Defense attorneys have accused her of running a death machine, but the wheels came off Carol Chambers’s rattling apparatus this week. On Monday a judge ruled that Chambers, the district attorney for Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties, and her entire office should be removed from one of six death-penalty…
I was standing on line, as the Yankees say, watching a situation escalate in a bodega on the Upper West Side. A large Indian man, distressed and in a hurry, was barking the name of a product while a small Korean woman working the counter struggled to understand him. “Pineapple…
University of Colorado at Boulder journalism professor Michael Tracey has never previously suffered from camera shyness. Indeed, back in August 2006, when bogus confessor John Mark Karr was arrested as a suspect in the JonBenét Ramsey murder due largely to comments he made in correspondence with Tracey, the prof practically…
Three things you need to know right away about Tony Krupicka: First, the guy loves to run. Loves it. He cruises the trails above Colorado Springs three, four, even six hours a day, in all kinds of weather. He runs up and down mountains with more joy and less discernible…
They say that everyone — even the guy with the best gig in the world — dreams occasionally of doing something else with his labors. I know chefs who dream of being musicians, musicians who’d love to be chefs, real estate brokers who spend their nights writing strange novels, and…
No puppies were harmed in the production of this Vlog. Numerous women had their hearts broken, and a few back-alley abortions may ensue, but no puppies were harmed in any way…
After a lackluster and sometimes controversial tenure as Manager of Parks and Recreation beginning in 2003, Kim Bailey is resigning effective May 27 to become vice president of Urban Centers for Outward Bound USA in Golden. I learned the welcome news on Tuesday, April 8, and interestingly enough, I’d been…
Three things you need to know right away about Tony Krupicka: First, the guy loves to run. Loves it. He cruises the trails above Colorado Springs three, four, even six hours a day, in all kinds of weather. He runs up and down mountains with more joy and less discernible…
State representative Andrew Romanoff is a party man, but not that kind of party man. The Colorado Speaker of the House is looking forward to the Democratic National Convention this August, but doesn’t think the nation’s drunkest city should consider keeping bars open later (make that earlier into the morning)…
Chas Gale may have danced his way right into a jail cell. On April 8, a jury of five women and one man convicted the tango teacher of unlawful sexual contact. As reported in this cover story last August, Gale had been accused of touching a student’s vagina and placing…
Laurie Anderson remains one of the most intriguing performance artists in these United States – a social commentator whose creative toolbox contains music, spoken word, visuals and electronics. In a conversation with Westword captured in the following Q&A, she talks at length about her current project, Homeland, which makes its…
The April 10 Message column kicks off with an anecdote about University of Colorado professor Michael Tracey, one of the journalism department faculty members who assembled earlier that month to mull the future of the Campus Press, CU’s student-operated online newspaper. Tracey wigged out after yours truly snapped the mediocre…
The April 10 Message column, about the future of the Campus Press, the University of Colorado Boulder’s student-operated campus newspaper, quotes briefly from a statement read at an early April faculty meeting by faculty member Tom Yulsman (seen here in a photograph that appears courtesy of the Press), who speaks…
The April 10 Message column refers to a report by Paul Voakes, dean for the School of Journalism & Mass Communications at the University of Colorado Boulder, about the Campus Press, CU’s student-operated online newspaper. The de facto investigation into the Press following its publication of “If It’s War the…
The April 10 Message column discusses three documents handed out to attendees of an April 2 faculty meeting held to consider the fate of the Campus Press, the student-operated online newspaper affiliated with the University of Colorado Boulder, in the wake of a divisive column by scribe Max Karson that…
John Fante was born in Denver 99 years ago today. If you’ve never heard of the late author, you’re not alone. He is one of the best, least-known authors of the 20th Century, but he is rarely talked about in Denver or anywhere else. “He’s an interesting in the American…
I’d been looking forward to seeing There Will Be Blood. It had been nominated for about a hundred Academy Awards, and my more serious film-nerd friends talked about it like it was a singular work of staggering genius that would shape the way Hollywood made movies for decades — the…
Tucker Carlson is sort of the Paris Hilton of political punditry: he’s famous for just being famous. Which is enough, it needs be said, to have your own show for a near three-year run on MSNBC. But then, Paris had The Simple Life, too. Life with Tucker Carlson isn’t so…
The employees at the Denver Post knew about tough times in the newspaper business long before the general public keyed in to the depth of the dilemma. But the message really hit home on April 4, when the attached flier turned up in their mailboxes. The item, distributed under the…
If the super-charged computers that Boulder-based company Umbria uses to break down the blogs, message boards and online social networks into lucrative market research had feelings, they’d be blushing right about now. Over the past few days the blogosphere – which the company number crunches into a massive, constantly-updated focus…
On the opening day of the trial for former tango instructor Chas Gale, the judge dimmed the lights so Gale’s defense lawyers could project video footage of an extremely distraught woman banging her hands on a table and screaming. Only a couple of seconds of the video played for the…
While the Denver Post didn’t taste Pulitzer glory in 2008 — see this More Messages blog to learn more — the Rocky Mountain News scored a couple of unexpected successes as part of the April 7 announcements. The finalists in the features category didn’t leak out in advance, unlike the…
