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The Downtown Denver Partnership wants your ideas to gussy up Block 162, since most of the block will remain unoccupied for foreseeable future while Evan Makovsky decides what to build on it. And we can’t have an entire city block looking like Ground Zero on September 12 when the Democratic…

The letters section of Westword’s September 13 issue is absolutely jam-packed with missives from readers responding to the previous week’s Message column about the weakness of far too many current comics. Still, we couldn’t fit every worthy take in the print edition — so here are three more pieces of…

Click here to see the whole piece. In an alley near Ninth Avenue and Sherman Street is a retaining wall known to local graffiti world as “the CIA wall.” The name, presumably, comes from the Colorado Institute of Art located across the street, though the school has no official connection…

First off, don’t worry. No animals were harmed in the creation of this video. This is just some good, clean, all-American fun in the form of a bowling-ball shaped dog used as a bowling ball. It actually looks like the dog is sort of enjying itself. If there’s any better…

For the charge of first degree murder, a Jefferson County jury found 19-year-old Michael Tate not guilty yesterday in the death of Steven Fitzgerald, but not because of Tate’s insanity defense. Tate’s relief was short-lived, however, because in the judge’s next breath she read the guilty verdict on the second…

Some of the most passionate responses to the September 6 Message column about today’s funny pages can be found at The Daily Cartoonist, which touts itself as “the source for industry news for the professional cartoonist.” The site posted an item about the piece under the headline “Two Week Comic…

The management at the Denver Post is clearly trying to get their moneys’ worth out of sports columnist Woody Paige, who was lured back to the broadsheet after he relocated to the East Coast to appear on ESPN’s Cold Pizza; the back story of his return is detailed in this…

It’s become an easy joke, poking fun at MTV and what makes for the majority of its content. So easy, in fact, that Justin Timberlake can do it. “I challenge MTV right now,” he said, accepting the “Quadrulple Threat” award at the Video Music Awards Sunday night, “to play more…

Here’s a brief look at some of the items America is desperate to learn about today: General Petraeus The general leading the U.S. war effort in Iraq testifies before Congress, reporting that we may be able to withdraw 30,000 troops by next summer. At that rate we should be out…

I’ve never gotten over my instinctive dislike of traditional holidays, and instead make up my own — personal, private mileposts on the calendar with their own rituals and rites of observation, celebrated mostly alone. One such holiday landed on the Thursday right before Labor Day weekend: New Phone Book Day…

For those poor souls that don’t care about football, the next five months are going to be excruciating. Broncomania is in full swing again. Everyone else is talking in a language you don’t understand. You feel left out, isolated – alienated, even. It’s okay, we’re here to help. Every week…

On the very day that General David Petraeus, the U.S. military’s main man in Iraq, is appearing before Congress to share his thoughts about the embattled country in the wake of a troop “surge” that went into effect earlier this year, KBDI/Channel 12 host Aaron Harber received confirmation that he’ll…

Wonders never cease at the highest-security supermax prison in the free world, the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum outside Florence. This week, for the first time in more than five years, journalists will be allowed inside the place. And a 69-year-old woman visiting from Great Britain, whose visit with a notorious…

As noted in this recent More Messages blog, I’ve received plenty of tips about great websites devoted to newspaper cartoons since the publication of a column about the general unfunniness of today’s funnies. Another one worthy of a visit is a feature Westword contributor Cory Casciato mentioned in a comment…

When I wrote about Glendale going from titty city to rugby town last year, plans for the 5,000-seat rugby stadium and adjacent rec center were still in the design phase. After adopting rugby as the city’s official sport, Glendale was going to spend $20 million to build the first municipally-owned…

The Colorado Judicial Branch has named its Outstanding Judicial Officer of the Year: District Judge O. John Kuenhold of Alamosa. Lots of people think highly of Kuenhold, who’s been on the bench since 1981 and chief judge of his district since 2004. He’s worked long and hard on issues ranging…

You used to be able to count on TV serving all your lowest-common-denominator needs. Up for some good transgender slap-fighting? Jerry Springer has you covered. Hankering for some good cornpone jokes and T&A? Hee-Haw was on for more than twenty years. Want to see someone forced to eat something disgusting?…

You’d think that a person who ate two — sometimes three — bags of buttered popcorn a day would suffer from clogged arteries. But Centennial sofa salesman Wayne Watson became ill with “popcorn lung,” a rare disease that typically affects people working in popcorn factories. Watson lost half his lung…

Since the publication of the September 6 More Messages column, in which I read all of the comics in the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post for two weeks to discover what I have (and haven’t) been missing, I’ve received plenty of e-mails, pro and con, from fans of…