More Messages: Back to the ER

In a March 2003 article, the Columbia Journalism Review declared Denver Post owner Dean Singleton to be a “newspaper surgeon” because of the trims he’s made at properties acquired under the auspices of MediaNews Group, the sprawling company he heads. Some of these procedures have saved patients such as the…

What to Wear Fridays: All Hallow’s Eve, Plan B

But you’re going to be cold, you say, in a strapless cocktail dress. Or maybe you need something a little edgier for that Halloween party than what The Cat’s Pajamas offered below. Problems solved: Just throw one of Lynne Bruning’s Wookie coats over your shoulders, and you’ll be ten feet…

What to Wear Fridays: All Hallow’s Eve, Plan A

The Cat’s Pajamas has always hated Halloween. She never liked having to dress up in some stupid-ass Tiger or Princess or Cheerleader costume. She was never much of one for make-believe, so the whole effort just somehow seemed pointless, even if candy was involved. There was this one time, however,…

More Messages: Snapped Up

After Rocky Mountain News photog Todd Heisler (pictured) won a Pulitzer Prize this year for his work on “Final Salute,” a sprawling piece that also earned a Pulitzer for reporter Jim Sheeler, there was no doubt that other publications would look to hire him. The only question, then, involved whether…

Oral Exam

We’ve got to figure that The Milagro Beanfield War — a story as rare, joyful, mysterious and full of life as a Truchas sunset — was a real no-brainer pick by Mayor Hick as this year’s One Book One Denver read. But because the Southwest classic by John Nichols (pictured)…

More Messages: Comings and Goings

A Message column published last month focused on Albert Manzi (pictured above), the new publisher of the Boulder Daily Camera, as well as the president and CEO of Prairie Mountain Publishing, a joint MediaNews Group-E.W. Scripps enterprise that oversees a slew of local publications, including the venerable Colorado Daily. In…

A Day at the Myraces

Since we went public this week with Westword’s myspace/myrace pages for the six Colorado gubernatorial candidates, much action has occured on the profiles we created on myspace.com. Both Bill Ritter and Bob Beauprez have gotten hundreds of page views in the past few days, but Democrat Ritter (who also has…

Cool Your Heels

Some sage advice overheard at Moontime: “These girls wear $500 shoes and $300 bags into a bar and then get mad when some guy spills a beer on them. I tell them, “Then don’t wear $800 worth of accessories into a bar.'” The Cat’s Pajamas couldn’t agree more. Because if…

A Lot of Ford

In the current edition of Westword, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ford (pictured) talks about his new novel, The Lay of the Land; that item, along with information about two booksigning events, can be eyeballed by clicking here. But there was much more to the conversation than could be squeezed onto…

What’s in a Name?

Dan Heidel met Qusair Mohamedbhai while waiting for the bus. Every weekday morning, Heidel would walk from his apartment to the stop at Ninth and Downing, then catch the #12 bus to the Brown Palace Hotel, where he worked as an assistant comptroller. It was his routine: He knew the…

A Real Ghost Story

Bryan Bonner is the last of the original founders of the Rocky Mountain Paranorma Research Society, started in 1999 “to study and help people with paranormal phenomena.” Up to thirty times a year, the group is asked to chase down ghost stories or other spooky sightings. Last year, one of…

Blogs 2.0

The debate over whether blogs qualify as journalism isn’t terribly useful. After all, a lot of the stuff on TV newscasts isn’t journalism, either, and it won’t be until the definition of the latter is broadened to incorporate coat drives, blooper reels and chuckle-heavy conversations about the next day’s forecast…

A Man in Uniform

Twice this past summer, I left business cards at the west Denver home of Joetta Bailey, asking her to call me about her 22-year-old son, Brett Allen Andrews, who’d been arrested in July at the scene of an auto accident, where he’d pretended to be a paramedic while brandishing an…

Wed Alert

Happily ever after? Not quite yet for the six men who signed up for the February installment of Thailand Romance Tours, a find-a-bride service based in Denver (“From Denver With Love,” March 2). Sammy and Yuvaree come closest to being a poster couple for the business. Sammy proposed to Yuvaree…

A Squirrel in Hand

When I first moved into my house, there were three purchases I intended to make immediately. I wanted a barbecue, on which I could quickly determine what foods can be grilled. What’s cooking tonight, Adam? Glad you asked: macaroni and cheese, Hot Pockets and flan. The second buy would be…

Letters to the Editor

Follow the Money Mind your business: Regarding Michael Roberts’s “Downturn,” in the October 19 issue: I believe that business reporting is down because the businesses that control TV want to deflect attention away from business. They want to vote down the new minimum wage. They want “business as usual.” To…

Both Ways Bob

“We’re the loudest ones here! YEEAAAHHH!” a red-faced guy shouted at his buddies a few minutes before Bob Dylan’s October 24 appearance at the Fillmore Auditorium. And, for my money, he was right. This quartet of middle-aged yahoos could have given even the most obnoxiously sozzled Parrothead a run for…

Visiting Venice, Via LoDo

Sometimes these weekly missives are about time and the progression through it of a menu, a chef, an address. Sometimes they’re about history, which isn’t the same as time, because time is smooth and steady, and history is, well, bumpy. History is the story of peaks and jags in time,…

From Colfax to Coolfax

The city is ready to roll out its new Colfax street-design study. I did my own study on Sunday. The sun was shining as I passed by Colfax and Sherman. Popping a squat on the green bench on the north side of the street, where people sit and wait for…

We’re the Tops!

It’s official: Denver has reached the top. The good people of Wolford — the Netherlands-based company best known for sexy legwear that can va va voom up any outfit — also have a line of body-conscious tops named after famous places worldwide, such as “Arizona,” “Long Island,” “Jakarta,” ” New…

More Messages: Like Rolling Stone

Although even supporters of Tom Tancredo and Marilyn Musgrave would agree that they don’t rock, the twosome wound up in the current issue of Rolling Stone anyhow, albeit for unflattering reasons. The Matt Taibbi-penned cover story of the November 2 issue is headlined “The Worst Congress Ever: How Our National…

Intruder Alert!

Years before the goofy pen-pal relationship between CU journalism professor Michael Tracey and phony confessor John Mark Karr blossomed into headlines of the sort explored in a recent Westword cover story, Tracey was pushing the theory that someone like Karr was responsible for the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey. The…