Face Time

Today a woman came to Dr. John A. Grossman to discuss getting her eyes done. Since Grossman is widely considered the finest cosmetic surgeon in Denver — and arguably also in Beverly Hills, where he keeps an office — she assumed she was in the right hands. “I looked at…

Big Lax Attack

If you lived in upstate New York in the late 1980s and early ’90s, as I did, there was really only one sports story worth paying attention to. No, it wasn’t the Buffalo Bills, a team on the cusp of setting a record for Super Bowl futility, dumping four straight…

Internet Interruption

North Carolina Republican Senator Jesse Helms is best known as a supporter of hot-button issues like tobacco subsidies and the Confederate flag, and not as a computer visionary. But reports indicate that Helms, who will retire from the Senate at the end of this term after thirty years in office,…

Letters to the Editor

The Sound of Música Swallow hell: Harrison Fletcher’s “Meanwhile, Back at the Ranchera,” in the October 24 issue, was an interesting look at the Mexican music scene. But the Galindos shouldn’t get too comfortable: I’m sure that their concert business will soon be gobbled up by the same corporate giants…

Deeper Into Columbine

Memo To: Jefferson County Sheriff John P. Stone Re: Columbine I know that you’re a busy man. You’ve got a lot on your mind and only a few weeks to go before you clean out your desk. So I’ll try to keep this short. I realize, too, that you’re tired…

Going Ballistic

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold weren’t the only ones engaged in a shooting spree at Columbine on April 20, 1999. Denver police officers were generous with their own ammunition that day, firing at phantoms and pumping rounds into a school full of trapped students long after the killers were dead…

Lights On

TV pitchman Tom Bodett may promise to “leave the light on” for would-be guests of Motel 6, but the City of Denver is about to bring out the klieg lights for the proposed city-owned hotel next to the Colorado Convention Center. The city may soon issue $347 million in bonds…

Off Limits

One of the most bruising battles of the current election has been the heated contest between state senator Marilyn Musgrave and state senate president Stan Matsunaka, squaring off for the 4th Congressional District seat being vacated by Bob Schaffer. But according to Greeley attorney Richard Blundell, whatever licks Musgrave, the…

The Wonder Years

Mike Speck believes in life, liberty and the pursuit of happily doing whatever you want to do on your own property. Since 1989, he’s lived in Wonderview, one of the last affordable neighborhoods in Evergreen, a 33-home subdivision where, historically, everything from tidy lawns to eccentric yard art to benign…

Let’s Get Together

Once upon a time, in a city right outside your door, reporters at assorted media organizations actively competed for stories, with the aim of scooping anyone and everyone. But while such battles still take place on occasion today, things are infinitely more complicated than they once were. Consider the tale…

Baseball’s Treasured Orb

When I was a kid, my father had a friend named Morris Kleinman, an elegant, witty lawyer with a passion for tailor-made suits, Bombay martinis on the stem and the New York Yankees. Renowned as a tiger in the courtroom, Mr. Kleinman was an indulgent and generous man outside the…

Letters to the Editor

No Kidding Candygram: Regarding Julie Jargon’s “Knock, Knock, Who’s There?” in the October 24 issue: So, what’s the next step? What do you do about a “business” whose owners are all but invisible? I’ve had the same experience in my neighborhood — kids I don’t recognize ringing my bell after…

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranchera

Delia Flores has selected raspberry lipstick, a blue headband and six tiny gold hoop earrings for the evening. Although she still has to wear her khaki uniform and lug around a dustpan and broom, Los Temerarios, Mexico’s hottest romántica band, is playing tonight, and she wants to look good. A…

Knock, Knock, Who’s There?

While most people are buying candy to give to kids on Halloween, Greg Zerwas is haunted by kids trying to sell him candy. Kids dropped by Zerwas’s northwest Denver duplex several times over the past two summers, peddling $7 boxes of chocolates. They didn’t look like they came from his…

Off Limits

While the manure — a substance that Republican Wayne Allard, the Senate’s only veterinarian, is very capable of recognizing, according to one of his ads — continues to accumulate on the campaign trail, a few voters unhappy with the negative tone of the major parties’ campaign for the U.S. Senate…

Let’s Put On a Show!

If you’re not careful, a telephone can ruin your romance. That’s the message of Gian Carlo Menotti’s 25-minute-long The Telephone. Although the opera was written in the late ’40s, baritone Chris McKim, who’s analyzed his part, considers it oddly up to date. “This is one of my favorite lines: This…

Ad Attack

On the afternoon of October 15, viewers in Colorado’s 5th District with their televisions tuned to Channel 4 saw someone plenty of them had probably never eyeballed before — the Democrat wishing to represent them in Congress. Why is Curtis Imrie an unknown to so many voters? Even in this…

Mountain Man Stand

One hundred seventy-five years after he should have died, Lance Grabowski is still here and looking as resplendent as ever. For this crisp fall day, he has selected a bear-claw-and-mink-fur necklace. He also sports a nineteenth-century do-rag, emblazoned with dozens of pins and medallions, as well as tanned, coffee-colored buckskin…

Letters to the Editor

Give Me Libertarians Ballots, not bullets: Regarding Patricia Calhoun’s “Mr. Stanley, We Presume,” in the October 17 issue: Thanks, Calhoun, for the non-judgmental article about Libertarians (in spite of Rick Stanley’s disrespect for the decorum of the office he is running for). Don’t forget it was the Libertarian Party that…

Territorial Dissings

Krist Novoselic sounds weary from his hotel room in Austin. When asked about the “survivor” tag that the press has attached to Eyes Adrift, he seems slightly peeved. “It’s a story we never really propagated,” Novoselic says. “That’s just a coincidence — how we all played in trios. People jumped…

Book, Chapter and Verse

In the beginning, the Big Bang created the heavens and the earth. The Big Bang, not God. Also, camels and lions were never immortal, and neither were humans, who actually used to be monkeys. Oh, and get this: The Earth is billions of years old, not six thousand, like the…

Excessive Force

On the evening of June 8, 2001, Delores and Charles Gates received the kind of phone call every parent dreads: Their nineteen-year-old son was calling from jail. They barely had time to absorb that information when the news got much worse. “Get me out of here,” John Gates told his…