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Rap star Hammer has confronted a sea of troubles over the last two years–sagging popularity, concerts marred by violence, allegations of rape lodged against members of his entourage. Now add to the list a recent judgment against a group of Hammer-owned companies in a lawsuit brought by Englewood’s Great-West Life…

The 500-channel future of television begins at Chatfield High. In a downstairs classroom of the Littleton school, home of the Chatfield Chargers, teacher Ron Gabbert and about twenty students in his advanced television- and radio-production class watch a just-completed program about the school wrestling team’s season. Mike Jones and Rich…

“I reckon being ill is one of the great pleasures of life,” Samuel Butler declared, “provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.” Yes, but Sam never had to contend with the modern hospital–or the hospital bill. Although car dealers talk about…

part 2 of 2 In February 1992 Casey went to live at another Utah-based program, Sorenson’s Ranch School in Koosharem. At Sorenson’s, Casey lived in a rustic cabin set in a high mountain valley. Like every youth there, he received a horse in order to learn responsibility. It would have…

part 1 of 2 Casey Collier’s quicksilver moods–kind and gentle one moment, unruly and obstinate the next–puzzled the people around him from the time he was a preschooler. He landed in therapy before he was ten, in a mental hospital at age twelve. The explanations for his actions seemed to…

Rush to judgment: Ouch. Not since the Broncos lost their last Super Bowl has Denver taken such a drubbing from the national press. In reporting the delayed opening of the “huge and controversial $3.2 billion” airport “28 miles from downtown,” the March 2 Wall Street Journal noted that the postponement…

A Chicago-based aviation consultant paid $250,000 by the City of Denver to help plan the future of Stapleton International Airport produced no tangible work other than a twenty-page report on the airport’s main terminal. The city says that the Unison Consulting Group Inc. performed a variety of “management consulting” services…

In a little more than six months, a small-time thief named Everett Francis Wann is scheduled to be released from federal prison, where he has spent the past eighteen months serving time for swiping aircraft parts sent to a Continental Airlines warehouse in Denver. Although Wann’s release may hold little…

The Churl Next Door Much as I enjoyed Robin Chotzinoff’s March 2 story, “If That Don’t Beat Al!”, I don’t think I’d enjoy having Al Avram (or whatever his name is) open a business next door. On the other hand, the Unsinkables don’t sound all that neighborly, either. Susie Saks…

Greg Wiatt paces the floor of his tiny Denver apartment like a revivalist preacher preparing to tear into a congregation of sinners. As he begins to speak, he punctuates his remarks by stabbing a finger toward the ceiling. In a fit of anger, he slams a 1938 book called Heredity…

Al Avram has an irresistible East Coast/macho/wiseguy/velvet growl, and the best thing he says with it is this: “You know, I got an explanation for that.” Which is handy, because Al has a lot to explain. His name, for one thing, which is Al Avram in some circles and Carroll…

Static cling: Denver’s “1994 Talk Radio Academy Awards” have just been revealed by an anonymous bunch of pranksters–“We of the Academy would reveal who we are,” they promise, “but we couldn’t do that. We have jobs to keep”–who swear they polled a hundred regular radio listeners by hacking into stations’…

Chicago-based aviation consultant that was awarded two lucrative contracts at Denver International Airport has a history of involvement in controversial consulting projects at the main airport in Atlanta. Aviation Resource Partners Inc. (ARP), a minority-run firm that has contributed generously to Mayor Wellington Webb’s re-election campaign, has been given more…

Fiery talk-show host Bob Larson has spent most of his career battling Satan. But over the past several years, he also has been under attack from a growing number of more corporeal opponents, who charge him with sins such as the financial exploitation of radio listeners by his Lakewood-based Bob…

The Gospel According to Paul Thanks for publishing Ward Harkavy’s “Passing on the Right” in the February 16 issue. The accompanying illustration about the New Right dittoheads marching in lockstep says it all. Paul Weyrich and company have the nerve to rave on about liberal “elitists” and then require absolute…

Sometime this summer, the more than 1,000 people charged with felony drug offenses each year in Denver will begin flowing into a single courtroom on the second floor of the City and County Building. There, if everything goes according to plans now being finalized, William Meyer, a wiry and intense…

Lillian Wittschen may be pushing seventy and hooked up to an oxygen tank, but she’s always on the lookout for a thrill. She thinks you should be, too. “Why don’t you go take a look at the biggest thing to come down the pike?” she suggests. “It’s an angel’s trumpet…

Nine wants to no: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now that Butch Montoya, former assistant news director at Channel 9, has become the city’s manager of public safety, can Paula Woodward’s appointment to director of public works be far behind? Not if the same connections that counted for Montoya (besides his Hispanic…

Much was auspicious in 1993, the Year of the Dave. Dave Letterman’s broadcasting coup made the news, Dave Winfield distinguished himself, Wendy’s featured Dave’s Deluxe (designed by one of fast food’s finest Daves) and Hollywood even came up with a Dave movie. “What I want to know,” says Dave More,…