Making Brown Babies!

Dear Mexican: I have a stupid, unemployed, sixteen-year-old gang-bangin’ cousin who already dropped out of school, and I’m pretty sure most Mexicans are related to somebody who fits that description. About eight months ago, he knocked up a girl around his age, so last week I was dragged to their…

Speak Your Peace

Archbishop Desmond Tutu rocked the house when he came out on stage Sunday morning. The thousands of kids gathered in Magness Arena cheered as he danced, waved the scarf that the Dalai Lama had presented him with the afternoon before, talked about how the story of Jackie Robinson inspired him…

World Peace

The 1900 block of Market Street has been quiet this summer. Not quiet, in the sense that business has been bad — in fact, business along this stretch of LoDo is better than it’s been in years, with people packing the bars and restaurants and rooftop patios. No, quiet in…

It’s a Crime

Dear Mexican: I see Jews, Asians and Persians making something of themselves and conducing safe, walkable communities. Of course they’re not perfect, but I don’t see high Jew-crime communities, either. I see these people sticking together and helping each other out instead of envying their own. Why can’t Mexicans get…

Nobel Intentions

On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, the founders of PeaceJam met with the Secret Service and finalized arrangements for the ten Nobel Peace Prize winners coming to town this week to announce their global Call to Action and, in rare spare moments, wondered what they’d have to do to become…

Uncle Tom’s Crabbin’

Tom Tancredo makes news wherever he goes — particularly when he’s not precisely sure where he’s going to wind up. On his swing through South Carolina this past weekend, Colorado’s controversial congressman found himself standing behind a podium draped with the Confederate battle flag, addressing the League of the South…

Shirting the Issue

Dear Mexican: My gabacha friends and I marched in the May pro-amnesty rallies and wanted to show our support on our chests as well as our feet. We wore T-shirts that read “I only (picture of big, juicy lips) mojados” on the front, and “Yo solo (lips) mojados” on the…

Give PeaceJam a Chance

“This PeaceJam is amazing,” my friend said. “I was just hearing about them on Colorado Public Radio.” She’d been hearing about them from me for months — since last November, when I interviewed founders Dawn Engle and Ivan Suvanjieff, and wrote about how PeaceJam would mark its tenth anniversary by…

The Eye of the Storm

“I’m a conservative Republican,” Michael Brown says. “What am I doing here?” Still, on the list of tight spots where Brown, former head of FEMA, has found himself in the last year, the Westword office should rank low. For starters, there was that emergency-response photo op on September 2, 2005,…

Myth America

Disaster is Lori Peek’s specialty. When Hurricane Katrina struck, she was fresh from the University of Colorado, where she’d earned her Ph.D. with a thesis on 9/11, and just beginning her first semester as an assistant sociology professor at Colorado State University. Still, she somehow found a week last October…

Vision Quest

Dear Mexican: I heard that Mexicans at an Orange County candy factory think they saw the Virgin Mary in a pile of melted chocolate. Why do Mexicans always see the Virgin Mary in the stupidest things? Non-Believer Beaner Dear Wab: It’s not just Mexicans who find the Holy Mother in…

Boulder’s Storm Warning

A year ago, Michael Brown was at the center of the storm. Today, the former FEMA head is back in Boulder, where he’s set up a disaster-consulting business. So far, he hasn’t been asked to consult on the disaster in his own back yard — but over the past two…

Meat John Mark Karr

Apparently the Boulder County Jail didn’t get PETA’s memo. On Tuesday, People for the Ethical Treatment of animals sent a note to the jailer in Los Angeles, urging that John Mark Karr be served a cruelty-free diet, one free of animals, because “unlike the humans in the prison system, all…

I PETA the Fool

Just when you thought the JonBenet Ramsey murder case had everything — a pint-sized beauty queen, a bogus Santa Claus, a ransom note right out of Matlock and, finally, a suspect with a yen for confessing and wearing eyeliner — another player enters the picture. PETA. Yes, People for the…

Beauty and the Bestiality

Boulder has never been particularly kind to Republicans, but Bob Beauprez owes District Attorney Mary Lacy a box of chocolates. Because without John Mark Karr, Beauprez’s running mate might still be stumbling through the headlines. Last Wednesday morning, the media was all over first-term Mesa County commissioner Janet Rowland, whose…

Spanish Inquisition

Dear Mexican: What’s with Mexican-Americans who live in New Mexico claiming they’re Spanish and not Mexican? Many actually get angry and combative if you ask them if they’re Mexican. But if you look at them, they look more Indian than Spanish! Why have so many developed a deep-seated embarrassment of…

Karr Crash

Just when the University of Colorado was starting to resurrect its reputation, journalism professor Michael Tracey, long a sideshow in the JonBenet Ramsey circus, hits (or is that creates?) the news with his creepy e-mail exchange with John Mark Karr — in which Tracey (pictured) looks about as much like…

Bah Humbug

The People’s Republic of Boulder isn’t known for supporting Republican causes, but gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez should send a big bouquet to the DA’s office there. Because yesterday’s announcement that the Boulder DA finally has a suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey murder may have been the only thing that could…

Drink Up!

Dear Mexican: Why do Mexicans forget about great beers like Tecate, Negra Modelo, and Bohemia and start drinking swill like Bud Light when they come to the United States? I always remember John Steinbeck’s immortal line –“Ah, Bohemia beer and the Pyramid of the Sun; entire civilizations have created less”–…

The Lite Stuff

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez seems to have picked his running mate as he would a tie — an accessory that’s complementary, and not too loud. Something he can embrace in an unctuously innocuous manner, as he did yesterday when announcing that Janet Rowland is his choice for lieutenant governor…

Love, Mexican Style

Dear Readers: My July 20 column advising Enamorada Gabacha to improve her relationship with the Mexican who invaded her heart by giving him “an old-school blow job” drew many letters — starting with one from Gabacha in Love herself: Dear Mexican: Well, of course I thought of a good old-school…

Reel Life

Dear Mexican: The last two movies I attended were rated R. Sitting around me were Mexican families with very young children. Why do Mexicans bring their eight-year-old kids to see a movie like Hostel? Do Mexican parents just not give a shit, or can they not afford a babysitter? Plus,…