Best Dick Jokes for Everybody 2009 | Wrist Deep Productions | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Dick Jokes for Everybody

Wrist Deep Productions

It ain't easy being funny these days. "Your mama so fat" jabs died with the banking collapse. Dick jokes in the middle of a recession? Fuggedaboutit. Thankfully, we still have Greg Baumhauer, Ben Kronberg, Ben Roy, Jim Hickox and former Westword scribe Adam Cayton-Holland (who recently released a DVD called Dick Jokes for Artists), the witty fellows behind the standup production company Wrist Deep Productions. From weekly open-mike nights at the Squire Lounge to viral videos like "Barackman Turner Overdrive" to wildly popular monthly extravaganzas at Orange Cat Studios known as "Los Comicos Super Hilariosos," Wrist Deep's genre-pushing, gut-busting humor is a full-time vocation – and one whose acclaim is spreading beyond Denver. Thanks to this crew, even in these troubled times, there are enough dick jokes to go around.

Best Direction of a Musical

The Producers

So you're producing a blockbuster musical on a limited budget, a show known for productions that feature sparkly costumes, amazing technical effects and big, big musical numbers. What do you do to make audiences forget the Broadway show and those costly touring versions? Here's Michael J. Duran's answer: He assembled a cast of talented actors and ingenious tech people, and he let everyone cut loose as only the BDT gang can. He put tall Brian Norber into staggeringly high heels and a glittering dress; he encouraged Wayne Kennedy and Scott Beyette to pull out all the stops as producer Max Bialystock and his bookkeeper sidekick; he deployed so much talent in the chorus that the group numbers were full of delicious surprises. And he put the vulgar, exhilarating whoop missing from many big-budget versions of The Producers back into this insane Hitler-baiting story.

Best Direction of a Shakespeare Play

David Ivers, The Merry Wives of Windsor

David Ivers is primarily known as an actor, but this production showed off his directing chops. He changed the play's time and locale, wedding the script's Elizabethan humor to the bright optimism of the 1920s, the era of flappers. With the help of an excellent cast that included Kathleen M. Brady as a hilarious Mistress Quickly, an inspired set by Hugh Landwehr and David Kay Michelson's gorgeous costumes, Ivers managed to make this minor Shakespearean work not only funny, but elegant, giving us lightness and wit where we'd expected only incomprehensible speech and corny puns.

Best Dive

Nob Hill Inn

Eric Gruneisen
The Nob Hill Inn recently celebrated its fiftieth birthday. It's daunting to think of all the people who have spent hours on the stools there, killing time and waiting for the day to the end. But it's the kind of joint where it's easy to lose track of time. The square-shaped bar makes for easy people-watching, and with some of Colfax's finest camping out there, it's usually entertaining as hell. If Bukowski were still alive, this might be his idea of nirvana.

Best DIY Book With Local Ties

Day of the Dead Crafts Co-authored by Jerry Vigil

We love local santero Jerry Vigil, having bestowed a previous Best of Denver award on him for his cocky Colorado Rockies muerto, a traditional bare-bones Day of the Dead calavera dressed up in a Rockies uniform. And now we get to laud him all over again for Day of the Dead Crafts: More Than 24 Projects That Celebrate Día de los Muertos, a book he co-authored (with Kerry Arquette and Andrea Zocchi) and contributed to as an artist. Vigil said last fall that he hoped to help impart a more sophisticated understanding of the cultural traditions behind the whimsical Day of the Dead art. And we say he succeeded, without taking away an ounce of the genre's personality.

Best DIY DJ Night

Bring Your Own Records Party!

Molly Martin
Everyone who has been around the scene within the last decade either knows Sarah Slater or has seen her at some of the most interesting shows, local and otherwise. For the past couple of years, she's organized and hosted her Bring Your Own Records night at various places, now mostly Carioca Cafe (aka Bar Bar). Basically, you bring a handful of vinyl instead of CDs or — perish the thought — iPods, and do your thing. What Sarah's doing may seem incredibly retro, but really, it's just a great way to bring people together to share music.

Best DIY Live Recordings

The Flat Response

You may not know Lance Stack by name, but if you've been going to certain shows, you've probably seen his impressively portable, live recording setup. For over two years, Stack has been making high-quality recordings of live shows and posting them online. After getting a band's permission, he posts the tracks at his website, the Flat Response. A casual perusal of that site reveals a breathtaking treasure trove of live audio, including the kind of technical information any audio geek would want to know. By any standard, Stack's website is an important document of what's been going on in Denver music.

Best Environmental Staging

The Hot L Baltimore

There couldn't have been a better setting for this textured, nostalgic play than the cozy, elegantly proportioned lobby of the more-than-century-old Barth Hotel, or a script better suited to the environmental approach chosen by director Terry Dodd. The playing area brought out the intertwined passions and emotions of the script and, because it was no brighter than the rest of the room, eliminated the separation you usually feel from the actors. As the title implies, the play is set in a hotel, and occasionally a genuine Barth resident became part of the action, walking through the scene or jumping up and applauding at a resonant moment. The production shimmered with history. Dodd had staged it here seventeen years earlier, and two of the actors from that version were on stage for this one: Judy Phelan-Hill and Patty Mintz Figel. No other local director possesses Dodd's understanding of place and its effect, and his Hot L Baltimore enlarged our sense of what theater is and the subtle, intriguing ways in which it speaks to us.

Best Example of Theatrical Relevance

Mediamockracy

Director Mitch Dickman and actors Karen Slack, William Hahn and GerRee Hinshaw went out with recording equipment during the Democratic Convention in Denver, asking questions and shooting video. The result was the satiric Mediamockracy, which took on politics, corporate interests and media idiocy in the form of two fictive cable-show hosts: a viperous Fox-style anchor and a talk-show comic in the Stephen Colbert vein. The show got in plenty of jibes, Hinshaw led the incorporated audience discussion, and Hahn and Slack made their characters so vivid and interesting that you almost wished someone, somewhere, would give them shows of their own.

Best Food Fair

Colorado Chocolate Festival

Like chocolate? Then you'll love the Colorado Chocolate Festival, which turns Mother's Day weekend into one long, miasmic cacao high, as hopped-up chocoholics snake from booth to booth tasting chocolate of every ilk, from dark and pure to sweet and milky, gooey to waxy smooth, with wine, with nuts, infused with tea, slathered on cakes, baked into brownies and artfully rolled into rich, melty truffles. Last year, there were chocolate contests, baking demonstrations and a Miss Chocolate crowning, and Willy Wonka strolled the room; there was even a Mother's Day gift market of non-chocolate items.

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