Leave it up to us crazy Coloradans to turn anything into an extreme sport. Parallel parking, shadow puppetry, tax preparation — you name it, we’ll “extreme” it. The latest outlet for local adrenaline and bone-fracture junkies, it turns out, is snowshoeing. Yes, snowshoeing, that thing where you strap racquetball rackets…

In the middle of the inauguration, a buddy called me just to say, “It’s kind of awesome Cheney is going out as a Bond villain.” Awesome indeed…

It doesn’t take much for Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper to put on a goofy getup for the photogs — but yesterday he had a good reason for doing so. Hick strapped on an ungainly helmet and peddled around a city block in honor of the news that this summer the…

For some reason, folks around here seem to have an unhealthy obsession with twittering, the social networking phenomenon designed for people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. A low point was surely the Rocky Mountain News pulling the ultra-classy move of twittering a three-year-old’s funeral in September. On the other hand, Denver resident…

Denver-based robot designers Jim and Louise Gunderson did pretty well when they invented Basil, a wicked smart beer-delivering robot. But they seem to have forgotten a cardinal rule in robot pop culture: Every robot is guaranteed by universal law to have an equally talented and somewhat similar-looking arch nemesis. And…

Since the holidays, countless piles of boxes have surely been left destitute up and down Denver’s streets. I know this because that was the case by my house last and all down my street last week. Heap after heap of cardboard was ignored by the recycling truck rumbling past, left…

Leave it to those merry pranksters at the Smoking Gun to spot this moment of utter embarrassment and hilarity at Vail Mountain resort last Friday. It turns out a skier attempted to ride the high-speed lift at Vail’s Blue Sky Basin, but when the seat didn’t fold down all the…

Has the other shoe finally dropped for up-and-coming Republican Ryan Frazier? The Aurora city councilman made headlines – as well as enemies – for sponsoring the controversial “right to work” ballot measure Amendment 47 this past November, and even though it lost at the polls, unions, many of which are…

First spotted on Boing Boing, this cheery holiday film is brought to us, for some reason, by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the government agency that’s based in part in Boulder. (Hopefully this video involved the incineration of one of those crappy student bungalows on the Hill.) The…

Journalists are an unusual bunch. We complain about our godawful pay and long hours, but we also live for such things. We make fun of all the self-indulgent and pointless press awards we constantly bestow upon each other, but if we don’t get any ourselves, we quietly mope for weeks…

You’ve read all about Basil the robot and his fancy cybernetic brain; now see him in action. To prove that their mechanical friend is actually capable of delivering delicious liquids (a feat Basil failed to accomplish at his coming-out party at the Wynkoop Brewery, solely because the stupid humans let…

We’ve long known people love the iconic big blue bear that peeks into the Colorado Convention Center (it’s officially titled “I See What You Mean”). Blue bear miniatures have been selling like hotcakes, and, as we uncovered in a tell-all interview, the big blue bear even recently appeared on Good…

You’ve already read about the drunken Santas who took over downtown Denver during Santacon 08 this past weekend; now you can have a drunken Santa for your very own. DRUNKEN SANTAS FOR HIRE, a new operation advertising on Craigslist, is all about providing folks with the perfect shitcanned St. Nick…

See more photos from Denver SantaCon 2008. Everybody sing along: “On the first and only day of SantaCon a drunken Santa gave to me, a fifth of vodka and a porno DVD.” Such was the naughty yuletide spirit that ran through Denver SantaCon 08, the annual all-day holiday bar crawl…

Update: As an eagle-eyed blog commentor pointed out, the voting for the KFC contest ended yesterday and the winner has already been announced. Turns out we were so awed by the Hulk’s majestic green majesty we just plain screwed up. The good news is that our man Komarnitsky won the…

I must take a moment to respond to my esteemed colleague Dr. Jason Sheehan, Chief Intelligence Officer of HARDON, who has, in his usual semi-coherent way, attempted to offer some thoughts on the so-called upcoming robot apocalypse. In full disclosure, I find Dr. Sheehan informative and amusing in a rather…

This morning, the Denver District Attorney’s Office will release new city protocols for how law enforcement, social services and legal agencies should deal with kids found in drug-endangered households, such as those living in meth labs or indoor marijuana grows. While that may not sound momentous, it is. For far…

When people ask Jim and Louise Gunderson if they have kids, they reply, “No, we have robots.” But right now, Louise feels like any other harried mother carrying a kilo of toys and bottles and diapers wherever she goes. Today is the first big day out for her little one,…

If anyone can make dirt fascinating, it’s J. John Cohen. That’s why a recent meeting of Colorado Cafe Scientifique, a popular free seminar that takes place ten times a year at the Wynkoop Brewing Company, was standing room only. Everyone was there to listen to Cohen, an immunologist at the…