Arts & Culture

Take cover, easily-offended citizens: Lisa Lampanelli is in town! This voluptuous old blonde may dress like a 1950s housewife, but her gutsy standup routine has catapulted her to comedian celebrity status. She’s a regular on the dais of Comedy Central Roasts and on Howard Stern’s radio show. She heckles like…

Even if the mountains aren’t your thing, you’ve just got to love Leadville. Here’s one good reason: The highest incorporated city in North America (elevation: 10,152′) has been holding ski-joring competitions since 1949. Clearly a contender for the world’s weirdest sport, ski-joring involves a horse and rider or a dog…

Compiled just in time for last fall’s thirtieth festival, Take 30: The First Three Decades of the Denver International Film Festival — a collection of DIFF anecdotes and memories with photographs by Larry Laszlo — conjures images both old and new between its covers in an ultimate labor of love…

You might suppose that environmental artist Lita Albuquerque, who’s slung giant blue orbs across the barren landscape of the North and South poles to create “Stellar Axis,” a kind of earth-sky star map on ice, has a bit of a Zeus complex. But, in fact, the project comprised the very…

If you’ve always wanted to rub shoulders with the movers and shakers of New York City — or tell a New Yorker cartoonist about one of your hilarious ideas — then head for the high country, because Beaver Creek’s signature funny event, Humor on the Slopes, is back for another…

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into town, the Denver Art Museum’s Untitled #18 (.gov) rehashes the DNC fervor. If you’re still riding that wave of political excitement, then make your way to the museum today at 6 p.m. for a slate of hands-on activities. This…

I’ve been doing this cultural beat for a long time now, and I’ve come to realize that things don’t last. Artists are disorganized and sometimes flaky, propelled by great ideas and held back by chancy finances. But those that do usually survive because someone, or in some cases, a whole…

“My advice: Stay away from black holes,” says Dr. Phil Plait, aka the Bad Astronomer. While this may seem like a fairly sound piece of sci-fi wisdom that’s more suited for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy than Earth, even Arthur Dent never experienced anything that sucked him hopelessly in,…

I don’t know about you, but this is the time of year when I turn into a crab and crawl into a boot and refuse to come out until it’s at least 72 degrees outside daily. I can no longer bear the brown, white and gray landscape or the fierce…

It’s a safe bet that all ambient, instrumental rock after the turn of the century will inevitably be compared to Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Sigur Rós. Even compelling acts such as This Will Destroy You will be subjected to such lazy comparisons. In this case, the association isn’t completely…

Baseball is back, at least in the sunnier climes of Arizona and Florida, where spring training is under way (the Rockies take on the Chicago White Sox this very day!). So pull yourselves together: It’s time to wipe away last fall’s tears and re-engage. For many of the hard-core fans,…

The documentary Pete Seeger: The Power of Song focuses on a much-misunderstood American-music figure. Many rockers once saw Seeger as an uptight purist who threatened to pull the plug on Bob Dylan’s electrified set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival — an anecdote still disputed forty-plus years later. (Seeger has…

When group members split to form separate projects, the results frequently add up to less than the original sum – but not in the case of Mat Brooke and Ben Bridwell. The pair teamed in Carissa’s Wierd, a sometimes entertaining but often erratic Seattle act, before joining forces again in…

When Thoreau said that most men will lead lives of quiet desperation, going to the grave with the song still in them, it’s obvious that he never met someone like Guy Clark, a troubadour who’s been penning odes of quiet desperation for over thirty years and shows absolutely no signs…

“Eating before practice helps a lot.” With a mouthful of homemade pizza, drummer Sam Spitzer is explaining the secret of the Hollyfelds’ camaraderie. Before each rehearsal, the quintet sits down to a meal at the Spitzers’ home. What started as carryout has evolved to delicious home-cooked meals, compliments of Spitzer’s…

While Gil Mantera’s Party Dream makes more-or-less sincere and angst-filled electro-emo, you’d never guess it from the duo’s live shows. On stage, the brothers from Youngstown, Ohio, dance, prance and make general asses of themselves with giddy, homoerotic abandon and total disregard for any hang-ups the audience might have. Gil…

Love him or hate him, with six Grammys to his name and having sold hundreds of millions of records worldwide, Billy Joel has a pedigree that’s impossible to ignore. Although he’s known primarily for crafting shamelessly catchy pop melodies with an ear for the British Invasion and a fondness for…

Brittany Spears puts on a great show. Her dynamic performances have impressed crowds all over the country, consistently earning her awards while helping build a fan base that should only grow bigger by the year. And she has yet to spend any time in a psych ward. Unlike her famous…