Summer is the time for swing sets. While growing up, most of us engaged in the bulk of our swinging during school hours, sprinting out of the cafeteria at recess in a mad dash to one of several highly coveted spots. But things really got serious when schools officially locked…
SAT, 6/4 Helen Hand knows all about life transitions. Navigating her fifties at a time when younger people of a different mindset seem to rule the roost, she’s also adjusting to a caretaking role with her aging father. And about a years ago, following the murder of her brother, Colorado…
FRI, 6/3 Cognoscenti in the early ’90s openly referred to my air-hockey talent as “burgeoning,” but a thug from Chicago abruptly snuffed out this promising career. Before that fateful moment, my friends and I would head to the Cherry Creek mall and idle away the time. There were many diversions:…
FRI, 6/3 Americana music cuts a wide swath these days, encompassing just about anything that involves songwriting and singing by, well, an American. But its heart, which is so central to the genre, began pumping long ago from a wellspring fed by the likes of Bill Monroe and the Carter…
THURS, 6/2 Jeffrey Nickelson saw Topdog/Underdog, written by Suzan-Lori Parks, on Broadway in 2002 with Jeffrey Wright and Mos Def in the lead roles, and he knew immediately that he wanted the Pulitzer Prize-winning play for his Shadow Theatre Company. He was fascinated when he realized Topdog was written by…
It’s hot as hell, and you’ve got no AC. You have two choices: Sit at home and simmer in your own bodily fluids and damp T-shirt, or get out of town. The obvious question is, where? Glenwood or Ouray? Durango or Alamosa? There’s just so much to do. Don’t fret:…
I love vacation. Let me rephrase that: I fucking love vacation. I have loved vacation since I was three years old and we went to Arizona to visit my grandparents and I got to swim in their pool and eat ice cream for seven glorious days. Second only to vacation…
Having attended at least one all-day fest at Red Rocks Amphitheatre per year for over a decade, I’ve been lucky enough to see nearly every great reggae band in the world. I gave a high five to Toots Hibbert while the Maytals looked on, aghast at my dancing. I watched…
Things are coming together nicely. You’ve managed to purchase your $6 foot-long bratwurst, $3.75 lemonade and $3 bag of peanuts while simultaneously avoiding the caterwauling of some unfortunately clad woman belting out the national anthem with near-freakish zeal. This pleases you, because you’ve never really been too fond of the…
Sex rules. Actually, sex rules for ten months out of the year. Sex in July and August is an act of love, an act of desperation or a combination of both. Sure, when you’re sixteen and doing it in your boyfriend’s parents’ basement, it’s one thing. But as a grownup…
If you have an extreme fear of heights, it’s wise to not accept a job that requires you to work on the side of a mountain. I realized that a little too late last May, as I found myself faced with a dilemma: choose certain death working on the side…
Sweat cascading over your brow, one eye on a road atlas and the other on the road, anger percolating as you curse yourself and everyone within earshot of the car. You’re completely, utterly and hopelessly lost. Go with it. It doesn’t matter that you don’t have a clue where you…
You know the drill: brake lights, deceleration, standstill traffic and indignant yawns. Until the people up ahead learn how to drive, here are a few time-killers to make your boredom less angry and your anger less boring. One perennial favorite pastime of those with out-of-state plates seems to be snapping…
No matter how many summer vacations you plan or how well you plan them, a moment comes when you realize that you will never sword-fight with Lord of the Rings fans in Kazakhstan or reach that tiny island off the north coast of Australia where the school shuts down for…
Admit it: Like just about everyone else, you aspired to outer-space travel when you were nine years old. Some of us never shake that out-of-this-world daydream to become an astronaut; we still secretly harbor that yearning to zap through meteor showers and past Saturn, seeking to go, yes, where no…
The objects on display are only the most visible aspects of exhibitions. There are other key components that, though less prominent, are equally essential. The most important of these is the idea underlying the display. Without an idea — even a bad or misguided one — there is no show…
Every year at this time, LoDo’s David Cook Fine Art (1637 Wazee Street, 303-623-8181) presents a group show that’s filled with museum-quality pieces by a who’s who of Western artists working during the last part of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. This is an important…
Chihuly. Michael De Marsche, president of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, has orchestrated the extravaganza Chihuly, a sprawling survey of the career of glass master Dale Chihuly. Working near Seattle, Chihuly is among the best-known glass artists of all time, right up there with Louis Comfort Tiffany and Paolo…
What is there to say abou The Wizard of Oz at this point in time? The film — if not the original book — is etched in every American mind: Judy Garland’s solid little Dorothy with her child’s innocence and full, womanly voice; Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion; Margaret Hamilton epitomizing…
Parallel Lives, at the Avenue Theater, begins promisingly, with two heavenly beings designing the human race. They discuss skin color — red, tan, yellow — and worry that those humans with ordinary white skin may feel left out or inferior. They decide that procreation will occur through sex and that…
Death of a Salesman. Written in 1949, Death of a Salesman electrified the theatrical world for several reasons. It tossed aside the conventions of the well-made, three-act play years before they were finally laid to rest in the rebellious mid-’50s. It criticized the post-war myth of the American dream –…
If you’re trying to navigate the gulf between the absolutist view inside Fortress Bush and the relativist politics of Western Europe, you need go no further than Brothers, a provocative new drama from Denmark. Superficially, it’s an intimate and rather self-contained film, but director Susanne Bier (Open Hearts, The One…
