No matter how scary this Halloween becomes, it can’t be as frightening as the vision of Halloween 1995 conjured up by Suzanne Galante, at the time a 22-year-old Channel 7 intern. At a party at a house in Boulder, she fell upon a longtime fantasy: a fellow with “peach-fuzzy sideburns,”…
Only the largest of cars will do. Thus, there were no road trips during the energy crisis of the ’70s. Before and after that, however, for better and worse, my father and I got to know each other during long drives in his 1971 Impala. No matter how rocky a…
As you and I know, polling has been an intrinsic part of election coverage for years now — but the 2000 campaign has taken things to a new (and notably ludicrous) level. A prime example: Immediately after the conclusion of the debates this month between presidential candidates Al Gore and…
Americans don’t give a damn if Slobodan Milosevic goes nuts and murders half of Eastern Europe. They don’t care if bubonic plague decimates Philadelphia, Homer Simpson gets elected president as a write-in or Firestone starts putting its tires on baby strollers. No, what most of America really worries about is…
His and Hearse A tisket, a casket: I enjoyed Harrison Fletcher’s October 12 “Death Takes a Holiday,” on the goths with the hearses. It brought back a lot of memories for me. Around 25 years ago on the East Coast, a friend acquired a 1964 Caddy hearse. It was extremely…
Even in the glare of the noonday sun, the Pea Green cemetery feels like a haunted place. Situated on a rocky bluff overlooking a highway in rural Montrose County, the cemetery is a parched jumble of tombstones and rock, drained of all life except for a copper-colored horse that lives…
At eighteen, Scott Zuviceh wanted to be just like a Secret Service agent. He’d grown up in Granby, mostly, and was one of the town’s more notable troublemakers, a bona fide hellraiser. When he was eleven, he’d been removed from his parents’ home and sent to live in a progression…
The past few months have not been the best of times for the folks at Halaby, Cross & Schluter, the private law firm hired to defend the City of Denver in cases of alleged police misconduct. Blasted by a federal judge last spring for failing to comply with his order…
When Colorado Public Radio woke up on September 29, it hadn’t exactly turned into a cockroach. But that didn’t makes its fall subscription drive — or, as one CPR host called it on the air, the “Franz Kafka fundraiser” — any less surreal. For the second time during the ever-growing…
So there he was, Eric Pabst, sitting behind the wheel of his hearse in a cemetery, wearing black jeans, black shirt and black boots, when a black bird flew in the window. “It came in the passenger side, bounced off the windshield, flew in front of me and my friend…
When members of the local journalism fraternity first heard that Bernie Lincicome would be filling the Rocky Mountain News sports columnist slot vacated by Bob Kravitz, the majority responded with variations on a single question: Why would Lincicome do it? After all, he’d spent the last sixteen years writing for…
That’s Life No sympathy for the devil: Regarding Harrison Fletcher’s October 5 article about inmate Alfred Madson Jr., “Hard Times,” it infuriates me to read comments by ignorant people (such as his attorney) who feel that this twice-convicted killer should be released from prison simply because of his old age…
Things have been awfully muddy the past week or two over at KBPI — but when haven’t they been? Ever since the FM rocker became part of the Jacor kingdom (which transitioned seamlessly into the corporate coffers of Texas-based Clear Channel), the station has courted an outrageous image with the…
Dick Berger, executive director of Living Support Network, doesn’t want to be interrupted, so he takes the phones off the hook, one by one. His personal line. The Youth Support Line. The Suicide and Crisis Hotline. “It’s okay,” Berger explains, his voice competing with the insistent, high-pitched beep of handsets…
He is dying in here. He is sitting alone in his white prison cell with his library books and his Ramen noodles, losing control of his body. He is sleeping nine hours a night and waking at six the next morning but feeling like he hasn’t slept at all. He…
A few weeks ago, Don Gilmore, a member of Friends of Eulipions, walked past the Eulipions theater group’s former home in the massive El Jebel Shrine Temple, at 1770 Sherman Street, and glanced through one of the windows. He saw nothing. The offices had been cleared out; costumes, props and…
While Denver braces for political fireworks — as well as a few explosions — over Saturday’s Columbus Day parade, the city’s still getting fallout over an actual, if unheralded, fireworks show last Thursday that marked the Pepsi Center’s first anniversary. A full-page ad in Sunday’s Denver Post (a Pepsi Center…
At the U.S. ski team’s summer training facility last month, Matt Chojnacki did something no freestyle skier had ever done before: He stepped into his skis, hurtled down a plastic-coated approach ramp at 35 miles an hour, shot up a steep, one-story jump, launched himself some sixty feet into the…
Coverage Coverup Premium gas: Let’s see if I’ve got this right — insurance companies are in the business to provide…insurance? Wrong! They fight you every step of the way, whether it’s medical insurance or auto insurance or legal insurance, as described in Patricia Calhoun’s September 28 “Duty Calls.” Although what…
Once upon a time, there was actual wheat growing on a ridge in Wheat Ridge. But not a lot of it. Instead, where today new strip malls sprout up almost daily, five- and ten-acre truck farms grew tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers and lettuce. And celery — the celery was particularly fine…
Janet Brown was on her way home from work one evening when she suddenly lost control of her car. It crashed through a fence and finally came to a stop in a field. The next thing she remembers is lying flat on her back in an ambulance, a female police…
In pursuit of the good life, Mr. Deep Pockets takes the highway. The big silver automobile cruises through the thinning evening traffic with hardly a whisper of effort. The soundtrack from Local Hero plays softly on the CD system. Mr. Deep Pockets turns up the volume, as if to fill…
