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You used to be able to count on TV serving all your lowest-common-denominator needs. Up for some good transgender slap-fighting? Jerry Springer has you covered. Hankering for some good cornpone jokes and T&A? Hee-Haw was on for more than twenty years. Want to see someone forced to eat something disgusting?…

You’d think that a person who ate two — sometimes three — bags of buttered popcorn a day would suffer from clogged arteries. But Centennial sofa salesman Wayne Watson became ill with “popcorn lung,” a rare disease that typically affects people working in popcorn factories. Watson lost half his lung…

Since the publication of the September 6 More Messages column, in which I read all of the comics in the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post for two weeks to discover what I have (and haven’t) been missing, I’ve received plenty of e-mails, pro and con, from fans of…

Here’s a brief look at some of the items America is desperate to learn about today: iPhone rebate In conjunction with the just-announced $200 price drop on the iPhone, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced a $100 rebate for people that picked one up in the short time it was available…

This faux-log-cabin tomb is found in Denver’s Riverside Cemetery. It makes you wonder what Davy Crockett’s grave looks like – hopefully he’s as well taken care of as Mr. Drake here. This picture was taken by Eric Purkalitis in October of 2005. He has a bunch more of the same…

The new fly-in community just east of Parker has drawn plenty of ire from neighbors worried about planes crashing into their homes — see last week’s “Up in the Air.” While much of the anger has been focused on the developer, Pete Vinton, the neighbors also petitioned county leaders to…

As my friend who told me about the event noted, were it not for the neatly manicured grass in Del Mar Park this past Saturday, you wouldn’t have been able to tell you weren’t in Ghana. Because, while everyone else in the city was busy greeting September with college football,…

On the twelfth day of Michael Tate’s murder trial, the final day of testimony, he told the judge that he would not be taking the stand in his not guilty by reason of insanity defense. “No ma’am” he said to the judge in a flat, monotone voice that sounded surprisingly…

Shoenberg Farm 7255 Sheridan Boulevard, Westminster 5:11 a.m. An hour before dawn, a lunar eclipse suddenly darkens the sky, leaving only the glow of neon signs from convenience stores and fast-food outlets and the never-ending stream of headlights along Sheridan. But back behind the brick silo, it’s dark and quiet,…

Growing up, we often played a game called Smear the Queer. I am not proud of this fact, but it is a part of my childhood that I cannot deny. The game was simple. All you needed was a ball of any shape or size. It was thrown into the…

Not long ago, I was a zealous reader of daily newspaper comics, devouring at least a dozen strips per day, more when I had the time. But somewhere along the line, that number began to dwindle, with my enthusiasm waning each time favorites such as Gary Larson (“The Far Side”),…

Next week marks the sixth anniversary of 9/11, the day when America realized that terrorists could strike here — and that from now on, there would be a never-ending demand for quart-sized plastic bags at the airport. There were other, more serious ramifications, of course, as shown in September 11,…

“The Plane Truth,” Jared Jacang Maher, August 30 The Truth Is Out There — Waaay Out There Jared Jacang Maher’s “The Plane Truth” was an excellent article! It shows that many people see only what they want to see. I was a sightseeing guide in Denver for some years. What…

Steve Fossett’s been missing in the Nevada desert since Labor Day. The Beaver Creek millionaire thrill-seeker who’s set records for circumnavigating the globe in a balloon, flying solo nonstop for almost 80 hours, and other feats of derring-whoohoo, was out scouting sites for a future run at the land-speed record…

Day eleven of Michael Tate’s murder trial consisted mostly of testimony from two psychologists, produced by the defense, telling the jury that everything is not alright in Tate’s 19-year-old brain and that relying on a sanity evaluation designed for adults and conducted by a doctor without much experience evaluating juveniles…

It was 50 years ago today, that the travel journal charting the 1951 bohemian oddysey of the not-yet-beloved-by-free-spirits-everywhere Jack Kerouac, hit book stands dorm-room shelves, changing America’s literary landscape and putting the Beat writers at the forefront of American consciousness. On The Road broke and subsequently changed the rules, it…

As noted in this August 29 blog entry, E.W. Scripps, owner of the Rocky Mountain News, recently made the decision to sell another of its newspaper properties, the Albuquerque Tribune. After word of the move broke, some folks in the Rocky newsroom wondered if the move portended ill tidings for…

When I walked through the door of City, O’ City the first time, late in the evening on a Saturday when the joint was in full hipster-utopian swing, I thought only of how immediately comfortable I found its spare décor, widely-spaced tables, high-backed booths and long bar; how buzzing and…

In honor of the epic post-Labor Day hangover I’m nursing (the kind of hangover Wagnerian song-cycles are written about) I present to you this YouTube funny about hipsters competing at the only thing they can do — being hipsters. At just over eight minutes it technically violates the first rule…

Michael Tate was so excited on the day that Tammy Wachtl brought him home that he ran smack dab into a glass window that he didn’t realize was closed. Tate was only seven then and Wachtl knew that he was going to need a lot of attention, so she quit…