Mad for Mad Men at the DNC

Smokin’ hot stars Jon Hamm and John Slattery in Mad Men and with Mayor John Hickenlooper at the Pepsi Center. I’d been getting kind of cranky about all the celebrity hype surrounding the Democratic National Convention. Where were the big parties? a radio producer wanted to know. The only party…

Preparing for spontaneity at the DNC

Look what they found. Upon entering the Pepsi Center on Wednesday, I tried to rendezvous with Westword cartoonist Kenny Be, who was working in the bloggers lounge, located in a part of the venue I hadn’t visited the day before. This attempt took me into the bowels of the building,…

CNN at the DNC: delicious!

Belly up to the bar. After getting through the security line outside the Pepsi Center on Wednesday afternoon with much more ease than had been the case the day before, I decided to try out the pass I’d obtained for the CNN Grill, located in the Brooklyn’s restaurant space. At…

DNC press gets Pope’d

“How do you spell ‘lunatic’?” The funniest thing about the scene from Wednesday captured here? Not the costume of the guy on the right. No, the most amusing part was that the reporter was seriously interviewing His Holiness as if he was an expert on church abuse. Then again, the…

Wanted: DNC Credentials

Please give generously. Seen on Market Street en route to the Democratic National Convention festivities at the Pepsi Center on Wednesday. Hope everything worked out for this guy — because clearly, the people of the Big Easy have suffered enough. — Michael Roberts…

Elvis 4 Obama

Elvis has left the building — the hard way. After Hillary Clinton moved that the delegates at the Democratic National Convention make Barack Obama the Dems’ presidential candidate by acclimation, the throng outside MSNBC’s headquarters behind Union Station erupted in applause. After watching them celebrate for a few minutes, I…

MSNBC versus the blue elephant at the DNC

As you can see, the elephant is topless. Amid MSNBC’s coverage of the Wednesday roll call of votes at the Democratic National Convention, a truck affiliated with a conservative organization — I didn’t catch the name — rolled up to the curb opposite the net’s headquarters to deliver the message,…

DNC crowds overwhelm 16th Street Mall shuttles

The Rocky Mountain News’ front-page headline described the mobs that have descended on the 16th Street Mall as a “hundred-year flood of humanity,” and that’s about right. How packed with people is the area? Yesterday, I walked from Westword’s offices, at approximately 10th and Broadway, to the mall with the…

MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan in time out at the DNC

That’s Pat Buchanan on the lower level of MSNBC’s Election Express. I arrived at MSNBC’s Democratic National Convention headquarters about midway through the roll call of votes that finally resulted in the formal nomination of Barack Obama as the Dems’ presidential standard-bearer. Speakers amplified the voices of co-hosts Chris Matthews…

MSNBC at the DNC: all aboard for goofiness

Choo choo. MSNBC’s headquarters for the Democratic National Convention can be found behind Union Station, which may explain why it looks disturbingly like part of Disneyland’s Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. During the first Denver taping of The Daily Show during convention week, host Jon Stewart ridiculed the net for leaving…

Shut out of the DNC Vanity Affair party — again

Hello, you must be going. When we stopped by the visitor’s bureau booth in Pavilion 3 outside the Pepsi Center yesterday — chips, beer and hits of oxygen! — the conversation turned to an e-mail that several Denver bold names had received that day, a painful slap in the face…

Obama T-shirts: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Slide show Anyone who’s cruised the streets of the Denver this week has encountered a slew of Barack Obama-inspired T-shirts, both on sale racks and on bodies. Here are 20 we’ve seen, ranked from worst to best on a scale of 1-10 Obamas. Get’em while they last! Or don’t!…

Barack Obama’s education plan gets help from Colorado principal

Slide show This week’s Westword features a cover story by Jessica Centers about Mike Johnston, principal at Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts in Thornton and one of Obama’s education advisers. For photos of Johnston, his students and teachers, see Mark Manger’s slide show. And read on for the text…

A big can of whoopee at the Pepsi Center

Jesus, why didn’t I think of this sooner? I mean, I know those floor passes are hard to get, but still… Thanks to my anonymous poster from gayzetteblog.com for the heads up. A quick scan of the craigslist personals proves that this isn’t the only guy looking to get a…

Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams has Denver by the balls

Cindy Adams. The Democratic National Convention in Denver. Denver’s a cow town. Doesn’t mean what we’re going to see here is the milk of human kindness. Means like what’s coming is a large load of bull. Having covered these rah-rah sis-boom-bah hoo-has since Lincoln’s day, I tell you Denver’s a…

Bellying up to the BarackBar

Still haven’t managed to wrangle yourself a floor pass for the Pepsi Center? Then the next best place for celebrity spotting is turning out to be Jesse Morreale’s Rockbar, renamed Barackbar for the festivities. (It’s located at 3015 East Colfax Avenue, on the ground floor of the All-Inn Hotel). Last…

Live Blog: Tent State University Music Festival to End the War

UPDATES BELOW: With photos from Rage and the Flobots. Oh yeah, and the cops have the place surrounded. It’s just after 11 a.m. and things are just getting underway at the Denver Coliseum. State Radio just took the stage and is in the midst of playing an energetic set in…

Shepard Fairey’s Manifest Hope camps out at Andenken Gallery

A lot’s been said, here and everywhere, about Democratic National Convention protests, parties and politics. But in the meantime, who’s minding the art? Never mind the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs’s Dialog:City offerings that have been unfolding around town since Monday, or the dozens of DNC-inspired shows at local galleries:…

All over but the attention-getting

Vote Satan-Angel. Once Clinton left the Pepsi Center stage, Jin Ho Kang and Yoougsook Kang, a pair of reverends from Aurora, delivered the closing prayer and the proceedings were promptly gaveled to a close for the night — at which point the band launched into Sly & the Family Stone’s…