Calhoun: Wake-up Call

By the time I squeezed through the closing doors, I was ready to punch the walls if I heard that same bossy voice telling me that I was “delaying the departure of this train.” I was delaying the departure?…

Patricia Calhoun of Twin Falls, Idaho, is a very generous woman. Particularly with my phone number. Last Wednesday, my direct line at Westword started ringing before eight in the morning, and it didn’t stop all day. “Why did you send me this money?” asked a woman in Kentucky. “What am…

I have a date with Steve Horner. In court. Horner was already spurned there last month, when Denver County Court Judge Ray Satter tossed one of his complaints against the Proof nightclub and sent the other back to square one. But Horner does not take no for an answer. He…

Talking to Steve Horner, you can see that he has a slight — very slight — point about ladies’ nights, although he’d be wise to stop his complaint at the disparate drink prices rather than use them as the start of an explosive screed like the one he delivered the…

Order in the court! It took less than a month to try and convict Joe Nacchio in U.S. District Court. But meanwhile, another case involving his former boss, Phil Anschutz, drags on…and on…in a Los Angeles courtroom, where opening arguments were made weeks before the freshly toupeed Nacchio stepped into…

Did you know there’s a swingers club in the basement of a gallery up by Pirate?” a Westword writer asked one day in early 2006. “No way,” I replied. “We would have heard. But I’ll call Chandler Romeo. If anything is happening in that neighborhood, she’ll know.” That’s because in…

The 3600 block of Navajo Street was dry last Friday night. Very dry. Because liquor had come up in her case against Scottie Ewing — who’d produced photos of Pirate’s Day of the Dead donation-for-beer box — Chandler Romeo sent a note to her art-gallery tenants alerting them to the…

The few. The proud. The desperate. After four years of slogging through the quagmire of Iraq, the United States military is desperate to find a few hundred thousand good men — and women. But does a fifteen-year-old qualify? In the spring of 2005, when the war was just two years…

On Denver’s yawner of a mail-in ballot is one interesting question: Measure 1A, which would extend the term limit for a Denver district attorney to three consecutive terms. Back in 1994, Colorado voters approved a constitutional amendment that imposed a two-term limit on all non-judicial elected officials but permitted voters…

With Sam Waterston (Executive Assistant DA Jack McCoy) and Fred Thompson (DA Arthur Branch), the political realm has already snagged two of Law & Order’s biggest names. But that leaves plenty of other characters in the L&O franchise who might jump into the fray. Here’s how they’d run, from no…

Here in Denver, plans are well under way for next year’s big, big, big political convention. No, not the Democratic National Convention, which will bring 5,000 delegates, 10,000 of their closest friends and family members, and 20,000 pesky journalists to town in August 2008 (exactly one century after the Democrats…

Pondcrete. The word echoed off the marble walls of the U.S. Supreme Court, the bedrock of a legal system that’s lasted well over two centuries, with the eight judges considering the case of Rockwell International Corp. et al. v. United States et al. (Justice Stephen Breyer had recused himself) possessing…

“A quarter of a century later, John Elway sells food; Stapleton is a neighborhood, not an airport; the 16th Street Mall is going strong — and so is CRL!” That’s how Maria Garcia Berry (pictured) begins the announcement that her political/lobbying firm is marking its 25th birthday. The announcment goes…

“If you have an ugly girlfriend and she changes her name, she is still ugly.” Yes, Sean Ford, mayor of Commerce City, said that while arguing against a proposed name change for his town — and he stands by the comment. “Changing the name doesn’t change anything,” he says. Not…

Marva Livingston Hammons Marva Livingston Hammons, head of the Colorado Department of Human Services under former Governor Bill Owens and one of the primary culprits behind this state’s benefits mess, collected quite a goodbye gift on her way out: Eight hundred twenty-three hours of unused vacation time, which netted her…

The Colorado Legislature may not have known that “Rocky Mountain High” references drug use (ha!), but John Denver sure did. Because here are his lyrics for another song, “Poems, and Prayers, and Promises”: And I have to say it now It’s been a good life all in all It’s really…

In today’s New York Times piece on the Colorado Legislature adopting “Rocky Mountain High” as a second official state song — “Colorado Has Song in Its Heart, and Not Drugs on Its Mind” — reporter Kirk Johnson offers this gem: “A lot of people probably think it’s already the state…

Wow — dope really does affect your memory. Because in all the yapping over making “Rocky Mountain High” a second official state song, no one at the Colorado Legislature mentioned a potential snag. Back in 2005, Coors Brewing Co. bought the rights to the song — the lyrics and music,…

Rounding the corner at DIA Monday morning, I ran smack into artist Gary Sweeney, who moved from Denver more than a decade ago, but left plenty for this city to remember him by. “America…Why I Love Her,” for example, the airport’s most beloved public-art piece, complete with a map of…

Give PeaceJam a chance. On March 8, a handful of celebs — including Nate Corddly and Martin Sheen — will launch Refunds for Good, which aims to take $20 billion collected over the past 108 years through a federal telephone tax — the “War Tax” — and redirect it to…

Denver Restaurant Week, Day 1 (an eyewitness report from Patricia Calhoun) Saturday, February 24: The numbers are staggering. Restaurants participating in the third annual Denver Restaurant Week, which starts tonight, are booked solid. At Prime 121, a Cherry Creek steakhouse that hasn’t exactly been packing them in, they have reservations…

The controversy came out of almost-thin air. After Barack Obama announced that he would give up smoking, The Hill asked other presidential contenders about their vices. “I smoke the occasional cigar,” said Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo. And then, in passing, he told the reporter a funny story — about how…