On Monday night, John Mark Karr faced the camera, wearing only slightly less eye makeup than JonBenét in full pageant regalia, and told Larry King that he was a “very private person.” What a difference a decade makes. Back in early January 1997, a week after the lifeless body of…
Dear Mexican: I have very, very light skin because of my Scandinavian heritage. Around Halloween, someone asked me if it was white-face makeup. Why is it that Mexican men find my pallor so fascinating? Fair Maiden Dear Gabacha: BECAUSE YOU’RE WHITE. Mexicans love gabachos even though you’ve fucked our country…
It was an ugly Sunday morning at the Las Vegas airport, with lines stretching for hours and a flood of overbookings after Saturday’s torrential downpour had washed away flights. The fellow at the far bar on the D concourse was holding his head and his wallet, having just shelled out…
Up in Arvada, there’s an intense interest in who will win the Nobel Peace Prize each year. That’s because PeaceJam, the international organization dedicated to linking Nobel Peace Prize winners with kids to teach them how to improve their communities, their countries, the world, is based in that ‘burb. In…
Dear Mexican: How can you explain the disparity between Japan and Mexico? Japan is a nation a fraction the size of Mexico, with zero natural resources, suffered a devastating war of four years that included two atom bombs, yet has reached the highest in educational achievements, technological advancements and economic…
Two weeks later than originally promised, Beauprez for Governor finally unsealed its Cold Case files critical of Bill Ritter’s performance as Denver District Attorney. But in the days between the initial announcement and the actual delivery of those files, their contents took a hard turn to the right. At first,…
Dear Mexican: I once got into a fight with a cholo. We beat the crap out of each other but when all was said and done, I kicked his ass harder than he kicked mine and the cholo ran off swearing and spitting. I assumed the matter was settled but…
The electronic signs placed along Highway 285 outside of Platte Canyon High School flash the warning “No Stopping.” But even as your car keeps moving past the place where Emily Keyes was shot last Wednesday, your mind stops, fixated on the horrors of that day. Last Friday, Ellen Keyes, Emily’s…
Her name was Sonja DeVries. She was the only child of Carolyn and Van DeVries, the light of their lives. And on July 18, 2004, that light was extinguished by a drunk driver, sentencing her parents to a life of almost unbearable darkness. The driver, Ramon Romero, is serving the…
Love and marriage, love and marriage, do they really go together like a horse and carriage? Colorado congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave was a featured attraction at this past weekend’s Values Voter summit in Washington, D.C., part of a panel discussing “The Preservation of Traditional Marriage.” And when the sponsor of the…
Dear Mexican: I am awestruck by the lack of anger from Mexicans for the Mexican government. Mexican leaders have forced Mexicans from their land. Mexico degrades its citizens like no other country in our hemisphere. The Mexican government and aristocrats despise the majority of Mexican people. The demonic lack of…
Did he or didn’t he? When U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo stopped by the South Carolina State Museum on a swing through that state earlier this month, he delivered his standard immigration speech from a podium draped with the Confederate flag. And then, as he exited the room, some members of…
Dear Mexican: I have a stupid, unemployed, sixteen-year-old gang-bangin’ cousin who already dropped out of school, and I’m pretty sure most Mexicans are related to somebody who fits that description. About eight months ago, he knocked up a girl around his age, so last week I was dragged to their…
Archbishop Desmond Tutu rocked the house when he came out on stage Sunday morning. The thousands of kids gathered in Magness Arena cheered as he danced, waved the scarf that the Dalai Lama had presented him with the afternoon before, talked about how the story of Jackie Robinson inspired him…
The 1900 block of Market Street has been quiet this summer. Not quiet, in the sense that business has been bad — in fact, business along this stretch of LoDo is better than it’s been in years, with people packing the bars and restaurants and rooftop patios. No, quiet in…
Dear Mexican: I see Jews, Asians and Persians making something of themselves and conducing safe, walkable communities. Of course they’re not perfect, but I don’t see high Jew-crime communities, either. I see these people sticking together and helping each other out instead of envying their own. Why can’t Mexicans get…
On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, the founders of PeaceJam met with the Secret Service and finalized arrangements for the ten Nobel Peace Prize winners coming to town this week to announce their global Call to Action and, in rare spare moments, wondered what they’d have to do to become…
Tom Tancredo makes news wherever he goes — particularly when he’s not precisely sure where he’s going to wind up. On his swing through South Carolina this past weekend, Colorado’s controversial congressman found himself standing behind a podium draped with the Confederate battle flag, addressing the League of the South…
Dear Mexican: My gabacha friends and I marched in the May pro-amnesty rallies and wanted to show our support on our chests as well as our feet. We wore T-shirts that read “I only (picture of big, juicy lips) mojados” on the front, and “Yo solo (lips) mojados” on the…
“This PeaceJam is amazing,” my friend said. “I was just hearing about them on Colorado Public Radio.” She’d been hearing about them from me for months — since last November, when I interviewed founders Dawn Engle and Ivan Suvanjieff, and wrote about how PeaceJam would mark its tenth anniversary by…
“I’m a conservative Republican,” Michael Brown says. “What am I doing here?” Still, on the list of tight spots where Brown, former head of FEMA, has found himself in the last year, the Westword office should rank low. For starters, there was that emergency-response photo op on September 2, 2005,…
Disaster is Lori Peek’s specialty. When Hurricane Katrina struck, she was fresh from the University of Colorado, where she’d earned her Ph.D. with a thesis on 9/11, and just beginning her first semester as an assistant sociology professor at Colorado State University. Still, she somehow found a week last October…
