My husband once lived in L.A. and worked at the fabled and now-defunct Aron’s Records, where he regularly bumped elbows with everyone from Belinda Carlisle to Ray Davies. He never tires of telling those stories, matter-of-factly, to the slack-jawed Denverites who’ve only dreamt of such encounters. What a kick. Ceramic…

I’m way too old to be captivated by Kidrobot toys, and yet I inexplicably am — if I were richer, I’d have a houseful of Dunnys and Munnys and Zoomies and Labbits and IceBots. But I was raised on a steady diet of Denver Art Museum doll trolls, Cootie, Gumby…

Jen Lewin wants you to touch the art. Without your input, after all, her work would fail. A nationally known artist with her hands in a plethora of cutting-edge disciplines, she’s created all manner of computer-driven gizmos and things of beauty, from laser harps (created for Burning Man throngs to…

Little known fact: The winter terrain around Leadville is a sled-head’s paradise, crisscrossed with snowmobile trails — both marked and unmarked — featuring picture-perfect scenery, plenty of pristine powder and a ton of family-friendly activities on and off the snow. Intrigued? Load up the kids and the Ski-Doo and get…

Two new shows opening today at CORE New Art Space couldn’t be more different: One artist’s works are small and full of all the space and mystery of Giorgio de Chirico’s metaphysical worlds; the other’s are large, funny and bluntly colorful mixtures of popular and found imagery. But they’re similar,…

Jake Adam York is a poet and a lover of poetry. But he’s wise enough to realize that most people just aren’t comfortable with verse, perhaps because they don’t know how to make sense of it. “The things we fear about poetry are the things that are good about poetry,”…

Well, here’s a race that tells it like it is: The Frosty’s Frozen 5 is just what it says it is, and a bit more. Featuring both five- and ten-mile courses, the second leg of the Winter Distance Series will be run regardless of frigid and icy conditions, through the…

Badi Assad is a real 21st-century animal: A multi-tasker within a multi-tasker, she nimbly rips through difficult guitar runs while humming and tongue-clicking rhythms simultaneously. Oh, and did I mention that she sings, too? Beautifully? Assad, the little sister of famed classical guitarists Sergio and Odair Assad (and a Villa-Lobos…

The following is addressed to girls only: Remember your first diary, the one with the key kept stashed in the underwear drawer, where all your tender, pre-pubescent secrets unfolded in private, away from the prying, super-egoist eyes of your mother and that nasty clique of eighth-graders who got to wear…

It’s generally agreed that the Who’s Pete Townshend birthed the rock opera: If you’ve seen the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, you’ve seen that band perform “A Quick One, While He’s Away,” a sparkling 1966 trial-run-in-miniature that paved the way for Townshend’s major works, Tommy and Quadrophenia. After that,…

There’s no art more cutting-edge than the astonishing landslide of contemporary works coming from China. Fueled by the nation’s political segue out of the Cultural Revolution and into a contemporary climate of industrialization and free trade, China’s artists are documenting, protesting and commenting on rapid change in unique ways that…

Kent Thompson’s Denver Center Theatre Company will do things big in the new year: The DCTC hits the ground running this month with three commissioned world premieres in a row, in conjunction with the annual Colorado New Play Summit coming up in mid-February. It’s all part of Thompson’s quest to…

It could have been jazz, ballet or hip-hop, but my all-American daughter is a Chinese dancer, in love with the rustling costumes, blingy props and mannered, graceful steps that form the foundation of the traditional genre. Generally a group effort, the form sports a classically based choreography all its own,…

Everybody loves the underdog, and we can all relate to the misunderstood. It’s those very sentiments that might explain the longevity of Boulder’s cyclical MahlerFest, an annual symposium and concert series dreamed up by artistic director Robert Olson more than twenty years ago. The event — a tribute to that…

As winter break comes to a close, four out of five parents agree that it’s way better to get out of the house than follow through on those dark urges to muzzle the next kid who whines “I’m bo-ored” one more time. There’s no need for boredom, after all, when…

I grew up on a steady diet of Jeopardy, part of a family so competitive about trivia that we produced a University of Colorado at Boulder Trivia Bowl champ/Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? contestant (not me) and warped the rest of us for life. To this day, my kin…

Local Bush-administration whistleblower Sean Shealy, who’s penned a book called Corruption and Cover-Ups of the Bush White House Unmasked, is alarmed that most people — even the ones who already long to see W. unseated — don’t really know how unlawful our national leader has actually been, or why. Shealy…

Holidays, shmolidays! They’re over, fartik! And what better way might there be to get past them completely than with an event as fresh as the year is new? While our Christian brothers and sisters drag out their half-dead trees and pack up the ornaments for another year, we Jews can…

Winter changes everything. Although many of the simple pioneer pleasures offered at Four Mile Historic Park are available year-round, these activities take on a whole new sheen when frosted with beautiful snow and holiday sparkle. So Four Mile’s Pioneer Winter Camp, a four-day series of half-day programs for kids, might…

Fussy folks always say you should take it easy on the day after, when you wake up bleary-eyed with a hammering head: Eat toast, drink liquids — not the kind you indulged in last night — and sleep in. Pshaw. Or maybe you’re the sort who can’t even seem to…

It’s hard to believe that a mere fifty years ago, nine African-American high-school students had to be escorted by federal troops, past a menacing stand of Arkansas National Guardsmen, local police and white citizens, simply to exercise their dubious right to go inside Little Rock Central High and sit alongside…

Denver’s already unique Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Art, 1311 Pearl Street, took a step in an uncharted direction when its new temporary show, Driven to Abstraction: Colorado Art From 1880 to 2007, debuted earlier this month. Switching from his usual focus on modernistic art, curator Hugh Grant expanded…