Want to get in touch with your inner Little Red Riding Hood or let loose the Gandalf trapped inside your routine self?Don’t wait around for a fairy godmother to help. Instead, check out some of the dozens of costume stores in the Denver area. And while this isn’t a complete…

Nobody understands the gestalt approach to making music better than guitarist (and former Denverite) Bill Frisell, one the great original improvisers of our time and a recording artist who changes partners more frequently than a square-dancer. But it’s not that he’s fickle: Frisell is just a dreamer, a musical sponge…

SAT, 10/25 Feel free to prance around in your unmentionables at tonight’s second incarnation of Floozy Night at the Buckhorn Exchange.Sponsored by local saloon girls, soiled doves and floozies — actually just a group of grown women who wanted an excuse to parade around in frilly costumes — this sultry…

SAT, 10/25 Keep your eyes peeled for paranormal behavior at today’s Meet the Fire House Ghosts at the Denver Firefighters Museum. “There is some definite poltergeist activity going on around here,” says the museum’s executive director, Carey Southwell. Built in 1909 as Denver Fire House Number One, the station, at…

To start a circus, you have to have a bit of the dreamer in you, not to mention an eye for the angle not taken. Cedric Walker has both, it seems: The utterly upbeat CEO and founder of the Atlanta-based UniverSoul Circus paid his dues during a life steeped in…

SAT, 10/18 When Augustana Arts executive director Donald Tallman heard that renowned vocal quartet Anonymous 4 would be making its final cross-country tour, he jumped at the chance to book the group for a farewell Denver concert, which will be held tonight at Augustana Lutheran Church, 5000 East Alameda Avenue…

SAT, 10/18 Like most local gallery-goers, you’re probably going to find yourself fighting the crowds at the Denver Art Museum to see El Greco to Picasso from the Phillips Collection at some point during the coming weeks. All well and good: We don’t always have such a wonderful opportunity to…

THURS, 10/9 Lewis Black and Dave Attell seem about as hard to contact these days as folks on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Still, even in the middle of a fifty-plus-city tour, Attell manages to find time to expound on the joys of hitting the road for Comedy Central Live Starring…

SAT, 10/11 Kids in Longmont don’t ask for much, but a lot of teens in that town are happy to have a place like Club Breakdown to go to on weekends instead of hanging out on the street. Artist Gamma Acosta, now 23, used to feel that way, although the…

SUN, 10/12 Kite-maker Jane Parker-Ambrose was really too busy to take on another project, but in 1985, after sailing one of her custom flyers in Red Square with the Soviet Women’s Peace Community, Parker-Ambrose was moved to use her kites for an even higher purpose. “The kite has its own…

FRI, 10/3 Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver curator Cydney Payton has a love affair with art’s cutting edge: Always seeking ways to straddle it, she’s continuing that streak with BLOOD: Lines & Connections, an ambitious exhibit of global proportions opening tonight with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. at the…

SUN, 10/5 Some would say the books of Peter Sís aren’t children’s books at all. And yet you’ll find them — complicated mazes of lavishly illustrated visual information and sophisticated themes — on the shelves of children’s libraries or among the juvenile picture books at your local bookstore. It’s no…

A good mystery series has to fit like a well-worn glove. It’s that utilitarian undertone of familiarity that sucks the most loyal readers in — that sense of time, place and enduring character that pulls all the plots together again and again. Once you really know Philip Marlowe or Spencer…

SAT, 9/27 The Colorado Ballet borrowed the costumes and set for its season opener Don Quixote, not from Spain, but from Louisville, Kentucky. “I originally wanted Boston Ballet’s,” says artistic director and CEO Martin Fredmann, “but it turns out they were doing it at the same time.” A harried search…

WED, 10/1 A circus remains an eternally strange blend of old traditions and things that have never been seen before: For instance, kids who are afraid of clowns and attend the 133rd Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus will barely even recognize that skyscraper-coifed daredevil Bello even is a…

THURS, 9/25 The organizers of Denver’s 22nd annual Great American Beer Festival know what you want: “Three days. 320 breweries. 1,400 Beers. 144,000 square feet of total beer heaven.” That’s what the banners say. That’s what’s repeated over and over again on the Web sites. And other than, maybe, a…

SAT, 9/20 In pagan lore, the autumnal equinox, or Mabon, celebrates the harvest season in what amounts to an early precursor of the American Thanksgiving. In other words, when the shadows grow long and the sun dips low, it’s time to make merry and share abundance with others. Leave it…

FRI, 9/19 You don’t have to be American to know about the Pony Express, but it’s a saga that Americans, particularly Westerners, all grew up with: Nary an oater has flashed upon the silver screen in the past hundred years without making some reference to the mid-nineteenth-century version of express…

SAT, 9/20 It seems incredible that books are still subject to witch-hunts, but in the 21st century they most certainly are, particularly when it comes to literature written or recommended for children and young adults. According to the American Library Association, the ten most challenged books or series last year…

THURS, 9/18 Bone-crushing tackles come as no surprise in a football game played without protective gear, and such action is at the black-and-blue heart of Aspen’s Ruggerfest 2003. The 36-year-old demolition derby, held every September in the Rockies, features the toughest rugby teams from across the country. The gathering’s a…

SAT, 9/20 They will not go quietly, these little critters. Instead, Boulder’s prairie dogs — creatures with names such as Viktor the Victim and Prairie Home Protection — will hold their polyether-resin heads high at a final celebration tonight at 7 p.m. at the Odd Fellows Hall, 1543 Pearl Street…

TUES, 9/16 Maxine Hong Kingston was born into war in 1940; her refugee mother, a doctor who had run a hospital in a cave in China before joining her husband in Stockton, California, talked about it all the time, in firsthand detail. Even then, Kingston felt an overwhelming responsibility to…