Blogs

Steve Hogan, executive director of the Northwest Parkway Public Highway Authority, is looking for a new job.

Hogan made this announcement after accepting a deal to lease the 11-mile Northwest Parkway toll road – which runs from Broomfield to E-470 – to a foreign business consortium that hopes to cash in on Colorado drivers.

Hogan’s exit is but a pit stop for the beleaguered toll way, whose short history should serve as a cautionary tale for states looking to save tax dollars by entering into risky partnerships with semi-private freeway developers. Built in 2003, the Parkway was funded through $30 million in loans from various North Metro counties, and the sale of $416 million in bonds from investors hoping for a quick return. The only problem was that once cars started hitting the pavement, the traffic projections on which the project was advertised proved to be wildly overstated.

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It was the best month ever in Denver (until June)!

Slide Show

Worst-Case Scenario

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Denver’s own gonzo brewery has gone geek. On May 15 Flying Dog Brewery announced their Open Source Beer Project, hoping to channel the talents of homebrew aficionados everywhere into the creation of their next specialty beer. The idea here is that homebrewers will take the recipe, test it, improve it with their own ideas and then return their knowledge back to the source for incorporation into the über-brew. It works for software (see Firefox, Linux, et al ad infinitum), so why not for beer?

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Westword’s crack team of political analysts are at it again. Last week they answered the age-old question, “Which local politician most resembles Shakira?” Now they’ve taken their investigation one step further, to bring to you, for the first time (drum roll, please) WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF LOCAL POLITICOS MATED WITH ONE ANOTHER!!!!


The space-age technology behind this breakthrough is courtesy of www.knockedupbabymaker.com, a shameless online plug for the new movie Knocked Up. Whatever the sleazy impetus for the Web site, its results are impressive. For example, what would happen if current Denver mayor John Hickenlooper (see left) went to former mayor Wellington Webb (see right) for advice and, well, things got a little out of hand?

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As was noted in this week’s Off Limits, the glitch-ridden Georgetown Loop railroad didn’t open in time for last weekend’s Railroad Days celebration in Georgetown. Some travelers must have showed up in Georgetown expecting otherwise, since on Friday a Denver Post article written by John Wenzel encouraged Memorial Day revelers to “Ride the steam-operated historic Georgetown Loop Railroad” at the festival.

Whoops. If only Wenzel or his editors had read the newspapers (specifically their own paper) the day before. Then they would have seen Post writer Steve Lipsher’s report on how the train celebration was missing its train. Instead, the shoddy coverage made it look like the Georgetown railroad isn’t the only operation around here that’s malfunctioning. – Joel Warner

A still from We Own the Night.

Last weekend, as Jerry Bruckheimer’s pirates were once again storming the international box office, the Cannes Film Festival bestowed its two top prizes on a gut-wrenching Romanian movie about backroom abortion and a plaintive Japanese drama about a sad old man who wants to dig his own grave. In addition, there were awards for a two-and-a-half-hour study of marital infidelity in a Mexican Mennonite community, and for a zigzagging, border-crossing Turkish-German production that begins as the story of an old man’s lust for a middle-aged prostitute and ends up charting the lesbian affair between a Hamburg college student and an Istanbul revolutionary.

What all of those films have in common -- aside from the fact that none seems in danger of an imminent Hollywood remake -- is that they will soon open commercially in French cinemas. On this side of the Atlantic, they may be coming sooner to a living room near you.

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Patrick Osborn, Westword's Drunk of the Week columnist, is leaving, and we want to send him off with a properly toasted toast! So we're collecting the very best drunk stories we can find, and will honor the winner with a hundred-dollar bill he/she can spend at the drinking establishment of his/her choice.

Toast our Drunk of the Week!

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5.28.07
Palma, Mallorca
Spain

Chief,

I arrived here last week after my fiasco in Gibraltar to find that my old college professor is on the mainland taking care of some business. He booked me into a hotel until he gets back, assuring me that the price was right and that it was "Nice and quiet." The reception area of the hotel was empty at 4 pm, not a desk clerk to be found, so the maid checked me in. I noticed several posters of half-naked men in the foyer, but I figured that it was probably a Euro thing. At any rate, I think I was the only guest in the hotel those first couple days.

And then Friday rolled around.

As you know, Spaniards don’t get moving until midnight, which was right about the time I was ready to hit the sack after a day of drinking 40s and writing garbled postcards to my relatives. Coming back into the hotel I noticed a small door off the lobby and a sign advertising a lounge. Holy God! A hotel bar! I took a seat and it took me about four seconds to realize that the fellows in there sucking their champagne through bendy neon straws were rather--how shall we say?--gay. I had a couple beers and decided that maybe this wasn’t my scene. Not a big techno fan, you know?

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Former Westword writer David Holthouse (he of the famous "Stalking the Bogeyman" saga) made his debut in Rolling Stone this week (the one with Johnny Depp and Keith Richards on the cover), writing about Shirley Q. Liquor, a gay white man who puts on blackface and performs as a boozing welfare mother.

An excerpt was posted on the RS site on May 16, but the full story was printed the current issue. You'll have to go out and buy a copy to see how it ends. Enjoy.

A funny thing happened over Memorial Day weekend; the YouTube clip that accompanied our freebirthing story ("Baby's Day Out", May 10) experienced a minor explosion in popularity, garnering roughly ten times as many hits over the weekend as it had received in the weeks since it was posted. Jump on the bandwagon while the jumping’s good and watch as two preteens stare in mild shock at a video of a woman calmly and seemingly comfortably giving birth in the comfort of her own home, with only her husband/boyfriend present.

Warning: NSFW, as the birther is au naturel (i.e. naked) throughout.

Speaking of bandwagons, Westword is now represented on YouTube. Check out our channel for original video and clips featured in our blogs. -- Cory Casciato

There's plenty about the murder of Denver Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams (pictured) that doesn't add up -- and the folks at KOA appear to be as confused as anyone.

On May 29, the station ran spots promoting an update about the Williams investigation, with the announcer expressing astonishment that it had already been six months since this notorious crime took place. Listeners who can count were undoubtedly amazed as well. Williams died early on January 1, 2007 -- meaning that it's almost been five months.

By the morning of May 30, when the report aired, KOA personnel had apparently refamiliarized themselves with the way calendars work. In teasing the piece, Colorado Morning News host April Zesbaugh said "we're entering the sixth month" since Williams' death -- a claim that's still a bit premature but considerably closer to reality.

Time really flies when you lose track of it.-- Michael Roberts

There I was, on the home stretch of the Bolder Boulder, pounding down Folsom Street (read: jogging at an exhausted pace barely faster than a walk), endorphins ramping up for final push over the last hill. Then I heard it, blasting from a loudspeaker at a gas station: “Always have to steal my kisses from you…”

With one chorus of his soothing 1999 hit, Ben Harper hadn’t just stolen my kisses, he’d stolen my will to live. It was a miracle I made it to the finish line in Folsom Field. Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate Harper’s rootsy and tranquil steel guitar doodling, especially if I’m, say, sitting around smoking something illegal. But while running 10 kilometers on an 85-degree day? No thanks — pass the Pantera.

The Bolder Boulder is a great road race because it’s one long party. This year’s 50,000 or so participants (including one who became the first casualty in event’s long career) are cheered on each step of the way by every kind of entertainment imaginable. Unfortunately, the last place many of those diversions belong is at a road race. As a courtesy to next year’s race planners, here’s my take on a few of the event’s hits and misses:

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There is only one true Italian restaurant -- back east, in that charmed province that runs along the coast, north into New England, south as far as Baltimore. Upstate, downstate, in the barrens and on the shore, just one restaurant with 10,000 names that has grown the way mushrooms grow, invisibly, inexplicably, sending runners out into dodgy neighborhoods and onto street corners once lit by trash-can fires, sprouting buds that push up through the cracked cement and grow into another Tony’s, Frank’s, Mama Leone’s, Mama Tacone’s or Jimmy’s All-Star, another Campesino’s, another Gianello’s -- always possessive, always named.
There is only one Italian restaurant. Ten tables, sometimes a bar, sometimes a counter separating the kitchen in the back from the floor, sometimes a curtain, sometimes a door. Red-and-white checked tablecloths or green-and-white checked tablecloths, Sinatra or Louis Prima, pictures on the walls of long-gone relations in black and white; of Tuscan hillsides in oversaturated color; of garlic cloves, tomatoes, bowls of fruit.

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Today marks the launch of Do Your Thing, a blog created to share fans’ stories and foster the follow-your-heart ethos that inspired the documentary 10 MPH, which chronicles a cross-country trip via Segway scooter, (“Slow Ride,” August 5, 2004, "Storme of the Day,” May 24) also releasing today on DVD.

There isn’t a whole lot to see there at the moment, apart from a few anonymous posts praising the film and a post from one of the filmmakers anticipating its imminent release. Apart from that, you can watch the trailer (funny), add the film to your Netflix or Blockbuster queues (handy!), check out some slide shows, buy a download for your iPod or set-top box, or even sign up to be a distributor for the film. There’s also info on when the film is screening at theaters nearby (August 8 in Boulder, August 9 here in Denver). -- Cory Casciato