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Denver’s art community has thrown out the welcome mat for the American Association of Museums, which is hosting a conference is in town right now. Tonight, April 30, from 7 to 10 p.m., the Museo de las Américas (861 Santa Fe Drive, 303-571-4401, www.museo.org) is hosting a progressive dinner along the ArtDistrict on Santa Fe Drive called “Salsa y Salsa.” It is being promoted with the tag-line “Come dance the night away” and the disturbing image on the invitation (pictured above).

But go anyway. If you do, you’ll enjoy Latin American delicacies at art shows located at various stops along the six-block-long gallery row. Music will be provided by Conjunto Colores, a salsa group, and by Real del Oro, a mariachi band.

Combining cocktails, food, art and music for museum officials, art experts and other art professionals from around the country is meant to showcase a slice of Denver’s vibrant art scene. Locals are welcome, too. Tickets are $45 and include dinner and two drinks. Spots are limited, so call the Museo’s Nicole Rousch as soon as possible to make reservations at 303-571-4401, ext. 25. -- Michael Paglia

I live in very close proximity to both a Mexican and an Italian catholic church (neither of which has adequate parking), so oftentimes after a weekend of leaving my car parked on the street amongst the overflow congregation parking, I will return on Monday morning to find an assortment of strange fliers stuck under my windshield wipers. But while I often don't give these bits of paper a second thought, I certainly had to take notice when this letter made an appearance one recent weekend.

I was halfway to work when I noticed what seemed to be a sheet of notebook paper with a handwritten note flapping in the breeze, tucked under the passenger-side wiper. Once I had a chance to examine the letter, I saw that it was merely a photocopied note, but the fact that a penny was taped to the corner still had me intrigued. Was it a present? My very own lucky penny?

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Oh, and, while technically not a Wetboy, William Spencer is down with their wacky style, which they hope to show off on their MTV reality show pilot:

On April 26, ultrarunner Tony Krupicka, profiled this month in my feature "Miles & Miles," added another triumph to his remarkable string of first-place finishes in major endurance races. He smoked the field in the Zane Grey 50, a steep, rocky trek through fifty miles of Arizona's Tonto National Forest.

Krupicka had a bruised foot and trouble with his "proprioceptive feedback," lost the trail entirely at one point, jumped over two rattlesnakes and negotiated a mess of downed trees on one of the most challenging fifty-milers around. Yet he still finished in just over eight hours -- ninety minutes ahead of the nearest challenger and eleven minutes off the course record. His account of the race can be found on his blog.

What's next for the Tarzan of the Plains? Possibly the Colfax Marathon (organizers are wooing, Krupicka seems undecided), then the big 100-mile Western States Endurance Run in June. -- Alan Prendergast

On the April 29 edition of ESPN's Pardon the Interruption, Michael Wilbon, who co-hosts the yakfest with Tony Kornheiser, requested a moment of silence for the Denver Nuggets after the team was swept from the playoffs in four games by the Los Angeles Lakers. A nanosecond later, the quiet was shattered by a single, sustained "Booooo!"

Seldom has silence spoken so loudly. -- Michael Roberts

Some not-at-all-immature video maker has been using their location across the street from Eddie Maestas Park near the Denver Rescue Mission to introduce the wider world to a new style of poppin’ and lockin’ called Crack Dancing. Ah, the subtle joys of urban living. Check out Crack Dance and, its sequel, Crack Dance 2 after the jump. -- Jared Jacang Maher

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On April 29, the day after the Denver Nuggets were sent packing from the NBA playoffs by the Los Angeles Lakers, Channel 4 morning anchor Brooke Wagner expressed satisfaction that the previous night's game had been exciting and close. And indeed, the fact that the contest hadn't turned into another ritual humiliation like the three matches that preceded it provided the only compensation Nugs' fans could glean. But it wasn't enough -- not nearly enough. Over in the NBA's much-maligned Eastern conference, the Atlanta Hawks, who ended the regular season with a below .500 record, are in a 2-2 tie with the mighty Boston Celtics. Meanwhile, your Nuggets hardly put up a fight prior to the third quarter of the elimination game when -- how novel -- they actually decided to play some defense and held the Lakers to just 15 points. In the fourth, however, Kobe Bryant's crew put up a robust 28, making the pressure shots when required. As a result, the Nuggets became the first-ever fifty-win team to be swept from the first round of the playoffs. What a proud achievement.

Now, of course, comes the blaming, and Carmelo Anthony will get his share. Not only did he get busted on a DUI charge as the playoffs approached (hence, the debonair mug shot seen here), but he chipped in with subpar performances on the court. He scored 21 in the last game -- a decent number, but hardly the superstar-level production the situation required. Hell, he was outscored by J.R. Smith, who tallied 26 in six fewer minutes.

That's not to say Melo should be dealt at this point. He's the most gifted member of the squad, and the odds the Nuggets could get equal value for him in a trade are mighty slim. Still, something major needs to be done -- and here are five suggestions about what:

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Two weeks after a Lincoln County judge yanked 18th Judicial District and state prosecutors off a death penalty case, citing several ethical violations, the Office of the Colorado Attorney General has filed its own motion to withdraw from the case.

The motion gives no reasons for the request and is hastily captioned "Motion for Withdrawl." But it's a clear effort by members of the AG's Capital Crimes Unit to wash their hands of the mess. District Attorney Carol Chambers has said she'll appeal Judge Stanley Brinkley's ruling, which removed all employees of her office from the prosecution of Alejandro Perez, a state inmate accused of killing another prisoner at the Limon Correctional Facility in 2004. Previous coverage can be found here and here.

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Writers at the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post appear to have very different ideas about newspaper circulation figures released on April 28 by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, an industry-supported monitoring organization. The Rocky's piece, "Denver Papers' Circulation Falls," penned by the prodigious David Milstead, puts the bad news up front, pointing out that "Denver's newspapers posted double-digit circulation declines during the six months ended in March, compared with the same period in the year before." In contrast, the Post's version, "Circulation Stabilizes For Post, News," penned by staffer Aldo Svaldi, portrays the glass as more than half full. "Circulation counts at The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News have stabilized over the last six months," the report begins, while "visits to websites run by the Denver Newspaper Agency, which handles business operations for The Post and the News, increased 22 percent over the same period, according to Omniture Website Traffic Reports. Average weekly unique visitors were pegged at 1.1 million to the DNA websites, which include the websites of The Post and The News."

So do the latest digits constitute a positive or a negative development? Well, things could be worse -- but they could be a whole lot better, too.

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Oh what a weekend. Things we learned:

1. People get all hot an bothered about zoning issues. Weird, we know, but check out some of these comments on Joel Warner's tour of ugly houses in Highland. The Highland. The Highlands. Whatever your real estate agent or copyeditor wants to call it.

2. A garden can transform itself into a vital place to see some great underground art by simply inviting some of the best graffiti artists around to paint some murals that will stay up all season. Here's a slide show to prove it.

3. You don't need a microphone to truly rock the mike. Just ask Yonnas of the Pirate Signal, who wouldn't let technical difficulties get in the way of his performance at F.O.E.'s CD release party this weekend.

4. Rihanna looks good. OMIGOD does Rihanna look good. Oh, and Kanye, Lupe Fiasco, and N.E.R.D. were at the Pepsi Center this weekend as well.

5. Next time your friend says the show starts at "rock time" double check what she means, because a duo of local promoters with some serious foresight are making an effort to get bands on and playing while you're still trying to forget work with your first five Friday happy hour drinks. You may soon be regularly able to rock your fucking face off AND be in bed with enough time to really enjoy Saturday morning cartoons again.

All in all, an educational weekend. Which is good because, as I learned without hangover on Saturday, apparently knowing is half the battle. Whatever that means.

On April 25, Denver's mainstream media weighed in on syndicated yakker Rush Limbaugh's recent wisecrack about dreaming of riots in Denver at the time of August's Democratic National Convention. In the Denver Post's piece, for example, interview subjects included Glenn Spagnuolo, spokesman for Recreate '68, an organization whose moniker specifically references the last Democratic convention that got out of control. (The confab gave birth to the Chicago Seven, whose members, including Abbie Hoffman and former Jane Fonda spouse Tom Hayden, were eventually acquitted of conspiracy charges.) "We don't need another 5,000 illiterate Limbaugh listeners coming to Colorado," Spagnuolo commented -- and while the statement doesn't make much sense, it earned points for equating Limbaugh with his brother in blather, state rep Douglas "Illiterate Peasants" Bruce.

Still, what may be most interesting about this dustup is the response to it by Clear Channel Denver, the corporate entity that broadcasts Limbaugh's program on its flagship station, KOA. On April 24, the firm issued a press release attempting to clarify the comments at roughly the same time that another Clear Channel host, KHOW's Dan Caplis, was scolding Limbaugh.

Here's the release:

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The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (1750 13th Street, Boulder, 303-443-2122, www.bmoca.org) hosts a panel discussion tonight (April 24) called “Mickey, Mao and the State of Contemporary Chinese Art.” It will take up the topic of why and how Chinese art has become such a major force in the U.S.

BMoCA currently has four shows on display featuring the work of four Asian or Asian-American artists. There’s Susan Lee-Chun, a Korean-American who works with photos, videos, performance and installation art exploring herself, often in a humorous way. Yumi Janairo Roth, who is partly of Philippino descent, works with installations based on everyday objects like barricades and traffic cones. Japanese-American photographer Hiroshi Watanabe does character studies of people, while Wang Jing concentrates on pop-related paintings like “What! No Rat on the Menu Tonight?” (pictured), an acrylic on canvas from 2007.

The Wang exhibit was curated by David Raddock who was among the first American scholars to explore and write about vanguard art in China. The three other shows were pulled together in-house at BmoCA. All of them close on May 4.

Thursday’s panel include Raddock and Jing; Boulder’s own Jennifer Heath will serve as the moderator. The event gets underway at 7 p.m. and is free and open to the public. — Michael Paglia

State representative Doug Bruce won’t have to suffer any official consequences for remarks he made during a House floor debate Monday in which he called migrant farmworkers “illiterate peasants” – and why should he? After all, without the Colorado Springs Republican in the Capitol, Denver politics would be a little less entertaining.

Instead, Bruce, who has been making headlines for his buffoonish behavior for years, will likely become a hero for the Minuteman Militia set now that they are losing Tom Tancredo. But whether he’s the mouth that roared or the mouth that bored, Bruce will always be a Shmuck to us – an honor he has earned an unprecedented three times in only a few short months. For Bruce’s previous awards click here and here.

For last week’s Shmuck, click here.

If you didn’t get your three-wheeled fix from “Wheels of Fortune,” here’s even more of everything you wanted to know about pedicabs but were afraid to ask.

I would've been remiss if I’d written the story without trying to interview Tony Wheeler, one of the global authorities on rickshaws. While Wheeler is best known as the co-founder of the Lonely Planet line of travel books, he also has a bit of a rickshaw fetish. In 1998, he authored Chasing Rickshaws, a guide to the rickshaw industry and culture in various Asian cities from Agra, India, to Yogtakarta, Indonesia. The beautifully illustrated guide is a kick even for those with no interest in pedicabs; the book delves into the sociological and economic complexities of these ubiquitous Asian taxis and even provides graphic schematics of the different vehicle variations. Unfortunately, Wheeler was so busy in his never-ending globetrotting that he couldn't respond to the questions I e-mailed him in time to be included in the story. Instead, you can find his answers below.

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Lizz Winstead, the subject of the following Q&A, is headlining five shows over two nights at the Comedy Works (click here for details), but she’s hardly the average standup comic. She co-created The Daily Show, one of the most influential comedy programs of the past decade-plus, serving as the production’s head writer for two years – and while she left during the Craig Kilborn era, prior to the period when Jon Stewart pointed the anchor chair in an entirely new (and better) direction, her influence lingers. For one thing, she’s a former Stewart collaborator, having produced a talk show he hosted before he started the Daily grind. For another, she hired Stephen Colbert, now the host of his own night-live fave, The Colbert Report, not to mention often-riotous ranter Lewis Black, who remains a regular.

The conversation begins with Winstead talking about Shoot the Messenger, a once-a-week live production currently running in New York City, which satirizes morning television – a subject ripe for ridicule. Then, after touching on her standup plans, she shares insights about The Daily Show and Air America radio, another project that she helped launch, and one whose financial struggles strike her as resolutely unsurprising. Then, after confirming that she plans to bring Shoot the Messenger to Minneapolis for the Republican National Convention, she floats the possibility of coming to Denver when the Dems hit town, if a local theater would be willing to pick up the tab.

Will an impresario out there hear her plea?

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