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It's still not too late to get Mom a belated something special. From experience, she probably expects too little too late as a matter of course. So, in order to make for your perpetual tardiness, you're looking for something beyond the usual brunch out, card and flowers, all the stuff you normally forget to do on time, because all that seems so empty anymore. So you start thinking creatively. You start coming up with what you think are fantastic ideas—practical stuff, but maybe a little on the expensive side, the indulgent side, something Mom would never get for herself, but just might secretly want. But be careful. Since you've already blown the Hallmark-mandated deadline, your need to overcompensate in the gift arena can take you down a road to giving gifts that carry meanings that are worse than doing nothing at all. Here are five of the worst:

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Summer is almost here and Spring is in full bloom. And what better way to celebrate this time of rebirth and renewal than with the gathering of retooled hearses that each, in their day, hauled countless dead folks to their graves and crematoriums? This weekend saw Hearse Con 2008, an annual event that draws some of the most spectacular converted death-mobiles on the planet (we presume). Click on the photo to see a slide show from Hearse Con 2008 by Aaron Thackeray.

Also,

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Boy, you got me good. Woke up the other morning, looked out the back window and noticed something funny. The yard was bigger. Wait, it wasn’t bigger, there was just less stuff in it. The patio table was gone, along with the patio chairs. Oh, the gas grill was missing, too.

I first wondered if you, the perpetrator, were the same one who stole the copper-colored solar lights from our front walkway last summer. I reasoned you weren’t, though, since this new crime seemed to constitute a level of intelligence above the numbskull who’d figured the lights were made of actual copper and were worth nabbing – a mistake his comrades in sin surely still josh him about: “Hey, remember that time you tried to melt down those lawn lights and ended up getting brain damage from the toxic fumes of the copper-colored plastic? Man, I wish we had that on video.”

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Slide show by Aaron Thackeray

So it’s a beautiful Wednesday in the early evening and I’m sitting in a traffic jam at a gas station. I’ve already been here ten minutes, idling, creeping forward, jockeying for positions at the next available pump. Don’t even think about it, lady. No, no, no – Shit! I’m thinking about retro television footage from the 1973 oil embargo with lines of station wagons and Impalas snaking down suburban city streets. At least back then people could blame OPEC, greedy Ayatollahs or those damn communists – remember Communism? So retro!– for the outrageous 55 cents a gallon. Gee whiz!

Now I’m starting at a King Soopers sign that says $3.55 for regular unleaded (four cents cheaper than down the street) and the line I’m in consists of oversized Chevy Tahoes and GMC Yukons. Blame these days is much harder to assign. Something about China’s growth, oil worker strikes in the UK and military attacks on suppliers in Nigeria. Commodities brokers . . . futures trading? About all I’m sure of as I finally get my Civic to the pump is that my gas light has been flashing orange for the last hour and all I have in my pocket is twenty bucks. So my grocery money goes glug glug into the tank and the only thing that makes me feel better is spying on my fellow pumpers, the ones with the mammoth four-door super trucks and Navigators so tall they have to grip the unused bike rack to climb in. The tickers read: $67.15, $75.33, $81.50. Some of these monsters cost $90 to fill.

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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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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.

Better late than never, I guess. To cap his "Small Town News" segment last night, Dave Letterman picked up a YourHub.com Wheat Ridge police blotter item from August of 2007. The original text from the article follows and Letterman's writer did nothing to change it. Some things are perfect on their own:

An off-duty police officer reported seeing a one-handed construction worker masturbating at a job site on the 4100 block of Youngfield Street at 1:56 p.m. July 9, police said. When police contacted the man at 2:42 p.m., he said it was "absurd" that someone accused him of masturbating, and he denied doing anything that could have resembled masturbation to passers-by, reports said. The worker's supervisor allegedly told police she didn't think the man could be masturbating because - having only one hand - he wouldn't be able to hold the stop sign and masturbate at the same time. The case was still open at the time of the report pending further investigation by police.

You can't make this stuff up.
--Sean Cronin

Joel Harvey is Ari from East High School's new hero. And mine too. On his day off, Harvey happened to head into work at the Bluebird Theater and caught a phone call from Eli asking if the Bluebird would be willing to post his prom date invitation on the marquee. Having been spurned by a girl himself in high school -- and suffered the kind of pain and humiliation that is exponentially multiplied by age, acne and punk music -- he jumped at the chance and jumped on a ladder. Harvey says he even had to craft a question mark out of electrical tape to complete his masterwork of charity. Remember when the Beastie Boys produced Grand Royal Magazine and every month featured another installment of "Real American Badass?" (The only one I can remember was Aaron Burr.) Well, I hereby declare Joel Harvey a Real American Badass. If anyone knows if Emma said yes (the marquee was changed after East High School's lunch ended; even charity has its limits), please let us know. Oh, and big-ups to Brofax for keeping it real on the 'fax.
-- Sean Cronin

We all knew the DPL's Central Library on 13th and Broadway is a great place to look at porn and catch a sink-shower when you're feeling a little ripe. But a place to bring your chemistry set?

At 12:49 p.m., Denver Fire responded to the library on a hazardous materials call and quickly identified several patrons and staff who were experiencing respiratory symptoms due to fumes emanating from a spot of carpet on the second floor, says Lt. Phil Champagne. Champagne says someone managed to spill a small portion of some corrosive material on the carpet, which reacted with the flooring and kicked up some noxious fumes. The library was evacuated for about an hour as a precaution as the hazmat crew identified the substance on the carpet as a 14ph substance (that's a corrosive acid, not a base, for all you chem geeks), and then neutralized and cleaned up the offending chemical spill. Hardly a need to involve the EPA, but still one of the more caustic episodes the library has experienced since the incendiary uproar over those Mexican comic books a few years back.

The video embedded above was posted by the Weld county sheriff's department to help catch the crooks burglarizing the pictured condo. Who knew the Internets would be turned to such weird uses? Shopping was a given, porn seems obvious in retrospect, and Star Trek discussion and flame wars were clearly going to be an integral part of such a technology-driven medium. But crime stopping? These tubes are full of some amazing stuff, no? As an aside, that video would be a lot cooler if someone put the Benny Hill music behind it... And let me add, if you recognize the burglars here, please notify the Weld County authorities post-haste.

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On Tuesday, when the Cory Voorhis case was about to go to the jury, Colorado Ethics Watch asked Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey to "launch an immediate investigation of former gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez and his former campaign manager John Marshall for making false campaign ads against Mr. Beauprez's opponent." That opponent, of course, was former Denver DA Bill Ritter, now the governor of Colorado.

It took jury just two hours to find Voorhis, a federal immigration agent, not guilty of improperly accessing a confidential law enforcement database in order to provide information on an illegal immigrant to the Beauprez campaign.

And it didn't take much longer for the office of current Denver DA Mitch Morrissey to determine that no charges were warranted in connection with the ad. Here's the decision letter that was sent yesterday, April 10, to Colorado Ethics Watch:

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John Fante was born in Denver 99 years ago today. If you’ve never heard of the late author, you’re not alone. He is one of the best, least-known authors of the 20th Century, but he is rarely talked about in Denver or anywhere else.

“He’s an interesting in the American literary landscape. Those who have come in contact with his writing are bowled over and can barely comprehend why he is not celebrated like the other great writers of the twentieth century, lions like Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald,” says Stephen Cooper, author of Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante, published in 2000. “He continues to be a marginal author, sort of cult favorite, but he is terrifically, deeply loved by those in the minority who recognize him.”

A hero of better-known iconoclast Charles Bukowski, Fante’s semi-autobiographical style was similar, though Fante’s tough-guy persona is softened by a poetic, almost elegant turn of phrase. His most famous book is 1939’s Ask the Dust, which was made into a terrible 2006 movie starring Salma Hayek and Colin Farrell. Some of his other books include, Wait Until Spring, Bandini, Dreams from Bunker Hill, The Brotherhood of the Grape and 1933 Was a Bad Year. He also wrote short stories and screen plays.

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Best. Weekend. Ever.

Click on the photos.

The Photo Atlas rocked 3 Kings on Thursday.

Opening day at Coors Field, regardless of the outcome, was just as magical as ever.

Bad Weather California got the opportunity of a lifetime when they backed up Daniel Johnston on Saturday at the Ogden Theater.

And the Swayback held their CD release party.

If one single thing threatens my relationship with my soon-to-be wife, it won't be my womanizing. That's just not me. It won't be the whiskey or the beer or the fact that I spend money like a drunken sailor or that night recently when I just didn't come home. She's pretty cool about those things. It's going to be parking tickets.

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