Like gay marriage, marijuana use and tattoos, public perception of female sex toys is not what it used to be. While male sex toys still weigh heavy on the shame scale, a female pleasure device is mostly seen as a cute novelty. Encountering one while snooping is comparable to finding a rutabaga in the fridge or a Kid 'n Play record on the shelf: more "Oh, that's interesting" than "You filthy slut."

In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play, which opens tomorrow at the Bug, takes us back to a time before female sexuality was acknowledged, when the buzzing phallus was used to treat women for "hysteria" -- and once its alternative uses were made known, was vilified as an unmentionable weapon of evil, a disgusting appliance of hell-bound harlots.

In honor of this theatrical monument to the social evolution of female sexuality, we are proud to present this brief pop-culture history of the vibrator:

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Update: Two corrections have been made: Tropic Thunder is now the only June 18 film, and viewers can vote on which film they'd like to see on July 16.

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It's finally here.

The 2012 Film On the Rocks summer line-up at Red Rocks Amphitheatre was announced this evening, and many movies that made the cut were picked for the people, by the people. Though carefully curated by the Denver Film Center -- and led by FOTR Program Director Britta Erickson -- if the inclusion of a film like The Notebook rubs watchers the wrong way, look no further than the audience itself:

"It wasn't just because this seems to be the year of Ryan Gosling," says Karla Rodriguez, Audience Development and Social Media Manager for FOTR. "It's because The Notebook has been one of our top five most-requested films consistently since it came out. From crowd surveys to Facebook polls, this is what the people want."

Read more about tonight's announcement and see the full schedule below.

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While it often gets overshadowed by the music scene, Denver actually has a rich history of underground literature. From the Kerouac-inspired bohemian coffee and bookshops of 1960s Colfax to the Yellow Rake readings at Old Curtis Street Tavern, our city has been spawning independent works of fiction and poetry for decades. And there are few locals today more closely associated with DIY publishing than Charly "The City Mouse" Fasano. Whether hustling his books of poetry or impressively crafted audio-books, or giving one of his now iconic readings (he once opened a sold-out show at the Gothic -- an audience size almost unheard of for a live poet), Fasano has rooted himself in this city, becoming as much a part of the creative fabric as home-brew or cutesy indie-folk bands.

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Faced with the postponement of two screenings of the highly anticipated film The Beatles: The Lost Concert, Boedecker Theater manager Glenn Webb didn't cry in his kidney pie. Instead, he secured a replacement reel: Paul McCartney Is Really Dead: The Last Testament of George Harrison, a comic mockumentary corroborating the famous "Paul is Dead" controversy of 1969, based on a rumor that the cute Beatle had been killed in an accident in 1966 and replaced by a look-alike.

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It's difficult to say exactly what "mod" means in 2012. Even when the movement reached its zenith in London in the early '60s, the definition wasn't clear: not quite hippie, not quite punk, not quite English, yet not quite American, either. Inventing a sort of bohemian dandy aesthetic, the mods wore pork-pie hats, listened to jazz records, gobbled down amphetamines like pac-man and rode Vespa scooters through London, on their way to fights with "the rockers." Ah, but some would say that's not quite right, either. In its evolutions from the Quadrophenia/mod-punk revival of the late '70s to the Britpop aesthetics of the mid-90s, what's considered mod has gone through many changes and titles -- yet, like the Supreme Courts definition of pornography, you know it when you see it.

Here in Denver, the mod lifestyle of high fashion, scooters and record-collecting has been growing, due in part to groups like the Denver Vintage Reggae Society, whose events allow people to get dressed up in mod (or skinhead, ska, northern soul, etc.) gear and dance to records made before most of them were even born. And this Friday, May 18, you can check out these bohemian dandies yourself at the Mods Mayday 2012 event at the Skylark Lounge, featuring DJs spinning ska and northern soul, as well as live music by The Manxx and The Sonic Archers.

Westword reached out to Mods Mayday 2012 event organizer Steve Antonio to discuss scooters, music and shopping for mod clothes in Denver.

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One of the 10 Facebook Tips we found on Twitter.

Ten Facebook Tips: It started as an informational list on Mashable to help people optimize their Facebook usage, but it's become a top trending topic on Twitter, full of helpful and not-so-helpful -- and some of it quite telling -- advice about Zuckerberg's site.

Most of the tweets, which only seem to offer one tip and not all ten, encourage people to delete their Facebook accounts and switch to Twitter (and more and more seem to be ads for porn sites), but within all of the hullabaloo, we managed to find a few real gems.

Here is the (quite meta) top ten "10 Facebook Tips" rundown. We troll Twitter, so you don't have to.

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All photos by Chris Morgan for Westword

On the calendar of nerd holidays, May 4 is certainly below Comic Con but at least a few pegs above the pirate convention that takes place each year near the airport. Yes, "May the 4th be with you," is a day every Star Wars fan can get behind obnoxiously -- and 100 percent. One such nerd is Dan Landes, owner of meatless restaurant City O' City, who organized the party there on Friday. Below are a few photos, but sadly for you nerds, there were no Slave Leia's to be found.

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All photos by Britt Chester

There was great fashion, loud music and heavy-pours, and probably some hooking-up and broken hearts: Yes, it was Derby day again in Denver! Apparently, there was also a horse race in Kentucky or something, but those people are all backwoods rednecks, anyway. There were giant hats to be worn, people!

Did we mention there was great fashion?!?! Below are a few memorable outfits, fits and faces of the Kentucky Derby parties we snuck into over the weekend.

Also see:
- Downtown Derby Debauchery
- 138th Kentucky Derby at Chloe and the Lobby

Now, onto the memorable Derby'ers.

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Mos Eisly Cantina...or City, O' City?

Science fiction isn't for everyone. But those who get it really get it. "Comics and sci-fi are the new archetypes of our culture; we relate to Star Wars and Stan Lee's characters, and we've created new mythologies through them," says Dan Landes, restaurateur and self-confessed sci-fi geek. And this Friday, May 4, Landes will make a long-held dream reality by turning his own City, O' City into a full-on orgy of nerdness with the May the Fourth Be With You sci-fi costume party. It's "the kind of thing that when you mention it to people, they immediately identify with it, they immediately have stories about the comics that they love or classic novels and sci-fi movies that they love," Landes explains. "This culture is just huge."

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Lauren Cohan, of The Walking Dead, will be at Denver Comic Con.

Denver Comic Con is pulling out all of the stops this year with many impressive guest speakers, including the just-announced appearances of three of the stars of AMC's The Walking Dead. Lauren Cohan, Steven Yeun and Chandler Riggs -- who play Maggie Green, Glenn and Carl Grimes respectively -- will all be attending.

This is the first year that San Diego-based Comic Con (not to be confused with the long-running Mile Hi Con, which has been around for more than forty years) has put on a show in Denver and the response has already been so large that the organizers have had to find a new venue.

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