“This Might Hurt A Little”

Sunday, June 24th: Wearing a simple black T-shirt and a green Michigan State Spartans baseball cap (the ‘S’ on the cap could also be for his new film ‘Sicko’), Michael Moore lambasted the US healthcare system, the mainstream media, and the war in Iraq from the steps of the State Capitol building in Denver. In town to promote his new documentary film Sicko, scheduled for release on June 29th, he attracted a largely partisan crowd of around 200 and a roving beehive of reporters, TV cameramen, and still photographers from the local and national press. Sicko deals largely with the the failures of the US healthcare system, the machinations of the large health insurance companies, and the real tales of suffering and despair that result, including the story of Donna Smith and her family from Aurora. Read on …

Heart of a Poet

Tuesday, June 19th: Torontonian. Sri Lankan. Poet. Novelist. A distinguished, professorial man—all those years at Glendon College in Toronto have left their mark—with a meticulously clipped grey beard and a wild mane of Einsteinian hair. Slight traces of a Sri Lankan accent, mingled with a touch of Anglicism. Initially, he seemed resigned to formulaic questions, but when the audience showed a familiarity with and curiosity about his new book, he came alive. Michael Ondaatje, the Booker prize winning author of The English Patient, was in Denver to read from and discuss his latest offering, a novel entitled Divisadero. Read on …

Ted & Me

Monday, June 18th: He is soft spoken and very polite. A muscular, clean-cut guy. You remember him. He was dressed in a diaper on the front cover of Westword’s New Year’s edition, holding two glasses of champagne and laughing as he brought in the New Year. Why was he in such a good mood? He had just slain Ted Haggard, founder and pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs and the leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, a 30 million strong organization of fundamentalist Christians, exposing him as a gay man and meth head. Not only that, but he also had a significant effect upon the 2006 midterm elections, as the story went national (not unlike Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart’s follies during Reagan’s presidency), disrupting the Republican evangelical base. On a 12 city book tour of the USA, Jones was in his hometown of Denver on Monday night to promote and discuss his book I Had to Say Something: The Art of Ted Haggard’s Fall Read on …

“The American Media Are Pussycats”

Monday, June 4th: She’s proud of her Liverpool roots and is a devoted Beatles fan (Liverpudlians one and all), having slept with a picture of Paul McCartney under her pillow when she was a little girl. When she finally met Paul as the Prime Minister’s wife, Tony Blair made a point of telling Paul that she no longer slept with his picture. There was some worry amongst the organizers of the event and staff at the Buell Theatre that anti-war protesters would heckle the British PM’s wife, but those fears turned out to be unfounded, the audience of 2,500 showing only appreciation (although who knows what some were thinking). Alternating between British reserve, an evangelical vision to create a better world, and a candid (sometimes bawdy) humor, Cherie Booth Blair spoke about her family, her career as a distinguished jurist in Great Britain, and life as the Prime Minister’s wife at 10 Downing Street. Read on …

Tao Berman Digs In

Thursday, May 31st: Homestake Creek was running fast, deep, and cold with all the spring snowmelt. In places it widened out, with a boulder-strewn, fan shape, very technical kayaking, in other places narrowing down to a series of 5 to 10 foot drops like a giant pourspout. The fastest one to the end of the 1/4 mile course wins. Pretty simple it seemed. But hold on. The river (like the island in Lost) demanded some sacrifices. Two kayakers flipped over and had to exit their boats, hauled in by lifelines, feeling battered and bruised by the river. More seriously, Canadian kayaker Valerie Bertrand had to be put on a spinal board, loaded onto a raft, and transported to a medical center after she flipped over and went over a drop backwards. Located up near Red Cliff, Colorado (just around the corner from Vail), the Homestake Creek race is part of the Teva Mountain Games going on in Vail from May 29th to June 3rd. Read on …