The time has come for me to confess to you, dear readers, that I have a massive, unrequited crush on someone. That someone is Professor Phelyx, mentalist, entertainer, artist, and professional gentleman. I met him a few years ago when I was a backstage newbie and terribly nervous about how unqualified I was. Phelyx took […]

I’ve lived as a female for decades now, yet mastery of feminine wiles still eludes me. Take makeup. I’m not good at it. When appearing as myself, I err on the side of “nothing” rather than make an error of burlesque proportions. When appearing in burlesque, it sometimes looks like I’ve applied bronzer with a […]

Someday, when I’m rich and famous, I’ll have my own dressing room with a responsive thermostat and at least 35 watts of lighting. Until then, I’ll continue to prep for burlesque and comedy shows in a variety of dim, crowded green rooms that seasonally vacillate between frigid and sweltering. If these tiny purgatories didn’t contain […]

I think some small part of me has always wanted to run away and join the circus. It’s my great sorrow that I found out just recently that such a thing is not only still possible, but a helluva lot of fun. I know because I started a circus adventure a couple years ago, which […]

I’ve done stand-up comedy for years. One of my favorite jokes used to be that I was single because I spent all of my spare time in comedy club green rooms, where the choice of men was not enticing, the social skills and economic prowess of unknown comics being what they are. I’ve found a […]

It may have escaped the attention of the average layperson, but there’s been a gaping vacuum of power in the Denver all-male-longform-improv-team scene in the last two years. I’m happy to report that this game of thrones has been settled. The new reigning monarch is Barkley. Barkley is six guys who make empty space into […]

The better the band, the later they play. This sometimes-inconvenient reality dictated that the band I was going to see didn’t start until, technically, the day *after* the date stamped on the ticket. I found myself shivering on an ice-caked sidewalk at half past midnight, clutching a ticket and thinking seriously about the wisdom of […]

Denver is a great town for variety. The geography of the Great Plains rams up into the Rocky Mountains in a cacophony of disorderly foothills and stunning shelves of red rock. This geographic jolt seems to inform the city itself, as it vacillates between high culture such as the Denver Center for the Performing Arts […]