I didn’t want to sell it to the first person to email me … that’s boring. So I wrote this in the post: “If you want the ticket, send an email with a haiku about the Avett Brothers. Best haiku gets the ticket.”

Here are the haikus I got:

Hark! Honey on ears
sight, smell, touch, taste envious.
Avett Bros. good sound.

— Sean S.

Retarded are you
In the request that you have
For avett tickets

— Chris S.

Which begat:

Chris didn't mean it
He needs me to reconnect
Him to the beauty

— Kathleen M.

Avett Brothers sing,
soulful music together,
dancing righteously.

— Max B.

Sold yesterdays tickets by accident
Very sad
Makes me cry like the Avett Brothers
when all the pretty girls in their songs dump them

— Kathleen V.

the avetts are here
for truth and love they shall sing
they are fucking rad!

— Taylor R.

joe magically makes
a pretty girl from denver
so very happy

and

poor, starving, artist
can't afford pricey ticket
i'll buy you a drink...

and

ears full of music
ticket with my name on it
joe's my new best friend

— Jackie

And the winner:

bearded brothers play
by guitars grace, tasty lick
paint smile on my face

— Joshua W.

“The biggest thing for me is the mood on the field has changed,” Tulowitzki said. “Early on in the season, we were expecting bad things to happen. Now we’re expecting good things to happen. We’re waiting for the big pitch, we’re waiting for the big hit, and we’re getting it. Whereas before, we were thinking out there, ‘What’s going to happen? What’s going to go wrong? How are we going to blow this lead?’ “

The bot-spammers are now winning over on COTweets, so I went and created a new Colorado group-tweet list, ColoradoTweets, that works in much the same way, but has a few more rules that should help keep it from turning into a noisy ugly hot mess.

To break it down:

• Only tweets that *start* with (as opposed to contain) @ColoradoTweets will be published. This fixes one of COTweeters’ weaknesses.
• Any tweet with “RT” in it, or “Follow Friday” (and variants) will be ignored.
• If @ColoradoTweets isn’t following you, you can tweet to it, but those tweets won’t be broadcast to the group until @ColoradoTweets follows you.
• Abusing the list with repetitive, promotional tweets, is a sure ticket to a blocking.

The goal here is to have a list that takes the pulse of Colorado folk on twitter, that can help people who have questions about something Colorado, and is interesting. Thoughts? Post ‘em here.

-Joe


Mark Cuban is a
rich businessman who owns the
Dallas Mavericks



He doesn't really
know how to play basketball,
But yell? Yes he does.



In Japan, they call
him Maku Kuban. In the
U.S., he's "that guy."



Mark Cuban said that
Kenyon Martin was a punk.
Welcome to third grade.



Cuban yelled that at
Kenyon's mom, and then wrote a
lame apology.



Cuban has two kids.
His daughters are experts at
razzing opponents.



Cuban appeared on
The Simpsons. Have you been on
The Simpsons? No, no.



News Flash: The Dallas
Mavericks' next game is in
November. Cry, Mark.


Overpriced two-drink minimums and potato skins; bad Clinton jokes on late night—these used to be the hallmarks of comedy, an art relegated to the controlled environs of comedy clubs and network TV. Fortunately, in the late ’90s, a daring breed of comedians began rejecting the status quo altogether and, by taking cues from the indie-music world, started reviving comedy as a savvy and groundbreaking art form. Mock Stars delves headfirst into this revolutionary scene, tracing the evolution of indie comedy as part of the underground music circuit and into mainstream America. Through candid interviews with the major players, including David Cross, Patton Oswalt, Neil Hamburger, Maria Bamford, Fred Armisen, Aziz Ansari, Jon Wurster, Aimee Mann, and dozens of others, Wenzel reveals how comedy is becoming relevant—and dangerously funny—again.

You can find more of Mr. Wenzel’s work in the Denver Post’s music section.

And here’s the second cut of the video, done by Mat:

You can get more information on the Obama Bacon Man song — credits, the story behind it, etc. on sizzology.com here. If you’d like to help spread the Bacon Word, here’s a list I typed up of stuff you can do to help.

Not that staring at a screen is bad… I mean, it’s what I’m doing right now, and I’m not paid for this. And having the DNC in town is exciting — it makes Denver feel like a city. There’s a Chicago level of folk walking the street. There are protesters. And buttons. I have seen more photos of dead, mutilated fetuses in the past week than I have my entire life. The anti-abortion protesters are doing a swell job of raising my awareness of how classy they are — but heck, this isn’t about being classy. It’s about people without a voice-through-standard-power-structure-means making their voice heard in do-it-yourself style. Unfortunately, this DIY method of voice-raising doesn’t go much further than yelling. Or getting arrested. Or some combination of the two.

And I’m painting the protesters with the same glossy wash that they paint their opposition … heh, heck, I’ve seen one civil conversation between folk who disagreed, and if there has been one civil exchange of ideas and facts I bet there have been more. Go, discourse, go.

So, work. A lovely problem reared its head Monday: javascript files hosted on our corporate parent’s server weren’t loading for users of InternetExplorer 6 unless said users force-refreshed their browsers. That means 25 percent of our audience, and 99 percent of our newsroom, weren’t seeing a bunch of important to semi-important stuff on denverpost.com. That problem still rages, and it’s not being blamed on me anymore.

The newsroom Tuesday was slow and I got out after eight hours. Wednesday was twelve straight hours of stuff. Getting into the breaking-news zone’s exciting, but then that part of me asks “yeah it’s exciting for you, but do people out there really care?” There’s a lot of one-way thinking in newsrooms when it comes to news judgment. I write that because of the ridiculous lack of attention given to the reasons people click the things they click on any given news site that I’ve observed and participated in at all (both) the newspapers I’ve worked at. Anyway.

The Denver Post reporters are doing a wonderful job of leaping into this DNC Twitter age — we’re out-tweeting the Rocky on the trivial stuff (celebs) and the important stuff too. That’s fun. I nabbed a news-tip tweet from a follower that turned into an article today. You can see the whole history of Post DNC tweets here… these updates are now also running on the PoliticsWest homepage, and in the DNC sidebar that runs on lots of our articles.

My boss said CNN took inspiration from the Post’s homepage lead-photo treatment in their layout — they look similar, certainly, and CNN launched that after we did.

Non-work: Yesterday a group of revolutionary-minded ruffians took tea bags to the pool in Civic Center park. When I find photos of the brown water I will share. Also, people were protesting bird porn (meh), and others were protesting Pepsi … asking them to bring back Crystal Pepsi.

And for some strange reason, this photo of this Falun Dafa float from Monday has more than 6000 page views. I don’t get it.

Also, tonight I went to the MSNBC outdoor stage by Union Station to watch their wrap-up hour. Man their shit’s fancy.