Ear to the ground

“I think you’ll like that. It’s sort of like a donut hole.”

– A Durango woman giving advice to a Durango police officer in a buffet line

A new ‘Dynasty’

Blake, Krystle and Alexis are emerging from the technicolor tomb. “Dynasty,” the television program that put Denver and Colorado on the prime time map, is set for a silver screen reboot.

“Dynasty” aired on ABC from 1981-89 and revolved around the Carringtons, a wealthy oil family living in Denver. In the show’s second season, Joan Collins was added to the cast as Blake’s scheming first wife Alexis and helped propel the show to the No. 1 slot in 1985. The popularity also spawned a J.C. Penney revolution and such fashion products as Forever Krystle, “the perfume for women.”

More than 30 years after its pilot episode, the iconic soap is coming back to life. Show creators Richard and Esther Shapiro are following in the shoes of “Charlie’s Angels” and “The A-Team” and launching “Dynasty” as a film franchise.  

“The time is right,” said Esther Shapiro. “Nostalgia has always been big, but we want to take it a step further. We want to go back to the beginning with these characters and use the film to trace their roots. We’re taking Blake Carrington back to his young manhood and when he met Alexis.”

The film’s script is currently being written by the Shapiros, and they hope to shoot “Dynasty” sometime in the next year. The team is already confident of the project’s success.

“Somewhere in the world, someone is watching an episode of ‘Dynasty’ right now,” Shapiro said.

Flushes and wipes

As long as tourists have visited mountain towns, mountain towns have kept a close eye on their visitors. Municipal officials are obsessed with gauging how many people are visiting and how much money they’re contributing to the community. Over the years, they have used some unusual tools.

For decades, Vail and Avon have embraced the “flush factor.” The very rough measure examines how much sewage is treated as a broad barometer for how many tourists are in town. However, the flush factor does have it drawbacks and does not account for such variables as appetite, stage fright or constipation.

Whistler has taken a literal swipe at an even rougher estimate: how much toilet paper is getting dispensed at hotels. By that measure, Christmas week was quite successful and the roll count went into the tens of thousands. That estimate was backed up by tourism officials’ estimate that lodges were filled to 90 percent occupancy at Christmas. Lodgers noted visitation by more Australians and South Americans than ever before. Whether they “fold” or “bunch” has yet to be determined.