Aurora Will Be In The Arena ~ Strange Days in LA: From Magnolia to Inherent Vice

On a television near you...

Nine miles from Theater 9.

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Brief update: The 2012 Presidential Debate in Denver had no mainstream, street-level topics, and ignored general news issues from this summer. I shall leave this posting, as it, nevertheless. A great opportunity was missed by Mr. Jim Lehrer to make this a relevant debate in Colorado.
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Last Halloween, who could have predicted that one of the words that we almost certainly would hear at this year's Presidential Debate would be Aurora?

Today, Aurora connects the human consciousness and the unconscious to so much. Mass shooting. July 20th. The Dark Knight Rises. Bane. Bain. James Eagan Holmes. "I am the Joker." Media. Wall-to-wall coverage. Movie theaters. Fear. Twelve Dead. Seventy shot. Darkness. Midnight showing. Colorado. Aurora. Blood. Red. Dawn.

Will the subject of mass shootings or gun control come up during the 2012 Presidential Debate in Denver, Colorado?

If it does, you can almost predict the wording that will be presented to the candidates:

"We find ourselves here tonight at the University of Denver in Colorado. Right down the road, in Aurora, in July, a dozen of our fellow citizens' lives were lost to what appears to have been the act of an alleged lone gunman [or substitute "madman"]. Something similar also happened near here before, at Columbine. What is your position on how we can best stop these shootings?"

After all, this first debate is in Colorado, in Denver. How can they ignore what happened near there on July 20, 2012? Or on April 20, 1999?

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Indeed, the pressure was on this week to address Aurora during the debate.

A man wounded in the theater shooting, Stephen Barton, appears in a television ad that will air nationally this week in which he asks the candidates to explain how they would reduce gun violence.
"I never thought I'd be a shooting victim until I was bleeding on a floor in Aurora," Barton said in a statement. "I was lucky, but I've seen what happens when dangerous people get their hands on guns. And I think it's fair to ask the men who want to lead the country to get past the platitudes and give us a serious plan to address a serious problem." Source.

Meanwhile, the relatives of eight of the 12 victims who died at The Dark Knight Rises screening in Aurora, Colorado, asked Jim Lehrer, the moderator of the presidential debate in Denver Wednesday, to ask the candidates about gun violence.

"Hey, didn't they have this debate in Colorado because of the Aurora shootings," some people ask?

Or, "Was it because Colorado has turned into a swing state?"

Intriguingly, Colorado was picked as the site of the first 2012 Presidential Election Debates some time ago.

How long ago?

Actually, the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates first announced, on the highly symbolic date of Halloween, October 31, 2011, that four sites had been picked.

Here are those four locations, dates, and topics:

First Presidential (domestic policy) Wednesday, October 3; Magness Arena, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado;
Vice Presidential (domestic and foreign) Thursday, October 11; Norton Center for the Arts, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky;
Second Presidential (town-meeting format) Tuesday, October 16; David S. Mack Sports and Exhibition Complex, Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York;
Third Presidential (foreign policy) Monday, October 22; Wold Performing Arts Center, Lynn University, Boca Raton, Florida.

The sites were selected to give some geographic representation to the debate choices. Any other reason is "purely coincidental," we are told.

Is it just synchromystic that Aurora is so close to the first debate at the Magness Arena?

Magness? Magness has its origins in magnus, the word for great and dean. The Magness Arena is named after cable television pioneer Bob Magness, who donated $10 million towards construction costs. Bob Magness, 72, who ran a tiny cable television company out of his kitchen before building Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI) into the nation's largest cable provider, died of cancer in November 1996 in Denver. He had created his first cable system 40 years ago in Memphis, Texas, then merged his cable provider Community Television Inc. and its microwave distribution partnership, Western Microwave Inc., to create TCI when he moved to Denver in 1968. The company now has 14 million subscribers nationwide.

His billionaire son is Gary Magness, who owned TCI until it merged with AT&T in 1999 in a $54 billion deal. Gary has inherited hundreds of millions of dollars in stock. He owns water rights in Colorado through ranch holdings; also invests in oil, gas, and cattle. Gary and his wife produced the film Precious.

The Magness Arena can be identified around the city of Denver by the attached 215-foot-tall (66 m), gold-spired Williams Tower, which contains a 65-bell carillon.

How far is it from the University of Denver's Magness Arena, at 2201 East Asbury Avenue, Denver, CO 80208, to Theater 9, Century 16 Cinemas, at 14300 East Alameda Avenue, Aurora, CO 80012? It's 9 miles, as the crow flies, but 10-13.3 miles, depending on your travel route (back way along East Alameda vs major highways I-25/I-255) there.

This leaves an obvious question to ask ourselves: Was it the Cosmic Joker that picked Colorado's Aurora to dominate the news for this Summer of the Gun, or was it something more human and wicked that this way came to choose this specific Denver-Aurora area for these red dawn events?

Why was Aurora "picked"?

Will the word Aurora be heard at the October 3rd debate? Our forecast is, "Yes."