The Holiday 2020 season is upon us. We’ve made it through Thanksgiving, and, having given adequate thanks for the families that we alternately want to hug and garrotte, we now await the horrors of Hanukwanzmas. Yes, the agony of coerced celebration is well upon us. Perhaps for those who have great jobs, loving partners, beautiful children, and supportive parents, the holidays are wonderful times of joyful celebration. For the rest of us, I offer this account of the internal life of a holiday celebrant. It documents Thanksgiving, but the principles can be applied to any upcoming holiday. 07:05am... Read More

I’ve written about bikes several times before in this column. Cycling seems to be something that ignites a fire and unleashes a glorious abandon within many of us. Suspended between heaven and earth, wheeling along on our rubber tires, just a little lower than the avian swifts in their tar-black feathers, we are released from the boundaries and burdens of surly Earth and, for a moment, we are the divine. I mean, it’s oftentimes a shit-ton of sweat and dirt and agony, but there’s more moments of feeling your body and releasing your soul while cycling than almost any other experience I have... Read More

Whew. We’re into November now and 2020 is still barrelling through all social norms and historical precedents at a blistering pace. At the start of this year, I wrote about an event at the Oriental Theater that over 600 people attended, packed in shoulder to shoulder and drinking in front of each other. My last column was about a socially-distant productionat the Aurora Fox where a dozen folks sat many yards apart and were careful to walk in only one direction through the hallways. Let’s just say that a lot has happened in between those two columns, or just as accurately to say, a lot has not... Read More

The Devil All the Time is streaming on Netflix I’ve been to the South, but I’ve never been to The South. To clarify, years ago my wife and I took a week off for a road trip. We were on the East Coast then, and with the exception of a couple of trips to Florida, I had never spent any appreciable time further South than Maryland. I was intensely curious about what I would find. Honestly, I loved it. In particular, I fell deeply in love with Charleston, the elegantly crumbling South Carolina city. The food? Incredible. The sights? Marvelous. The people? Delightful.* In particular was a couple... Read More

Sports and numbers have always been synonymous.  Mention the number 23 and one immediately thinks of Michael Jordan.  Ask any baseball fan what 406 means, and they will tell you that it was Ted Williams’ batting average in 1941, the last time a player hit over .400.  Bring up the number 11, and you will find the amount of NBA Championships won by Bill Russell. Wilt Chamberlain once scored 100 points in a game, Joe DiMaggio had a 56-game hitting streak, and Roberto Clemente finished his career with exactly 3,000 hits before tragically dying in an airplane crash while delivering aid to earthquake... Read More

I went out in public. Yes, all the way outside of my house, to a public event, where there were strangers that I did not know, and I sat in a row of seats and watched these unfamiliar humans who, and I am not making this up, were in the same exact room as me. The event was Tomfoolery, a revue of the works of Tom Lehrer, at the Aurora Fox Arts Center, directed by Kenny Moten and executive produced by Helen Murray. I’ve seen a number of other productions at the Fox and never been disappointed so I was curious to see how this creative company would handle a pandemic-age production. The Colorado... Read More

Cuties is streaming on Netflix  Take a seat. Better yet, make a nice, hot cup of tea, pull up your nearest fainting couch, and get ready for some information that is sure to blow your mind. Ready? You sure? Okay…here goes. *takes a deep breath* Americans are really, really stupid when it comes to both art and nuance. An example is the kerfuffle that sprang up regarding The Last Temptation of Christ. It all began with the 1955 novel written by Nikos Kazantzakis that examined the life of Jesus. Specifically, it posited the concept of Jesus briefly succumbing to temptation while on the cross and... Read More

In a sports world full of quarantines and opt outs, empty venues and cardboard cutouts, rule changes and daily testing—week one of the NFL season was bound to be a relative unknown. With exhibition games canceled and the media limited, the first week of the NFL would have to serve as a limited sample size in answering many of the questions about the teams around the league, the quarterback carousels, and the sport in general. Here are ten things we learned: The Jacksonville Jaguars are not tanking for Trevor – After shipping players like Jalen Ramsey, Leonard Fournette, and Nick Foles to... Read More

I’m Thinking of Ending Things is streaming on Netflix The movie isn’t the problem. I’m the problem. Nobody ever said art was easy, right? Making art can be something that goes beyond difficult. It can go to a place that feels like self-flagellation, as if you’re hurling your entire body against a brick wall. All in service for…what, exactly? The slim possibility that your artwork manages to escape into the wild, a viewer sees it and thinks, “Ah, I see what you’re doing. Good work.” Art is a two-way street. It requires both an artist and a viewer of the art.* I get it, and I’m... Read More

Lookout Mountain is benignly described as a “7,377-foot (2,249 m) peak located in Lookout Mountain Park, 1.7 miles (2.7 km) west-southwest (bearing 245°) of downtown Golden.” This seems like an understatement because over the last few years, this “7,377-foot peak” has turned into a beacon for me that outshines even the antennae farm on its crown that beams out signal to my countless screens. My first memory of Lookout is a bland mental snapshot from a family vacation—my dad has a thing for the romanticized history of America and our family vacations in the ol’ Toyota Camry were to... Read More