"Creating People On Whom Nothing is Lost" - An educator and writer in Colorado offers insight and perspective on education, parenting, politics, pop culture, and contemporary American life.
Disclaimer - The views expressed on this site are my own and do not represent the views of my employer.
We've all seen it before in movies and television: the "heartbreaking tale" of the bright, talented, and aspirational young adult who rises above their situation and gets into the Ivy League but can't go because the kid is poor, and the college is just way too expensive.
Such an unfortunate situation, ... and also wildly inaccurate, if not completely false and misleading.
The college admissions process and the price of a degree is not an uncommon point of discussion for American families, and those situations have been an increasing point of concern for decades now. The affordability crisis hits in all sorts of ways, but the affordability of a university education, especially at elite schools like the Ivy League, is an often-misunderstood concept. And, I regularly come across online posts and stories -- and, of course, the annoying Hollywood distortions -- about a kid "getting into their dream school," but turning it down because they can't afford it.
Here's the deal -- a kid growing up in poverty who gains admission to the Ivy League, or elite schools such as the University of Chicago, will likely go to college for free. Elite schools with huge endowments (Yale University's is nearly $50 billion) provide extensive financial aid on a need basis. And, for schools like Penn, tuition is waived completely for families making less than $200,000 annually.
Starting in the 2025-26 academic year, the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) is offering free tuition to undergraduate students from families with annual incomes up to $200K through its "Quaker Commitment" initiative. For families earning up to $75,000 the aid package also covers housing and dining.
While the sticker price for major universities can be eye-popping, it's important to note how few students and families are actually paying full tuition at numbers like $80,000 a year. In fact, at Harvard and many, if not most, of the Ivies, as much 60% of students receive 50% financial aid or greater. Now, that said, half-off of the tuition can still be tens of thousands of dollars a year, and families still face large bills for room and board. But, it's important for families to understand the actual details. And the online Net Price Calculator is quite helpful and pretty accurate in letting students know what they will actually pay.
If ya know, ya know. The catchphrase where I grew up -- St. Louis, "the Lou," where baseball is religion -- is always about how many days until "Pitchers and Catchers report."
Few poets have the ability to make my smile, laugh, cry, and think all at the same time in the way that Billy Collins does. As a high school English teacher for many years, I realized that I could find a Billy Collins poem for practically every lesson, every discussion, every unit, every situation that I covered in the course of a high school year. Just yesterday I was talking with a colleague about just such a thing, as she began a new unit, and I shared with her one of my favorite Billy Collins poems.
To My Favorite 17-Year-Old High School Girl
Do you realize that if you had started building the Parthenon on the day you were born, you would be all done in only one more year? Of course, you couldn’t have done it alone, so never mind, you’re fine just as you are. You’re loved for just being yourself.
But did you know that at your age Judy Garland was pulling down $150,000 a picture, Joan of Arc was leading the French army to victory, and Blaise Pascal had cleaned up his room? No wait, I mean he had invented the calculator.
Of course, there will be time for all that later in your life, after you come out of your room and begin to blossom, or at least pick up all your socks.
For some reason, I keep remembering that Lady Jane Grey was Queen of England when she was only fifteen, but then she was beheaded, so never mind her as a role model.
A few centuries later, when he was your age, Franz Schubert was doing the dishes for his family but that did not keep him from composing two symphonies, four operas, and two complete Masses as a youngster.
But of course that was in Austria at the height of Romantic lyricism, not here in the suburbs of Cleveland.
Frankly, who cares if Annie Oakley was a crack shot at 15 or if Maria Callas debuted as Tosca at 17?
We think you are special just being you, playing with your food and staring into space. By the way, I lied about Schubert doing the dishes, but that doesn’t mean he never helped out around the house.
In a world and nation overly focused on negativity, it's important and practically necessary to remind ourselves that there are many places and reasons to find joy in the everyday. And few "institutions" have the ability and reach to provide simple mirth to so many people in such simple ways as Jim Henson's magical world of friends like Kermit and Miss Piggy and Elmo and the Swedish chef and more.
And, in a time of reboots and remakes and rebrands of classic entertainment from the past fifty years, the return of The Muppet Show is a refreshing and comforting bit of news. I can still recall the Sunday evenings of my youth at 6:00 PM with the purest of sketch comedy, entertainment that wholesomely appealed to the kids who watched and their parents who occasionally check in as well. Thus, February 4 this year hearkened us back to those halcyon days through a collaboration of Disney and ABC to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the show. And as the New York Times reported, This Is Your Grandparents’ ‘Muppet Show,’ Fortunately:
Backstage on the new special, “The Muppet Show,” Sabrina Carpenter excitedly greets Miss Piggy, in whom she recognizes a kindred spirit. “I grew up watching you,” Carpenter says. “My parents grew up watching you. Their parents grew up watching——” The joke, of course, is that Carpenter ends up offending the diva by implying that she’s old. But there’s a truth to it, too: Since the madcap critters lit the lights on the comedy-variety “Muppet Show” in the 1970s, every generation has gotten its own Muppets.
Sometimes we get them more than once. In 2015, ABC — which had aired the prime-time update “Muppets Tonight” in the 1990s — premiered “The Muppets,” an awkwardly edgy workplace mockumentary. (“This is not your grandmother’s Muppets,” the president of ABC promised/threatened at the time.) In 2020, Disney+ gave us “Muppets Now,” a streaming show about Kermit and company producing mini streaming shows, which lacked the original’s theatrical pizazz.
The premise for “The Muppet Show” of 2026, a (for now) single-episode special premiering on Wednesday on Disney+ and ABC, is comparatively simple: It’s “The Muppet Show.” And wocka wocka wocka, that’s all you need.
I have to be honest - I was about to cancel my Washington Post digital subscription this month. It wasn't a political protest about the direction of the paper under owner Jeff Bezos. It wasn't about disappointment in coverage of one story or another. It wasn't a fading interest in the daily news. It wasn't the coming increase in the the price of my subscription for renewal. No, it wasn't anything like that. It was simply because I will be moving in a few months, switching jobs and uprooting for a few months. So, it was just a convenience.
But now, I can't. Not now. Not after this. The shocking announcement that WashPo is "laying off more than 300 journalists," and eliminating sections and features such as all sports coverage and the esteemed books department is a serious blow to journalism. Writing for The Atlantic, Ashley Parker makes no bones about it. This move is pure carnage, and the layoffs amount to what she calls The Murder of The Washington Post:
We’re witnessing a murder.
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of The Washington Post, and Will Lewis, the publisher he appointed at the end of 2023, are embarking on the latest step of their plan to kill everything that makes the paper special. The Post has survived for nearly 150 years, evolving from a hometown family newspaper into an indispensable national institution, and a pillar of the democratic system. But if Bezos and Lewis continue down their present path, it may not survive much longer.
Over recent years, they’ve repeatedly cut the newsroom—killing its Sunday magazine, reducing the staff by several hundred, nearly halving the Metro desk—without acknowledging the poor business decisions that led to this moment or providing a clear vision for the future. This morning, executive editor Matt Murray and HR chief Wayne Connell told the newsroom staff in an early-morning virtual meeting that it was closing the Sports department and Books section, ending its signature podcast, and dramatically gutting the International and Metro departments, in addition to staggering cuts across all teams. Post leadership—which did not even have the courage to address their staff in person—then left everyone to wait for an email letting them know whether or not they had a job. (Lewis, who has already earned a reputation for showing up late to work when he showed up at all, did not join the Zoom.)
The Post may yet rise, but this will be their enduring legacy.
Long before Draft Kings and FanDuel became omnipresent in the sports universe, offering the "chance" to wager on practically any aspect of any competitive sport, I knew a couple guys at school who introduced me to the idea of "prop bets," specifically on the Super Bowl. They had a side-competition every year during the game with the most random of wagers. They bet on obvious game-related details such as winner, final score, MVP, and individual stats like "how many TD passes will Kurt Warner throw in the game." But then they added in a completely random list of fun propositions.
They bet on the color of the Gatorade poured over the winning coach and which team's cheerleaders would be featured first on a sideline TV shot. They bet on whether a beer commercial or car commercial would come first. They wagered an "over/under" guess on the duration of the National Anthem, and tried to outguess each other on songs during halftime, celebrity appearances, and of course, the coin toss.
That was my introduction to the idea of the "prop bet," which is now a huge business during the Super Bowl. And I have to admit I love it, even as I have become quite uneasy with the ubiquitous nature of gambling in sports and in contemporary society. Each year, I join a prop bet pool, or host one myself. I've done them individually with forms made on a GoogleDoc, and I've used websites that have a pre-established list as well as a scoreboard that keeps score and ranks all players. The prop bet has become another Super Bowl tradition, like watching the commercials, and the Washington Post recently posted some ideas on their "Favorite Prop Bets for Super Bowl LX."
Politics is complicated ... and pretty much always has been.
And in my latest project, The Punk on Walden Pond, I am intrigued by the issue of politics in relation to Henry Thoreau and punk rock. Was Thoreau a political writer and theorist? Is punk a political art form? At times Henry Thoreau argued he is not political, and many might say the punk on Walden Pond is above politics. Similarly, while the music and bands of punk rock certainly are anti-establishment and a challenge to the status quo, some musicologists argue that more than 80% of punk songs are not political, and that the bands have no clear political agenda. I'd imagine Joe Strummer, Jello Biafra, and bands like Propagandhi have some thoughts on that.
In my Walden Punk Project, I have a piece-in-progress titled "In the Mosh Pit: the Politics of Thoreauvian Punk." Here are some thoughts from that work.
Chapter 4 of Jane Bennett’s Thoreau's Nature: Ethics Politics & Wild (2002) is titled “Why Thoreau Hates Politics." Thoreau may have hated politics, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t political. In fact, Bob Pepperman Taylor makes a strong case in two books America’s Bachelor Uncle: Thoreau and the Polity (1996) and Lessons from Walden: Thoreau & the Crisis of American Democracy (2024) for seeing Thoreau primarily as a political writer. He believes that even the supposed “nature writings” such as Walden, "Walking," and "Wild Apples" are actually political positions, specifically in how they criticize and challenge America to be what it claims. And that is as punk as it gets, in my opinion. For, Thoreau is in many ways the first true contemporary critic to challenge the national narrative to call out the American dream to pull back the curtain on the ruse that had been perpetuated against the people.
As far as punk is concerned, it's worth noting that much punk is simply about frustrations with daily life, as opposed to large political manifestos. As Legs McNeil says in his comprehensive history Please Kill Me, “... the great thing about punk was that it had no political agenda. It was about real freedom, personal freedom." In the study Rebel Rock, a review of lyrics suggest only 25% of songs are distinctly political. However, a counterargument is that for the music of a counterculture, even when songs aren’t political, they are.
In viewing Thoreau as combative and political, and punk as a political movement – even when it’s not trying to be, the key elements are personal conscience and a sense of social justice. The goal of Walden is to promote a kind of personal responsibility because, for Thoreau, the fear is that people will succumb to a less interesting and morally deadening utilitarianism. Thoreau insists that we submit to principles which will make us nonconforming in an unjust world. Thoreau urges readers to be rebellious, be a tradition breaker, be civilly disobedient.
In 1972, via a statewide referendum, the people of Colorado rejected funding for the 1976 Olympic Games, becoming the only city ever awarded the games to turn down the chance to host. While that decision shocked the rest of the country, as well as many around the world, it wasn't a surprising move for anyone who knows the taxpayers of the Rocky Mountain state. In fact, knowing what we know now about the structural challenge and fiscal nightmare the Games can be for some cities and countries, it was a surprisingly prescient and prudent move.
Hosting the Olympic Games is an incredible honor and opportunity for a country to shine on the international stage, but it’s also a significant financial and structural investment saddled with huge risks. The Olympics generally cost tens of billions of dollars to stage while providing only a fraction of that in terms of revenue. Host countries must invest heavily in building a vast infrastructure of sites to hold the events, housing for the teams and guests, and transportation and security systems to manage the people. While these can certainly upgrade a city, they are rarely necessary to maintain following the games and often end up in disuse and decay.
Additionally, any benefit from the event is often overshadowed by the corrupt history of the bidding process at the International Olympic Committee and the potential for bloated budgets prior to the event followed by blight afterwards. The scandals plaguing the entire hosting process are extensive, ranging from bribes and extortion to graft and highly orchestrated doping programs which have tainted vast numbers of events and athletes. It often seems the Olympic Games, an international institution intended to honor the individual pursuit of excellence, are more trouble than they’re worth. But it doesn't have to be that way.
Instead, the international community should establish permanent locations for the Olympics, where all countries contribute to maintaining the sites as the premier athletic facilities in the world. The fields and tracks and stadiums could serve as hosts for an endless number of world championships at all levels, and they could also serve as training grounds and research locations to serve all manner of individuals and organizations committed to honoring and promoting the highest levels of athletic achievement.
Choosing permanent locations would obviously be a significant challenge, though certainly not more problematic than the current bidding process. It’s reasonable to have host cities across multiple geographic regions, and it makes sense to consider places which held successful games and maintained some of the original infrastructure. Athens is the obvious choice for one permanent summer location, while Barcelona, Seoul, and Sydney are solid choices as well. Salt Lake City and Lillehammer are good bets for the Winter Olympics, though a strong case can be made for both Vancouver and Turin. Obviously the city and host country must want the honor and responsibility and be willing to trust the rest of the world to support the plan.
This idea is not new, having been discussed for years among commentators, athletic groups, and political leaders. In fact, at the end of the 1896 Games, which launched the modern era, King George of Greece called for Athens to be the permanent “peaceful meeting place of all nations,” and many delegations signed a letter endorsing the idea. Currently, host cities are already established through 2028 when Los Angeles will host its third Olympic Games. And perhaps that’s enough. Before any more bidding happens and planning begins, the public should discuss the idea of permanent host cities. Once the idea is floated to athletes and voters, political and business leaders should take the discussion to the IOC and make it happen. With many future games already assigned and planned, there is plenty of time to develop and implement this logical change to the Games.
Groundhog Day was once about the annual folk tradition of looking to a small animal for predictions about the weather. But since 1993, the day - or at least the phrase - has become part of the lexicon, describing the boring, monotonous nature of everyday life. The Harold Ramis film that established that idea is actually about the opposite. Here's an essay I wrote a few years ago:
It’s not about monotony — it’s about re-birth.
Twenty-six years ago, an unassuming little film about a cantankerous weatherman on the most random of holidays became a pop culture phenomenon that ingrained itself in our consciousness. The title became a metaphor for reluctantly acknowledging the dailiness of life. With the silly story of Phil Connors waking up everyday in Punxsutawney, PA, with Sonny and Cher singing “I’ve Got You Babe” on an endless string of February seconds, Groundhog Day entered the lexicon as a way to describe the drudgery and repetition of daily life. But the movie was never simply about the mundane nature of existence. It was always about self-awareness and second chances and reinvention and hope.
Let’s face it, by February 2 the New Year’s resolutions are fading, the fitness centers are back to the regulars, and we’re all bogged down in the drudgery of winter. These moments are ripe for a bit of pop culture existentialism, and the quirky film from Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin puts that long cold winter, the odd little holiday, and the repetitiveness of daily life in perspective. Watching the story of a disgruntled weatherman pondering the absurdity of a weather-forecasting rodent provides a second chance at mid-winter self-reflection and re-invention. The conceit of the film is not only the ridiculous holiday but also the inexplicable weirdness of Phil Connors’ predicament.
The film Groundhog Day is actually a wonderful primer for the wisdom of existentialism, and when I taught the philosophy in my college literature class, I would often lead or conclude with a viewing of Bill Murray’s brilliant portrayal of a man trying to bring some sense of meaning to a life that seems nothing short of absurd. Clearly, the idea of living the same day over and over again in an unfulfilling, dull, mundane place and repeating the seemingly mindless tasks of a pointless job is portrayed as a curse and a cruel joke, and that realization is at the heart of existentialism. Life makes no sense. Phil spends many years in disgruntled fashion viewing his life as exactly that, a cruel meaningless joke of an existence.
I am so glad that I moved to Greenwood, Village, CO, when I did in 2003, and that I also sold my house and moved out in 2024. GV is one of the toniest suburbs of Denver, with an average home price of well over $1million. And, that's completely out of range for working middle class people like teachers and police officers. Fortunately, at one time, the area allowed a fair number of townhouses and duplexes, which is where I was able to buy, directly adjacent from the high school. But those days are over, as several years ago, the millionaires were freaked about the possibility of multi-family housing coming to their little hamlet, and a (hysterical) group called "Save Our Village" got on city council, where they effectively outlawed the construction of anything less than single-family homes on quarter-acre lots.
I've been thinking about that recently after reading an interesting substack essay called "The Housing Theory of Everything" and a recent column from Nicholas Kristoff in the NY Times about how to save the American Dream through programs like Hope VI.
We need some good news now, and here’s some out of left field: An important new study suggests that there’s a highly effective way to overcome one of the most intractable problems in 21st-century America — intergenerational poverty. We like to think of ourselves as a land of opportunity, but researchers find that today the American dream of upward mobility is actually more alive in other advanced countries.
The new study highlights a powerful way to boost opportunity. It doesn’t involve handing out money, and it appears to pretty much pay for itself. It works by harnessing the greatest influence there is on kids — other kids. The study, just released, is the latest landmark finding from Raj Chetty, a Harvard economist, and his Opportunity Insights group, along with other scholars.
The team dug into the long-term effects of a huge neighborhood revitalization program called Hope VI. Beginning in 1993, Hope VI invested $17 billion to replace 262 high-poverty public housing projects around America.
I love living in and driving around Old Town Fort Collins, Colorado. The quaint tree-lined streets are filled with a diverse selection of houses that represent the best of how American towns used to be developed. Nearly every street in the area is filled with cozy, comfortable one and two bedroom cottages and bungalows, which are located right alongside beautiful mid-size craftsman and colonials. Those same streets have a pleasant smattering of gorgeous large Victorians and estate-style houses. That sort of mixed-market neighborhood creates a solid community, one which offers a vanishing relic - the starter home.
People tend to have their own understanding, but starter homes are typically perceived as being on the smaller side, in need of renovation, or both. Buyers often go in expecting to stay a few years to build equity, then trade up for something bigger and generally better. But the concept is antiquated given current prices and big floor plans, a dynamic that’s icing out many entry-level shoppers.
Builders have been constructing bigger and bigger homes during the past half-century. Homes with four or more bedrooms made up nearly half of all new construction in 2022, according to Census Bureau data. That compares with 1 in 5 in the 1970s.
More rooms and more upgrades mean more costs. The U.S. median home price is $410,800, up nearly $100,000 since 2019, federal data shows. Layers of local regulations, as well as market dynamics, have pushed builders to go big, rather than catering to first-time buyers with less to spend. “You have zoning requirements that have encouraged large lot sizes,” said Dennis Shea, a housing expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “Home builders, particularly in the wake of the Great Recession, where they were very negatively impacted, find it easier to build larger homes that have higher profit margins.”
The key to the newly-coined "affordability crisis" obviously starts with housing. And finding a way back to the starter home, or a society more accepting of townhouse and rowhouse construction, could be an important key to the national economy in the new era.
Even though I taught English for three decades, I still tell people that when I grow up, I want to be David Brooks of the New York Times. Or, I add, perhaps an author like Michael Lewis. As the son of a editor and feature writer, I have been a fan and voracious reader of the "newspaper column" for as long as I can remember. Readers of this blog might recall that I've written about the high esteem I had -- still have -- for the work of legendary Chicago columnist Mike Royko. I feel the same about George Will.
And, of course, I have always been a fan of David Brooks ... or at least since the late 1990s when I read his work for the Weekly Standard, Wall Street Journal, and eventually the New York Times, where he has been a regular columnist for more than two decades. And, I truly enjoyed and began to follow his writing more regularly after he published a very cool book of pop culture criticism called Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How It Got There. Granted, Brooks definitely has his critics and detractors, and he's by no means perfect, but as an erudite and insightful scholar and cultural commentator, I've always found Brooks to be worth the read.
And, Brooks isn't going away, but he is making a change. This morning Brooks and the New York Times announced that he is leaving his longtime home for a new position at The Atlantic, along with a new podcast and a position at Yale University. Brooks bid farewell to times readers with an extended column, "Time to Say Goodbye."
It’s been the honor of a lifetime to work here, surrounded by so many astounding journalists. But after 22 wonderful years, I’ve decided to take the exciting and terrifying step of leaving in order to try to build something new. When I came to The Times, I set out to promote a moderate conservative political philosophy informed by thinkers like Edmund Burke and Alexander Hamilton.
When I think about how the world has changed since I joined The Times, the master trend has been Americans’ collective loss of faith — not only religious faith but many other kinds. In 2003, we were still relatively fresh from our victory in the Cold War, and there was more faith that democracy was sweeping the globe, more faith in America’s goodness, more faith in technology and more in one another. As late as 2008, Barack Obama could run a presidential campaign soaring with hopeful idealism.
The post-Cold War world has been a disappointment. The Iraq war shattered America’s confidence in its own power. The financial crisis shattered Americans’ faith that capitalism when left alone would produce broad and stable prosperity. The internet did not usher in an era of deep connection but rather an era of growing depression, enmity and loneliness. Collapsing levels of social trust revealed a comprehensive loss of faith in our neighbors. The rise of China and everything about Donald Trump shattered our serene assumptions about America’s role in the world.
We have become a sadder, meaner and more pessimistic country. One recent historical study of American newspapers finds that public discourse is more negative now than at any time since the 1850s. Large majorities say our country is in decline, that experts are not to be trusted, that elites don’t care about regular people. Only 13 percent of young adults believe America is heading in the right direction. Sixty-nine percent of Americans say they do not believe in the American dream.
Brooks' column is definitely worth reading for the perspective and insight he brings to "what's happened to America" in the twenty-first century. If nothing else, he is a well-educated and broadly talented writer with enough background knowledge to offer a thoughtful long view on the past, present, and "hopeful" future.
Godspeed, David. Looking forward to what comes next.
Michael Coren, an advice columnist for the Washington Post, believes he has "cracked the code on toddler screen time." I'm a bit suspicious, believing "toddler" and "screen time" really don't go together at all. I'm basing my position about screen time and children on the standards and recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Basically, best practice in raising your kids around "screens" - and that goes back to the anachronism of 'television' for the past fifty years or so - is that children under six months old should have "zero screen time," and up to the age of two, it should be limited to no more than thirty minutes a day.
"Ok, now trade papers with a classmate and take out your red pen."
It's a sentence everyone who has ever gone to school has heard. For as long as teachers have been saying it, a number of kids in every class have always cringed. And it's not always the kids who struggle. In fact, as a coordinator of gifted education for many years, I know the highest achieving students -- the ones who likely have "nothing to worry about" (so it's claimed) by peers seeing their work -- are often the ones who dread the practice the most. They may simply be anxious about their work, classic perfectionism. Or more likely, they're ironically embarrassed by their success and don't want to be mocked or even criticized by students who didn't do as well.
I've never really liked or approved of the practice of peer grading, as a student or a teacher, and I never practiced it in any class I taught. That puts me at odds with many, if not most, educators. And, while the legality of the issue was resolved back in 2002 by the Supreme Court after a family sued over the practice as a violation of family and student privacy, it still comes up from time to time in schools and among teachers as schools and departments debate and discuss their standards for "best practice" in the classroom. Though I've retired from teaching, I am still around schools and teachers, and I still engage int the debate, arguing that the practice is wrong.
Basically, it comes down to this -- Some kids are mean, some kids are insecure and anxious, and outside of those concerns, the practice is simply unnecessary in the learning process. Granted, the world - especially school - is an imperfect place where some people will always be mean and others will always be insecure or anxious or meek or just modest. Teachers can't solve all problems, ease all burdens, and smooth all bumpy paths. Everyone needs to learn resilience, and school plays a big role in that. However, there are some choices we can make that diminish the risk of problems, and peer grading is one of them.
Now, many teachers over the years have countered that the practice works well as long as teachers set clear expectations, modeling the appropriate behaviors, and dealing with any violations of the protocols. But I feel that view is rather naive. Of course we want to set expectations, model good behavior, and deal with the problems. But does a teacher always know when it’s happening? When kids are inappropriate and cruel? Hardly. Any educator or parent knows most bullying happens in the dark and victims rarely complain out of fear.
And what about kids who give favors to other kids who are friends? How does the teacher know? Happens all the time, as we know from being students. With that in mind, I'd argue the practice and the grades are inauthentic at best.
So, regardless of whether a teacher could effectively manage it all the time, the practice is quite simply unnecessary. If it’s just homework or daily practice, then kids can grade themselves. They know if they’re being honest. And if it’s a true assessment then kids have no business seeing another kid's grade anyway.
Well, this was bound to happen, right? It's like cloning meets Tron ... or something like that.
With the rise of AI and a social media world filled with deep fakes, it's becoming harder to maintain your own identity and simply exist as yourself with no competition from ... other artificially created versions of you. The publishing world has seen this with authors discovering fake AI-generated writing in their names, even using their own intellectual property. And now in the music world, a Colorado band is battling an AI version of a band with the same name.
“A few months ago, someone sent us a message and showed us there was an AI band with our name,” says Ryder King, the vocalist/guitarist of the actual, human band (which makes incredible rock music, by the way). “I found out later that they were actually directly correlated to Velvet Sundown. … I went to the Velvet Sundown Spotify, and it said they appeared on the [AI] Velvet Daydream’s album. It doesn’t say that anymore, but I have a screenshot of it.”
If you visit The Velvet Daydream’s Spotify page, you’ll find a truly haunting image of its poreless AI members, who appear very similar to the Velvet Sundown. And unless rock bands have started using FaceApp like a Real Housewife, I don’t see how anyone could believe these are real people. Listening to the music is even worse; it’s also just as comical. “Somewhere in Europe” is a madlib of indie sadboi tropes: “Smoking cigarettes / Making plans for my life…” Meanwhile, “I Heard the City Breathing In Its Sleep” describes how “every window glowed like a holy womb.” The effect is singularly uncomfortable — almost as much as Taylor Swift’s song “Wood.
It's hard to believe but it has been twenty years since the release of Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and penultimate book in a "children's fantasy" book series that is undoubtedly the publishing phenomenon of the past half-century. The literary and publishing world - and the world in general - has never seen anything like Harry Potter, and likely won't ever see something like it again.
As a reader, as an English teacher, and as a parent whose children were born in 2002 and 2005, I was completely immersed in and fascinated by the world of Harry Potter from the moment I picked up the first book, roughly a year before the first movie came out. I was so taken with Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone that I read the book out loud to all my high school classes, every day, a couple of pages at a time. And I was stunned with how captivating it was for even junior-level high school boys who were not readers in any sense of the word.
This book is something special, I thought, something altogether different.
For an avid reader and pop culture fan who came of age at the dawning of the Star Wars franchise phenomenon, the Harry Potter books represented all the magic that storytelling can be. But, that said, it's equally fascinating how the books, the films, the stories, the franchise, ... dare I say, "the magic," has faded into history far more quickly than I would have thought. And that's the subject of a fascinating piece of cultural commentary from British writer Louise Perry who suggests, "Millennials, It's Time to Leave Hogwarts."
It’s been almost 20 years since the final Harry Potter book was released. The wizarding world is still generating interest — book sales remain strong, and the 2023 video game Hogwarts Legacy, topped 40 million sales. HBO is working on a TV adaptation of the books, set to be released next year.
But the relevance of the franchise is waning. “We’ve seen our audience age up,” conceded a Warner Bros. executive of the recent spinoff films. When the first of these, “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” premiered in 2016, just 18 percent of cinema goers were actual children.
As the contemporary world's relatively newest major nation begins to celebrate its 250th birthday, the study of the American concept, the American Dream, American history, and American culture is being pulled in so many directions, it's difficult the find a defining narrative to something that for most of our lives seemed pretty obvious.
In the past couple weeks, the Wall Street Journal has published two pieces of commentary that begin to dig into the complicated question asked for most of American history: as Michel Crevecoeur asked in Letters from an American Farmer -- "What then is the American, this new man?" It was a question explored by the French diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville in the esteemed Democracy in America.
Ben Fritz, the entertainment reporter for the WSJ delves into the concept of American "culture," specifically the vanishing idea of a singular national monoculture in terms of arts and entertainment, with a piece on "The Rise and Fall of the American Monoculture," asking the important question: For most of the 20th century, pop culture was the glue that held the U.S. together. But what will it mean now that everything has splintered?
“I Love Lucy.” “Star Wars.” “Thriller.” It doesn’t get more American than that. All nations are held together by culture, but the U.S. is unique for the power of its pop culture. Our music, television shows and movies are a multitrillion-dollar business and the first way that billions of people around the world get to know us.
For most of the 20th century, they were also the glue that held the country together. In a sprawling nation founded on the precept of individual liberty and populated primarily by immigrants from around the world, there was hardly one American experience. Maids in Boston, factory workers in Chicago and farmers in California lived much different lives despite being part of the same country.
Cinemas, radios, television sets and records changed all that. Americans might do different things during the workday, but at night and on weekends, we were watching and listening to the same things—things made in America, primarily for Americans, by the first modern celebrities.
It was the birth of the monoculture—a word that captures the historically unique power of American entertainment in the 20th century. An estimated 200 million tickets were sold for “Gone With the Wind,” which came out in 1939, when the population of the U.S. was 130 million. The “Amos ’n’ Andy” radio show was so popular that movie theaters scheduled around it and piped the audio in on their speakers. In 1983, more than 100 million people watched the finale of “M*A*S*H.”
And, on the opinion page of the WSJ this week, policy analysts Richard D. Kahlenberg and Lief Lin discuss the complicated issue in the world of cultural criticism that "American Studies Can't Stand Its Subject."
The 250th anniversary of America’s founding provides an opportunity to reflect on—and fight over—the country’s extraordinary story. Unfortunately, many of the serious scholars who study America—its history, literature and culture—fail to provide a balanced and nuanced account of the country’s complex tale.
On the one hand, America’s is a story of greatness: The U.S. is the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet. Its founders created what is now the world’s longest-lasting liberal democratic constitution. The Declaration of Independence put forth revolutionary ideas about human freedom and equality that ushered in a new era for the world. At the same time, the American experience is complicated. Our history includes the mistreatment of Native Americans, slavery and Jim Crow, and high levels of economic inequality that persist to this day.
Yet we found only one part of this narrative presented in most of almost 100 articles we examined from over a three-year period in American Quarterly, the flagship journal of the American Studies Association. Published by Johns Hopkins University, it’s widely considered the country’s premier journal of American studies.
The NFL is filled with siblings ... and sibling rivalries. The Kelce brothers are a prominent duo, as are the Manning boys, and then there's the Watt family trio. Literally hundreds of sibling pairs have played in the National Football, which might seem surprising consider the elite status that requires, but is also understandable considering that same factor. However, a family that sends four young men to the pros is something special, and the Elliss family, whose sons Jonah (Broncos) and Christian (Patriots) face off in the AFC championship game between Denver and New England this weekend, is an incredible and heartwarming story like none you've heard before.
On Sunday, the Elliss crew will count names and invade Denver, with Broncos outside linebacker Jonah and Patriots ILB Christian facing off in the AFC Championship Game. The two, both biological, are close as any within the group of 12 kids. Christian told New England reporters this week that he and Jonah have a “side bet” on the outcome Sunday, and Luther’s excited to watch his boys “bump heads” on special teams.
A former team chaplain for the Broncos during their 2015 Super Bowl season, Luther’s life has always been deeply rooted in faith. He figured he and Rebecca would have a large family; four to six kids, maybe. They never looked to adopt. But Rebecca called Luther one day after a workout class, talking about a baby a friend had told her about that was in transitional care in Utah.Not a week later, they brought home Isaiah Elliss.
“It just kinda spiraled pretty quickly,” Rebecca said.
Along the way, the Ellisses became one of the most prominent football families in the modern world. Jonah, Christian and Kaden are biological children and have grown into standout NFL linebackers, as is Elijah Elliss, a current Utah linebacker. Noah Elliss was adopted.
A family that sends four of its children to the professional sports level is truly an incredible story. But the Elliss family narrative is so much more than that, a story of a couple who chose unconditional love above all else.
Perhaps no one in American history has had his finger on the pulse of the seamy underbelly of the American psyche than an ol' rascal from Hannibal, "Missoura." Mark Twain was, is, and always will be the sly, sardonic, but loveable curmudgeon that America has definitely but reluctantly needed since its founding. And, with the way things are going lately, the republic needs him now more than other.
Thankfully, Mark Twain is back, and coming to a theater near you.
I am, of course, talking about the Richard Thomas' revival of the beloved and revered one-man show "Mark Twain Tonight!" conceived, developed, and delivered with masterful effect by the late great Hal Holbrook.
I have the good fortune to have tickets to the show at Denver's DCPA next week, when an old colleague and fellow Twain fan will join me for an evening of acerbic wit, clever wisdom, and unapologetic scrutiny of the times in which we live ... according to a man whose guile and insight are nothing short of timeless.
I just placed my final club membership order for the year with Seghesio Vineyards, a wonderful little zinfandel-focused winery in Sonoma that has been vinting for more than a century. My wife and I discovered Seghesio during a visit to Sonoma last year, though we had to make the trek out to the charming little town of Healdsburg, forty-minutes north, for the pleasure of tasting Seghesio's zinfandels. And it was worth every minute.
So, I was not surprised to run across this article in Travel & Leisure in my Apple news feed this morning, which states, "This Tiny Town Is the Jewel of California Wine Country, With Some of the World's Top Restaurants and Resorts."
Healdsburg could fairly be described as the jewel of California Wine Country. “It’s a charming little town where you can eat incredible pastries on a park bench under redwoods in the morning, taste wine and spirits at the source, grab an organic burger or wood-fired pizza for lunch on a patio, detox with a shrub or tea tasting in the afternoon, and dine on three-Michelin-star cuisine at night before walking back to your hotel—all without getting in a car,” says Healdsburg expert Lisa Mattson, a Sonoma County denizen of more than 20 years. (She's also the author of “The Exes In My Glass: How I Refined My Taste in Men & Alcohol” and a food and wine contributor for Wine Country Table.)
It’s the only town in wine country that sits at the epicenter of three different wine regions—Russian River Valley, Dry Creek Valley, and Alexander Valley—each with unique climates and grape varietals, Mattson adds. This distinctive year-round destination is home to just over 11,000 residents. Healdsburg is a true epicurean hot spot with an extremely charming town square, around which some of its best hotels, restaurants, and shops sit, not to mention approximately 40 tasting rooms. “The culinary scene has the kind of diversity you find in a big city, but it's all centered around this quaint town’s park-like plaza,” says Mattson, adding that “Valette [is] the poster child for what a local wine country restaurant should be.”
For people who appreciate wine, regions like Napa and Sonoma and Santa Barbara and Willamette certainly ring a bell, and they might even know towns such as Calistoga, Yountville, Solvang, Santa Ynez, and Dundee Hills. But the wonderful towns outside of Sonoma -- specifically Healdsburg -- are known to the true wine afficionados. And if Healdsburg isn't on your wine radar, it should be.
Yesterday, I read a post on Threads from a mom who said this:
I was talking to my son about what he wants to do after he finishes school, and he said he thinks he'd be a great teacher. He's exactly who we want teaching our kids ... and I'm advising him against it. The pay is low, teachers don't get to decide best practices, and they're not respected. Saddest advice I've ever had to give my kid.
And, I was disappointed in the response, though I understand why she said it. It was sad, though, and honestly, she didn't have to give it, and probably shouldn't have. I responded with the following:
Hard disagree, especially because that "advice" is rooted in misinformation and misunderstanding - and I say that as a 32-year veteran educator with experience in both public and private schools. It's a demanding career, to be sure. Always has been. And, yes, "things" are changing and somewhat different now. But it's also an incredibly enriching and rewarding vocation - especially for a job that is only in session for 36 of 52 weeks each year, offering full benefits and potential "retirement" at age 52-55, with as much as 80% of salary.
And, there's so much more to the story. Coincidentally, I wrote a column about this idea several years ago for The Villager. I thought it would be a good time to repost.
(Don’t?) Become a Teacher
“Don’t become a teacher.”
That advice unfortunately enters my mind too often these days when talking to students. As they share thoughts on the future and mention an interest in teaching, I can’t help but pause. My reservation is not surprising. Even our most revered educators have concerns about steering young people down our career path, as in 2015, when the national Teacher of the Year Nancie Atwell shocked educators and the general public by warning students away from our profession.
Though it’s disheartening to hear, the profession has long had difficulty attracting and retaining educators, and it has a high attrition rate with more than one-third of new teachers leaving the field within their first five years. Now the precarious nature of teaching is in the news again after the Denver Post reported a poll showing 40% of Colorado teachers are considering leaving the profession. After a stressful and draining pandemic year, teachers cited safety concerns, unmanageable workloads, and low pay as primary reasons for walking away.
The revelation is troubling, but it represents a growing trend as the state and local districts continue to tighten budgets while increasing responsibilities. Nationwide, schools struggle to find qualified educators for the fifty-five million children enrolled in school. Education programs produce fewer graduates every year, and districts find themselves traveling far and wide to lure young people to the field. Additionally, the financial question is tough for future teachers, for they will knowingly enter a profession earning among the lowest starting salaries for any credentialed college degree. They will spend their entire career making 20% less than their private sector counterparts. The reluctance to commit is not hard to understand.
In addition to being content experts and masters of pedagogy, teachers are expected at a moment’s notice to become counselors, nurses, psychologists, social workers, and even security guards. At times of social unrest, such as the political protests that flooded our nation following tragedies like the killing of George Floyd, students often naturally turn to their teachers to help them process and understand. They may even speak to their teachers about issues they would never discuss with their families. Yet teachers can often feel unprepared, unqualified, and even unapproved to talk with students about the issues.
Additionally it can be dispiriting to enter a profession where so much seems beyond your control. Non-school factors are the predominant motivators of academic achievement. And issues such as vocabulary and knowledge gaps from the moment kids enter kindergarten create a daunting and seemingly insurmountable task for educators. Keep in mind that between their first day of kindergarten and their high school graduation, students spend 90% of their time outside of school. Thus, the classroom learning opportunity is a very small window to impact a young person’s life. Yet that is the commitment and expectation.
Of course, no one enters teaching thinking about those problems, worrying about those challenges, or focusing on the money. We think about our passion for learning and how we want to share it with kids. And when we think about the times a student shares an insight we’d never considered before, or asks a great question that had never occurred to us, or solves a problem in a unique way, or simply shows their joy about learning, we remember why we do this. We remember what an honor it is to be a person of trust to another human being, and we realize sometimes we might be the only one. When our students say “thank you” after we’ve given them a really hard test, we marvel at their good nature, and we’re grateful to have found such a rewarding vocation.
A longtime colleague used to pass me in the hallways before class, and he'd say, “Hey, they need you today. Bring your ‘A’ game. They need your best.” So, yes, I hesitate when young people describe a desire to teach, but then I speak from the heart when answering.
“Go for it,” I tell them. “Become a teacher. We need you.”
According to an online post I saw, "Carson Beck has played six years of college football. The last two years he's been the quarterback for the Miami Hurricanes [who lost to Indiana-U last night in a truly thrilling CFP national championship]. He graduated from the University of George with a degree two years ago. He has not attended a single class at the University of Miami. But he has been the school's starting quarterback during that time, and he makes $4 million a year in NIL money as the team's QB."
Apparently, this is true after the supposed "college" athlete turned heads with a basic admission of that status during a pre-game press conference.
When asked if he attended class earlier in the week ahead of Monday night's title game, he laughed off the question. "No class. I graduated two years ago," Beck said.
Beck, who attended Georgia before transferring, added that he is "working toward other degrees now that I’ve gotten to Miami, but these programs take a little longer than just a year to finish."
"Obviously, I'm not enrolling again next semester. I'll be done after this season," Beck continued.
In 1996, Calvin Broadus, Jr. was acquitted of first-degree murder in the killing a gang member in Los Angeles. It was a life-changing moment for a young man from the hard streets of Long Beach, California, one that coincided with his meteoric rise in the music world with the impact of his debut hip-hop album Doggystylein 1993. The trial was a touchpoint in the mid-90s for the complicated world of hip-hop's gansta rap genre, and it was a moment that could have sent Broadus to prison for most of his life.
Fast forward to December 25, 2025.
Snoop Dogg absolutely owns Christmas Day with a stunning and star-studded halftime show of the NFL's Detroit Lions-Minnesota Vikings game in Netflix's first-ever Christmas Day football broadcast. The Snoop-football-Christmas event was a wonderfully entertaining bit of television that no one saw coming, and it capped several years of Snoop's mass media resurgence that has seen him as a sports commentator at the Olympics and in a surprisingly endearing collaboration with Martha Stewart.
The incredible turnaround in lifestyle and incredible thirty-plus year run as a pop culture icon is nothing short of inspiring, and it represents the absolute best possible outcome of an idea -- jaded as it has become -- known as the American Dream. It's not an overstatement to suggest there is something Dickensian in the story of a young man who rises from a life of poverty and crime and dangerous situations to a sphere of influence, comfort, and success rooted in his genuine good will, incredible work ethic, and charming ability to bridge countless cultural divides.
Well, that was a helluva Saturday afternoon football game in the divisional round of the AFC playoffs. The newly dominant number one seed Denver Broncos survived an overtime game, beating the solid Buffalo Bills, and being led by the calm, cool, and collected leadership of sophomore quarterback Bo Nix. And, then Broncos Country was dealt the devastating news that Nix broken a bone in his ankle on the second to last play of the game and will miss the rest of the season.
So many emotional storylines to follow in this game, and leading the charge is the slew of "controversial calls" by the referees that supposedly tilted the game in the Broncos favor and "cost the Bills a win."
And I have to say, "stop."
I've never been a fan of trying to reduce entire games to one call or another. While I get the motivation, and in genuinely evenly matched games, there is obviously an inclination to argue that a game can come down to a single play -- like the interception in overtime when: Broncos cornerback Ja'Quan McMillian's overtime turnover of Bills receiver Brandin Cooks, ruled an interception because Cooks lost control of the ball upon hitting the ground, despite appearing to secure it initially. Referees, led by Carl Cheffers, explained that McMillian completed the "process of a catch" by gaining possession as Cooks went down, a ruling that angered Bills coach Sean McDermott and fans but was defended by rules analysts who noted Cooks didn't maintain control through the landing. (disclosure: this is Google's AI summation)
That call, along with a couple of defensive pass interference calls on the Broncos' game-winning drive are certainly a bit "suss," inviting scrutiny and complaints and argument and outrage (if you're a Bills fan)
But we could do that all day long. For example, the game was arguably over earlier when the Bills should have been called for a safety after a blatant holding call in the end zone at the start of the Bills drive. The end zone judge couldn't have been more than a few feet away, and a Broncos player is literally held from behind and thrown to the ground in the end zone just as he's about to sack Josh Allen.
Games are filled with myriad plays that could go one way or another. And it's a game of human error ... and human achievement. Parsing all the plays with the idea that through replay and review and technology that we can eliminate the human element is simply silly. It's the antithesis to sport, and it brings nothing to the subject except our human need to vent and demand justice and perfection in an inherently imperfect world.
It was an incredible football game, and let's leave it at that.
The nation -- at least the college-football-watching demographic -- has marveled at the rise of Indiana University Hoosiers football. IU, one of the losing-est college football programs in history, will play for the CFP National Championship as the number one seed against the tenth-ranked Miami Hurricanes, a traditional powerhouse. And this IU team, coached by the enigmatic Curt Cigneti, is being talked about as one of the top-5 greatest college football teams ever. It's a truly fascinating story.
Ok, not really. It was actually influenced by the musician behind that iconic 80s song. And, not even really influenced by John Mellencamp, but there is a connection between the Indiana musician and artist and IU football program. That little tidbit of trivia is the surprising subject of a feature in the Wall Street Journal this week: The Chain-Smoking Rock Star Who Made Indiana Football Hurt So Good
There are a select few ways to become wealthy enough to join the ranks of college football’s most powerful boosters. The late T. Boone Pickens, the chief benefactor for Oklahoma State, built an oil fortune that he dispersed to the Cowboys. Phil Knight, who bankrolls Oregon, turned Nike into an intercontinental empire that transformed the Ducks into a gridiron behemoth.
Then there is Indiana University. The program that opened the season as the losingest team in Division I football history now stands one game away from its first championship—and it hasn’t gotten there via the pursestrings of one of the world’s richest people. In fact, the Hoosiers’ most prominent booster isn’t a tech genius or hedge fund titan.
It’s the guy who wrote “Jack & Diane.”
In a college sports landscape lorded over by billionaires, none other than John Mellencamp—the 74-year-old heartland rocker—has played no small part in Indiana’s rise from laughingstock to the No. 1 team in the country. Year after dismal year, Mellencamp trudged to Hoosiers games on Saturdays. At a time when nobody saw Indiana football as a good investment, he gave $1.5 million to build the team’s practice facility: the John Mellencamp Pavilion.
The facility’s namesake harbored no illusions that his donation might one day turn the downtrodden Hoosiers into the country’s top team. “It was a bunch of down years,” Mellencamp said. “That’s just the way it was.”
Well, finally some sanity in the dietary guidelines for public school cafeterias. Students can now, once again, drink whole milk at school. As they always did, and always should have been able to do. CNN and other outlets reported yesterday: Whole milk now allowed in school lunches as Trump signs bill reversing limits.
Whole milk could be coming to your local school cafeteria for the first time in more than a decade. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed a bill that allows schools participating in the National School Lunch Program to serve whole and 2% milk alongside fat-free and low-fat versions. The move comes a week after the US Department of Health and Human Services released new US dietary guidelines that highlight whole-fat dairy products, a recommendation that has received mixed reviews from nutritionists and medical experts.
The new legislation, which passed Congress last year by unanimous consent, rolls back US Department of Agriculture rules approved by the Obama administration that required milk served in schools to be fat-free or low-fat, part of efforts to fight the childhood obesity epidemic. The new law also allows nondairy beverages that are “nutritionally equivalent” to fluid milk to be offered, such as fortified plant-based milks.
I have more than a bit of experience with school cafeteria policy and the federal food guidelines after my time in school administration, which included a couple years of work redesigning a school cafeteria after we withdrew from the federal school lunch program. America's war on fat and the misguided attacks on whole milk as a contributor to childhood weight and health problems has been a colossal failure.
Let's be clear -- the fat content in whole milk does not make people fat. And, to add to that misunderstanding, skim milk is not only rather disgusting, but ironically is likely worse for people with weight and blood sugar problems because without the natural fat in the milk, the sugar content is actually increased, and the body turns excess sugar into fat.
So, the prohibition of whole milk in school cafeterias was nothing short of ignorant misguided nonsense, and it never should have been a policy mandate.
Free Solo, the absolutely stunning 2018 film of Alex Honnold's legendary free climb ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite, blew a lot of people's minds. For people who don't know much about climbing, it was a mind-boggling feat that was both inspirational and terrifying. The interesting thing is that for people who really know climbing well, like his long-time training partner Tommy Caldwell, it was even more than that. Honnold basically did the impossible, and it was an incredible, almost inconceivable feat of human excellence.
Well, Honnold is back with a new challenge that is likely to blow even more people's minds. And this time, his unprecedented and historic free solo Taipei 101 - a 101-story skyscraper in the capital city of Taiwan - will be broadcast live on Netflix.
And, if you're interested in more information and insight into exactly who this guy is, how he is preparing for the historic and nerve-wracking (for the rest of us) climb, and even what gear he will be using, check out this profile in Climbing.com, "How Alex Honnold is Preparing to Free Solo Taipei 101."
Imagine a freestanding 1,667-foot tower. Limited access and no protection have made it nearly impossible to climb. Now picture this: You’ve been granted permission to climb it, but you’ll be paid to do so. For many climbers, this would be a dream come true. For world-famous free soloist Alex Honnold, a rope-less ascent of Taiwan’s Taipei 101 will be a reality next Friday.
In the coming days, the 40-year old husband and father of two will travel from his Las Vegas home to Taiwan to free solo the tower on January 23 while Netflix livestreams his ascent, with climber Emily Harrington serving as a live announcer. Before this Netflix “Skyscraper Live” special, he and I have been sport climbing together at the Clear Light Cave, a limestone crag near his home, and talking about his upcoming solo.
“It’s two easy moves and then a hard move,” Honnold tells me of the climb, which will take approximately 90 minutes.
It has taken me too long to get around to seeing the long-running Broadway musical Kinky Boots, a situation I finally remedied this weekend when the traveling show stopped by the lovely Lincoln Center in Fort Collins. While I knew something about the show being connected to the music of Cyndi Lauper, I had literally no idea what the story was about, and that made it quite a treat. What a wonderful, engaging, entertaining, and heartwarming show, one that will have you practically dancing in your chair during the show's finale.
I didn't know this, but the musical, which won numerous Tony awards in 2013, is based on a film from 2005, which was seen and adapted for the stage by the esteemed Harvey Fierstein. And, Lauper came on to write the music, a score for which she won the Tony. I'd originally thought the story was based on the songs of Cyndi Lauper, ... so I was waiting for some story about "Girls [who] Wanna Have Fun." But, alas, no. It's an entire musical score, and it features some really great new Broadway hits.
Kinky Boots is the story of two people looking for their place in the world, a place where they can be who the truly want to be. Based on a true story (a BBC documentary inspired the original film screenwriter), KB is the story of Charlie who reluctantly takes over his father's struggling shoe business after his father passes, and his relationship with Lola, a flamboyant drag queen who could benefit from a new product -- obviously, the "kinky boots" of the title.
Not to give too much away, but the great message of the musical -- a message that is both timely and timeless -- can be found in Lola's six steps to success:
Human societies have long revered excellence, specifically physical prowess. The heroic ideal going back to Beowulf and early Anglo-Saxon storytelling is the foundation of the modern-day action hero. The epic hero is an individual of supernatural strength and endurance, and the storytelling around these paragons of greatness is foundational in practically every land and culture.
That is, of course, why professional athletes are called "heroes" and are not only awash in adulation but often material riches. It's why we talk about ideas like "the GOAT." But greatness is found in moments, and truly incredible feats of excellence happen every day, often simply for the thrill of the experience. And that idea in the digital age is spotlighted every day through the magic of YouTube.
"People Are Awesome" is a YouTube channel simply devoted to cool videos of amazing people doing awesome things. I am a fan, as you can imagine, and when I was teaching high school, I would often start some classes by watching a "Best of" video from the site, and then I would encourage my students to think -- sometimes write -- about how they can be awesome this year. Below are a couple favorites. As the song in one states, "we can be heroes."
LeBron is one of the greatest basketball players -- and pure athletes -- in the history of the NBA. That claim is not, or should not be, in any way controversy or disputable. However, in discussions of greatness, of a degree of excellence that poses questions and discussion about GOAT status, LeBron is not, for me, a Top-5 consideration. LeBron James is most certainly not the greatest player ever, and for many reasons he is a Tier-2 player in GOAT discussions.
A recent post of mine about Steph Curry and Nicola Jokic being more positive impacts on the game than Lebron has been or ever could be certainly set off a bit of online quibbling. And, let's be clear, some may call that rage baiting, but others would say that claims and social media threads like this are just part of the fun of being a sports fan. And to be clear: I am not a "LeBron hater." I have mad respect for the career he has produced and the person he is off the court. But as a basketball player, he is simply not the greatest.
Let's start with the most basic skill of the game - the dribble. For someone to be considered an elite baller, in my opinion, that player has to be highly skilled on the dribble. And Lebron is simply not a talented ball handler. In fact, as a point of comparison, Nicola Jokic is arguably the best big man ball handler I've ever seen. LeBron doesn't dribble well at all and carries the ball in a rather audacious way. And that carrying the ball often becomes some pretty ridiculous highlight reels that can best be characterized as LeTravel.
The greatest ballers have to be highly skilled on the dribble. Think about the Allen Iverson crossover, the graceful transition game of Magic, the manic movement of the ball in Larry Bird's hands, and the poetically frenzied dribble of Steph Curry. Great ballers have to be great on the dribble -- a fundamental component of the game. MJ was an incredible ball handler, so smooth on the dribble. And literally no one cites the graceful dribble of LeBron James because he's just not good at it.
The next most important consideration is, of course, the jump shot. To be the best, a player has to have a wide range of jumpers. And I've never heard anyone brag about Lebron's deft touch on the ball. Michael Jordan practically invented and certainly perfected the fadeaway jumper. It was an innovation in the game that he developed as a way to avoid the punishing treatment in the lane he received. Kobe, of course, took lessons and crafted an equally exquisite jumper. Bird could shoot from practically anywhere on the floor, Kevin Durant is an elite baller with a deft touch and staggering range, and, of course, Steph is a sharpshooter of historic proportions.
LeBron simply doesn't have a great jump shot -- the majority of his points come from back-down layups and jams with an often-blatant push-off, points in transition -- where he travels to an embarrassing degree -- and obviously free throws.
And, of course, we all know the mantra -- defense wins championships -- and LeBron is quite simply not a great defender. I'm not going to argue that he's awful or that he never plays D, though that is a common and widely held criticism of LB -- he doesn't play defense, especially not in the past few years. While he has made one all-defensive team, his prowess on D is often referenced to his skill at the "chase down block." But that's not defense -- often that's a reaction to a lapse or breakdown in coverage. And let's be clear -- Michael Jordan was a 9-time All-Defensive Team player and a one-time Defensive Player of the Year.
To add to that, it's worth noting an incredible stat of true greatness, of GOAT-ness. Only one NBA player has ever won the scoring title, been all defensive team, league MVP, NBA champion and Finals MVP in the same year. That player is Michael Jordan, and he did it four times.
The team hopping is another weakness. Jordan once noted a key difference in his era and today -- he didn't want to join another elite player's team. He wanted to beat that guy. MJ and players of his era did not hop around to other organizations and build "super teams" and the Big-3's. Bird wanted to beat Magic and vice versa. Jordan and Pippen wanted to beat Barkley and Ewing and Drexler and Olajuwon and Malone and Stockton. Dr. J -- a legitimate T5 player who never gets the respect he deserves -- said, "If LeBron hadn't tried to assemble superteams to win championships, I'd have him in the Top 10. I have him at #15 behind Scottie Pippin."
Finally, it's just really tough for me to declare greatness on a player who flops and begs for penalties as blatantly as LeFlop. It's honestly embarrassing. And while Kareem rolled back his comments on this in the past, he was being perfectly candid and honest when he criticized LB for whining and crying literally on the floor of the Boston Garden. Granted people have argued that it's all part of the game, but I find the whole thing just hugely disappointing. In all honesty, flopping is cheating. It's beneath the dignity of the game. And I have no memories of such nonsense from the time I grew up watching Bird and Magic and MJ. Those GOAT candidates never flopped.
So, yeah, LeBron is in no way the GOAT of the game of basketball. He's not even in a legit Top-5. LeBron James is an incredible athlete and great basketball player who has had an historic, impressive career. While I believe he would have greatly benefited from a couple years of solid college coaching, his ability to jump to the NBA and be immediately impactful is a testament to his skill. And, as a person, LeBron has carried off an achievement of a truly scandal-free career. He's a good guy, all the way around. I'm not a LeBron hater -- I'm just not a fan.
In the spring of 2024, my wife and I spent a weekend in Fort Collins, Colorado, where we came for a local musical festival, which I had written a preview about in Westword Magazine. And it was such a great time and cool town that roughly three months later we moved to FoCo, where we have enjoyed the last eighteen months in a hip, eclectic, and close-knit small town in northern Colorado at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.
Fort Collins, or The Fort, or FoCo is a cool, quirky, and quaint college town, home to Colorado State University and the the site of FoCoMX, America's "Biggest Little Music Festival," hosted each year in late April by the Fort Collins Musicians Association. The all-Colorado festival features more than 300 bands at more than 30 different venues over 48 hours, and it is a nearly all volunteer effort to "spotlight local music." It is something special to experience, and even be a part of, which my wife and I did during our first year here, volunteering to man the information booth and work at festival check-in.
Many people -- and music fans -- may not know this, but Colorado has an incredibly vibrant local music scene, one that runs from Fort Collins on the north, down through the incredibly rich and diverse Denver locale, on through the surprisingly hoppin' Colorado Springs environment, and all the way to a emerging scene on the southern border at Trinidad. Now, obviously with the revered venue Red Rocks Amphitheater just outside of Denver in Morrison, music is a big deal in Colorado, and the mountain towns all host a plethora of festivals like the legendary Telluride Bluegrass Festival. But Denver's local scene up and down the historic Colfax and Broadway Avenues offers a huge number of venues, from local spots like The Squire Lounge and The Skylark, partially owned by Colorado music royalty Nathaniel Rateliff.
But just forty-five minutes up I-25 from Denver, the town of Fort Collins is a music lovers dream, and it has stories worth telling, such as the emergence of FoCoMX, which grew organically out of local musicians committed to their scene. FoCo residents truly love their live music and residents go out to see and support musicians seven nights a week. There are so many places to see live music for a generally small town, and locals don't miss a chance to sit and chill with good sounds. And it's not just the local venues and music fest that provide the good vibes.
FoCo also offers a summer's worth of free music through programs such as "Thursday Night Live -- Bohemian Nights," a series of free shows in Old Town Center every Thursday through the summer. It's such a good time, with hundreds of people turning out to hang around the square, support local business, and listen to a diverse lineup of touring acts. The program is sponsored by Bohemian Foundation, the beloved local non-profit founded and fueled by the town's resident billionaire philanthropist Pat Stryker. The organization is committed to supporting music, arts, and education in northern Colorado, and it's so heartwarming to see a person with the means commit to making the world a better place through the power of music. And if that's not enough, one of BoHo in FoCo's coolest contributions to music and the arts is a division called The Music District, which exists to support artists through grants and residencies, offering the simple freedom of time and place to create.
And, if all that isn't enough to impress you with FoCo's music prowess, the town is also home to one of the most legendary music studios in the country. The Blasting Room founded by Bill Stevenson of the Descendents is located right in the heart of town, and it has produced some of the best punk rock albums of the past thirty years.
This week while listening to Denver's 93.3 KTCL as I drove my kids to the airport, I paused as morning deejay Steve Burrell intro'd a song with high praise, noting how he recently listened to it with fresh ears and urged his audience to take a moment and do the same. The song was "Under the Bridge" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Burrell explained that the song was a huge hit when it was first released in February of 1992, maintaining its powerful impact for decades.
It was a pretty impressive build-up, and I was thinking, "wow, Steve, what's going to live up to that hype?" Then I noticed the title on my radio feed, and just smiled. The kids and I just listened, zipping down I-25, my daughter softly singing in the background, my son and I nodding our heads to the beat, provided so smoothly when Chad comes in with that tap drum beat. And guess what: the song absolutely lives up to the hype. Give it a listen, with fresh ears.
The song is undoubtedly one of the best of the 90s, if not one of the best ballads in the history of alt-rock, and it evokes a special time when the music industry, especially rock and its offshoots, reminded us all of the magic of music. The Chili Peppers hit like a wrecking ball in the early 90s, blowing our minds with a fusion of punk, rock, funk, jazz, hip-hop, and more that sounded exactly like themselves and like nothing we'd ever quite heard before. The LP Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic was critically acclaimed, topping "best of lists" and became of testimony to the calm, reserved brilliance of producer Rick Rubin.
The kids and I chatted about the song and its unique development as my daughter commented, "Isn't this the song with the women's gospel choir?" And, it is. If you have ever been of fan of VH1's Behind the Music, you know the story of the song -- that the angelic choir voices in the backing chorus of the song are actually Flea's mom's church choir. So, you have one of the most powerful, funky, impactful rock songs of the 90s, and a fundamental part of the song is a group of middle-aged women who sing in a weekend church choir. That addition is just one part of Rick Rubin's brilliant vision and contribution to the music he "produces," -- if you can even call it that.
