Why I'm not a LeBron fan

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.

FoCo - The Best Music Town You Don't Know About Yet

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. 

Under the Bridge - the Chili Peppers 90s Musical Magic

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.

A la Carte Streaming -- Sports & SlingTV

Finally, I can pay for and watch a single game on my FireTV at home.

Let's be fair -- the new media universe with numerous streaming services and countless league/network broadcast agreements is making it increasingly frustrating to just "turn on the TV" to "watch the Big Game." To watch the NFL, you can't just flip on any channel with your local programming or cable provider:  some games are on ESPN, others on CBS (or some variation of CBS/Paramount+), a few on Prime Video but not always. It's a cluster for the average sports fan. And for people who have tried to "cut the cord" with media behemoths like Comast/Xfinity or DirectTV, it's often impossible to watch anything.

But this week, thanks to SlingTV working with Amazon Prime Video and, apparently the NCAA, I was able to "purchase a day pass" to watch the games of CFP (College Football Playoff), which made for a totally chill New Year's Day with the family and a thrilling ride last night as Miami - "The U" - punched its ticket to the NCAA National Championship Game by grinding out a gritty victory through a nail-biting fourth quarter over the Rebels of Ole Miss.

And, that's the way it should be. 

With so many streaming services splitting access to so many sports, activities, and events -- Netflix, PrimeVideo, Hulu (or I guess Disney now), Paramount, Paramount+ (which might have something to do with CBS - I can't remember), Peacock, Tubi, Fubo, SlingTV -- it's overwhelming and confusing for anyone that doesn't just pony up several hundred bucks a month to subscribe to everything. 

Because, well, no I do not want a monthly or annual membership to some channel that I will watch three or four times all year. But, just like going to a movie, or attending a game, or paying a cover at a bar, I will gladly pony up $5-$10 a pop when some event -- like the World Series or SuperBowl or NCAA National Championship (football, basketball, hockey, etc) -- is on and interests me.

It's just like Pay-Per-View back in the 90s, ... or was that even back in the 80s? Anyway, I can't for the life of me figure out why it's not lucrative for any channel to sell single day/event access to specific broadcast events like the NFL playoffs. And, considering pretty much everything runs through Amazon these days (don't forget the recent crash of the internet worldwide when Amazon Web Services went down), let's just normalize the a la carte purchasing of broadcasts.

The Nuggets are the Best Team in the NBA

By far the most exciting basketball game in the NBA this year was on Monday night in Philadelphia. And it's not even up for consideration or debate. Granted, yes, the Spurs knocking off the seemingly invincible OKC Thunder -- with Wemby on limited minutes -- was awesome. And the Charlotte Hornets basically scorching the defending champs this week was another thrilling bit of roundball this year. But Monday night's Nuggets victory over the Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers was, in the words of Jake Shapiro, "A Nuggets win they'll talk about for 20 years."

Rarely does a game in the NBA regular season live on for ages and echo through the fanbase. On Monday night a variety of factors combined into the Denver Nuggets’ most memorable win of the 2025-26 regular season as they took down the Philadelphia 76ers 125-124 in overtime.

Coming off a horrendous loss in Brooklyn on Sunday, the Nuggets took to the road again for a back-to-back and this time without their entire starting five and top two bench players. With only nine mostly little-used players available, the Nuggets took it to former MVP Joel Embiid and his nearly fully healthy star-filled 76ers squad.

It was nothing short of a true barn burner with the Nuggets putting what amounts to the C-Team on the court against a full-strength Philly team that has two Hall of Famers, the likely Rookie of the Year, several potential All Stars, and which was rolling on a win streak. The Nuggets "Young Guns" led by role player Jalen Pickett with 29 points, 7 boards, 7 assists, and going 7-11 from 3-point land, played some of the scrappiest ball I can recall seeing in a game they were destined to lose and lose in a big way.

Yet, these ballers refused to roll over. And potential Coach of the Year David Adleman set them up for success with a game plan designed to simply be competitive -- stack the lane, fight for rebounds, play quick to avoid a stagnant half court against a more experienced team -- just ball like you got nothing to lose. And they didn't lose. Even when the Sixers bullied their way to overtime. The Nuggets key bench player Peyton Watson played like he deserved that big contract extension last summer. But he's not griping -- just watch the clips of P Wat being coached by Nicola Jokic during timeouts. The intensity and focus is nothing short of impressive.

Perhaps the best part of the game that wasn't actually on the court was the raucous enthusiasm of the starters and key bench players, cheering on the team like it was Game 7. The joy and camaraderie on the bench after big plays and during timeouts tells us something quite important -- this is a TEAM. It's a pretty special vibe running through a Nuggets organization that has been decimated by injuries. I mean, seriously. All five starters out, plus the two key bench players, including the back-up center. It's incredible that this team is still winning games.

And, guess what?

The Nuggets did it again two nights later, playing short but with the presence of "must-finally-be-an-All-Star-selection" Jamal Murray, knocking off the solid Boston Celtics. The Nuggets have now won 15 road games this year, often with a half a team. I'm telling you, this team can flat out play. And I mean the entire team.

In a season that has seen the league anoint the Thunder with near legendary status, comparing them to the 2017 Warriors and more, the best team in the NBA is the Denver Nuggets. And it's not really close.

New to Jazz? Start with these Legendary Artists and Recordings

I listen to Jazz every day. It's usually the first thing I hear in a quiet house upon waking, as I open the morning paper and click on my Pandora stations of Cool Jazz, Jazz Piano, or Contemporary Jazz. In the car I also regularly ride along to Denver's KUVO Jazz. Jazz is simply a natural part of my life, of life in general, and I've been grooving on America's original music form since at least my early teens. And  I was fortunate to spend more than twenty years teaching at a high school with one of the country's best music program, and the school featured two complete Jazz bands. When I was an administrator and the team chose supervision assignments, I took every Jazz concert because, "well, I'm gonna be there anyway."

People like to say jazz is "an acquired taste," though I think people know in an instant if Jazz connects with their soul. And if it does, life will always be so much sweeter. Jazz is simple yet complex, fixed but improvisational, clear but esoteric, obvious yet mysterious, and trying to describe the magic of jazz is like trying to grasp a cloud -- you can see it, but it eludes you when you try to corral it. Louis Armstrong is credited with saying about Jazz, "If you have to ask, you're never gonna know."

I love turning people on to the magic of Jazz, and had many signature specialties that I would play in the background whenever my classes were writing or reading. So, I was quite pleased when the New York Times culture critic David Renard recently posted the story, I’m New to Jazz. Where Do I Start? - The New York Times. 

Let’s say you’ve only heard of one jazz musician, and it’s Miles Davis. Perfect — he had a decades-long career that included tons of stylistic shifts, from bebop (1940s) to cool jazz (1950s) to electric fusion (the late 1960s and beyond). If you’re hearing jazz playing in a restaurant or bar, it’s a decent bet that it’s “Kind of Blue,” Davis’s 1959 masterpiece with a sextet that included John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley. (Hedge bet: Coltrane’s “Blue Train.”) Simply exploring Davis’s large catalog would be a jazz education, covering multiple milestones like “Birth of the Cool” (1957) and the fusion landmark “Bitches Brew” (1970). The first jazz album I ever bought, somewhat at random, was Davis’s “’Round About Midnight” (1957), and I still love it, especially its brisk take on the Charlie Parker composition “Ah-Leu-Cha.”

So my (not very deep) advice is, start with the canon — but it sounds like you’re looking for guidance on who’s in it. Any list is going to provoke debate, but the soundtrack to Ken Burns’s 10-part documentary “Jazz” seems like as good a place as any to encounter most of the Mount Rushmore names — Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Coltrane, Parker — even if plenty of critics took issue with the series. The former Times critic Ben Ratliff wrote a 2002 book, “The New York Times Essential Library: Jazz,” that attempts to list the 100 most important jazz recordings, and the website for Jazz at Lincoln Center offers a more concise 10, leading with the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s “Time Out.” (That album’s “Take Five” is on the shortlist of jazz songs that even non-fans recognize.) You can also — plug! — take a spin through the “5 Minutes” archive to find playlists for topics.

Peggy Noonan -- Be Better People

So, on a rather unsavory anniversary in American history -- five years after the January 6, 2021 debacle (is there any good word to describe the assault on the Capitol, ... I don't know), I am thinking about the feeling of the country in which I was raised, and the feeling that seems to be the standard now. Specifically, a lack of decorum, of manners, of simple good behavior. 

Many people begin a new year with a resolution to simply be better people. I know I do. In fact, I have a long-standing mantra that this is the year of "the kinder, gentler Michael ... the kinder, gentler Mr. Mazenko." I know that I am too often quick to judge and criticize rather than listen and empathize, and that will always be a growth area. But, I do believe I am generally a good guy who tries to do the right thing. 

And that doesn't seem as common anymore. Maybe it never was, but ...

Anyway, I'm not the only one who has general behavior and the temperament of contemporary society on the mind. Peggy Noonan, a columnist extraordinaire for the Wall Street Journal recently published a piece which suggests, "We Could Use a Return to Gallantry - WSJ":

I don’t want to sum up the year, outline hopes for 2026, predict or warn. I want to say we all have to become better people.

You won’t get through the future without faith, you won’t get through life without courage, and if you want courage to spread (and you do—you’re safer in a braver world) you have to encourage it, give it a lift, give it style. That’s what gallantry is, courage’s style. Its class, its shine and burnish. As a virtue it is close to my heart.

We live in a culture of winners who must win, and if the others don’t know you won then you must tell them, over and over, like Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez. We are the wealthiest and most glamorous, we are living the best lives, Amal Clooney’s on line one, the Pope’s on hold. Are you not impressed?

Gallantry never says it won.

In Debates about the GOAT -- It's Always Jim Thorpe

Chuck Klosterman -- a favorite GenX music and pop culture writer -- has done it: he has written the perfect summation of what I have thought, said, asserted, and argued for many years when people talk about greatness in sports. In any discussion of "the GOAT," the answer is always Jim Thorpe.

Klosterman, in a superb piece of commentary for the New York Times, focuses specifically on the NFL and the game of football as he asserts: "Tom Brady Is Not the GOAT ".  That headline alone is designed to and is certain to generate immediate interest and criticism. But Klosterman is not deterred, nor should he be. While Tom Brady is almost undoubtedly the greatest NFL quarterback of all time (I do have a bit of a preference for Johnny Unitas, to be honest, but have mad respect for Brady and don't dispute his "GOAT-ness"), Jim Thorpe is untouchable as the greatest football player of all time.

To classify Tom Brady as the greatest football player of all time is among the least controversial assertions anyone can make about anything. It’s a subjective opinion accepted as objective truth: He played quarterback for 23 professional seasons, and if those 23 seasons were divided into three separate careers, all three might qualify for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He won six Super Bowls with the New England Patriots and a seventh with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He is the winningest player, the man who played the longest at an elite level, and the unthinking answer to this particular debate.

 ...

In other words, it’s the earliest incarnation of greatness still intimately related to all examples that follow. Which is why, despite so much evidence to the contrary, the greatest football player of all time is still Jim Thorpe, a Native American who retired from the game in 1928 and died when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president. 

...

When evaluating someone like Jim Thorpe against someone like Tom Brady, it’s not enough to estimate how much Thorpe might have benefited from modern nutrition or how much Brady might have suffered if he’d been forced to grow up in rural Oklahoma before the invention of breakfast cereal. One must also consider how those differing environments would have caused them to understand almost every aspect of the material world in totally different ways. We don’t have video footage of Thorpe running the football. Such footage does not exist. Yet we know he was the greatest ball carrier of his era, and we know this era was when football (as we still understand it) came into being. 

But, I will take Klosterman's claim one step further to its obvious conclusion: Jim Thorpe is indisputably the greatest athlete of all time. Thorpe was an early twentieth century Native American athlete who won Olympic gold medals and played professional football, baseball, and basketball. The decathlon has long been considered the track and field sport (with ten events) that determines the top overall athlete. And when Thorpe competed in 1922, he won it as well as the classic pentathlon, which is a similar event of five events.

There is no comparable accomplishments -- elite performance at the Olympics and the three major professional sports -- in modern or contemporary history. Nor will there ever be again. So, it's clear, in terms of pure athletic prowess, Jim Thorpe is the GOAT -- the greatest athlete of all time.

Travel -- Where to Go in 2026

Travel is almost always the unanimous choice when people are asked what they would do if they had the freedom to do what they want. Usually, it's a question about retirement plans or a "what if" query about a fortuitous windfall like winning the lottery. As Robert Fulghum once noted in a quirky little essay he wrote about traveling, "nomads we are at heart, and we scratch the itch whenever we get a chance." 

Travel has been a constant in my life since late 1992 when I graduated college with few teaching prospects and little desire to settle into a thirty-year career in one place at that point in my life. So, my (future) wife and I moved to Taiwan, where we lived for five years, traveling quite a bit in between contracts and on any given week or so we could get a way. That inclination is also part of my kids' DNA -- my daughter recently returned from a semester abroad in Spain, and my son and his girlfriend seem to head abroad any time they can -- Ireland, Japan, Austria ... the international sauntering goes on.

2025 turned out to be a big travel year for us, though it began with one simple trip and grew from there. We spent a week in St. Maarten, traveled for a couple more around Washington, DC and the Chesapeake Bay area, jaunted off to Paris for the exquisite (and once in a lifetime) art exhibit and career retrospective on David Hockney at the Louis Vuitton Foundation (and unexpectedly ended up witnessing the final stage of the Tour de France as it rolled through Montmartre), and finished the summer with a trip to Boston and Concord for the Thoreau Society's Annual Gathering.

This year will likely not present as much varied travel, but will include a big move, as we wrap up our two years in FoCo and our near quarter-century in Colorado by relocating to the East Coast, likely in Maryland and the DC-Chesapeake Bay region. Baltimore in all its cool quirky fun has definitely caught our eye. So, with all that in mind, I thought I'd share the annual "52 Places to Go, So Little Time: Where We Went in 2025" from the New York Times. 

52 Places to Go, the Travel section’s annual list of recommended destinations, lands every January. Each short entry is a snapshot into a different possible adventure.

Some Travel editors were intrigued enough to design their own personal vacations around the list: Amy Virshup described staying in the inns atop Italy’s Dolomite Mountains known as rifugios as “otherworldly,” while Stephen Hiltner fondly recalls “ducking into a crowded izakaya during a torrential rain” in Osaka, Japan.

In 2025, a number of our writers and photographers also headed to destinations on this year’s list to dig even deeper into what makes them worth visiting.

Leaving New York -- Lena Dunham looks back and forward

The HBO show Girls was not written for me. 

But I did pay attention, especially as an educator and writer of cultural commentary. Because it was a show for the times as Millennials hit that fascinating stretch in life called the "twenty-somethings," -- and for the Echo-Boom kids the emergence of a weird sociological term called the quarter-life crisis -- I was intrigued enough to see how Lena Dunham's portrayal revealed the temperature and temperament of her generation the way shows like Sex in the City did for mine. And I did use some of the revelations in my writing for the next generation: 

In the first episode of the HBO show “Girls,” Hannah is fired from her unpaid internship, only to learn her replacement is actually being paid for the job. When she adamantly confronts her boss, he says, “Well, she knows Photoshop.” While Hannah may tell herself, “I can learn Photoshop,” the reality is she didn’t. Thus, the point is to advise kids to be the kind of person who learns Photoshop. Hannah is a classic example of a person waiting for passion to lead her to happiness — and it never happens. Successful people, by contrast, are the ones who work hard and do what needs to be done to get what they want and need.

So, I browsed with more than passing interest, Lena Dunham's new long-form New Yorker piece "Why I Broke Up with New York." 

It didn’t take long for me to grow into possibly the least adaptable native the city had ever seen. All good New Yorkers know that to live in, and love, the city takes a certain amount of chutzpah—you have to be ready, at a moment’s notice, to push your way through the throngs, shout your coffee order, rush to nab the last subway seat or the only on-duty cab. You have to be unsurprised by the consistent surprises that come with a new day in New Amsterdam. And you have to love it all, even if you pretend you don’t. My parents had both been raised far enough outside the city to have childhoods that could be called idyllic, but close enough that Manhattan exerted a strong pull. Getting to New York was their ultimate expression of self-determination, the place where they would shed preconceptions about who they were meant to be and create a new life among artists and experimental thinkers, planting their seeds in the fecund soil of the city. If we are to continue with the plant metaphor, I was more like an avocado pit mashed into a cup of dirt by an excited third grader who then forgot to water it. I never actually sprouted.

And, of course, readers of cultural commentary can't read Dunham's reflections without thinking of perhaps one of the greatest long-form essays on New York, the legendary Joan Didion's "Goodbye to All That." 

Anyone who’s completed the climb out of their early twenties hopefully has the wits to remember when life was as vivid as Kodachrome and the experience to recognize that perhaps all those new colors were duller than they seemed. Perspective, after all, is one of the great pleasures of getting older. But at the date of her death Thursday at the age of 87, Joan Didion’s 1967 essay “Goodbye to All That” remains the permanent sunspot obscuring the center-vision of many maturing writers even contemplating leaving a place like New York and telling other people about it. Only a great artist creates and ruins a genre at the same time. For millennial writers who grew into the body of essays, novels and literary journalism Didion already had waiting for them, it was like sitting down to grainy footage of a party that ended long before they would ever arrive.

So, yeah, Dunham's show was not written for me, but I understand its significance. And, to be honest, New York City is not for me either. Even though my son and many former classmates live there, and I can relate to the draw of life in the Big Apple, especially in your twenties, I like to think of the line from Chicago Tribune writer Mary Schmich's excellent piece "Wear Sunscreen." 

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

The Punk on Walden Pond -- Art

“The Punk on Walden Pond” — mixed media, acrylic, paint pen, marker on canvas, 14x18” — the last painting of ‘25 or first of ‘26, this piece is my latest visual for the ongoing Walden Punk Project. Pretty happy with how it turned out.

2026 Arrives, Bringing an End to Stranger Things

Well, that's a wrap. 

The wild and weird year of 2025 exited last night, and with came an apropos ending to a strange stretch -- the series finale and end to Netflix's Stranger Things.  Millions of people tuned in on New Year's Eve to watch the final two-hour movie-length episode of a surprisingly popular sci-fi thriller that snuck onto the streaming television scene and into a nation's consciousness almost ten years ago. It's actually hard to believe that show arrived a decade ago, though the summer of 2016 could certainly be considered the beginning of "stranger things."

To watch the final episode with flashbacks to the young actors -- some of whom were barely out of elementary school when it started -- was kind of wild. And it was actually a bit of a head scratcher that Netflix managed to draw five seasons of a limited series over ten years. That said, it "strangely" made sense to see the characters age through high school and beyond as they battled to save themselves and the world from the Upside Down. 

If you're looking for a quick summation of everything you saw -- or maybe missed -- during the show's abnormally long run, NY Times writer Noel Murray has a piece explaining "What Happened in the Series Finale?" 

Worlds collide. Heroes die. The day is saved … but not without a little heartbreak. So ends “Stranger Things.”

After five seasons — spread across nearly 10 years — the “Stranger Things” creators Matt and Ross Duffer concluded their enormously popular Netflix show on Wednesday much the way they began it. Although the brothers’ budgets have gotten bigger, their aims have remained mostly the same: to tap into their core influences (Stephen King, Steven Spielberg, teen comedies and “Dungeons & Dragons”) and tell the story of a handful of brave young people in the 1980s, protecting their small town of Hawkins, Ind., from monsters.

In the two-hour series finale, titled “The Rightside Up,” the heroes are helped as always by their secret weapon: Jane (Millie Bobby Brown), a.k.a. Eleven, a teenager whose innate psychic abilities became supercharged when she was imprisoned in a secret government lab as a child. Thanks to Eleven, a group of Hawkins middle schoolers and high schoolers discovered the Upside Down, a shadow version of their town in another dimension, populated by dangerous beasts. 

As a fifty-something Gen Xer -- roughly the same as age as Stranger Things mom Winona Ryder -- I was drawn into the first season with its references to a 70s childhood era hooks like Dungeons & Dragons, and I enjoyed that first season. The interesting thing to me was how much the story reflected themes and structures of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And if you want to dive into critical analysis, you can certainly start connecting the story arcs to other archetypal stories -- Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter -- all rooted in Campbell's monomyth.  

While I did not tune in committedly for the entire run of the show, I did enjoy the wrap up last night, and hanging with my wife and two twenty-something kids, it was a rather low-key and satisfying way to ring out a strange year -- and strange ten years or so -- before we switched over to playing games, eating tiramisu, and enjoying some much-deserved and appreciated family time. 

So, here's to 2026, a fresh start and perhaps fewer strange things.