5 Pop Culture Things I'm Grateful For

When I was growing up, it was easier (and fun!) to be a snarky shithead and throw shade in every direction. The biggest sin was expressing an earnest or vulnerable opinion because not caring was the default way of looking cool. That disaffected posture was the default M.O. of an entire generation, and looking back on it, what a bunch of fucking dicks we all were. On the old site I wrote a whole piece chronicling five characters from the era that turned me into a giant douche.  

And make no mistake, I still have douche energy. At this point in my life, having been self-employed and flying solo professionally for more than a decade, I’ve learned that cultivating charisma through a nearly sociopathic level of self-possession is not only a professional survival skill, but a valuable lead generation tool. People are drawn to those with offbeat sensibilities and an ability to block out cultural noise in favor of carving a unique path.

The most common way of doing that in the past involved crapping on easy targets and drowning the world with withering putdowns. I’m really fucking good at that. Some of the most popular things I’ve ever written have been when I do a complete fisking of Jeep Wrangler owners (the most read thing in the history of Cru Jones Society by a wide margin), some Patriots fan who wrote one of the dumbest Westword articles about the Broncos before Super Bowl 50, and some shithead Yale professor who pontificated that empathy was overrated. Note to Paul Bloom (the guy who wrote that stupid empathy piece I dunked on): Hope you’re enjoying our country currently run by a bunch of psychos who loudly believe empathy is bad and act accordingly resulting in the nightmare hellscape we currently exist within politically.  Any interest in revising your dumbass thesis, Paul? Don’t @ me to let me know if he’s ever done this. I don’t care.

But since it’s Thanksgiving, and because the entire existence of Off the Clock is built upon the premise of being the change I want to see in the world, I’ll share with you something I’ve learned through unsolicited feedback I’ve received from friends and colleagues. People tell me they love how positive I am. And that by virtue of my demeanor, it inspires them to more positive action, too. Granted, I don’t want to be like some failed athlete who comes to your middle school and gives you a bunch of empty happy talk about never giving up on your goals while warning about the dangers of vaping (or whatever the fuck), and I don’t think I am.

I just love what I love, and I love it loudly. There’s no greater catnip for people who create professionally than to hear what people love about their work. That’s why there will be nights I’m just high on my couch after everyone goes to bed where I text some friend who’s in a band how much I love a small moment in one of their songs or I’ll text a buddy about how great the set design in the forgotten 90s superhero farce Blankman is. I have a master’s degree in media studies. I love analyzing shit and finding small things in every nook and cranny of a work is pure jouissance to me.

So, in the spirit of that, here are five things from pop culture I am intensely grateful for. Happy (belated) Thanksgiving, everyone!

1.       The privilege of watching Nikola Jokic play basketball

There’s a scene in the movie Pirate Radio where Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character sits alone on the deck smoking a cigarette and says he’s made a terrible mistake.

“I realized something. And instead of crushing the thought the moment it came, I let it hang on. Now I know it to be true. And now I’m afraid it’s stuck in my head forever… These are the best days of our lives. What a terrible thing to know, but I know it.”

The best times never last. They never do. They never can. And when it comes to moments in your life, that feeling can be crippling and drag you to a doomful sense of fatalism and preclude you from living fully in the moment. Awareness is often anathema to bliss. Like if you enjoyed college and you’re playing out the string before graduation, you know your carefree days of living the fat life are numbered and the looming and overbearing feeling of responsibility of finding a real job and a place to live and buying your own car insurance and all sorts of boring and very adult activities awaits you. shudder

But when it comes to watching Nikola Jokic play basketball, FUCK THAT! I KNOW I’m living the high times, baby! I am fully aware this is the best basketball player I will ever see play for my hometown team, and that he is also one of the Top 10 basketball players that has ever played the game. And I get to watch him night after night after night just do straight up sorcerer shit. As one example, check out this dime to Peyton Watson during crunch time against the Memphis Grizzlies the other night!

Bro, he’s 6’ 11” and 284 lbs. in a meat and potatoes body and he’s the most coordinated motherfucker I’ve ever seen on a basketball court. He drains half court shots like he’s popping a 15-footer. Every game he’s doing some Magic Johnson shit. White Chocolate shit. Point God shit (Note: I hate Chris Paul, but that dude in his prime could fucking cook).

Big Honey does something pretty much every single game I watch that I’ve never seen before, that apparently not even the camera guy can keep up with this shit. I make it a point to watch every Nuggets game I can because I know I will never see shit like this again. I know Nikola Jokic is unique and brilliant and beautiful on a basketball court (what an incredible bonus that he’s such a good dude too), and there are so many puds out there who don’t. Their loss. But I’m going to bask in this glory for as long as it lasts.

2.       The City Cast Denver Podcast

This is how I want my local news delivered to me. And look, I understand that I work in public affairs and that I have a professional incentive to engage with local news, but it’s also possible that I’m attracted to this work, and that I’ve sustained a career in this field for as long as I have, because I believe local news outlets play a vital role in sustaining a healthy republic. The weaponization and manipulation of media outlets is one of the great failings of modern society, and it’s important that we build the future in the image of what we want our culture to be. The Colorado Sun does a good job of this. So does Denverite. Next with Kyle Clark is about the pinnacle of this form in terms of television news.

City Cast Denver features journalists who are passionate about the city about which they report, dogged and fearless in their questions of public officials, creative in their approach to stories of import, and most importantly, enjoyable to spend time with. Are the members of the City Cast team unbiased automatons? Of course not! But in a podcast format, what’s the value in that? If you understand the show’s framing, and buy its premise that: “Every day, you’ll hear from the team highlighting what makes this beautiful, complex city we call home just a little bit better,” you’ll feel compelled to be both celebratory and critical of the factors that contribute to its changing dynamics. It’s become my favorite way to start my day by hanging with skilled professionals who care very deeply about the city they cover, and do so with nuance, determination, and good humor.   

3.       The WWE Vault and WWE NXT YouTube Channels

Growing up WWE home video releases (under the imprint Coliseum Video) would sometimes feature behind the scenes segments. One such segment on Supertape Vol. 2 showcased the fleet of big rigs that move WWE rings and all the rigging associated with putting on this perpetual traveling carnival in cities all across the North America. They showed the sleeper cab where a blue blazer with a WWF logo embroidered on the breast hung on hanger, and a small TV with a VCR next to the bed.

My friend Mike (a fellow semi-closeted wrestling freak like me growing up) and I speculated – or perhaps fantasized – that these truck drivers had access to every pay-per-view, every home video release, and basically every piece of content ever created by the company that they could watch when they weren’t driving. Man, how awesome that sounded! Of course, what we didn’t realize at the time was that these were guys doing a job who may or may not have given half a shit about what they were hauling around, and not fanboy dweebs like us.

Then the WWE Network launched in 2014 and that fantasy of all WWE content available all the time in one easy-to-access place – the fantasy I first had watching some filler segment about truckers on a nothing Coliseum Video release – became an honest-to-god reality. I’ve come to appreciate just how rare that actually is. It’s not often a childhood dream comes to fruition and it’s just as good as you hoped it would be. And all for $9.99 a month!

But, like Robert Frost and Johnny from The Outsiders remind us, nothing gold can stay, especially when there’s always more money to be made. WWE sold the assets of the network to the shittiest streaming service (Peacock) that migrated the content into the most user-unfriendly interface a wrestling fan could ever dream of, arranged content counterintuitively, and basically made the entire experience akin to navigating a moronic automated chatbot that hates you. Now some WWE content is on Netflix, some is on the shitty new ESPN service, some I think remains on Peacock, and it all feels so nakedly craven, I just want to give up being a wrestling fan.

Thankfully there are still some wrestling fans working at the largest pro wrestling company in the world because the WWE Vault and WWE NXT channels are just CRANKING out content and dope ass playlists every single day. Great matches, full episodes of TV shows, entire PPVs, unique and curated playlists… these channels are clearly cared for by actual humans, and humans that clearly have affection for the product they represent. I watch this shit constantly, and it’s possible the voice of Gorilla Monsoon helps me fall asleep.

4.       Bingeing the show Ghosts on Paramount+

My kids are 11 and 9, so their taste in media not geared exclusively toward children is emerging. My older kid loves comedies from the 90s like Airheads, Encino Man, Wayne’s World, Clueless, and a ton more. The younger one has been obsessed with Titanic since learning about it in school and has watched the movie dozens of times already, watched documentaries about the actual ship and about the process of making the movie, and keeps dropping trivia about it on me. She’s recently become obsessed with Mean Girls and has taken to watching that one over and over again.

I’m a pop culture fiend, and it’s fun to share that with my kids. We listen to a ton of music of all different genres, and we’ve ripped through a bunch of shows together. Each night before bed, we all watch a show together, which has become something we all look forward to. We’ve done the entire run of Futurama, Daria, Clone High, The Baby-Sitters Club (which is legit one of the absolute best shows anywhere in any genre of the last 5 years), and much of The Simpsons. We’ve also endured some middling tween-oriented fare that were largely fine but frequently groan-inducing like The Big Show Show (pro wrestler The Big Show deals with his family – hijinks ensue), Bella and the Bulldogs (cheerleader becomes quarterback of her middle school team), and I Woke Up a Vampire (self-explanatory).

We’re now caught up on the four seasons and change of Ghosts, a CBS show based on a BBC original that sees a Manhattan couple inherit a mansion in the sticks populated by various ghosts who have all died on the property and now find themselves constrained to its borders. The wife falls down the stairs, nearly dies, and when she wakes up, realizes she can see and hear ghosts, each of whom has their own ghost power like messing with the electricity or the ability to voice activate Alexa.

I’ve realized in consuming all this TV over the last several years that one of my favorite things is a large ensemble cast that allows for different character pairings which gives each character new shading and depth as well as a rich playing field for great jokes and unique setups. And I mean, it’s not every show where a pantsless finance bro from the early 2000s can hook up with a robber baroness obsessed with cocaine and child labor from a century ago and have it make sense. But Ghosts is REALLY funny and really skilled in executing this premise, which could become a nightmare of logistics or devolve into cornball camp or emotional schmaltz. And the best part is that it’s written in a way that it’s got a ton of dirty jokes – when characters ascend to (presumably) heaven, the ghosts say they “got sucked off” – but my kids don’t notice.

We watch together. We laugh together. We end our days enjoying each other’s company together. It’s something I look forward to each day.

5.       The Denver punk rock community

I spend enough time on this platform gushing over the Denver punk scene when I’m interviewing Caleb or Banana J or Dana or any of a bunch that I’ve already done with more coming soon. So I won’t beat you over the head with this any more than I already do. I’ll just make the following points:

• Like with City Cast Denver, one of the best things you can do with your money is to support creative people in your own community. Buy your friend’s art. See their short films. And in this particular case, go to the neighborhood dive bar or independent venue and watch them rock the fuck out. Buy a shirt or a koozie. It’s cheap. It’s fun. And you’ll meet great folks no matter what musical sound you’re into.

  
  

• The base level of talent for most bands in 2025 is really fucking high. The first cardinal rule in playing music in front of people is always “don’t suck.” 25 years ago that wasn’t always true simply because more people tried playing in a band because there simply wasn’t as much to do, which is why I’ve seen and forgotten more shitty hardcore bands than most people have seen reruns of Friends and Seinfeld put together. But now being a band means buying equipment, finding daylight in multiple people’s schedules, and trying to get people out of their houses to come see you. It behooves you not to waste anyone’s time, so now show lineups generally kick major ass.

  
  

• I hesitate to make this last point because I fear the jig will be up… but whatever. It’s like in high school when jock kids would ask me, a theater kid, if we had orgies at our cast parties, which was a popular rumor in our school. I always just said yes because that rumor was way cooler than the reality of a bunch of dorks playing improv games over pizza. But punk shows are some of the most wholesome experiences of my entire life. I’ve met a surprising number of “wife guys” at these shows. We support each other. We cheer for each other. There’s a lot of drinking and pot smoking, but we respect anyone who’s chosen to get sober. When we fall down in the pit, we pick each other up. Most of the poseurs have moved on to other shit, so all that’s left are the true believers.

  
  

• You and a band screaming your feelings at each other while surrounded by a gaggle of good-natured freaks remains a 10 out of 10 cathartic exercise and if you haven’t tried it, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I’m grateful for the life I live and for the opportunity to share with you the things I love. The world can be an ugly place, but the antidote despair and conflict is joy. Fighting for what we believe in and manifesting the world in which we want to live will always be crucial. But like my friend Nick says, “war all the time will turn you weird.” So here’s my little contribution to our collective joy.

May you find yours this season, and if this little post of mine helped in any way, it’s my privilege. Be the change you want to see in the world.