I don’t really care for many of my friends, so generally I do not support their extracurriculars. Oh, I’ll pretend to stand behind them. I’ll show up at their concerts or attend their company picnics, but this is really a false sort of support, a passive-aggressive means of pushing them…

Not long ago, this country was a diverse place. In Beat America, that fabled land of adventure and intrigue, all you needed was a hitchhiking thumb and a dream to find yourself on the road to adventure. Unique mom-and-pop shops dotted every winding roadway, and even a chance pit stop…

I was standing on line, as the Yankees say, watching a situation escalate in a bodega on the Upper West Side. A large Indian man, distressed and in a hurry, was barking the name of a product while a small Korean woman working the counter struggled to understand him. “Pineapple…

Hickenlooper, buddy, what’s going on? It’s your old pal Adam Cayton-Holland. Yes, the same Adam Cayton-Holland who grew up in Park Hill. Hey, how are you enjoying the neighborhood? I noticed you put a trampoline in the yard — nice move. I’m sure Teddy’s loving that thing. My dad would…

After recently donning a freshly laundered pair of pants, I plunged my hands into my pockets, as all men are wont to do when cloaking their morning thorax, only to discover several tablespoons of brown powder. I ransacked my memory but could not recall a recent instance of purchasing hash…

Matt Holliday is sick to death of being asked if he was really safe. “I get tired of hearing people talk about whether I touched the plate or not,” the Colorado Rockies slugger tells me as he’s seated in front of his locker, taking down a bowl of oatmeal before…

T.J. Cole refers to them as To Sir, With Love moments, a reference to the 1967 Sidney Poitier film in which the actor plays a rookie teacher facing a rowdy class of street toughs in London’s East End. Of course, there are variations on the theme: Lean on Me, Stand…

White guilt is a funny thing. On the one hand, it can inspire you to altruistic heights as you plant bulbs in the community garden, tutor bilingual elementary-school children or, at the very least, tone down your hurling of racial slurs. But on the other hand, it can be used…

I was recently fortunate enough to travel to Tanzania with my family. Our first morning there, we were loading our bags into a Jeep when a man on the sidewalk took one look, sized us up as Americans and yelled “Obama!” with a thumb up and a smile. How he…

On one of my favorite television shows, Friday Night Lights, there’s a character named Tim Riggins who’s an all-around stud. He has his problems with alcohol, sure, as well as father issues and occasional outbursts of violence, and he’s not the smartest Panther in Dillon, but the ladies all love…

In the early ’90s, Saturday Night Live owned my weekends, and I wasn’t alone. Although there were other favorite prepubescent activities — soccer games, covering Lego men in rubber cement and then lighting them on fire — SNL was the focal point of any good overnight. I can still recall…

I’m on to you, Colorado House of Representatives, you sly dogs, you. Check and mate, you pack of ruddy-faced bastards. Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You look so ugly when you play innocent, and as a collective whole, you’re in no position to engage in…

It’s a cold Sunday night, the kind of night that eats at a man, makes him start thinking crazy thoughts, like heading out on the town for some kicks, maybe watching men in masks and underpants bludgeon the holy hell out of each other. The Independent Wrestling Federation is putting…

My mother is teetering on the edge right now. She acts like she’s holding it together, putting up a good front and saying relevant, timely things like “Christmas gifts,” but inside she’s falling apart. Her baby is having babies, and she’s made herself sick with worry. No, one of my…

In a lot of ways, the Internet is like a wormhole: There you are, just cruising along in your space module, playing pinochle with some commie chimpanzee and sipping on Tang when you see one — and oh, man, you’ve got to get a closer look. So you proceed with…

First of all, City and County of Denver, I want to thank you for coming to me in this, your hour of need. Okay, okay, so it was actually the Diversity Advisory Committee (the less-fun DAC) of the separate Career Service Authority that made the impossibly awful diversity training video,…

Santiago’s Mexican Restaurant, known for the spicy stuff it slips into everything from breakfast burritos to carnitas, isn’t as old as Chubby’s, but it already rivals the famed northwest Denver hot spot for the affections of green chile lovers in Colorado. The 21-location chain was founded in Brighton in 1990…

It’s an early Saturday evening, and the tiny front room of Chubby’s Burger Drive-In is absolutely popping with patrons, all waiting to gorge. There are no tables here, no seats for dining, so customers place their order at the busy counter, then jockey for space to await their Chubby’s infusion,…

While television programs and commercial jingles will soon rape our earholes again, reminding us that this is the most wonderful time of the year, I’m going to disagree. That nifty little title is reserved for June 2, my birthday (see: free shots, me being the center of attention). Shoot, the…

I can kick your ass in Street Fighter II. I’m not kidding. You could be Ryu or Guile or even M. Bison if we were playing the Turbo version, and I could be lowly Zangief, and I would still bury you. I’d deliver a swirling, hairy, man-blizzard of Russian beatdown…