Atticus   

My grandmother won’t like this post. Fortunately for me, she probably won’t see it because she doesn’t own a computer.

But it also won’t make my mom happy, meaning there’s a chance she’ll print it out and read it to my grandmother to gain an ally.

Here’s my confession: I’ve grown to like it here. And by “here,” I mean Denver.

Yes, I hate the six-month winter. I hate shoveling snow, and I hate walking through it to the bus stop. I hate the lack of sweet tea. I hate driving on roads where people don’t understand there’s a lane for slow drivers and a lane for faster drivers. I hate the airport. I hate the indifference toward college football. I hate the lack of trees. I hate how dry and flakey my skin is 365 days a year.

But I love the summer. I love spending time with my cousin Diane, with whom I didn’t grow up. I love fly fishing. I love my flag football team. I love the lack of mosquitoes, roaches and Japanese beetles. I love the big mountains. I love learning how to play hockey. I love being only a mile from a grocery store and my gym. I love the lack of pollen. I love how sunscreen actually dries on my skin.

And, most importantly, I love hanging with Dave, Todd, Jim, Kelly, Christopher, Greg and Andy. I’ve made more friends in a year in Denver than I did in nine years in Atlanta.

I don’t know whether that says something about me or about the city I previously called home. Probably a little of both.

Will the move I said would be nothing more than a two-year change of pace become permanent? I don’t know. My best friend recently reminded me to live in the moment—to not fret over the past or worry about the future.

So I’m just taking things as they come, watching things unfold.

Just don’t tell my grandmother.

My friend Chad passed along a link to The Amazin’s, a new documentary honoring Auburn’s football team of 1972.

Those of you who don’t like sports will have no interest. Many of you who like sports won’t even have an interest. But I’m an Auburn man, so I’m excited to see the production of something commemorating the incredible season these young men had more than 35 years ago.

The man behind the documentary is a friend of friends, Tim Arnold.

“Holy crap, Rob—are you hearing this?”

“Yeah, but I don’t recognize it,” he said. “What is it?”

My brother and I were seated with his family and our parents in some popular local deli in Huntsville, Ala., and I couldn’t believe what was emanating from the speakers in the ceiling: “To Cut a Long Story Short” by Spandau Ballet.

If you grew up in Canada or in the suburb of a large U.S. city in the ‘80s, you probably have no idea why this makes me shake my head in disbelief every time this situation—an obscure British song getting airplay in the 21st century as if it had been a major American hit—occurs. You likely had a progressive Top 40 station that occasionally played those tracks.

But if you grew up like I did, in rural Alabama an hour from the nearest mall, your local station played only the hits and nothing more.

Until my parents purchased one of those gigantic satellite dishes in 1986, we didn’t even have MTV because my hometown didn’t have cable.

That’s why it was always by the strangest means that I would discover a British or Australian band I’d previously never heard of. Like the time I stayed up until the very last clip of the night on Friday Night Videos to see the No. 1 song in Australia, “Original Sin” by INXS. Or when my mom won a trip to the UK through her job and took me rather than my dad because he had already been to London several times on business. Or the mix tape I received from a pen pal in Dallas whose best friend had moved to England a few years earlier.

In seventh grade while taking the California Achievement Test, I had Talk Talk’s “It’s My Life” lodged firmly in my skull, thanks to seeing the video for it numerous times on TV-69 (not joking) in Atlanta the preceding weekend while visiting our family’s closest friends.

As a result, I was probably the only teenager within a 50-mile radius who owned a Depeche Mode T-shirt or had seen Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark in concert. To better illustrate how much I was in the minority, I should share with you our class song from my senior year: “Pour Some Sugar on Me” by Def Leppard.

How my family didn’t know I was gay, I’ll never know. I’m pretty sure my classmates did, though, as most of the guys were always talking about “that weird queer shit” I listened to.

That’s why today I crack up every time I’m wolfing down a burrito in a Qdoba or walking to the multiplex at Northfield Stapleton and hear something like “The Love Cats” by The Cure, “From Pillar to Post” by Aztec Camera, “Bizarre Love Triangle” by New Order or “How Soon Is Now?” by The Smiths.

I’m imagining my classmates somewhere similar, with kids in tow, turning to their wives and asking, “What the hell is this?”

It always amazes me. If a celebrity says something crazy or inappropriate, we often label it cute or quirky. If someone random says it, we label it for what it is: crazy or inappropriate.

On Sunday a friend of a friend tells me he attended David Sedaris’ reading and book signing earlier in the day. Though the renowned writer shuffled most people through the line after his talk, he did pause randomly and talk with this guy and the 60-something woman behind him.

His comment: “Do you think Barack Obama is circumcised or uncircumcised?”

The woman froze in horror, which Sedaris facetiously interpreted as lack of knowledge.

“Do you know what I’m talking about?” he asked.

Before she could answer, he began illustrating the difference between the two – inside the book of hers he would be signing.

I’ve been anonymous on this blog for years. I added a mug shot on the “About Me” page only a month ago. So here are two photos from the preceding weekend: a sunburned me with my friend Greg at beer bust and a mellow me with my friend Dan before the Alison Krauss/Robert Plant concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

I’m not sure which is my favorite story: (1) The time when he pulled off the road and stripped to his underwear because he didn’t want to get his clothes sweaty on the drive in his non-air-conditioned truck to take his wife out on their first date or (2) the time he struggled to retrieve a base hit from the empty potato-chip bag into which it rolled – and then accidentally heaved it directly into an empty plastic grocery bag that went airborne just as he was making the throw.

But it’s hard not to love a guy like Lance Berkman. He sleeps in the clubhouse before games. He didn’t mince words when it came to Roger Clemens. And he’s having a pretty good year for the dismal Astros.