During the pandemic, I found myself gaming again. Like a lot of people, it started with trying to reconnectwith friends, with fun, with some version of normal. I was coaching wrestling at Denver West with Rocco DePaolo, Justin Gaethje, and Josh Imeraj, and we'd hop into Call of Duty: Warzone lobbies with some of the kids we coached. Spoiler: we’d get smoked.

In the very first episode of Storytime with Gary on Grafenberg TV, I read The Soul Bird by Michal Snunit — a beautifully simple book that manages to say something profound about emotions, memory, and what it means to be a person. It’s technically a children’s book, but like the best “kids” stories, it hits adults right in the chest.

During the early days of the pandemic, I started a weekly solo show called Storytime with Gary for Grafenberg TV — a digital content stream launched by the Grafenberg Theater.