COLUMN: Livin' La Vida Awful

Well, this is a first.

I've been writing this column every week for 17 years now, and I can safely say this is the first one composed on a cellphone. But that's how desperate I am to escape my present situation. As I painfully type this one thumb at a time, I'm getting work done on my car, and I'm currently being tortured by the devil's Muzak while sitting in the waiting area / infinite purgatory of the dealership. 

I should be feeling good. This is maturity at work right here. I'm adulting like heck. I have a burned-out tail light, something I've known for weeks and relegated to the lower mid-section of the "to-do" list like an irresponsible idiot. But last week, I drove home to Galesburg and made the mistake of letting my dad notice. If I didn't sort this out post-haste, I guarantee it would be the lead topic of every phone call home. Plus I'd rather not get rear-ended OR a ticket, so it's time for action. Specifically, the action of sitting here indefinitely while time crawls to a halt.

In all honesty, it's a lovely waiting area and a great dealership. Everyone's super nice, it's clean as a whistle, there's unlimited beverages, and their COVID mitigations are top-notch. There's just one big problem.

The overhead radio is presently tuned to one of the many kazillion satellite stations out there. If I had to reckon a guess, I'd say we're listening to the Middle-Aged White People Party Jams channel, or perhaps a channel whose theme is simply Shane's Least Favorite Songs of All Time Ever. If it's insipid, over-played, inescapable, and terrible, it's on this playlist. I've been here for a half hour and I'm ready to pull my ears clean off.

I'm fully self-aware that I'm an elitist music snob. Listening to me prattle on about music is likely ten times more tiresome than this playlist could ever be. If there's a band you love, odds are good that I (a) sincerely hate them, (b) secretly love them but still insist I hate them, or (c) am about to tell you how they're derivative of some far superior Scottish indie band from 1982 that precisely 17 people on Earth have ever heard of. Sometimes it takes great patience to be my friend.

But I don't think you have to be a snobby elitist to hate this channel. We all come from different walks of life. We all have different tastes, passions, and stories. But if there's one thing that unifies us as a people, it's the shared truth that none of us EVER need to hear "Livin' La Vida Loca" ever again. Ricky Martin himself probably doesn't want to hear that song ever again.

That's the kind of schlock this channel's been pushing down my earholes for some forty minutes now without rhyme or reason. Well, I guess there's rhyme, if you count "loca" and "mocha." 

But worse than their song selections is the way they're assembled. It makes absolutely no sense. They just played that Cher autotune song -- "Do you beeeLIEEEEEEVE in life after love??" -- followed immediately by Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love." Is there anyone on Earth who's a hardcore fan of both Cher and Led Zep? If so, you're downright weird. And should probably be my friend.

Fifteen minutes have passed. I can now say with some certainty that I have no idea who let the dogs out and I frankly don't care. Nor do I care that you've been through the desert on a horse with no name. I cannot see paradise by the dashboard lights and I do not want to come sail away. It is quite unnecessary to celebrate good times, come on. These songs already live in the deepest, darkest earworm-riddled corners of our brains for all time, there's absolutely no reason to bring them out for a refresher. If "Mmm Bop" comes on, I swear I'm walking home.

WHOA. I just discovered what this channel is. It's the satellite channel "Road Trip Radio: Music To Drive To." If this was my required road trip soundtrack, I'd be a MUCH bigger homebody.

Now it's Icona Pop's "I Love It," which is actually a bop, but I'm trying to sort out why "Road Trip Radio" would feature a song whose main lyrics repeat, "I crashed my car into the bridge, I watched, I let it burn." This does NOT bode well for your roadtrip safety, people.

Perhaps this is all just a genius sales technique. I'm half-tempted to buy a new car just so I can get out of earshot. "Sure, give me the keys, I'll sign on the X, just don't make me listen to 'Love Shack,' I'm begging you." 

We have warped ahead 30 minutes. I'm home. Just as the gentle strains of "Eye of the Tiger" were kicking up, my car was done. All in all, a good experience -- as soon as I remembered I had my noise-cancelling earbuds in my pocket. I can definitely tell you what channel I did NOT listen to on the road trip home. If you were annoyed just now by the car zooming past with two shiny tail lights blaring some Scottish indie band from 1982 that only 17 people on Earth have ever heard of, my deepest apologies. And my work here is done, because you're now #18, congrats.  

COLUMN: Galesburg

They say "you can't go home again." I've clearly been proving them wrong.

I've spent a good chunk of this past week in my hometown of Galesburg. My mom took it upon herself to book an unexpected two-week stay at the fabulous bed & breakfast resort known as OSF St. Mary's Medical Center, so I've been doing a fair share of commutes lately.

Don't worry, she's home now and doing much better -- and it wasn't anything COVID-related -- but it definitely wasn't the most fun couple of weeks a person could have.

When I say Galesburg's my hometown, I'm kind of lying. Technically speaking, I don't have a hometown. I grew up in the country, about five miles northeast of the 'Burg. When I go home for a visit, I don't even need to go into town -- I usually just head straight into the sticks.

But between hospital visits and food runs, I've been spending quality time within the city limits of the town I used to run amok in -- and things ARE mighty different. 

Back in my day, the area around St. Mary's was truly the edge of town. The hospital was effectively in the country. But a few years back, they built a fancy new Wal-Mart in that corridor, which means the former edge of town is now bustling with fast-food joints and strip malls. Honestly, for once I'm a little jealous of my parent's locale -- they've got a Buffalo Wild Wings and a McAlister's and a Burger King and a Pizza Ranch all within five minutes of my once-isolated childhood home.

Of course, I'm not especially jealous of my mom right now, because the only haute cuisine she's been enjoying is water and Jello. When I asked what flavor it was, I was told "green." Seeing as how it's fairly impolite to sneak food into the hospital room of someone who can't eat, I was resorting to scarfing down burgers in the hospital parking lot, trying not make a spectacle of myself as the staff went about their shift changes.

It must have worked, because the first time I visited, I didn't even discover until later that I wasn't supposed to have made it through the door. I just walked in, nodded at the attendant, and went straight to the elevator up to my mom's room. I didn't even realize that COVID-19 protocols were still in play, and every patient was only allowed ONE support person (in this case, my dad.) They were supposed to have cross-checked me against a list of approved visitors. They were supposed to have checked my temperature and issued me hand sanitizer.

I didn't know any of this. I just strolled on in and nobody stopped me. Only later, when a surprised nurse walked in and gave me the third degree, did I realize I was in breach of protocol. Clearly this can only mean one thing: I must resemble a neurosurgeon. The attendant must have noticed my confidence, poise, and profound level of maturity and naturally assumed I was an important doctor here to do important doctorish things. I'm sure its nearly impossible to tell the difference between a cardiac surgeon and a chubby newspaper columnist wearing a t-shirt that says "your favorite band sucks."

I was summarily and justifiably booted from the premises. Given my hermitic ways, I'm pretty sure I was in more danger of catching COVID-19 from them than they were from me, but rules are rules and safety first. Thankfully, a couple days later they eased back the protocols. Mom was allowed two designated visitors and I made the list (sorry, Aunt Merry, you missed the cut.)

Once upon a time, a simple roadtrip home wasn't a big deal. I love any excuse to go for a drive. Once I left the house on a food run and ended up in northern Wisconsin. Roadtrips are my jam. But the older I get, the longer that stretch of highway gets. Instead of just hopping in the car, I'm running through checklists in my mind like a mature person (gross.) Do I have water? Check. Mask? Check. Advil? Check. Imodium? Can't be too cautious. Anything could happen on the mean streets of the Illinois interstate system.

Advil turned out to be a good idea. I fell on the ice two winters ago in a comically ridiculous way, and I'm pretty sure my butt's still broken. Get me in a car for longer than a half hour and there's a good chance my tailbone will start screaming. I should probably see somebody about that, lest I become a crochety old man whose butt predicts the weather ("Uh oh, my coccyx is flaring up. Hard rain's a-comin'!") 

Driving down Henderson Street in Galesburg always reminds me of high school weekends, when the required social activity was cruising the strip from the McDonalds on Henderson to the McDonalds on Main over and over again. Do teenagers even do that any more? Have I reached the age where I just sit around and start stories with, "Back in MY day..."? Apparently so, since I already started a sentence with those very words a few paragraphs above.

Change is inevitable. My mom liked to amuse me with stories about life before television. Our generation's children are equally blown away by our tales of life before cellphones. THEIR children will probably be saying things like "do you remember the olden days when cars used to roll around on WHEELS?" But whether we have to walk, drive, fly, or teleport, family will always be family, and I'm lucky to have one that will always welcome me.

It might not look the same, but you can DEFINITELY go home again.      

COLUMN: Second Shot

Well, it's official. I have been double-stabbinated and fully vaccinated. If all goes well, by this time next week, I will be 100% impervious to all disease and an immortal superhero with direct 5G access to Bill Gates and the Illuminati.

Or, just maybe, I'll be a normal human being who can interact with other human beings without a mask, Plexiglass, or six precious feet between us.

It's been a rough year. A microscopic (and, let's be honest, silly-looking) virus has taken the lives of an estimated 2.87 million people across the globe. The amount of tragedy, loss, and suffering caused by COVID-19 is horrific and incomprehensible, and that is the ONLY reason why I'm not spending the rest of this column whining about HOW MUCH MY ARM HURTS RIGHT NOW. Ow.

Honestly, though, I didn't experience any of the occasionally reported side effects from the vaccine. No nausea, brain fog, chills, or fever, and that's awesome. But I can't pretend my arm isn't sore right now. I'm literally typing this one-handed. But if a sore arm is the required price for concerts to happen again, I'm glad to pay the piper. For the love of rock & roll, go get stabbed. 

Where's the one place you'd want to be right now if you could travel anywhere? Most of you would probably want to be on a tropical beach or a majestic mountainside. Me? I wanna be at Codfish Hollow, the barn concert venue tucked into a little hidden valley just outside Maquoketa. If you haven't been, you're missing the greatest secret in the Midwest. Thanks to COVID, we've all been missing it for over a year now -- but word on the street is they're hoping to re-open later this summer, so fingers crossed and masks up, people.)

At this point, I'd go see ANYONE in concert. I'd pay money to watch Nickelback open for Milli Vanilli. I would sit through a polka band doing a twenty minute version of the Chicken Dance. I just want music and life and people and smiles. It's coming. I can feel it.

We need to be patient, though. Just because some of us are now fully vaccinated doesn't mean we're free to roam around mask-less, licking doorknobs with carefree abandon. Vaccinated people might not feel the effects of COVID-19, but they think we can still spread it to folks who are vulnerable, and that's no good. Herd immunity's on the horizon. For now, though, us vaccinated folk can get together in small groups and hug each other until it gets SUPER awkward, and that's a good start. 

Finally, I might be able to think realistically about post-pandemic life. COVID's changed the way we all live, though -- and for me, some of that will NOT be changing.

WHAT I'LL STOP DOING IN A WEEK: Disinfecting my groceries as they enter my house. The CDC already said it's probably overkill, but I got in the habit early on and have yet to stop. When I was at the store to get my second vaccine, I saw a little kid with his grubby little kid hands feeling up every can and box as he skipped maskless down an aisle, so I'm good with over-caution. Still, there are no seconds in a day longer than the ones where I'm wiping down groceries, especially the ridiculous times I've caught myself disinfecting cans of disinfectant. When you're wiping down Lysol bottles with Lysol, you may have a problem.

WHAT I WON'T STOP DOING IN A WEEK: Using a delivery service for groceries. I've grown to love it, pandemic or no. Sure, it's spending needless money on delivery fees, but I've done the math and I'm honestly SAVING money using a home delivery service. When someone else is hitting the grocery store on your behalf, you can't impulse shop. I'm spending less at the store because I'm not foolishly grabbing anything that looks tasty on a whim. 

WHAT I'LL STOP DOING IN A WEEK: Avoiding uncooked food. I realized the other day that I've spent the past year shying away from things like salads and sub sandwiches, and it's probably out of a subconscious fear that someone's coughed on them. I'm well aware how ridiculous this is. The odds of catching a virus from a ham sandwich are slim to none, but cooked food just seems safer and more comforting. That said, when I choose which restaurant I'll walk into next week for the first time in over a year, odds are pretty high it's going to rhyme with Bungry Bobo. 

WHAT I WON'T STOP DOING IN A WEEK: Cooking more at home. If nothing else, the pandemic's forced me to get pretty good at kitchen-y stuff, especially if it involves the Instant Pot, God's gift to single people who never learned how to cook. I got into a debate online last week with someone about caraway seeds. Never in my life did I expect to one day care about caraway seeds. A year ago, I didn't even know what a caraway seed was. But now, I'm SO insistent they're vital to Hungarian goulash that I picked a fight about with a stranger on the internet. WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME?

WHAT I'LL STOP DOING IN A WEEK: Being judgey towards people. You should never read a book by its cover, but on those rare occasions when I get out and about, I'm still catching myself looking at people and thinking, "Well, THAT dude looks super COVID-y." If you see me strutting by you briskly, I'm likely worried that you're toxic. There's even a chance that behind my mask, I'm holding my breath. Don't take it personally. I'm an idiot.

But soon, I'll be an idiot who doesn't have to live in a constant state of caution and pananoia. No longer will I have to spend my days sitting around alone wishing there was something to do, and I can finally get back to my normal hobby of CHOOSING to sit around alone wishing there was something to do. There's light at the end of the tunnel. With any luck, I'll be able to move my right arm by the time I reach it.

COLUMN: Coloring

As I've mentioned in previous columns, it was NOT a terrific winter for yours truly.

Some scary health symptoms combined with some ill-advised self-diagnostics on the internet led me to believe I was on the brink of death. Suddenly faced with mortality, I decided the best course of action would be to hole up in my house, stop answering the phone, and essentially suffer a fear-induced breakdown. In retrospect, I can't say this was an optimal way to spend the holiday season. It was NOT, as the song promises, the most wonderful time of the year.

My journey into self-isolation and panic wasn't without its upside, though. Had it not been for my temporary descent into madness, I wouldn't have discovered my newest hobby. And I'm proud to say, on the grand list of time-wasting hobbies out there, this one might very well be the stupidest.

I have acquired a fondness for online coloring apps.

Coloring books were never a big thing for me as a kid. I owned a few, sure, but it wasn't an activity I ever yearned for. I was always too worried about coloring outside the lines, using the incorrect color, or having an ugly finished product.

Online coloring apps take away all those worries. In fact, they take away any ounce of creativity whatsoever.

The app I downloaded, "Happy Color," works in a familiar manner to those old-school coloring books of yore. Each day, you can download a new array of black-and-white images full of tiny numbers. Each number corresponds to a color on the accompanying color palette. To complete each picture, you highlight one of the numbered colors, find its match in the image, and simply tap on that area of the image to have it magically colorize.

One image can easily have over 1000 of these numbered areas, so it can take hours to fully color in one image. There's no coloring outside the lines - the app won't let you. There's no using the wrong color - the app won't let you. You're just essentially matching the number from column A to the identical number in column B. It's just that column B happens to be a picture of a horse. Or a meadow. Or a horse in a meadow.

Essentially, Happy Color is little more than an excuse to waste hours furiously tapping on your phone for no real reason. It's ridiculous, it accomplishes nothing, and it's EXACTLY what I needed.

When you spend two months assuming you're moments from death, wasting hours furiously tapping on your phone for no real whatsoever is JUST what the doctor ordered. (Well, that and multiple colonoscopies.) But when I'm fooling with Happy Colors, for those few pleasant moments, I can switch my brain off and worry about nothing more than finding the right shade of blue. 

It's cathartic and calming and centering. And a bit crazy.

"Happy Color" prides itself on its wide variety of images, and they're not exaggerating. There must be thousands in all, and they add new images daily. Last time I opened the app, there was a pic of a cat. And a motorcycle. And a saxophone. Oh, and a picture of a wide-mouthed bald woman with razor-sharp teeth glaring psychotically at a terrified rat. Wait, what?

I'm all for variety, but this image could give ME nightmares, let alone some hapless little kid. Only later did I discover it's a still image from "The Witches," a recent film adaptation of the popular children's novel by Roald Dahl. This makes perfect sense, because Dahl is an author whose literary canon is full of Willy Wonkas and Giant Peaches and is basically a nightmare factory for children. This is, after all, the same man who once turned an innocent girl into a hideous blueberry monster, all for the unspeakable crime of... chewing gum? I know nothing about Roald Dahl's children, but I reckon they were terrified into some seriously good manners.

Yesterday, I opened "Happy Color" to find an image of... well, I'm not even really sure WHAT it's supposed to be. It's an elephant. Specifically, it's an elephant standing upright on an urban street corner. More specifically, the elephant appears to be having some kind of unspeakable romantic liaison with the side of a building. I know no other way to explain it. My friend thinks maybe the elephant is meant to be hiding and peering out from around the corner of the building. But I spent WAY too long coloring that image, and it sure looks more bawdy to me. No time is a good time for pachyderm pornography. I'm beginning to wonder if the artists of "Happy Color" get out of the house less than I do.

Oh, and if you think coloring these photos is a stress reliever, think again. The game won't let you complete an image until you've colored in every single space. And, invariably, as you reach the end, there will always be some teeny tiny uncolored sliver that can take FOREVER to find. So it's all quite charming and relaxing until you get to the end, when you have to play an agonizing round of "Where's Waldo" hunting for that last elusive uncolored piece.

Of course, the app offers hints to the location of the uncolored pieces, but to view the hints, you have to sit through a sixty second ad for some other time-wasting app. Frankly, I'd rather be turned into a hideous blueberry monster than suffer through one more ad for Crazy Birds. 

Honestly, though, I love this utterly stupid app, and I can't recommend it enough. It is the video game equivalent of "just take a second to breathe." If you're having a tough time making it through these (hopefully) last days of the pandemic, I feel your pain. Trust me, I've been there. But maybe things aren't as bad as you think. Maybe you just need a little color in your life.