COLUMN: Festival of Trees Silent Disco

Welp. It's officially the holidays, I guess. Fa la la.

Once upon a time, I bet "the holidays" referred strictly to Christmas and New Year's. Thanks to the gods of retail, "the holidays" now incorporate Thanksgiving, Halloween, and pretty much any date that falls between October 15th and January 2nd. I'm surprised by this point we haven't just rolled Valentine's Day into the mix. January 21st is National Squirrel Appreciation Day, and I bet if you gave greeting card companies enough time, they'd figure out a way to monetize it.

As for me? I am not feeling it yet. 

I normally love "the holidays," and honestly, who doesn't? If there's an opportunity -- even if it's just an arbitrary day on a calendar -- to feel some warm fuzzies, take the day off work, and get together with friends and family, what's not to like? I mean, other than crass consumerism, forced interaction with toxic family members, overindulgence, pointless arguments over whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie, and hearing that terrible "Santa Baby" song on the radio eleventy-kajillion times. But I mean, other than all that, it's kind of an alright time to stroll the Earth, no?

But THIS year? I've yet to find that holiday vibe. In fact, as I type this, I'm still stubbornly wearing a short-sleeved shirt, refusing to accept the fact that Old Man Winter has already started his annual commute to our neck of the woods. I don't only want an extension of fall, I'd be up for a complete re-do of summer, please. My brain still wants outdoor fun, country drives with the windows down, and a sun that doesn't set at an eyeblink past noon. 

Despite my stubbornness, though, the holiday season marches on. I'm trying to figure out exactly what I need to do to get into that mindset.  

As much as I hate to admit it, one thing that might shift me into holiday mode would be a good old-fashioned snowfall. There's no denying winter is coming when you wake up to a blanket of freshly-fallen snow. When I was a kid, I used to beg the heavens to open up and blizzard away at full force. I remember my dad getting stressed out about plowing the drive, and I was so confused as to why anyone could possibly dislike snow. It's the closest you could ever get to toys literally falling out of sky.

Then I got older. I got a driver's license. I bought a house with a sidewalk I'm suddenly responsible for. I broke my foot on a patch of ice. I get it now -- snow sucks. It makes a mess everywhere, it takes work and effort to shovel and plow, it's treacherous, and it adds extra time to the morning commute when my brain is powered by little more than caffeine and hope. My days of praying for snow are over. Still, there's nothing like a coating of slushy ick to put the final nail in summer stubbornness and force me to move those short-sleeved shirts to the back of the closet. 

In my continuing efforts to find some Yuletide glee, I tried watching a made-for-TV Christmas romance the other night. If television has taught me one thing, it's that if you're a holiday humbug, all you need to do is get stranded by a snowstorm in a small mountain town where the woman of your dreams (who is usually a former cast member of Full House or Party of Five) and her precocious son and/or daughter will force you to discover holiday magic while you save her hotel and/or Christmas tree farm from an evil corporation (that you probably work for.)

These days, though, I find I have the attention span of your average eight-year-old. The guy in the movie had barely gotten stranded and I was already picking up my phone to watch some inane TikTok video instead. After rewinding the same scene four times to try and focus on the Christmas magic unfolding before me, I finally just gave up and turned the movie off. I'm pretty sure I know how it ends. Someday I want a Hallmark romance with an ending where the guy doesn't get the girl, the hotel gets foreclosed on, and a card before the credits comes up and just says, "Can't win 'em all, I guess. Sad holidays!"  

All that said, I do have one last trick up my sleeve and a hail-mary effort to officially get in holiday spirit. It involves a certain Festival of Trees you all might be familiar with. You might NOT, however, be familiar with what happens this Saturday night at the River Center. The Festival of Trees shuts down at 7 p.m., but then re-opens at 8 p.m. for the after-hours Festival of Trees Silent Disco. Every attendee gets a pair of headphones, and you can select from one of three DJs throwing down beats onstage. I'll be one of those DJs.

It's my favorite gig of the year, and its the only opportunity where you can dance around the Festival of Trees expo hall without people thinking you're a bit weird. If nothing else, show up just to hear people singing horribly off-key in an otherwise silent room. It is yuletide comedy gold, trust me. Tickets are still available on the Festival of Trees website and also come with a free general admission pass to the daytime festival if you're so inclined. 

Normally, I'd apologize for shamelessly turning my column into a plug for a DJ gig, but if we're living in a world where stores have their Christmas displays out the day after Halloween and radio stations are already belting Christmas songs weeks before Thanksgiving, I figure I'm just a tiny cog in the holiday money machine. And with your help, this gig might be EXACTLY what I need to find that elusive holiday spirit. Bonus points if you're the woman of my dreams. But I'm not saving your Christmas tree farm. I've got, like, stuff to do, sorry.

COLUMN: Catnapper

So let's get the sad news out of the way first.

Last month, I had to say goodbye to Isobel, my feline houseguest and roommate of the past 18 years. She was the nicest, most loving, doofiest cat I've ever been around, and her loss has left a cat-sized hole in my already addled heart. I lost her twin sister about a year ago, so my house is the quietest it's been since, well, ever.

This leaves me with just one roomie, the feral neighborhood cat who just strolled through my back door a few years ago and looked at me like, "oh hi, I live here now. Food, please." Bereft of ideas for a name, I went to a website that uses cutting edge AI technology to generate random cat names, and this is how I came to have a cat named Meatbag. She never got along well with the twins, and honestly seems pretty happy to have the run of the house.

From an owner's perspective, having just one cat is MUCH easier as well. The litterboxes have ceased to be daily biohazards and I'm no longer buying more cat food than people food at the store. Still, the house has been mighty empty and sad this past month.

Which is why I've been a little over-excited this week to spot a couple tiny new neighborhood strays cavorting around my alley and backyard. My initial thought was, of course, "KITTIES! LET ME GRAB YOU AND SQUISH YOU AND LOVE YOU AND YOU WILL BE MINE FOREVER AND EVER." But I'm also a realist. The newer, mellower Shane might be better off sticking to a maximum capacity of one pet. And I have a feeling the Meatbag might also prefer the solo lifestyle. If I did take these new alley-dwellers in, I'd be in store for a lecture or two from some of the more irritatingly responsible people in my life (hi, Mom.) 

Plus, for all I know, these cats might very well already have happy homes, and I'm in no hurry to add "catnapper" to my resume in any other context than sleeping. I'm no thief. Before I took in the Meatbag, I put a collar on her with a note that said, "Is this your cat? Because she strolls into my house every day and I'm taking her in if nobody claims her." And when I did take her in a week later, I had her scanned for a microchip and I put posters and flyers around my neighborhood to make sure I wasn't stealing someone else's pet.

I should probably be responsible and NOT abduct any more alley strays. But these cats look awfully skinny and needy (AND ADORABLE), so maybe they're hoping for an open door and kind heart, who's to say? I'm not going to go out of my way to lure strange cats inside the house, buuuuut, I mean, if I were to say, leave a little bit of food on the steps in the name of charity, and if they were to eat said food and then perhaps decide to saunter inside to say hello, who am I to stand in the way of cat/human relations?  

So I left some cat treats on the back steps a couple nights ago to see what would happen. And wouldn't you know it, when I walked out to work yesterday morning, all the cat treats were gone. Perhaps I've made new friends, I thought to myself with a mild skip in my step.

Then I got home that night and rewound the security cameras to see if my feline friends enjoyed their dinner. They did not.

Instead, I watched in fast forward as for hours, the army of squirrels that reside in my neighbor's walnut tree conducted a well-choreographed stealth night raid of my back steps. Long story short, there's likely now a hidey hole somewhere in that walnut tree chock full of cat treats.

Once upon a time, I used to like squirrels. I thought they were cute and fluffy. Then I moved into a house with a walnut tree overhanging my back yard, and quickly learned that squirrels aren't cute and fluffy at all. They're mean and fluffy. Every year, a pack of them harvest that tree until every single nut is decimated. With a ballet of skillful precision, they climb onto my house, roll the walnuts off the roof and onto the sidewalk below, and use my back steps as their own personal nutcracker. I come home nightly to a blanket of walnut debris covering my walk. And no matter how hard I try, I always manage to track that detritus into the house where it tries its best to stain my carpet and I find myself on my hands and knees with a bottle of Resolve.

I wouldn't even mind any of that if the squirrels were nice, but they're not. They're mean little buggers who scowl at me when I interrupt their harvest. They climb to eye level, stare at me with their beady little eyes, and angrily go, "Thpf! Thpf!" They purposely try to drop walnuts on my noggin. Hand to God, one morning a squirrel climbed the tree for the express purpose of peeing on my head. While it WAS one of the Top 5 most interesting reasons I've had for calling in late to work, it wasn't exactly my favorite morning.

So instead of luring any cats to their doom -- I mean, their future loving home -- I instead contributed to the ongoing epidemic of squirrel obesity plaguing our fragile world. Live and learn, I guess. As for the cats, I'm guessing they ARE feral, because they aren't exactly keen on humans and run away at the slightest glance. For the time being, I think I'd better stick to one indoor pet and a couple dozen mean and fluffy outdoor ones.

COLUMN: Einstein's Pink Frosted Sister

It was definitely my own fault. I did it to myself. I was the one who uttered those two cursed words a couple weekends ago:

"I'm boooooored."

I announced this, without even thinking twice, to an audience of precisely one person -- and that person was actually a cat. She didn't seem nearly as concerned as I was.

When I went to college at Augustana, the majority of the student body (and hence the majority of my friends) came from the greater Chicagoland area. With few exceptions, most of my big city friends loved the college but hated the Quad Cities. Hearing them talk, it was as if their parents were punishing them by sending them to the outer reaches of civilization for their education. "There's nothing to do here!" was a refrain I'd hear often.

I don't come from Chicago. I grew up in Galesburg. I didn't have the heart to tell my friends that when the cool kids from MY town talked about going to "the big city" for the weekend, they meant HERE. I've always been of the opinion that the Quad Cities has perfectly enough to do. Chicago is a fun place to visit, don't get me wrong -- but there's something to be said for eight-minute commutes, river views, and the comforting knowledge that I could be escaping down a dusty country road towards the middle of nowhere by the time this song on the car radio ends.

But for a few fleeting moments that weekend, I felt like my whiny Chicago friends of yore. I was bored, and there was nothing going on. My close friends were all busy. I spent a good portion of that weekend sighing, pouting, and having an exceptionally pathetic pity party for a table of one. At one especially depressed point, I put on my shoes, resolute in my efforts to find entertainment. I drove my car about 3 blocks before giving up and returning to the house, muttering "there's nothing to do!" This time, I didn't even have my cat's attention. I was just whining to the open air.

I'm happy to say I made up for it this past weekend.

It's official: anyone who says "there's nothing to do here" is an idiot. Or at least doesn't check the calendar of events.

Last Friday night, I found myself at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, first in line to check out the rock stylings of Chicago shoegazers Airiel. I'm a big fan of the high-volume, laid-back bliss of the shoegaze subgenre, so I was prepared for the sonic onslaught. What I was NOT prepared, for, however, was the opening act. They were called Pink Frost, and they were angry. Or at least discontent. Something in their lives, or perhaps the lives of others, was clearly not going well, and they had things to say about it. Or occasionally scream about it.

It was amazing. This band came out with such an intensity that I was moderately concerned about the structural integrity of the building and/or my future ability to hear anything ever again. Wear your earplugs, kids - that's my PSA. But if you're ever going to be driven mad and deaf by a band, this would've been a solid choice. 

"Wow," a friend of mine said after a couple songs. "What do you think?"

"I WANT TO START A REVOLUTION," I replied. "I'm not sure what or whom we should be revolting against, but this noise is clearly a call to action." They were great. Airiel were great. Everybody was super nice. I felt 20 years younger. It was a rock and roll lovefest.

The next night, I was back in action, this time at Common Chord's Redstone Room for the long-awaiting reunion gig of local powerpop heroes Einstein's Sister. This was a show that was a little more my speed. Einstein's Sister have been doing their thing since I was a freshly-graduated idiot turned loose upon the world, and grey was the predominant hair color of the evening.

They're some of the best musicians in town. Their fans are some of the best people in town. It was a veritable who's who of experienced local music nerds, and there were more friends than strangers in the audience that night. It was less a concert and more a big party of friends, except that it was still VERY MUCH an amazing concert, too. Unannounced guests like local legends Manny Lopez and Nervous Neal Smith joined the band onstage, and the setlist leaned heavily on Einstein's classics alongside tracks from their newly released EP, "Exit Strategies." 

The set ran blessedly long and culminated in a lovingly shambolic, half-improvised cover of "Gimme Shelter" that saw almost a dozen musicians take to the stage. There's videos of it floating around online - try to find and watch it while reveling in the fact that we're lucky enough to co-exist in the same metropolitan area as these class acts.

It was a stellar weekend for music, friends, and fun. And after the year I've had, I no longer take nights like these for granted. I'm glad I live in the Quad Cities. I'm seldom bored. I'm grateful for my friends and the great venues we have in this area to get together and celebrate. And this week? I'm also awfully grateful for my couch. That's where you'll find me for the next few days. I could certainly go for a nice, boring weekend right about now. 

COLUMN: Salt

Today, I inadvertently channel-flipped into Blink 182's "I Miss You" and almost rolled a tear. Sometimes all it takes is a good melody and some simple lyrics to capture the unrelenting pain of missing that which will forever sit close to your heart.

I'm talking, of course, about salt. I miss you, salt. It's been months since we ended our relationship, and I'm starting to regret the break-up.

Salt will forever sit close to my heart. This is mostly because it's embedded in my arteries and will likely never leave, no matter how much bland broccoli I force down my gullet. When my doctors told me I should go on a low sodium diet, I said, "No problem." Just lay off the French fries and stop sprinkling table salt on my dinner plate and I should be all good, I figured.

It's not that easy.

Salt, it turns out, is everywhere. It's in everything. It's in bread. It's in cereal. It's in fudgesicles. If air had one of those "nutritional information" charts, we'd probably learn that air is loaded with sodium and we should all stop breathing immediately for the sake of our hearts. 

A few days ago, I was excited to try out a new restaurant that opened up in town. Their menu has a lot of healthy-looking fare like chicken and rice and veggies, so I thought it would coalesce nicely with my new heart-healthy diet. Then I had to be stupid and look up their menu's nutritional information. If you've ever felt the urge to look up a restaurant's nutritional information, my best advice is... don't. Trust me, it's better not to know.

I'm supposed to aim for around 1500 milligrams of sodium per day. The "healthy" dish I was eyeing at that restaurant turned out to have 3900 milligrams of sodium per serving. That's more than twice what I'm supposed to have in a DAY, let alone a single meal. Had I not looked this up before-hand, I'd probably still be bragging about the smart dinner choice I almost made. 

Thankfully, there seem to be a lot of people in my boat, which is why they make an array of sodium-free spice blends you can use in lieu of table salt. I think I've tried all of them over the past few months -- and they all pretty much taste like grit. Sometimes it's slightly garlicky grit. Sometimes it's slightly lemony grit. But it's grit regardless, and does little to nothing to enhance the flavor of whatever vegetable I'm trying to choke down.

Someone told me that if you stop eating things that are salty and sweet, you'll eventually learn to appreciate the other tastes. I've now spent months trying to develop a fondness for sour, bitter, or umami flavors. No dice. I'm pretty sure sour and bitter taste buds evolved for one reason: to tell us when the salty and/or sweet things we're craving have gone bad. That leaves umami, which no one can even easily define, other than some vague explanation like "savory-ness." 

If umami means bland and boring fare like turkey and beans and salmon, then crown me the 2023 Umami King, because that's pretty much all I've been living on for months now. I've been trying recipes for heart-healthy dishes, but it hasn't exactly been a culinary triumph. Last week, I tried a recipe for "heart-healthy vegetable soup." You know what heart-healthy vegetable soup WITHOUT SALT is? It's green things floating in tomato water. And it tastes exactly how you'd suspect green things floating in tomato water to taste (spoiler: not good.) 

One recipe was for "delicious heart-healthy chili." I'm not sure what the thing I ended up eating was. It was, by no definition I could muster, chili. At best, it was bland Mexican soup. Maybe if the recipe had been called "bland Mexican soup," I might have been like, "Hey, this bland Mexican soup isn't half bad." But the recipe was called "chili," and I can't forgive that. 

So my search for enjoyable yet healthy food continues. The other day I went to a family restaurant with friends and wanted to eat healthy, so I ordered their most boring meal: a chicken breast with a side of broccoli. I took one bite and made a face I wasn't expecting. "What's wrong?" my friend asked. "This is SO salty," I replied in shock. In hindsight, I don't think it was especially salty. It's just that I haven't cooked with salt in months, so to get something with even a hint of salt on it tasted like a brine explosion.

I'd like to tell you I went "eww!", complained to the manager, and didn't rest until I had a salt-free delicious meal in front of me. But when I said, "This is SO salty...," I'm pretty sure I followed that a few seconds later with, "...and AMAZING!" And then inhaled every morsel and milligram of that deliciously salty plate. And then drank three diet sodas because I was so parched. I'll try to curb my addiction now before you find me on a street corner begging for sea salt. In the meantime, I'll be over there in the corner trying to will broccoli into tasting NOT like broccoli.