COLUMN: Neowise

(Photo: Dana Taylor)

2020 has been woefully lacking in adventure.

Well, actually I guess every day's been an adventure. Going out in public is an adventure. Sharing an office with 20 people is an adventure. Heck, just turning on the news is an adventure.

But I'm talking about good old spontaneous adventures to new places and new experiences. Many of my best stories start with calling up a friend and saying those magical words, "I'm bored. Wanna hang out?" Over the years, those fateful words have been the start of tales that end with phrases like:

...and that's how we ended up in Beloit, Wisconsin at 4 in the morning.

...and that's how I ended up dancing in a meditation dome with Oscar-winning director David Lynch.

...and that's how we almost got arrested at the Canadian border.

...and that's how I ended up on MTV.

...and that's what turtle jerky tastes like.

All those stories began with an "I'm bored" phone call, usually to my best friend, Jason. Some of the best times in my life have been random spontaneous drives to parts unknown.

But 2020 has put an end to all that. The only "hangout" I've done with my friends this summer has been preceded by the word "Google." I've seen Jason once since February, when we met at Sunset Park to eat dinner from separate corners of a long picnic table. I'm pretty sure I've only filled my car with gas five times this entire year. 2020 is the worst.

But last weekend, I came pretty close to checking off that annual adventure box.

Friday night, I got home from work with several hours to kill before my weekend DJ gig. I ate some food and settled down to waste yet another night in the loving embrace of Netflix. But after five minutes, I shut the TV off defiantly. "NO!" I told myself and likely 1-3 cats within earshot. "2020 doesn't get to win tonight!"

I was sick of my four walls, sick of television, sick of repeating the same life day after day after day. I grabbed a mask and hopped in the car in search of socially distanced adventure.

I'd seen some friends online talking about Neowise, the newly discovered comet that's been gracing our skies just after sunset for the past month. Maybe it was discovered before, but that person was probably too busy learning how to make pottery because Neowise only pays us a visit every 6,766 years. Well, I wasn't waiting until the year 8786 for my next chance to see it.

Neowise shows up just after sunset below the Big Dipper, so I set off on the I-280 loop for a good glimpse of the northwest sky. Unfortunately, when you head off in that direction, the only thing you see to the northwest are trees, hills, and the nuclear glow of the Walcott truckopolis. Frustrated, I kept driving. More hills. More trees. More lights. No comet.

Eventually I found myself pretty far away from the Quad Cities. TOO far away considering I had a DJ gig at midnight and had no real clue where I was. I found myself on a dusty farm road driving along the banks of the Wapsi, cometless and running out of time. I decided I'd turn around at the next intersection and head back dejectedly. That's when I saw him.

There, on the side of the road, in the absolute middle of nowhere on a Friday night, I spotted a guy with a fancy camera on a tripod. Specifically, a camera pointed straight to the northwest sky.

"Are you hunting for the comet?" I rolled down my window and asked.

"Not hunting," he replied. "Found it."

"I came out hoping to catch a glimpse myself," I said.

"Pull in," he offered. "I'll show you what it looks like through a camera lens."

...and that's how I ended up spending an hour watching a comet with a total stranger in the middle of nowhere.

The stranger in question is my new friend, Dana Taylor. He's one of the founders and a former president of the Quad-Cities Astronomical Society, and it was pure luck I happened upon him. Man, I'm glad I did.

Even on a dark country road, Neowise is tough to spot with the naked eye. It mostly looks like a slight haze in the sky that I could only really see with my peripheral vision. But point a camera at it with a 15-second exposure and it's an entirely different story. Neowise is a marvel to behold, with a bright nucleus and an elegant dusty tail. Taylor would leave his camera motionless, controlling the ISO and exposure from a phone app. I stood there for minutes, not even caring that I was serving myself up as a banquet to a legion of mosquitoes. This was epic.

For a time as a kid, I was convinced my life would be devoted to astronomy. Then I found out astronomy was mostly math, and my dreams were crushed. I am not especially gifted with numbers (I had to pull out a calculator earlier just to figure out that 2020+6766=8786.) As an adult, I fear my full appreciation of astronomy consists of the phrase "space is neato." But that night, standing on the side of the road, looking at a rock 64 million miles away flying through space at 144,000 mph? In that moment, I was Carl frikking Sagan glimpsing the heavens.

The next moment, I looked at my phone and realized Carl frikking Sagan had 45 minutes to get to his DJ gig. So I bid my new friend farewell and raced home to make my gig with precisely 4 minutes to spare. By that time, Dana had already sent me some of the best pics he shot that night. As I type this, he's out there right now with an even better camera trying to get some last souvenirs.

The moral of the story? Like the books of our youth, choose your own adventure. Don't let 2020 win. You've only got a couple more days to check out Neowise before it fades from view for an awfully long time. If you think 2020's rough, who knows what 8786 has in store for us.

COLUMN: Jug

To say 2020's been a challenging year would be a bit of an understatement.

Once upon a time, our paper ran happy headlines, I'm almost sure of it. Nowadays, I cringe as I unfold the morning edition, bracing myself for whatever global disaster awaits. Turns out we missed one.

While your attention's been diverted by minor news like a pandemic, civil unrest, and the potential economic collapse of the free world, an even more sinister story has been lurking in the shadows.

I hate to break it to you, but the Quad Cities has a water thief.

Last night, I went grocery shopping. I don't think I've made one successful trip to the supermarket this year without forgetting at least one crucial item I went there to buy. I'm too preoccupied trying not to get breathed on, casting sanctimonious glances at the unmasked, and navigating the one-way arrows.

I'm a firm believer in giving people the benefit of the doubt, but all bets are off in the grocery store. Whenever I pass someone in the aisle, I can't help but wonder, "Hmm, how COVID-y does THIS person look?" It's nothing personal, I swear -- but don't take offense if you see me non-chalantly holding my breath as I give you the widest possible berth. Yesterday I found myself ducking down a side aisle just to avoid a family of unmasked heathens. No big deal, I thought, I'll just wait here pretending to comparison shop for, umm, tampons. I definitely picked the wrong aisle to duck down.

Eventually I made it to the checkout with a cart full of essentials: some TV dinners, butter, pasta sauce, a jug of distilled water, coffee, and some quarantine cookies. It wasn't until later that night, sitting at home on the couch, that it hit me: WHERE'S MY DISTILLED WATER? I definitely had it in the checkout lane, but it sure wasn't in my kitchen. Somehow, some way, it never made it home with me.

The way I see it, there's a few possible explanations:

#1: In the twenty seconds it took me to return my cart to the corral, clearly some nefarious scoundrel disabled my alarm, picked the lock, broke into my car, and absconded with my water. He's probably sitting somewhere now, toasting me with a distilled glass of his plundered booty, jubilant in his 99 cent pillage.

#2: When I got home, it was 7:02 PM. I think I left the store at 6:51. Does it take eleven minutes to get from the store to my house? Or am I missing time? Perhaps I was kidnapped by aliens and taken aboard their mothership where I was studied intently for my intellect and brute machismo -- and, clearly, my water.

#3: Perhaps technology has evolved at such an alarming pace that plastic water jugs have now become sentient. Having just been snatched and taken against his will from his friends, perhaps Juggy noticed my back turned and leapt from the cart in a desperate bid for freedom. Maybe he's made his way out of town by now, learning to live and flourish far from the thirsty mouths of those who would do him harm.

But I'm not going to waste your time with ridiculous theories of aliens or sentient water jugs or, umm, a bagger forgetting to put the water in my cart. No, I'm pretty sure I know what happened. Occam's Razor tells us the best explanation is usually the simplest. But I've been spending a lot of lockdown time on the internet, and the internet tells us the best explanation is usually the most convoluted conspiratorial thing you can dream up.

So here's what I think happened.

As I approached the checkout lane, the cashier must have recognized me as a card-carrying member of the #fakemedia. Too bad I didn't recognize HIM as Dead Body #2 in that fifth season episode of Law Order, because he was no cashier -- he was a crisis actor. As I placed the water jug on the checkout counter, I hadn't noticed the UPC code directly corresponding to the number of false positive COVID tests reported that day. Knowing how dangerous it would be to send that fateful jug home with me, he quickly set the bar code reader to 5G and irradiated the jug with toxic chemtrails. Unfortunately, he hadn't predicted the reaction it would have with the adrenochrome within.

As the jug began to glow, he realized in horror it was projecting the mystical square and compass symbol of Freemasonry onto the Hy-Vee ceiling! He had to act fast lest their Deep State jig would be up. As I was scanning my debit card, he grabbed the jug and vaulted over the checkout counter, pulling out his iPhone 12 to send an unsecured email to the only person who could help. The call came instantly.

"Hillary?" he cautiously asked.

"That's right," the confident yet strangely reptilian voice said.

"I think... he knows."

"Don't panic. Do you have the jug?"

"I do."

"Then we're good. He's already heading home."

"How do you know?"

"The microchip we implanted in his flu shot, duh."

"The fool!" 

"Nothing can stop us now. Care to meet Bill & I for dinner? Pizza's on me."

At least that's how I assume it went down. Frankly, it sounds more realistic than murder hornets, plague squirrels, or Iowa bears. I'm not putting ANYTHING past 2020 at this point.

Update: On my way to work just now, I glanced in the back seat and there sat the missing jug. This is worse than I thought. Clearly, typing this column caught the attention of Mark Zuckerberg & Bill Gates, who promptly reported the security breach to their reptilian Illuminati overlords (Oprah? AOC? Flo from Progressive?) and spared no expense breaking into my garage and putting a replacement jug in my car while I slept. It's a good thing I'm woke, people.

2020 might not be done with us, but at least I won't be thirsty.

COLUMN: Fireworks

I've always had a thing for loud stuff.

When most people get around a piece of screechy industrial machinery in action, they cover their ears. They grimace. They move away. I've always been the idiot standing there elated by the sheer stupid exhiliration of it all. I'll be the guy smiling with a thumbs up going, "ooh, impressive." I love it when a train blows its whistle as I'm driving by. I love the roar of the Blue Angels at an air show. To me, sound is excitement. Sound is power.

I spent most of my twenties as a rave promoter, renting out rickety old halls and warehouses and filling them with kids, DJs, speakers, and thumping dance beats. I've stood in front of speaker stacks taller than me. I've DJed on systems that have shaken fixtures off walls and tested the structural integrity of buildings.

I once paid more money than you need to know to bear witness to My Bloody Valentine, the UK group currently in the Guinness Book of World Records as the loudest band ever recorded. Their shows routinely feature decibels higher than a jet engine, and they hand everyone in the audience earplugs and warnings upon entry. They close their sets with a half-hour barrage of pure feedback fans lovingly refer to as the "Sonic Holocaust." 

I'm also an idiot. I'm well aware of how much damage I've likely done to my hearing over the years, so spare me the lectures and don't do as I did -- well, unless you're looking forward to the relaxing inescapable ringing of tinnitus.

But even as someone with a crazy high tolerance for loud noise, can I say one thing on behalf of myself, my cats, and a vast majority of our local populace?

ENOUGH WITH THE FIREWORKS ALREADY.

As I type this, some of you are on your 14th day of celebrating independence, and it's getting a little old. Every night for going on two weeks now, the minute the sun even thinks about setting, my neighborhood erupts into a barrage of bottle rockets, firecrackers, and show-stopping pyrotechnics -- except the show isn't stopping.

Seven days ago, I was sitting on this very couch trying to write last week's column, when

((((BOOOM!!!!))))

It felt like someone had lit an M80 directly into my spinal column. My windows shook. My elderly cats jumped into the air like kittens. And I dove to the floor like Captain Fatpants, the world's saddest superhero. I truly thought either the world had just ended or half my house had just exploded. But as I lay there in a defensive position awaiting the Four Horsemen, I was instead met with the sound of neighbor kids laughing and high-fiving.

As time marches on, so too does firework technology. Bigger, bolder, louder. But where do you draw the line between an impressive firecracker and a medicore bomb? My guess is you draw that line in chalk around the body of your terrified neighbor who's just stopped, dropped, and rolled off his couch. Thankfully I live to columnize another day.

Look, I get it. Fireworks are cool. They're fun, loud, dangerous, and illegal. That's a tempting allure. I remember one summer, we -- I MEAN, DISTANT FRIENDS OF MINE -- drove to Wisconsin and THOSE FRIENDS may have spent the entire profits of a rave on a carload of fireworks. As I recall MY FRIENDS TELLING ME, it was exciting enough to drive home with a trunk full of bootleg fireworks, let alone launching the things. But MY FRIENDS were so nervous, when the 4th of July came 'round, we -- I MEAN, THEY -- were too scared to light them off in town. THEY ended up driving out to a pasture in the middle of nowhere and were still so jittery THEY spent more time worried about getting caught and cleaning up the mess than actually enjoying their illicit show.

I remember thinking those fireworks were super cool. Trust me, they were super lame compared to the things people have been launching from my neighborhood this week. The night vision videos from my security camera on the 4th make Rock Island look more like stock footage from Desert Storm. Debris was everywhere and the whole Quad Cities looked like a foggy moor, except the fog was toxic smoke. I literally awoke on the 5th to a warning on TV to stay indoors -- the air quality was too dangerous to go outside.

Fireworks are dangerous and exciting. But this is 2020 -- just leaving the house these days is danger enough for me. If you're a thrillseeker, go grocery shopping. Hug a stranger. Walk around without a mask. No, don't do that. Please don't do that. But can't we just have a relaxing holiday weekend where everything is chill and calm, even for just a day or two? As one of my friends said on social media this week, I can't believe constant explosions and emergency vehicle sirens is the aesthetic anybody wants at this point in 2020.

I spent my holiday week engaged in my fun new hobby of making sure my house didn't catch on fire. Others weren't as lucky. I listened to the police scanner that night as fire and ambulance calls rolled in, not to mention countless noise complaints. At one point, I literally heard a cop say he was driving to his own house to complete his paperwork, because "there's too many crazies out here tonight." We should be better than this.

So I tell you what, Quad Cities. Let's make a deal. You stop lighting off mortar shells for a while, and I'll keep My Bloody Valentine to a respectable volume when I'm driving around with the windows down. Deal? Besides, when I'm by myself in a quiet room, I'm pretty sure I'm still listening to the aftereffects of that concert.

COLUMN: Bucks Fizz

I have long been an Anglophile. I love British music with a passion. I can't get enough British TV. English comedians are the funniest, UK radio is the bee's knees, and I'll take a BBC newscast over CNN anytime. If a girl with a British accent tries to speak to me, I can barely keep from squealing. I once worked with a reporter from Ireland (which isn't even part of the UK) and I still wanted to be his very best friend just because he'd at least heard of some of my favorite bands.  

On the very weekend we celebrate our independence from British rule, it's probably poor taste to write about how much British culture rules. But here's the thing -- England has launched an all-out assault on my brain this week, and this is a war they just might be winning.

It started with an innocent movie. This week, Netflix debuted a new Will Ferrell flick that I enjoyed very much. It's the kind of film that critics are bound to hate, but I was all in. Not just because it's full of heart and optimism and silly laughs, but because it's about a topic near and dear to my heart: The annual Eurovision Song Contest.

Truly, there is no greater annual trainwreck, and it's a shame more Americans don't know about it. Every year, the nations of Europe compete in a continentally-televised sing-off to determine which country has written the best song of the year. Songs are judged by representatives of each country along with the viewing public. It is the world's longest-running annual televised contest and draws up to 600 million viewers every year.

And it's terrible.

Not just a LITTLE terrible, either. It's a whole new level of terrible. Every once in a while, Eurovision can find a star. ABBA got their break representing Sweden back in 1974. Celine Dion catapaulted to superstardom when she was hired to perform Switzerland's Eurovision entry in 1988. But for the most part, Eurovision is a nightmare factory of garish costumes, over-the-top antics, and truly terrible music. It's a wonderland of bad taste and poor choices.

Since winning requires the overall consensus of 47 completely different cultures, Eurovision entries tend to be watered-down, homogenized, bubblegum pop trash written for mass appeal. Since the songs are cheeseballs, the performers try to differentiate themselves with zany stunts, cringe-worthy gimmicks, and some of the weirdest attempts at sex appeal you'll ever see. Don't believe me? Google Iceland's Silvia Night or the awesomely named Serbian singer Rambo Amadeus and strap in. 

In Ferrell's "Eurovision" movie, he and Rachel McAdams portray earnest Icelandic singer-songwriters trying to advance to the finals. You might laugh when you see Ferrell in silver makeup and a winged helmet singing an ode to volcano gods, but that's honestly not too far off from the real thing. There's a scene in the movie where Ferrell joins in a crazy medley of ABBA, Madonna, and Cher songs at an afterparty. What Americans might not realize is that the performers in that medley are all actual Eurovision winners. It's a magical mess.

Watching the movie put me in the mood to see the real deal, so I immediately went on Youtube looking for past Eurovision highlights. That's when Britain got its revenge on me for our indepedence.

In 1981, England won Eurovision with their own version of ABBA -- four vocalists assembled for the contest who went by the name Buck's Fizz. Well, technically they still GO by Buck's Fizz. Kind of. More on that later.

Buck's Fizz may have looked like ABBA, but their sound was straight Brady Bunch. They won Eurovision '81 with a song called "Making Your Mind Up" that might be the worst pop song of all poptime. If you were to combine the DNA of My Little Pony, Shirley Temple, and Hello Kitty, the resulting cuteness monstrosity STILL wouldn't be half as insipidly sugar-sweet as "Making Your Mind Up." It even comes with hand-jive choreography and a "scandalous" bit where the two guys rip off the skirts of the two girls -- only to reveal matching mini-skirts underneath.

Here's where I'd normally tell you to go listen for yourself. Trust me, don't. For the past 72 hours, "Making Your Mind Up" has been on auto-repeat in my head. It won't leave no matter what I do. Buck's Fizz is the devil's earworm. Somewhere in my brain, there's a radio station that now only plays ONE request. "Making Your Mind Up" has bored its way into my soul and now there's no other music. It's so obnoxiously catchy that I fear it'll be a part of me forever. Maybe this means it's the best song ever written. Am I the world's #1 Bucks Fizz fan now?

The BEST part? The singers HATE each other. There's a Buck's Fizz documentary on the BBC (and Youtube) that's one of the closest things to real-life Spinal Tap you'll ever see. The foursome turned their win into modest fame -- until a horrible bus crash left one member near death. Then the remaining guy convinced the singer of another terrible band to join, and this new guy tried to take over Bucks Fizz for himself! They fired him, but he formed his OWN Bucks Fizz with the original bus-crash guy! Now there's TWO warring Bucks Fizzes touring the cabaret circuits of England while they fight in court over the right to the name. The other band has to go by "The Fizz," and their career is clearly on the rise since they're booked to play October 4th at Pizza Express Live in Holburn.

Well played, England. You've destroyed my Anglophile dreams and turned me into a Fizzhead. Maybe one day the DJ in my brain will stop requesting "Making Your Mind Up." Until then, if you see me out on the street, wear a mask and stay six feet away, but SING SOMETHING TO ME. ANYTHING. GET THIS SONG OUT OF MY HEAD. Curse you, England. I'm glad we revolted.                

COLUMN: Frequencies

Like most of us these days, I need to relax.

2020 has been a bit challenging to say the least. A horrible virus is plaguing our fragile Earth, and for once I don't mean Tom Cruise. Friends of mine have gotten sick and a few of them unfortunately didn't get better. We all yearned for a COVID distraction, but none of us wanted the distraction to be a televised murder in Minnesota. People have taken to the streets in protest, and others have taken to the streets to protest the protestors. Somehow everything's become a political fight and our nation has never been more divided. Oh, and by the way, there's murder hornets, a Saharan dust storm, and bears roaming the Midwest countryside. 

If there truly was ever a time for Calgon to take us away, it's right now.

The other night I found myself enjoying my latest 2020 hobby: insomnia. I've been fighting it occasionally for weeks now. I don't know if it's from the anger, the worry, the frustration, the caffeine, or just the pent-up energy of a day mostly wasted on the couch, but something about bedtime just hasn't been agreeing with me lately. The fastest way to get me sick is to mess up my sleep schedule, and "sick" is a heck of a lot scarier of a word now than it was six months ago.

I've been trying new ways to help fall asleep at night. This week, it backfired and took me down a rabbit hole that kept me up half the night in amazement. 

I got the bright idea to check and see if there were any Youtube clips of sounds & videos to help you relax. I didn't just find a few clips. I found an entire cottage industry of so-called relaxation experts. 

There's multitudes of traditional three-hours-of-a-babbling-brook nature videos. There's creepy homemade ASMR videos, where people film themselves whispering and doing things like eating raw fish on camera, all of which is supposed to fill you with a tingly relaxation -- but I believe people here are confusing "tingly relaxation" with "the heebie-jeebies." There's even an app you can download where boring British voices read boring stories to you boringly, but it didn't help me sleep AND I had to suffer through, I kid you not, the history of lavender. No thanks.

But then I found a new age world I never knew existed: Solfeggio frequencies. Strap in, it's about to get weird.

Solfeggio frequencies are specific oscillating tones of sound that are purported to promote various aspects of body and mind health. They're based on a six-tone musical scale created by an 11th-century monk. In the 1970s, a "doctor" named Joseph Puleo began researching these tones. Supposedly Puleo found sacred numbers and codes in the Bible that, when deciphered using Pythagorean math, revealed specific numeric frequencies that corresponded to this 11th century scale. Puleo claimed that, for instance, listening to "Mi" (as in "do re mi") at precisely 528 Hz promotes healing and mental wellness. "Mi," in fact, is said to derive from the Latin phrase "MI-ra gestorum," or miracle. That's why 528 Hz is considered "the miracle frequency."

Okay, first off, this is fun -- but also bonkers. I am NOT here to rain on anyone's new age parade. I love weird hocum-pocum, and I'm down to try anything. I once attended the annual Psychic & Paranormal Expo in Moline and paid twenty bucks to sit motionless in the center of a crystal pyramid while a white-haired shaman blew a didjeridoo in my face to, you know, fix my chakras or whatever. I am keen on mystical mumbo-jumbo.

But if you ask me, this seems like an especially jumbo bunch of mumbo. Supposedly this ancient scale was used by Tibetan monks to tune their singing bowls -- except the idea of frequencies didn't exist back then, but okay. The original Solfeggio scale was used in everything from Gregorian chants to Mozart's symphonies. After George Frideric Handel died, they found his original tuning fork that he used to compose, and for what it's worth, that tuning fork oscillated at 512 Hz, awfully close to the miracle frequency.

My favorite part of the story comes in 1988, when a biochemist conducted a study that supported the health benefits of the miracle frequency. How did he prove this? Easy. He took vials of human DNA, put them in front of speakers, and blasted them with music. The vials exposed to Gregorian and Sanskrit chants at the miracle frequency absorbed 5-9% more light than the DNA exposed to other musical genres. The DNA exposed to rock music actually deceased UV light absorption, proving once and for all that AC/DC really IS back in black.

I'm a firm believer that the right noise can soothe the savage beast. Anyone's who's been within a half-mile earshot of my car when My Bloody Valentine comes on the stereo can testify to that. Log onto Youtube right now and watch ANY live clip of the band Slowdive playing "Golden Hair" and then try to tell me the power of music can't alter your brainwaves. I once saw Slowdive in concert and had to grasp the railing after every song because it offset my equilibrium so much. They're as loud as a jet engine yet sublimely beautiful. 

Youtube has hours of new age music composed at the miracle frequency, so I gave it a shot. Last night, I went to bed to a video of computer-generated seascapes with a soundtrack that went "wwwwwwwwuuuuuhhhhhhHHHHHHHhhhhHHHHHHhhhhh" for eight hours straight. After one minute, I was relaxed. After twenty, I was pretty annoyed. After thirty, I realized the most miraculous part of the miracle frequency was when you grabbed the remote control and shut it off.

So I dunno. My super scientific thirty-minute test of the miracle frequency is thus far inconclusive, other than proving my working theory that owning a synthesizer and a Youtube channel does NOT make you a master new age musician. I'm still fighting insomnia now and again, but I figured out a trick. Every time I get stressed out, I stop, take a breath, and remember we live in a world where someone somewhere is earning a modest living by cutting up dead people and seeing what happens when you play Bon Jovi to their corpses. There's hope for us all, friends.

COLUMN: Escape to the 80s

I've gotta be honest. When the shelter-in-place order initially came down, there was a tiny part of me that was psyched.

For a guy who revels in laziness, I do an annoying amount of stuff. I write this column. I work in our advertising department. I DJ to a packed dance club every weekend. I work at a friend's retail store. I have a lot of things going on in my life.

The one thing I don't have, though, is enough free time.

Running from job to job while maintaining a modest social life means I'm never home as much as I'd like. As a result, my house is always messy, my cupboards are usually either barren or filled with expired food from the Mesozoic Era, and there's a list of unfinished projects I could show you -- except finishing that list is one of those unfinished projects.

But suddenly there I was, handed a golden opportunity, even if I had to wear gloves and a mask to accept it. By government decree, I had to stay home. Perhaps this was finally the time I needed to whittle down my to-do list.

That was my mindset back in March at least. Here we are in June, a week or so away from Illinois graduating to Stage 4 of reopening, and do you think I've accomplished even ONE of those things on my unfinished list of unfinished projects? NOPE.

Well, okay. I got one thing done.

In my younger and less slothful days, I was a Friday night regular at Bettendorf's Stage 2 teen club. The friendships I made at that crazy club will last a lifetime and the music they played remains the soundtrack that unspools in my brain anytime I find myself in a quiet room.

For years now, friends and fellow Stage 2 alumns have been bugging me to make a mix of all those old-school songs near and dear to our hearts. On the very first week of lockdown, I figured it was just the project to take my mind off toxic diseases and the economic collapse of the free world. Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer would just have to wait -- I had a mix to work out. For nearly two weeks straight, I spent my days in the basement dusting off old vinyl and firing up my turntables. 

In the end, I crafted a three-hour-long megamix of vintage 80s gems I was proud of. (In fact, you can stream it for free right now at mixcloud.com/shane-brown11 if you're so inclined.)

Little did I know, though, that my foray into those classic jams was just the beginning of the nostalgia rabbithole for me. For the past three months, I've pretty much been trapped in the 1980s. 

Pulling out all that old synthpop put me in the mood for more. The next day, I was bopping around the house to Duran Duran. Then came OMD and the Human League. On one sunny quarantine day, I decided it was prudent to go on a country drive blaring Dexy's Midnight Runners to an audience of myself and a few highly confused cows. Every time I reached for something to listen to, it was music recorded some 35 years ago.

And my obsession didn't stop there. I have a DVR currently sitting at 98% capacity, filled to the brim with TV shows I need to catch up on. Instead, what did I decide to binge during lockdown? All eleven seasons of Cheers, which I've probably already seen eleven times over. The Golden Girls, a show I didn't even like IN the 80s. I wasted an entire day watching reruns of Murder She Wrote. I swear to you, if I'd had access to The Love Boat, I probably would've watched it.

The weirdest thing? I didn't even realize I was doing it. I just thought they were songs and shows that fit my mood and sounded entertaining. I wasn't purposely trying to fire up the Way-Back Machine or anything. It just seemed... nice.

For a kid growing up on a farm in rural Galesburg, the 80s were a pretty gentle decade. Watch a show like The Golden Girls and you'll have a couple of chuckles and probably learn a morality lesson by the end of every episode. Listen to 80s radio jams and about the most ribald thing you'll encounter is George Michael wanting your sex, whatever that was supposed to mean. This was a decade where we seriously had popular radio hits telling us we didn't have to take our clothes off to have a good time, we could dance and party all night and drink some cherry wine, uh huh.

Even the murders on "Murder She Wrote" are some of the most polite murders I've ever seen. On today's TV dial, even what passes for bland procedural dramas are usually full of severed heads, serial killers, and stunningly graphic dialogue before the first ad break. Imagine Jessica Fletcher strolling into an episode of "Law & Order SVU." The poor thing would have an aneurysm faster than you could say "Executive Producer Dick Wolf."

Maybe my little nostalgia trip was an attempt to go back to those gentler times. I'm starting to think escaping to the 80s was my subconscious' best effort to flee the assorted civil unrest, murder hornets, and killer viruses that've welcomed us into the not-so-roaring 2020s.

In reality, the 1980s weren't all about walking on sunshine and safety dancing. I seem to recall the 80s having a killer virus of its own, and it wasn't like systemic racism took a decade off or anything. There was also a little thing called the Cold War. Some of those hummable 80s hits are pretty lyrically frightening. "99 Luftballoons" is the most fun you'll ever have bopping around to a song about nuclear annihilation. That was a daily fear back then. I was just a kid in the early 80s, but old enough to remember our school still having "duck and cover" drills. 

Maybe the safety and comfort of my little nostalgia trip had less to do with the 1980s themselves and more with it being the era in which I was a kid. I never cared about the Iran-Contra Affair or the Cold War -- not when there were bikes to ride and video games to play. The only thing that TRULY scared me in the 1980s was the life-sized stuffed St. Bernard my aunt won at the fair and gave me, and my mom wouldn't let me throw it away no matter how maliciously its eyes glared at me all night long. Oh, and then when you finally DID manage to fall asleep, there was always a chance Freddy Krueger would show up and slice you into bits so tiny even Jessica Fletcher wouldn't be able to find them.

So who knows? Maybe dealing with an upside-down world is just a thing we all have to endure from time to troubled time. Maybe one day in 2050, our kids will be sick of worrying about the killer robots or President Baron Trump or whatever the future holds, and they'll go down to their basements and watch reruns of Breaking Bad and listen to Lil Uzi Vert to remind them of simpler, gentler times.

All I know is I need to step out of the 80s and back into the warm viral 2020 sun. Next week, I'll be returning to the DJ booth with guard up and mask donned. If I learned one thing from the 1980s, it's that all we really wanna do is dance with somebody who loves us.

COLUMN: PLUR 2020

One of the TV channels I watch has taken to airing stress breaks. In the middle of their wall-to-wall news coverage of whatever nightmare is plaguing our world this week, they'll suddenly insert thirty seconds of puppies and kitties frolicking in a flower garden. It's probably just filler where an ad would normally go, but it's a nice breather.

We could all use more frolicking puppies and kitties right about now.

It's tough to be the light-hearted columnist in a world where not too many hearts are light these days. 2020 is proving to be a tough year to fix with a few paragraphs about my cats or how much I hate to clean my house (but if you're wondering, my cats remain awesome and my house remains messy.)

For me, the biggest heartbreak in all of this is seeing how divided we've become. Facing problems is hard, but it's harder when you leap on social media only to find some "friend" you haven't seen since high school yelling opinions at you. I'm as guilty of it as anyone else.

Sometimes I just wanna stop and post a picture of a cat to my Facebook page. But I can already envision the comments:

"Aww, what a cute cat."

"CATS ARE TERRIBLE, LIBTARD! #teamdogs"

"They say owning a cat reduces stress levels by 8.5%"

"The WHO just refuted that study."

"The CDC just refuted the WHO study."

"DON'T TRUST ANY STUDIES YOU SEE IN THE MEDIA, SHEEPLE #fakenews"

"Cats matter."

"ALL ANIMALS MATTER!"

"You're a speciesist!"

"Your cat needs a rabies tag."

"VACCINES ARE POISON!"

"THERE IS NO RABIES, PEOPLE. IT'S JUST A BAD FLU!"

"HILARY CLINTON EXPERIMENTS ON CATS IN THE BASEMENT OF A PIZZA PLACE IN NEW JERSEY. #WAKEUP"

By morning, I'd be lucky if Kim Kardashian wasn't hosting a benefit for feline rights or the President wasn't tweeting that my cat is a communist. 

I've always subscribed to the simple premise of being nice to people and wondering why we can't just all get along. Of course, it's probably complacent idealism along those lines that's allowed systemic racism to fester for decades. I get the anger. I understand the tipping points, whether it's witnessing a senseless murder or watching your income dry up while we shelter-in-place. I don't think the answers can be found by torching an Autozone or proudly walking into a crowded room without a mask, but I get the anger. It's palpable and well deserved.

But I swear to you, we can and will get past this. I've seen it before. I've been to places where we all got along without pretense or drama. It's possible. Maybe we just need a good beat.

Most people graduate college and join the work force. I had the bright idea to become a rave promoter.

You remember raves, right? Find an inconspicuous warehouse, pack it with as many kids and loudspeakers as logistically possible, and then blast thumping house music at inhuman volumes from dusk to dawn. For much of the early 1990s, it was my life -- and for a while, it felt like utopia.

Every good movement has its slogan. In the rave community, that slogan was PLUR -- "Peace, Love, Unity, Respect." It was the credo of the scene, and it held true more often than not. No one was turned away from a rave. No one was judged or marginalized -- if you liked house music in the early 90s, you were marginalized enough as is. Raves were a safe space to hang with like-minded weirdos and dance like lunatics without anyone caring.

Out of boredom, last week I hooked up my old VCR and went through a pile of unlabeled VHS tapes in my closet. The very first was footage from a 1994 rave I helped organize in downtown Davenport. We had 1100 people at that party, and watching that tape was even better than frolicking kitties.

We didn't even notice at the time, but it was a sea of diversity. No one cared what race you were. No one cared if you liked boys or girls or if you were a Republican or a Democrat. It was just a big collective of weirdos celebrating each other, their shared love of dance culture, and their shared future early-onset hearing loss (hey, nothing's perfect.)

We had licensed, uniformed security at every event we organized. They were usually really bored. In over 100 events, the worst thing I saw was a yelling match in a bathroom, and strangers had already self-policed the scuffle before we even caught wind of it.

Of course, utopias seldom last, and neither did raves. Like most fads, crowds shrank after a few years. In larger cities, drugs and crime and cops put the kibash to most parties. I'm sure those same issues would have filtered down here eventually had we not retired from party promoting at the wise old age of 24. But those glory days were something special, and I'm proud to have played a part. 

I'm not an idiot -- I know we can't solve racial disparity, airborne pandemics, or political strife with a well-choreographed dance-off. Real life is not the "Beat It" video, which is good because I'm a terrible dancer. But I know we can do better than this. 

At the very least, let's try and inject some PLUR into our lives. We can and should talk about the issues plaguing our world. But we should be able to do it without yelling, looting, doxxing, mask-shaming, trolling, or murdering our fellow humans.

Call me a snowflake if you want. I won't be able to hear you. My ears are still ringing from that party back in 1994.

COLUMN: Scanner Addict

The year was 1987.

Your intrepid columnist had just managed the impossible. Someway, somehow, he had convinced the State of Illinois that he was responsible enough to control a motor vehicle, and he had the shiny new driver's license to prove it. But that was only the first basecamp needed to climb the larger mountain: somehow convincing his notoriously over-protective parents that he was mature enough to take the car out on a Saturday night.

You see, kids, once upon a time, in a world devoid of smart phones, Pokemon Go, and all-night raves, the youth of America had but one ritualistic pasttime on a Saturday night: unnecessary repetitive driving. We called it "cruising the strip." In my hometown of Galesburg, it was a simple course of driving from the McDonalds on Main St. to the other McDonalds on Henderson St. And then back again. And then back again. Over and over and over until we depleted our gas tanks, our curfews, and our fragile ecosystem. And if you were sixteen years old and couldn't hit the strip on a Saturday night? You would just die. It was, like, SO important.

I don't know how I managed to convince my parents, but somehow I pulled it off. That night, I peeled out of my driveway a champion, a triumphant rebel behind the wheel of my 1978 Plymouth Horizon, wood grain paneling against the wind, looking for adventure or whatever came my way. After picking up the requisite carload of friends, it wasn't long before we found ourselves caught in the love embrace between the two McDonalds, yelling at friends and giving others the silent look that said in a glance, "Hey, you're cruising the strip. I am cruising the strip as well. We are super cool and shall live forever."  

It was about this time I happened to pull alongside my friend Aaron, a fellow freshly-minted driver. He revved his engine, as you do when you're a teenage idiot. I revved mine, since I was also a teenage idiot. The light turned green. Suffice to say I won. My prize? A speeding ticket from a kindly Galesburg officer, on my very first night behind the wheel. As it turns out, I wasn't born to be wild. That night, I was born to be grounded.

As I dropped my friends off and headed home, I tried to figure out the best way to break the news to my parents. Should I go with calm and mature? Or should I opt for weeping and mercy? Turns out it didn't matter. My parents were already waiting by the door, arms crossed and judgemental as you'd expect. I should've known better. There was no need to break the news to my parents. The minute that officer called my name over the police radio, he was breaking the news to my grandfather. My folks knew before the ink on the ticket had dried.

Whenever we visited my grandparents' house, us kids had the run of the place. Except, that is, for one desk we couldn't touch. On it sat my grandfather's rather impressive CB radio and police scanner command center. Most nights, he'd sit there for hours, listening to the seedier happenings in and around Galesburg. I never thought one day I'd do the same. Help me, Quad Cities. I may have just become a scanner person.

In the wake of this week's civil unrest, scanner culture has exploded -- and the Quad Cities is no exception. On Monday night, the QC police & EMS feed was the most listened to scanner stream in the country. But MY recent obsession with the local police scanner started before the unrest and heartache of this week. Last month, there was a shooting in my neighborhood. Thankfully it wasn't on my block, but it was close enough to rattle my windows and send me to the basement for a little while.

When I got brave enough to look out, I could see the glow of police lights a few streets away. I'm nothing if not nozy, so I hopped online and listened to the scanner for a bit to see if I could eke any details. The next weekend, I got a text from a panicked friend -- this time it was HER turn to live near a shooting incident. Within minutes, we were BOTH tuned into the scanner feeds, eager for information. Since then, I've listened every evening, and especially with the recent turmoil and tragedy, it's a tough addiction to break.

For a scanner novice like me, though, it's often hard to follow. I don't know a thing about police lingo, and I wouldn't know a 10-4 from a 10-54. One of the easiest ways to listen to our local police is through a stream on Broadcastify.com, a website and app known for its scanner streams. But the QC feed scans through EVERY local police and EMS band at once. It's constantly bouncing from Moline to Davenport to Rock Island to Bettendorf. As you'd expect, this can be a tad frustrating.

The other night, I was trying to follow along with the radio chatter of a high speed car chase that crossed state lines. But every few seconds, it would cut away from the car chase to another city, where some poor officer was responding to a 911 call about a kid throwing a temper tantrum because mom wouldn't let him ride a moped. Now, I realize that everyone's problems are different and that 911 is an invaluable resource for all sorts of emergencies, but at that moment, I found myself seething in contempt for Moped Kid who I've never and most likely never will meet.

Just then, I got a text from a friend. It read "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, JUST GIVE THE KID A MOPED ALREADY."

That's when I realized maybe sitting in front of a police scanner all night isn't the healthiest of hobbies, unless you're (a) the police or (b) our thankless reporters upstairs right now with one ear constantly glued to our newsroom's scanners. At the end of the day, you're pretty much just being a Nozy Nancy eavesdropping on someone's worst day ever. There's a fine line between listening to police scanners for information and listening for entertainment, and that's a line we should never cross.

The next night sealed the deal for me. I hopped on the scanner JUST long enough to hear -- you guessed it -- a friend's son getting pulled over. And yep, I called my friend to let her know. Then I stopped and looked in a mirror to make sure I hadn't COMPLETELY turned into my grandpa. At this rate, it won't be long before I'm putting peanuts in my Pepsi, mixing jelly into my mashed potatoes, and eating peanut brittle without any teeth (my grandpa was an interesting guy.)

I miss him like crazy, and I'd like to think he's up there somewhere with a desktop full of the finest hi-fidelity eavesdropping equipment heaven can provide. As for me? I'm giving the scanner a rest and letting people live their most horrible moments with one less uninvited audience member. Besides, I've got TV to watch. There's a 6-hour marathon of "Cops" starting...  

COLUMN: Mask

Well, just look at that lovely photograph.

Go ahead, soak it up in all its glory. That's me, captured unknowingly by our marketing guru Todd Mizener upon my first day back in the office after two months of self-imposed house arrest. Please, bask in its unbridled majesty. The unholy, unkempt hair. The wrinkled attire. The look on my face that says "I'm super happy to be back in the general public." The fact that if you squint, it looks like I'm wearing an oversized turtleneck and a gold chain rappers would be jealous of.

"Shane: Portrait of a Disgruntled Columnist." Autographed copies available upon request.

I'm so torn on this whole grand re-opening. I can tell you one thing, I'm sick to death of staring at the walls of my house. When I moved in, I thought this place was spacious and homey. After two months of barely leaving the place, it's starting to look I belong on "Hoarders." My only contact with the outside world are boxes of junk from Amazon I keep ordering mostly out of boredom. There's a whole wide world out there I enjoy exploring. I just prefer my wide world a touch less toxic, thanks.

These past months have been an unspeakable nightmare for many. I'm friends with business owners, restauranteurs, bar owners, musicians, and actors, and their lives are coming apart. Either the government needs to step up their game and start supporting them or we need to allow these fine folk to make a living.

But I also don't want to do it if we're turning the world into "Survival of the Fittest." There's not ONE medical organization that I'm aware of that's given the ol' thumbs-up to going about our regular lives willy-nilly — at least not without mitigation, caution, and some new habits. You know where I'm going with this.

If we're going to shirk medical advice and re-open the country (and it's probably time,) the very least you can do is take a couple seconds and tie a mask around your virus-spewing faceholes before you venture out. You need to wear a mask. I need to wear a mask. We ALL need to wear a mask. There's not ONE valid reason not to wear a mask when you're out and about.

There ARE a lot of INVALID reasons. I've been watching them run amok on Facebook every day. This week, for one of the first times ever, I deleted people from my friends list. I snoozed and unfollowed others. It was either that or give myself even HIGHER blood pressure. There's a breaking point, and social media broke mine.

From what I can gather, the non-mask-wearers generally fall into two argumentative camps:

Camp One are the people who spout on about their liberties, the Bill of Rights, the government can't me do this or that, blah blah blah. Those people are 100% right. The government can't make you put a mask around your head when you go out in public. They shouldn't have to. It should be common sense and common decency. Our nation also has a long and proud history of not letting you run around killing people. And if you go out without a mask, there's a chance you could do just that. I don't want to get sick, sure — but I REALLY don't want to get OTHER people sick when I could have prevented it.

That brings us to Camp Two: the well-educated among us who have logged onto Facebook and read some article from some random person saying that masks are pointless. Viruses are tiny and you can breathe them right through a cloth mask. Masks are stupid.

Look, I'm no more a medical expert than your crazy uncle on Facebook. But I'm also lazy as all get out, and that means I've had two months to sit and read all these articles. I've also had two months to read actual news in this very publication. And most medical experts in the world are in agreement that masks help. They're not perfect, but nothing about this pandemic is.

Can the virus get through a mask? You bet, unless you have one of those fancy N95 suckers. If you think a mask makes you impervious, you're dead wrong (hopefully not literally.) But masks aren't recommended to stop you from getting coronavirus. It's to stop you from SPREADING coronavirus if you have it and don't realize it. One of the grossest things I've seen in all this was a news report where they used slo-mo and some kind of UV light to show a sneeze. A single sneeze can send your nasty ick droplets cruising some 26 feet away from your schnozz. But if you sneeze and you're wearing a mask, much of that ick gets stopped in its tracks.

It's like if you throw a bucket of water at a screen door. Sure, a lot of water will get through -- but not ALL of it. And maybe, just maybe, a mask is enough to keep your buddy from ingesting 1000 microns of your cooties, which is what they say it takes for COVID to take hold. In Austria, mask-wearing in public IS the law - and they've had a 90% drop in cases since it happened.

Yes, you can walk into a Wal-mart and find tons of maskless people and their clerks aren't all getting sick. But those box stores are HUGE with enough air circulation to dissipate our collective ick a bit. You might just be safer in a Wal-mart with 200 other people than in a small office with five co-workers and stagnant airflow. Did you hear about the call center in California? ONE guy got 26 of his co-workers sick, and he wasn't anywhere near them. The air circulation in their office sucked and the viral load just hung in the air contaminating people. Maybe if had had a mask on, the outcome might have been different. Maybe not. No one knows for sure. But what can it hurt?

When the virus first came out, there were people on your TV telling you not to bother with masks. But here's the thing. At the virus' onset, there was serious concern that everyone would freak out and buy up masks like toilet paper and there wouldn't be enough supply for our nation's healthcare workers, who need them more than we do. Ergo, medical experts were dissuading Joe Q. Public from wearing them so there'd be enough masks for Dr. Joe Q. Public, MD. But thanks to the hard work of many small businesses around the country, masks are now easily attainable.

In fact, hop online. There's some crazy stylish ones out there. Bands and sports teams are putting their logos on masks as we speak. You can get high fashion masks from elegant brands if you're some snooty haute couture type. You can get a mask that says "Prada" on it to impress your friends -- and if you think they're not selling accompanying satin travel mask pouches for the low price of $186.65, you don't know Prada. If you'd rather go the DIY route, there's an infinite number of tutorials out there to show you how to play Maskmaking: The Home Game.

The truth is, we JUST DON'T KNOW the science behind this 100% yet. That's a GOOD thing. We should count our blessings that crazy dangerous viruses don't roll thru town on the regular. We're inexperienced when it comes to pandemics, thank God. But what's the harm in being a little proactive? If there's even a chance that my wearing a mask could stop me from unknowingly passing the virus on to YOU, it's well worth it to me. It's well worth the knowledge of how bad my breath can be sometimes. Its well worth the elf ears I get from those straps tugging at them. It's well worth the horrible photos Todd Mizener might take of you.

I'm no medical expert, but I'm pretty good at being judgey. And when I see you out in public without a mask, I don't think you're a liberty-loving freedom fighter. I don't think you're taking a stand because someone on Facebook told you that the Illuminati is using masks to control us. I don't think you're an amateur medical expert who knows better. No offense, but I just think you're being a jerk.

COLUMN: Mystery Box

I had it on good authority that the postman always rings twice. As it turns out, most times he doesn't ring at all.

The other morning started the same as most of my 2020 mornings now: me on the couch, nose buried in a laptop, trying to get some work done while cats crawl all over me outraged at my lack of focus on their every feline need. That's when I heard the roar of a lawn mower.

Yes, I pay someone to cut my lawn. Yes, I realize I'm a lazy oaf perfectly capable of doing it myself. But here's the thing. I'm also fully aware of my own ineptitude. If there's a way to mow one's foot off, I'd be the one to figure out how. Plus mowing means dealing with my sworn enemy: nature. Lawn care requires one to care about one's lawn, and I don't care about my lawn in the slightest.

But I also have a couple of hydrangea bushes that need to be trimmed back lest they become an unbridled jungle that could eventually consume all of Rock Island. I needed to tell my lawn guy to attack those bushes, so I opened my front door... and stopped cold.

There, on my porch, was a box. A HUGE box, and its unexpected presence on my porch really DID make me exclaim, "Whuhhhh?"

The smiling arrow on its side immediately informed me it was from Amazon. Last week, I ordered some masks, but if they came in a box THIS size, either they accidentally sent a gross of the suckers or the mask company REALLY over-reached on their "one size fits all" claim.

How it arrived is a total mystery. Whoever delivered it had such stealth it didn't even set off my security camera, which is supposed to activate whenever anyone even LOOKS at my front door. Then again, perhaps it couldn't see anyone looking because of the GIANT BOX in the way.

I looked at the slip. That was my address, alrighty. But it definitely wasn't my name. Now what?

I tried calling Amazon, but their phones were closed due to the pandemic. I checked their website, but none of their Frequently Asked Questions were "what do you do when a human sized box arrives at your door that you didn't order?" I tried UPS and was greeted by the most annoying automated phone system of all time.

"What would you like to do? Press one to track a package, press two to schedule a delivery, press thr--"

"CUSTOMER SERVICE"

"I didn't understand that. Say 'track a package,' 'schedule delivery,' 'bill'--"

"OPERATOR"

"It sounds like you want to speak to an operator. Is that correct?"

"YES"

"I will happily connect you. In order for the operator to better assist you, say 'track a package,' 'schedule deliv --'"

"AAAAARGH!"

If I were to suffer a fatal stress-induced stroke while housebound, would that technically count as dying from COVID-19 complications? I didn't want to find out, so I hung up and instead asked the Facebook hivemind what to do.

Most of my friends told me to just keep the package, or at least open it. Tempting for sure, but in situations like this, I tend to be an annoying do-gooder. Opening someone else's package just felt wrong. Besides, if movies have taught us one thing, it's that mystery boxes usually contain (a) an alien portal, (b) a date with Pinhead, or (c) the head of Gwyneth Paltrow. Hard pass, thanks. The LAST time I stumbled upon a mystery box and dared open it, it was chock full of moldy, maggoty muffins (true story). Lesson learned.

My friends had many theories as to the contents. Many assumed it was my long-awaited life-size Katie Holmes doll. One thought it might actually BE Katie Holmes, a disturbing prospect given the lack of air holes. Some speculated it was full of murder hornets or perhaps a killer robot. I thought I'd never know.

I called UPS a second time and managed to press the right combination of buttons to get through to an ACTUAL human being, who dispatched a truck to pick it up. Meanwhile, all afternoon I was getting texts from friends: "WHAT'S IN THE BOX?!"

Five minutes after the driver retrieved the box, I found out. That's when a knock at the door revealed the sad face of my next-door neighbor. "Did you happen to get a package today?" OH NO. I'd debated asking around the neighborhood, but I didn't want to go door-to-door in a pandemic like Covid Claus. I told her she'd just missed the driver by five minutes and she raced home to call UPS.

"Wait!" I hollered. "I have to ask because I'm nozy and 34 of my friends are texting me. What was in the box?"

"Oh," she said, "it's a vanity."

Hmm. Sort of anti-climactic, yet still better than murder hornets or Gwyneth Paltrow's head. I think I did the right thing, even if it was five minutes too soon.

Truth be told, only one of my friends correctly guessed the box's contents.

"I know what it is," he said on Facebook. "To me, it looks like your next column."

COLUMN: Stimulating My Toilet

Welcome to my Quarantine Diary, Week Number Eleventy-Kajillion and One. In this week's episode: I may have forgotten how to speak English, and life has no purpose. My cats, on the other hand, insist that I still have a primary purpose, and that's to feed them. Their impatient meows are the only thing keeping reality in check, and I suppose I should be grateful.

In the meantime, I continue to find ways to occupy my time. I've begun talking to the characters on TV, to my cats, and the other morning, I carried on a lengthy one-sided political discussion with my toaster. I'm pretty sure I've watched ALL of Netflix, listened to ALL of the music on all of the Earth, and yesterday I played The Sims and got incredibly jealous every time my little Sim people stood within 6 feet of one another. Then I sealed them all in separate rooms and yelled "SEE HOW IT FEELS?!" to my computer screen. It was strangely cathartic.

The good news is that my stimulus check arrived. The bad news is that it's gone already. It literally went down the drain.

We're supposed to use our stimulus checks to keep our needs met while keeping the local economy somewhat afloat. Well, I can attest that mine went to the local economy, alrighto. In fact, it went directly into the hands of the City of Rock Island.

A few weeks ago, I received my quarterly utility bill. I was a couple weeks away from a paycheck, so I put it in my Safe Place to Keep Important Stuff, otherwise known as the dusty pile of papers atop my bookshelf. Then, as we all know, the world basically pressed the pause button. Suddenly I wasn't waiting for my paycheck so much as I was waiting for my stimulus check. On the day of its heralded arrival, I dusted off the paperwork and set about paying bills. But when I opened my utility bill, instead of being greeted with the usual affordable total, I found myself staring at a dollar amount almost four figures deep. Say whaaaaat?

Now, I'll admit to some intense hand-washing over the past few weeks, but nothing that would result in a utility bill over four times the normal amount. I put on my best voice of indignation and called the city to inform them of their obvious clerical error.

"Umm, no," the friendly woman at the clerk's office responded. "Your water usage has spiked. Something's wrong."

Immediately my mind flashed back to when I bought my house. I have an outdoor water spigot with easy access for all the gardening and lawn care that I never do. Upon seeing this, my father INSISTED on putting a shut-off valve to the spigot in the basement. "Otherwise, your neighbors will steal your water!" Now, my folks live out in the boonies where neighborhood water thievery isn't much of an issue. But I was also pretty sure neighborhood water thievery isn't much of an issue in the heart of Rock Island, so I admit to not being too guarded about that shut-off valve.

But here it was, staring me in the face. Clearly someone had been stealing my water. I threw on shoes, gloves, a mask, a full Hazmat suit, doused myself in Lysol and headed out indignantly to see who was stealing my water so I could yell "J'accuse!" from 6 feet away. I spun the outdoor spigot, but nothing. The valve was working. The water was off.

I came back inside, furious and frustrated. And then I heard it. Underneath the roar of the TV, underneath the friendly hum of the air purifier, underneath the sound of the refrigerator and the air conditioner and the impatient meows of assorted cats, I heard it. The very subtle, very quiet hum of my toilet running. And running. And running. Uh oh.

Another thing my dad insisted on upon his first visit to my house was replacing my run-of-the-mill pauper toilet with the royalty of low-flows: a deluxe ultra-quiet behemoth fit for a king — or at least a king's wallet when it develops a leak. A simple internet search revealed the ugly truth: the toilet I have loved, trusted and sat upon for years is notorious for failure. Numerous Youtube videos demonstrate the problem.

As an evolved and knowledgeable journalist of some reknown, you'll have to forgive my complicated tech speak here. When you lift up the back of the toilet, there's a little doohicky that plugs the tank. When you flush, it raises that doohicky to dump the tank water into the bowl. And around that doohicky is a little plastic whatzit that seals the plug. It probably costs about 7 cents to make. And on MY particular model of toilet, this plastic whatzit can develop bubbles. As the bubble grows, it loses its seal and hundreds of dollars of water goes down the drain.

One Youtube video recommended I feel around the plastic whatzit for a bubble. I didn't have to feel. The bubble was sticking out of it like a thousand-dollar zit.

So you're welcome, Rock Island, for my undue yet somehow overdue stimulus. I now know the downside of getting a super-quiet toilet. I also know the downside of quarterly billing, and maybe Rock Island would be wise to alert its valued customers before three months pass when their water usage spikes. For the past week, I've had to turn off the water to my bathroom after every flush.

Thanks to essential workers risking their lives, a replacement whatzit is on its way to me now. People are hoarding everything from Lysol to hand sanitizer to meat. I'm going to start hoarding little plastic whatzits. In the meantime, I think my new strategy is to simply stop going to the bathroom. After all, I'm getting low on toilet paper.

COLUMN: Quarantine Party, Pt. 4

Okay, this is officially starting to get old.

I'm a homebody. If somebody told me I could spend a week at home doing nothing but lounging on the couch watching TV, I'd be the first to sign up. But it turns out its a little less fun when somebody tells me I HAVE to spend a week at home doing nothing but lounging on the couch watching TV. And instead of a week, it's two months. And all the TV kinda sucks and no better shows are coming because all the people who make all the shows are ALSO staying at home doing nothing. This is not ideal.

The only original show left to watch is this one science-fictiony soap opera that's allllways on, and it's SO boring. It's about this dystopian society where an unrelenting virus attacks the world, and the leader of the free world is this orange guy who's only concerned about his re-election chances, and then the rest of the show is just a bunch of people bickering about how wrong and/or right the orange guy is. It's like "Game of Thrones," just with WAY fewer dragons. I don't give it high odds of getting renewed for another season.

I am, however, happy to see that "Days of our Lives" is still thriving. I haven't seen a second of DOOL since college, when it was pretty much required viewing in the Augie student center. I caught five minutes the other day, just in time to see Patch awaken from his coma with amnesia after Kayla operated on his brain to remove the implant that made him think he was Stefano. In other words, it's business as usual in Salem. I'm sure I'll be hooked again soon. Curse you, Stefano!

I can also attest that I've begun holding lengthy one-sided conversations with my cats. I now understand why Grizzly Adams had chats with a bear. I'm pretty sure two of my three cats fully understand what I'm saying -- they're just too aloof to respond. The third just wants food and is deeply irritated that the human keeps hanging out on her favorite daytime sleep spot.

You guys may have noticed a lack of ME in the paper last week. I'd like to tell you I was off on some exotic vacation or doing incredibly fantastic things that would provide weeks of column fodder, but I can't because fun has been cancelled. Truth be told, I was sick. This is not a good position to be in for someone who's already a bit of a hypochondriac living through a global pandemic. In the course of about twelve hours, I went from "I feel a little off" to naturally assuming I was days away from death and pondering who to bequeath my vast fortune of mixtapes and cats to.

Thankfully, it was a bug that (knock on every piece of wood in here) came and went. Three days of fever, chills, and grossness and then fine. Was it COVID? Doubt it. I didn't even have enough symptoms to merit testing. Truth be told, I'm wondering if I didn't give myself food poisoning -- a possibility that seems a little more realistic once I noticed the expiration date on the pickle relish I had up to then been eating with gusto. I am virtually incapable of self survival. And being sick DOUBLE stinks when there's no one to baby you.

What HAS gotten me through, however, are family and friends. My parents had my back when that stimulus check didn't show up as fast as I needed. I've already mentioned my friend Dianna, who's done all my grocery shopping for the past month (as well as a most excellent and appreciated surprise Easter doughnut.) I also need to shout out the Isbells, who sorted me out with an insanely stylish mask -- if you've got to walk around looking like a bandito from a spaghetti western, you might as well do it with some flair.

The best part of the weeks have been Saturday nights, when my closest friends gather together on the internet for solid evenings of socially distant debauchery -- or, in our case, Pictionary. Still, it's good to see the smiles and faces of those I too often take for granted. Life without their companionship is weak at best, so even if we can only muster it via webcam, it's a good hang. Even our friend Chris who moved to Japan years ago has joined our weekly fray -- and in these homebound days, Nagoya suddenly feels about as close as Moline.

There's just been one problem with our online hang. Google thinks one of us is racist.

We've been using Google Hangouts for our little webcam meet-ups, and the other day I decided to fiddle with the settings to see what all I could do while logged in. That's when I discovered Google Hangouts has captioning. If you turn captioning on, it'll try to figure out what your friends are saying and it'll appear in typed print beneath their camera feeds. I thought it was kinda fun, so I turned it on. Sure enough, with about 90% accuracy, Google could understand even our most demented ramblings.

EXCEPT when one of my friends coughed and her microphone caught it. This happened twice the other night. Each time, Google translated it as -- well, as a word that no one should say ever. (Just ask recently fired NASCAR driver Kyle Larson.) For some reason, Google thinks my friend coughs racial slurs. (She doesn't. I promise.) Plus, we were playing Cards Against Humanity at the time, a game that already requires liberal usage of some salty and tasteless language -- but Google's captioning made it WAY saltier than it actually was.

So if someday we all finally emerge to greet the toxic-free dawn of a new day, my friends can all rest assured that I have some screencaps of varying accuracy that could probably get them fired, ex-communicated, and looked down on by civilized society should any of them wrong me. And yes, if you're curious, at one point one of my cats jumped onto the laptop close enough for my microphone to pick it up. And Google duly translated it as "Shane: Meow." So, according to Google: I'm a cat, my friend is a racist, and we're all potty-mouthed heathens.

Still, it's way better than the show with the orange guy. I wish they'd cancel it.

COLUMN: Quarantine Party, Pt. 3

Isolation Diary, Week 3. Or maybe Week 19. I'm honestly not sure. Time has lost all meaning. The other night I went to bed at 5 a.m. and woke up at noon. At Castle Shane, there are no rules. I sleep when I'm tired. I eat when I'm hungry. I haven't stepped outdoors in four days. I think. Welcome to my new normal.

To anyone concerned about my welfare flying solo at home for the foreseeable future, no worries. I have loads of company -- they're just not human. Thankfully, my cats are unaware what's going on in the world, and I'm not sure they'd care even if they knew. They're far too busy doing what they want to do. And what they want to do most is kill each other.

Is this the kind of nonsense that goes on EVERY day when I'm at the office? I was living under the assumption that my cats for the most part tolerated one other. Boy, was I wrong. As you may know from my previous ramblings, I have three feline roommates. Two are the elderly gals I've raised since kittendom. The third is a young vagrant I took in last year after months of well-practiced sad eyes at my back door. Each of them feels strongly that this is THEIR house and the rest of us are uninvited interlopers. 

Co-habitation was a bit of a struggle at first. New Cat (whose true Jellicle name shall never be revealed by me) was used to a life of opportunistic meals before suckering me into room and board, so she'll eat absolutely anything and everything I leave out for ANY cats or humans. This also includes any form of shiny cat toy, which she will disembowel and consume in its entirety. And yes, this was a skill set I only became aware of after finding a litterbox full of glitter and tinsel. Cats are magical.

After a few really intense food fights and some meet-and-greets of varying degrees of success, I thought our house had eventually settled from a warzone into a state of at least resigned acceptance. I'd come home from work to find cats peacefully sleeping in separate rooms, each in their own territories and seemingly tolerant of one another. Over the past three weeks, though, I've realized the only reason I find them asleep when I come home is because they're exhausted from spending all day trying to kill one another when I'm gone. 

It happens like clockwork. Every morning, just around 10 a.m., old Bez (the alpha of my house) gets off the couch, stretches, saunters into the kitchen, and lays down directly in front of New Cat's food bowl, hissing every time the other comes round to eat. She's not protecting what she thinks is HER food -- she eats completely different food from a completely different bowl. Bez is a thinker, and I'm pretty sure she's just playing the long game of trying to starve the new cat into non-existence. I may live with a depraved wannabe murderer.

In the afternoon, all three cats will take up different spots on the sectional while I try my best to work from home. New Cat is big on cuddles, so she usually won't leave my side. Except, that is, for the other day -- when she randomly sat up, gave me an adorable meow, and suddenly ninja jumped across half the couch, landing square on sleeping Bez and pinning her in a move the WWE would be jealous of. Suddenly, both cats were making noises I didn't even know cats were capable of. Let's just say they weren't pleasantries.

Normally this would only be moderately alarming. However, I WAS ON THE PHONE WITH A CLIENT at the time, trying to talk advertising strategies while it suddenly sounded like I was in the tiger pit at Joe Exotic's house.

Working from home just altogether confounds the cats. Usually when I'm lounging on the couch, it's time for attention and skritches. In THEIR minds, the fact that I'm typing away on a laptop computer and talking to advertisers shouldn't alter those plans in the SLIGHTEST. I can't go ten minutes with a curious meow, a complaint meow, or yesterday when Bez just sauntered up and batted my laptop shut on my hands as a less-than-subtle hint that no computer shall ever replace her as the alpha. My new bosses are CONSTANTLY up in my business, hovering around my workspace, and micromanaging every thing I do. 

Earlier today, I decided to reach out to some of our advertisers struggling in this crisis to make sure they didn't need anything. I was half a sentence into the e-mail when I decided to take a brief pause for a coffee refill from the kitchen. I returned to the living room to find New Cat comfortably curled up ON the keyboard -- and somehow, she had managed to hit send. THAT is why one of my favorite advertisers got an urgent message from me today that read, and I quote, "Good morning! I hope this e-mail finds you fzzzzzkweddl"

So that's where things stand -- or, more accurately, that's where things lie sprawled out on the couch. I wish I had the answers, I wish I had a miracle to erase this spring and demand a do-over. I'm just like you -- stuck at home and hoping for the very best. We're going to get through this, come hell or high water -- and we're all pretty experienced at handling high water. Until then, please know that myself, Bez, Isobel, and New Cat wish you all a very good morning, and we hope this column finds you as fzzzzzkweddl as possible.    

COLUMN: Quarantine Party, Pt. 2

Well, here we are. Yet another missive from the International House of Fear, Paranoia, and Exceptionally Good Music — otherwise known as MY place, lockdown style. My thoughts are about as disjointed as the world at large, so forgive me if this column sways from here to there at the drop of a well-sanitized hat.

Day Five. That was officially when cabin fever set in for me. Being an only child who grew up in the country far away from anyone else my age, I've always been rather skilled at chilling out by myself. I'm normally an indoors person as well, so the thought of a few days of rest and relaxation at the crib didn't bug me too much. In a way, this social distancing stuff is fairly ideal for me — except for the nagging fact that anyone or anything I touch could be toxic, so fun times. I have friends and it sucks not to see them, but I also have a phone and know how to use it. I'm good with social distancing.

Total quarantine, though? That took five days for me to officially be sick of. That's the afternoon I reached my fill of staring at the same four walls (or, more realistically, the same one television screen.) I stood up, stepped outside my door to remind myself there really WAS a world out there, and walked around the block. It felt good. Really good, honestly. It also felt a tad bit apocalyptic, as I didn't see ONE other human being outside. We ARE still allowed outdoors, right?

How paranoid am I? Well, considering how just a few minutes ago I used a sanitary wipe to sanitize my container of sanitary wipes, I'd say I've pretty much crossed the threshold into pure anxiety disorder. There isn't a container of food in my house that hasn't been wiped down with some toxin-killing substance that's probably toxic in its own right. This is not the ideal way to live.

Public Shout-Out No. 1: My friend Dianna Saelens. Dianna works for the Rock Island/Milan School District and is one of those essential people on the front lines of helping families and their kids deal with staying-in-place. She's also done all my grocery shopping for the past week because I'm a big scaredy-wimp. It's completely unnecessary and appreciated beyond belief, and she deserves a great big hug, which I fully intend to deliver sometime, say, mid-August or so.

Public Shout-Out No. 2: All the area musicians out there, but especially Chuck Murphy, who's been holding nightly solo gigs and chats from his garage that have been keeping many of us sane. There's a ton of musicians like Chuck out there who are currently gig-less and income-less. MANY of them are on the internet right now doing shows for free and taking online donations. If you get some time, and that's one thing we all seem to have an abundance of at the moment, be sure to check them out and support them if you can. Art has no quarantine.

Public Shout-Out No. 3: All the DJs. Have you ever wanted to hit a club but were too afraid you wouldn't fit in? Ever curious what this "EDM" thing is your kids talk about? When you lock a music nerd in their home with no toys except a record collection and a live stream, it turns out magic happens. MANY of our best club and bedroom mixmasters are hitting the internet nightly to entertain us with nonstop beats and fun. Get on Facebook and find them. Rachel Hagen, aka DJ K Yung; Joshua "DJBuddha" Smith; and all the gang at the QC EDM Facebook group are just SOME of the local talent serving up dance floor decadence almost nightly. You can even stream some of my quarantine mixes at mixcloud.com/shane-brown11 if you're so inclined. Tune in and dance like no one's watching you, because for once, no one is.

Which is more than can be said for me. I've long been gifted at finding new and exciting ways to make a total fool of myself in public. It turns out this holds true even when I'm trapped in my house. As you guys may have guessed, I'm opting to burn some vacation time through this crisis and hunker down at Shane HQ for a bit. But earlier today, our office held an employee webinar to unveil some new tech we're implementing to help our advertisers. I didn't want to miss out, so I logged on using the a company laptop they loaned me while I'm out of the office.

I had yet to use this computer, and it turns out it didn't have the right software for a webinar. This meant I had to fiddle around, quickly install the right program and get logged into the webinar with no time to spare. For a half-hour or so, I was online with some 70 other employees from different papers across the country. The webinar was informative and should allow our employment advertisers to reach even more job-seekers, so yay!

But then the webinar ended. That's when I minimized the screenshare window and saw the OTHER window I hadn't noticed before — a window displaying everyone who was in the meeting, including me. What I DIDN'T know was the new laptop I was using had a VIDEO CAMERA on it. A camera that was ON and broadcasting the whole time. So imagine if you will a professional webinar full of professional salespeople in professional attire in their professional offices — and then one dude sprawled out on his couch in a ratty t-shirt and unshowered hair, laying there munching on Pop-Tarts while cats crawled over him the whole time. You can take a guess as to which one I was. It is frankly only by divine miracle that I was wearing pants.

So if nothing else, take solace that our sales team in Bismarck, N.D., now likely thinks the sales team in the Quad-Cities is officially a bunch of freaky-deakies. And they probably wouldn't be wrong. But if we've got to be stuck at home, why not do it in style? Plus I have Pop-Tarts and they don't, so nanny-nanny boo-boo.

Stay safe, all. Best wishes and bountiful supplies of toilet paper to you all.

COLUMN: Quarantine Party, Pt. 1

It's a rough time to be the guy who normally writes silly columns. There's not a whole lot of silly in the world right now.

Like many of you, I'm hunkered down at home for the foreseeable future. For the time being, it's just me and my cats trying to stave off an army of microscopic invaders. For all I know, they've already crashed the party. As fast as this pandemic's moving, by the time this column runs, it wouldn't surprise me if the virus had sprouted teeth and a hunger for human kneecaps. Anything's possible at this point.

But inside the fear and the worry and the stress, there are lessons to be learned. For instance, I've learned two important things over the past week: 1) I am an old fuddy-duddy; and 2) People, at least many of us, are quite stupid.

I'm well aware that I'm a giant nerdy man-boy who can't make eye contact for more than a second. But the Shane I've created in my brain is a hip, somewhat happening, occasionally counter-culture voice bringing together the generations with wit, insight, and a radiating coolness respected by one and all. At least that's what I tell myself.

But last weekend, I wasn't cool. I wasn't happening. Saturday night, the only hip bone in my body was the one I was using to quickly pivot 6 feet away from you.

I moonlight on the weekends, working as a DJ at dance clubs. It's not just a hobby; it's a life choice. It is the air that I breathe. But last weekend, it was also the air that HUNDREDS of other people breathed, and that's where the fear kicked in.

There's nothing I love more than spinning records, but I have to be honest — I didn't want to work on Saturday night. Important people with lab coats had been on my television for days telling everyone to stay home. But I also didn't want to lose my job, so I had to be there.

No worries, I told myself. Experts and governors were telling people to stay in. Surely crowds would be thin, and common sense would prevail, no? No, indeed. Saturday night, our club was at government-sanctioned capacity from the moment I walked in to the moment I left. The dance floor was awash with people less than 6 inches apart, let alone 6 feet. Absolutely no one seemed to care about the looming crisis.

I, on the other hand, was a wreck. I'm the guy in the DJ booth who's supposed to be making the party happen. Just like Alicia Bridges, I love the nightlife and I like to boogie on the disco raHAAAAAOHHHYAY. I am all in when it comes to DJ-ing. But that night, I was mixing more hand sanitizer than records. At one point, I pulled out my phone, took a picture of the epic dance floor carnage I had single-handedly created with my blazing beats, and then immediately sent that photo to my mother with a text that said, "What are today's kids THINKING?" I hate to say it, but I may be becoming (gasp!) mature.

I'm sure some of you probably blame the bars and clubs for staying open on St. Pat's weekend despite the warnings on TV. I don't. I've worked in clubs for decades. The people who own those joints, and especially the people who work tirelessly in them, depend on that income. I don't blame them for staying open. But the people who packed those clubs? That was just foolish.

But part of me understands. I was a twentysomething once, and twentysomethings think they're invincible. I spent a good chunk of my 20s as a rave promoter. I was the guy responsible for your kids wearing baggy pants and staying out till sunup dancing to house music. One unlucky cop once drew the short straw of having to break up one of our parties at 4 a.m., only to be met by a snotty know-it-all Shane, who pulled out a copy of the Rock Island code book and demanded to know which ordinances we were breaking. Sometimes you really DO have to fight for your right to party.

But it was just the beginning of the cavalcade of lunacy we've seen over the past week. On Sunday, I went to a store and saw a dad dragging his open-mouthed, coughing child by the hand and scolding, "Don't touch anything! You're SO sick!" On Monday, people were jostling to grab a roll in the toilet paper aisles. By Tuesday, some shelves were bare.

And now we've come to this — biological house arrest. Much of our country has now been put in time-out because we don't know how not to breathe on one another. People are finally starting to get it. Or so I thought until I went on Facebook.

I only made it through the first 20 or so posts on my feed. Four of those 20 were people saying, "I'm soOoOoO bored! Who wants to come hang out?" THAT'S NOT THE POINT OF SOCIAL DISTANCING. IT ISN'T SOCIAL DISTANCING WHEN YOU'RE INVITING PEOPLE OVER. If you're incapable of spending a single day in your home alone, then you have way bigger problems than a virus, friends. People were excited when an app came out that lets you watch Netflix at the same time your friends are watching Netflix, and a little window pops up on your computer so you can chat about the Netflix you're watching simultaneously.

Maybe it's the only child in me speaking, but come on, people. You call it social distancing, I call it a typical weeknight. Work on a project. Read a book. Watch a movie. Play a video game. Pet a cat. Or, if you're like me, reorganize your mp3 directories so when you can resume DJ-ing again, you will tear up the dance floor with the grace, poise, and finesse of the twentysomething you still yearn to be.

I don't have the answers. I'm just like you, housebound and full of worry. But if we all do our part, we'll see the other side of this. In the meantime, I have a wicked DJ set planned for my cats tonight.