COLUMN: New Cat

I don't often write column sequels. But I also don't often have days like the one I experienced last week.

If you're a regular visitor to this nook of the newspaper (and thanks if you are,) you might remember last week when I told my tale of Shane's Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day. It was just like any other normal workday, except I woke up in a foul mood, pretty much hated everyone and everything, and decided it was a jolly time to try one of those Impossible Whoppers at Burger King, which immediately turned the day into sunshine and roses and made me swear off meat for life.

Or not.

Truth be told, the burger was better than expected, other than causing my stomach to make a delightful array of odd noises all afternoon as it figured out how to digest this foreign soy invader. Still, I couldn't quite shake the bad mood. As it turned out, I needed help to do that -- help that would come unexpectedly a few hours later.

I have long been a sucker for anything with four legs, sad eyes, and a well-timed meow. I share my living space with two cats who have graciously allowed me to house them, feed them, and see to their every need. But at any given time, I also have anywhere from 1-8 stepcats, who long ago realized that showing up at my back door with big eyes and timid meows usually results in a bowl of food their way.

Rock Island is rife with feral and stray cats, and I'm pretty sure most of them know my house. I'm an easy mark, or at least I used to be. A few years ago, one sad kitty started dropping by every night for a meal. Then it started bringing a friend. And another friend. But one day when I opened my back door to find no fewer than seven raggedy alley cats impatiently awaiting dinner, I closed up shop on Cafe Shane. Well, for a while.

I've recently had a new visitor to my back door. I first saw her tiny little frame last fall, timidly slinking around the edges of my yard. When I surprised her on my steps one day, I did what any normal grown adult would do: I looked her square in the eye and went, "Meow?" To my surprise, her tail perked up, she marched right over, and meowed back.

Thus began our long friendship. It didn't take long until I gave in and started feeding her. But this cat is no ordinary stray. She'll carry on full conversations with you. She'll ignore the food in favor of skritches and a lap to jump in. Her purr is so loud I can hear it from across the yard. But when the weather got cold, she disappeared for the winter. "Awesome," I thought, "she has a home somewhere." But as soon as spring sprang, she was back.

All summer long, this cat has been living in my yard. No matter the day or time, you can find her lurking nearby. I get home from work, she's on my back steps. I get back from a DJ gig at 4 a.m., she's there. I leave for the office first thing in the morning, she's under foot. Maybe she DOESN'T have a home? When I stepped out a couple weeks ago and found her politely sitting there in the middle of a rainstorm drenched to her little kitty bones, I decided it was time for action.

So last week, I put a collar on her with a day-glo note that said, "READ ME! Is this your cat? She's been visiting me and I want to help if she doesn't have a home. Call me!"

That brings us to my Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day, when I came home from work to find her on my back steps, still wearing the collar I'd put on her days before. No one saw the note. No one called me. It was fixing to rain. There was no better time to act.

So I took her to the vet to get some answers. She's definitely a she. No micro-chip, but she's been spayed -- if she's not somebody's cat, she probably once was. But the vet also said she has several broken teeth, which is the sign of a cat who's led a hard outdoor life. Best of all, the tests came back negative and she didn't have any toxic cat heebie-jeebies.

So, as I type this, I have a new houseguest. The vet wants me to quarantine her for a couple weeks to make sure she doesn't have any lingering respiratory issues, so I've turned my bedroom into a makeshift kitty hotel. I'm still desperately trying to find out if she has a home -- I've put flyers around the neighborhood, ads in the paper, and posts on social media. If you or someone you know in Broadway/Longview Rock Island is missing a kitty, e-mail me.

But if no one claims her, I might just have a new roomie. The key word is "might." She seems cool with the arrangement, but my other houseguests appear less than enthused. She doesn't have any cat cooties, but she was providing transportation services to a wayward family of fleas, so now all three cats had to get flea treatments and stink to high heaven. And I won't gross you out, but there's been some tummy issues. Let's just say my new friend gets a little less cute every time I have to clean her poop off my WALLS. Ugh.

So yeah, what started as a Very Bad Day ended with me getting a new roomie. If she has an owner, hopefully I can find them. If not? Time will tell. But there's no bad mood a purr can't fix.

Or so I thought. Wait, isn't this crazy day OVER yet? Nope. Part 3 next week.   

COLUMN: Impossible Whopper

Today I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

Okay, that's a lie. I didn't wake up on ANY side of the bed. I fell asleep on the couch watching TV. The bed had absolutely nothing to do with the lousy mood I've found myself in all day, but I want to blame something, so j'accuse, cursed bed!

From the moment I was greeted by the shrill tones of my alarm clock, I've wanted to take a mulligan on the day. Once upon a Shane, I would've most definitely switched the alarm off and been asleep before my head hit the pillow. But those days were called "college," and they're long gone. Adult Shane has a job and responsibilities and things to do regardless of random mood swings.

So instead I sighed deeply, grumbled something incoherently at a passing cat, and got ready to face the yucky day ahead. And, as is always the case whenever I find myself in a bad mood with a short fuse, people and places and things began queueing up to test my patience.

At least three drivers cut me off on the way to the office. I got stopped by a train. The woman ahead of me in line at the gas station chose that exact moment to purchase FIFTY lottery tickets -- and with my luck, she probably won. The other woman in line looked at me and then suddenly covered up her hand as she entered her PIN number at the register as though I were a Nefarious Dude Up To No Good -- then again, I'm sure the scowl I was sporting would have frightened anyone at that moment.

At the office, my co-workers (who are all honestly lovely people) accidentally did everything to get on my last nerve, from chomping on butterscotch candies to, well, breathing weird. Or breathing normally. I've never noticed my co-workers breathing before. But today? Suddenly I did, and I wanted them all to stop their needless breathing immediately. Clearly, I was in a rotten mood.

A perfect time, then, to tackle a topic I've been meaning to for weeks. On my lunch hour, I went straight to Burger King to try their much-touted vegetarian creation: an Impossible Whopper. My logic was infallible: Nothing could make my day any worse, not even a patty of soybeans pretending to be meat.

I've actually been curious about the Impossible Whopper for some time. I just assumed it got its name because it's impossible to make soy taste good, let alone taste like a burger. Still, I wanted to give it a shot. I've never met a burger I didn't like. But I've also never met a burger without the meat. But if I can give my arteries an occasional break from non-stop red meat infusion, I might just get to live a little longer. So I summoned up all my courage, pulled through the drive-thru, saw a menu full of hundreds of delicious things, and instead proudly ordered a bag full of (shudder) vegetables. Or legumes. Or whatever the hell this thing masquerading as a "burger" is.

I'm no food critic, but here's my take on it. First, there's the look. Honestly, it's kind of impressive. The patty has the right color. This is due to something called "soy leghemoglobin," which I believe is science-speak for bean blood. It gives the patty a brown-pink hue that legit looks like beef. That said, the patty's also thin and a little too unnaturally uniform. It's a perfectly round disc of whatever-the-heck-it-is that clearly says, "This did not come from a cow."

I did my best to just unwrap the thing and bite into it without judgment like it was any other Whopper. From a texture standpoint, it sure felt like digging into a burger. But I've got to be honest, the first taste that registered was definitely not-a-burger. It's a savory flavor, but not a beef flavor. Epic fail, I thought.

But only for a second. Because right after that flavor hits, its replaced by everything else a burger should taste like: ketchup, mayo, pickles, mustard. Grilled deliciousness. And the more I ate, the less I registered the not-a-burger taste. Maybe I just had to get used to it. After a few bites, I was pretty much okay with the thing. I still wouldn't call it a burger. But it's enough like a burger that I absolutely didn't mind it.

We as a society have a love-hate relationship with food that is bad for us. We don't call it "unhealthy," we call it "decadent" or a "guilty pleasure." Whenever we learn that some food item is slowly killing us, we don't stop eating it. We just look to science to make a healthier, less scary version of it. Our store shelves are stocked with diet sodas, almond milk, low-sodium salt, and whatever laboratory miracle "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" is.

A red meat diet is not good for you. So should we abandon burgers altogether? Or should we be happy there's a fairly-okay meat-less burger option out there? It reminds me of NBC's "The Good Place," when Michael the Architect attempts to explain why the afterlife is packed with frozen yogurt shops. "There's something so human about taking something and ruining it a little so you can have more of it."

Is the meat-free Impossible Whopper better tasting than a Whopper? Nope. But it's not awful, either. If you're the kind of person who can eat frozen yogurt and pretend it's ice cream, you can probably eat this and pretend it's just as good as a Quarter Pounder. And let's be real -- anything can taste good if you cover it in enough mayo, ketchup, and pickles. The whole thing was better than expected, and almost enough to turn my day around.

As for my bad mood? Well, a few hours later it got a infinitely better. And then infinitely worse. More on that next week.

COLUMN: Youtube

Everyone needs a hobby. I've got a few.

I love music. I love driving around aimlessly and seeing new places. I go to movies, restaurants, and concerts. I like auto racing. I like spending time with friends, listening to podcasts, and playing with cats.

But this past month, I've been nursing an injured foot that's turned me into even more of a hermitic couch-dweller than usual. For a while there, my biggest hobby was playing frostbite roulette with an icepack. That's when I developed a new passion: Youtube. Yes, in front of me sits a television capable of receiving 236 channels programmed by, written by, and starring people whose sole job is to entertain me -- while I instead choose to watch random snots with GoPros filming their version of "entertainment." (Spoiler alert: most of the time, it's not.)

The days of burying time capsules for future generations is over. Instead, I hope there'll be an archive of Youtube clips somewhere. That way, our children's children's children can look back, examine the evidence, and come to the natural conclusion that life in the 2010's consisted mainly of makeup tips, dumping ice over your own head, dancing to Drake, and watching other people play video games.

Thanks to the miracle of Youtube, you can watch the new Billie Eilish video. Then you can watch other people watching the new Billie Eilish video. Then you can watch Billie Eilish watching other people watch the new Billie Eilish video (seriously). What's HAPPENED to our world?

But Youtube really is amazing. You name the topic, there's channels and clips for it. If you want to watch lizards, there's a channel for you. If you want to watch Elizabeth Warren, there's a channel for you. If you want to watch a guy tell you that Elizabeth Warren is secretly a lizard working with the Illuminati to hide the fact that the Earth is flat, there's a channel for you. There's videos to love, videos to hate, and videos you love to hate. But what does Youtube have to say about OUR neck of the woods?

I've fallen down some deep online rabbitholes before, but never had I attempted what I just did: an entire evening of searching Youtube for "Quad Cities," "Davenport," "Moline," etc. The results were staggering, and I've learned much.

To be precise, I've learned that:

• Way too many people own drones. I've seldom seen drones flying around the Quad Cities, but it's clear they are. In fact, Youtube is home to dozens and dozens of soundless scenic aerial videos shot from drones flying above our downtowns, bridges, and flooded rivers. And they're all super duper boring. The only fun thing is trying to date the videos by whether or not you can see my car parked in the lot of our old downtown Moline office. I miss that place.

• People like trains waaaay too much. Look, I get it. Trains are cool, I guess. They're a vital part of our nation's history and infrastructure. They were also my dad's employer and a vital part of my financial well-being. But I don't really get the appeal of standing next to railroad tracks filming every car of a seventeen-minute-long coal train, let alone watching someone else's video of it. If you're into trains like I'm into music, you're as weird as me. But I'm also kind of jealous of you railfans out there. When I get stopped by a train, I'd love to feel joy and fascination instead of my usual response, which is to swear like a sailor and make exasperated sighs to no one at all.

On a side note, there's also an alarming number of videos out there of people sneaking onto freight trains and filming themselves free-riding to who-knows-where. This is just especially stupid. For one, here's a pro tip: when committing a crime, you should probably switch your camera to the "off" position. I'm all for the occasional act of rebellion, but if you think freighthopping is cool, I'll let my dad tell you the story about how he once had to helplessly watch a freeloader get decapitated. Use your head, don't lose your head, people.

• Fifteen years from now, there's going to be a lot of Quad Citians REALLY embarassed that their parents put their dance recitals online for all to see.

But I also found some real gems.

Search Youtube for "Davenport police" and you'll find a promo video from 1965 showing off the cutting-edge police technology of the time (radios! meter maids!) as well as some amazing shots of yesteryear Davenport.

I stumbled into a series of videos from street evangelists ministering and scolding Quad City pedestrians and passersby. To each their own, and I'm all for freedom of speech and religion, but they all come off a little self-righteous and mean-spirited to me. But then I discovered that there's another street evangelist in Oregon who takes issue with the street evangelists in the Quad Cities and there's a whole series of response videos and a Biblical battle royale I never knew existed. Fascinating stuff.

I've been at it for hours. I've seen everything from rap battles to cemetery tours. I've seen tornados in Davenport and UFOs over Moline. But I also found a clear winner - my favorite local video on all of Youtube. It's simply called "Cruisin' in Davenport" uploaded by a user called "OLDSCHOOLNEVERDIES". It has 546 views - well, now proudly 547. And it's just a fixed camera on the dash of what I believe to be a vintage Lincoln Town Car as it drives around the Quad Cities at night blaring all 6 minutes and 48 glorious seconds of the vintage disco/funk jam "First Time Around" by Skyy. And that's only one of several inexplicable videos of the same car night driving around the QCA unapologetically pumping amazing disco ear candy. Dare I say, in one of the videos, he drives right past my house.

We all need hobbies to cope with and avoid the stresses of everyday life. But my life is a LOT less stressful just knowing that somewhere as I type this very sentence, an anonymous disco avenger is out cruising our streets making the Quad Cities a whole lot funkier. If you're reading this, OLDSCHOOLNEVERDIES, please know that if you ever need a co-pilot in that sweet, sweet ride, I'm always available. Forever in disco, your funky pal Shane.

COLUMN: Stage 2

Last week in these pages, I offered my take on the ideal Quad City travelogue -- the things I'd want to show off to a QC newbie to welcome them to our neck of the cornfields.

Of course, it was an incomplete list. I could name-drop and shout-out my favorite things in the Quad Cities for days. If I were really showing off the area to someone unfamiliar, I'd ask them how much time they had. If I could swing it, I'd have Roald Tweet wow them with history. I'd have Kai Swanson lead them on a guided tour of Augie. I'd have Patrick Adamson drag them onstage. I'd have Jon Horvath pour them a beer. I'd take them to the Freight House Farmer's Market and Mercado on Fifth. It'd probably be easier to make a list of places I wouldn't take them.

But I can't take them to my favorite Quad Cities landmark, because it no longer exists. The building that quite possibly had the greatest impact on my life is little more than dust and distant memories these days. For a few brief years in the late 1980s, though, it was pretty much the center of the universe. I'd only visit once a week, but it's the spot where I made life-long friends and pretty much learned what I wanted to be when I grew up.

The Quad Cities Waterfront Convention Center in downtown Bettendorf is a majestic structure we should all be proud of. But when I look in the direction of that building, I don't see a convention center. I see what used to stand there: an unassuming, run-down, multi-use office space that looked like nothing special from the street. But if you were one of the cool kids, you knew to drive around to the back. THAT was how you got to Stage 2, the Quad Cities legendary under-21 teen nightclub.

How big of a deal was Stage 2? Well, I was there almost every Friday night for the better part of four years, and so were most of my friends. I wasn't even a full-time Quad Citizen at that point, so many of those Fridays involved driving up from Galesburg and carried on into my college years at Augie. My college friends oft spent their Friday nights at frat parties or out test-driving their fake IDs. As for me? I had overage friends with fake IDs showing they were UNDER 21 in order to sneak into Stage 2, where the most hardcore thing you could chug was Pepsi.

WHY was it such an important place to so many? I don't think kids today would understand.

I help out at my friend's record store from time to time, and I'm constantly flabbergasted to see what kids bring to the counter. The other day, a girl walked up with CDs from Tool, Taylor Swift, and Lizzo in one buy. "I listen to all kinds of stuff," she said with a smile. With streaming audio and easy access to all kinds of music, today's kids are a lot more worldly in their musical choices.

When I was a kid, your musical taste defined you. Especially growing up in Galesburg, it seemed everybody was either a Top 40 fan or a metalhead. Me? I was a socially awkward weirdo with a penchant for alternative left-of-center new wave music. As a hopeless square peg, I suppose it was natural for me to gravitate to dour tunes made by pasty-faced Brits who spoke to the loners, rebels, and weirdos of the world. Stage 2 proved I wasn't alone, and suddenly I found myself trying to fit in with other misfits. Saturdays at Stage 2 were for the Top 40 crowd, but Fridays were ours. Every weekend, the dancefloor would fill with goths, punks, gays, misfits, and freaks convinced (often accurately) that we were better than everybody else.

Somewhere along the way, we earned the monicker "corn chips," but nobody really ever knew how or why. (The glossary at inthe80s.com says: "Cornchip (noun.) Started off meaning a punk or new wave look. Later, any slightly avant-garde fashions, hair, or music. Mainly Illinois/midwest.") You may have had Bon Jovi. We had The Cure and Depeche Mode and a slew of lipstick-smeared bands of decidedly UN-merry men. You rocked out to Guns n Roses. We cried along with Morrissey & The Smiths. Nowadays in his old age, he's just kind of a bitter (and arguably racist) old man, but in his heydey, Morrissey was the only rock star who understood. He sang our woes and we loved his unconditionally (Sample lyric: "There's a club if you'd like to go, you could meet somebody who really loves you. So you go and you stand on your own, and you leave on your own, and you go home and you cry and you want to die."

Were we better than everyone else because we wore black and claimed to see through society and all its trappings? Heck no. Every Friday at Stage 2 was like living a bad Afterschool Special except with a MUCH better soundtrack. For a group of people so sure of our intellectual superiority, we were rife with all the stereotypical angst, drama, and trappings of teen life. When the DJ would throw on a slow song, you could count on at least three people running to the bathroom in theatrical tears over whatever the daily drama was. It was our real-life teen soap opera, and I wouldn't trade those years for anything.

I doubt you could pull off opening a teen club these days. It'd probably just be a sea of underage twerking and worries about weapons at the door. That's a shame, because Stage 2 was the very best of my teen years. Its the sole reason I spend my weekends DJing in clubs to this day. It gave me lifelong friends I couldn't imagine being without.

I'm supposed to be all grown and mature and wise nowadays. But sometimes I still feel like that awkward loner. Sometimes it still seems like Morrissey is the only one who understands me. Sometimes I'd just like to be in a room full of weirdos dancing like our lives depended on it. Stage 2 may be gone, but it'll always be a Quad City landmark to me.

COLUMN: Travelogue

Sometimes -- but not often -- I can be a (gasp) nice guy. Don't tell anyone, I've got a rep to maintain.

We've got a new manager at work. He comes to us from a far-off distant land called Peoria. Soon he'll procure some real estate, move his family up here, and begin the long and arduous process of becoming a Quad Citizen. Until then, he's living out of a hotel and commuting home on the weekends.

I couldn't imagine the difficulties of a temporary arrangement like that, but I suppose I've got SOME idea. I spent my first years here living in a dorm room and commuting back to Galesburg to see my family. The tedium of the I-74 stretch between here and Galesburg is barely tolerable. Double it and you're in Peoria. The last time I drove from here to Peoria, a pothole made mincemeat out of not one but TWO of my tires. I feel his pain.

Regardless of where you hail from, it'd be a little intimidating to be stuck in a hotel room trying to make sense of a strange town, let alone four strange towns across two states while the main artery connecting them all is under attack. Welcome to the Quad Cities: Land of A Thousand Detours.

So I, being the aforementioned nice guy that I am, offered to take him out, drive him around, and show him all the important things he needs to see and know about our Quad Cities.

Okay, so maybe it's less about me being a nice guy and more about me trying to suck up to the new boss. But I remember what it was like arriving here my freshman year at Augie, not knowing a soul or how to get from Point A to Point B. I'd get lost on the daily. The first time I accidentally turned onto Arsenal Island, I had a panic attack assuming I was trespassing on a military installation. One time I got lost, crossed the Rock River, and thought Milan was Iowa. I needed a buddy (or at least a GPS) back then, and if I can help somebody make heads or tails of this place now, I'm happy to.

I have no idea if he'll take me up on my offer, but it got me thinking. If you had the opportunity to introduce a new arrival to the Quad Cities, what would you show them? I started daydreaming about my optimal Quad Cities travelogue, and I think I've got the basics down pat:

• This wet part here is called the Mississippi River. It flows north to south, except here where it flows east to west because the Quad Cities is cooler than physics. Oh, and except in spring, when it flows pretty much any damn place it wants. You DO own a pair of waders, right?

• This little boat is called the Channel Cat. It's a leisurely way to see the river. It's also currently the fastest means of crossing it.

• Okay, this is 12th Avenue. Except in East Moline, when it's 30th Avenue. And in Silvis, when it's Crosstown Avenue. Don't worry, you'll get used to it.

• Alright, see this big abandoned lot? Once upon a time, it was Watchtower Plaza. Then Rock Island turned into a field in hopes that magically a Wal-Mart would appear. We're still waiting.

• This is called a pizza. Yes, I realize how flat it is. Yes, I know there's enough cheese to clog the arteries of 3-5 fully grown adults. Yes, I realize it's cut into rectangles. Just shut up and eat it. Then you'll understand.

• Speaking of food, this place on your right serves the Quad Cities' most cherished culinary treat. That's right, it IS just cheese and beef poured over hash browns and toast. You got a problem with that?

• This is Harrison Street. Say, you don't happen to own a truck that's taller than 11'8", do you? Why am I asking? No reason...

• Here we have Moline's Riverside Cemetery. Did you know it was built by the "Father of the Skyscraper"? Neither did I til I just read it on Wikipedia. Now, get out of the car and go walk around that grave three times counter-clockwise while chanting "Nothing runs like a Deere." You'll either summon the ghost of John Deere or give me an awesome photo opportunity.

• Speaking of our ghostly friend, here's the John Deere Pavilion in downtown Moline. Inside you can learn all about the man, his innovative company, and the science behind modern agricultural equipment. Or you can just climb onboard a combine the size of New Hampshire and yell "VROOM!" while you pretend to be a farmer. Either way, it's culturally enriching.
 
• This here is the crown jewel of the Quad Cities and sums up everything I love about this crazy town. Behold the majestic downtown Davenport Skybridge that connects nothing to nothing. Let's say you want to cross River Drive here. You could either wait thirty seconds for this stoplight to change... OR you could climb five stories, walk across a nausea-inducing psychedelic light show, and climb back down. Ta-da! The convenience it affords us all is priceless. Actually, no, the convenience it affords us is apparently worth $7 million dollars, because that's how much it cost to build. What can I say? When we connect nothing to nothing, we do it in STYLE. 

• Oh, and here's some chocolate and ice cream and an art museum and a ballpark and a record store and a bar with video games and a college and a university and eleventy different microbreweries and parks and coffee shops and concert venues and antique stores and festivals and neighborhoods and some of the nicest people you'll ever meet.

Welcome home.