COLUMN: Best of 2019 - Music

 2018 was a lousy year for music. As a chart-obsessed musical optimist, I didn't really broadcast that sentiment. But truth be told, when it came time for last year's annual recap, I was hard pressed to find ten records I liked enough to merit inclusion in a best-of list. Thankfully, 2018 was a fluke. This past year busted loose with musical greatness all over the place. Here's ten of the best to check out:

10. Red Hearse - Red Hearse - Less a band and more a meeting of musical genius, Red Hearse is the Fun (pun intended) new collaboration of super-producer Jack Antonoff (Taylor Swift, Lorde, and his own bands, Fun and Bleachers) with beatmaker Sounwave (who was responsible for much of Kendrick Lamar's "DAMN!") and singer Sam Dew, who's written for Rihanna and Zayn Malik among others. Together, they've crafted a sleek minimal album of modern R&B led by Antonoff's future-retro synths, Sounwave's pulsing percussion, and Dew's impressive falsetto. It's a short record of relentless urgency and confidence from three players at the top of their game.

9. Morrissey - California Son - No artist is more polarizing to his fans these days than Morrissey, former vocalist of the Smiths and the once morose messiah for an entire generation of misunderstood, maladjusted youth. Decades on, Morrissey keeps damaging his legacy through his support of extreme right-wing UK politicians and a series of controversial statements some have labelled xenophobic at best. It's a shame, too, because "California Son," his first ever album of all covers, is a charming and solid collection. Perhaps the most shocking thing about 2019 Morrissey is that he finally sounds like he's in a good mood.

8. White Reaper - You Deserve Love - Kentucky's White Reaper jokingly called their last album "The World's Best American Band," but they weren't too far off the mark. Shrugging off modern rock trends and focusing instead on harmonized guitars and power hooks, White Reaper owe more to Thin Lizzy and Cheap Trick than the current radio sound. Landing a major label deal this year with Elektra Records this year, "You Deserve Love" is a slightly more polished affair, but still full of the same headstrong snottiness, killer tunes, and absolute lack of pretention that makes them one of the most vital bands on the planet.

7. Billie Eilish - When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? - HOW could an album this striking, confident, and professional come from a 17-year-old noodling around with her brother in their bedroom studio? Did they have any idea they'd be redefining the pop landscape? "Moody" doesn't begin to describe this record -- it's downright dark and haunting, with Eilish's barely-above-a-whisper ASMR croons flowing loosely over her brother's minimal musical landscapes. It's emotional, affecting, and holds a gravitas that defies her age yet resonates with a new generation of pop fans. Billie Eilish is the hero our radios needed in 2019.

6. Sekai No Owari - Eye/Lip - The charts may have been owned this year by Lizzo, Billie, and Ariana, but the grandest pop music being made right now comes from a band who are massive superstars in most of the world but virtual unknowns in America. Japan's Sekai No Owari are SO prolific that in 2019, they released TWO full-length albums on the same day, "Eye" and "Lip." Both are spectacles of sing-along pop sunshine even if you don't speak the language. Despite running the gamut from dancefloor techno to wistful ballads to New Orleans jazz and big band swing, "Eye" and "Lip" are still strangely cohesive and utterly enjoyable. Just try it. It won't leave your headphones for a long time, trust me.

5. Deep Cut - Different Planet - I've reached the age where I'm starting to repeat the sort of cringe-worthy things my parents once said to me: "Today's kids just don't understand what good music is." But hey, it's not MY fault the greatest music of all time ever just happened to come out when I was in college. Deep Cut is the family project of Mat Flint, who once fronted one of my favorite bands of that era, Revolver. Together with his wife, brother, and brother-in-law, they sporadically release albums that harken back to that magical era of psychedelic swirls, fuzzy guitars, and magnetic melodic jangle-pop that makes me yearn for the days of mixtapes and midterms.    

4. Sault - 5 - Not much is known about the mysterious outfit Sault, who arrived in 2019 with not one but TWO albums, "5" and "7." Based on what limited information has been made public, the loose collective may rotate around producer Inflo and is rumored to also involve British rapper Little Simz and Kanye West protege Kid Sister. One thing we DO know, though - the results are magic. Both records ("5" is a little more striking than "7") are groove-heavy experiments that melt R&B, funk, dub, and tribal rhythms into the best vibe of the year. There's no better soundtrack to drive around town and lose yourself in. 

3. Susto - Ever Since I Lost My Mind - South Carolina's Susto have become an annual crowd favorite at Maquoketa's Codfish Hollow, and it's easy to see why. Leader Justin Osborne's hook-filled, no-pretenses songwriting is refreshing in an era where every acclaimed tunesmith seems to compete for who has the longest beard, highest falsetto, and most obtuse lyrics. Known for songs about rebellion, substance abuse, and the celebration of youth, "Ever Since I Lost My Mind" finds Osborne coming to terms with adulthood, a new wife, and a baby on the way. None of this has settled or compromised Osborne musically, and his newfound maturity hasn't affected his ability to craft emotional barnstormers that tackle weighty subjects with honesty and an unspoken optimism.      

2. Ride - This Is Not A Safe Place - When 90s Brit shoegazers Ride announced their reunion back in 2014, it was a dream come true for yours truly. I've spent most of my life championing the band to anyone who would listen, and when they announced their first US comeback show, we packed up the car and drove to NYC to be in that crowd. But no one, not even me, could have anticipated their post-reunion output to be as good as it's been. "This is Not a Safe Place" is their second album since the comeback. Rather than retread their vintage psychedelic sound for the nostalgia circuit, Ride continue to challenge and expand their sonic palette while giving bands a clinic in what a second go-around should sound like. "It's funny, people hate you to change," they sing on "Repetition." "They want you just to repeat and stay the same." No worries here, lads. We're still along for the Ride. 

1. Tripmaster Monkey - My East Is Your West - Here's where I have to convince you that of all the kajillion records released in 2019, the best one of all comes from a Quad Cities band. But it DOES. Well, technically they're not all from the QC anymore. After a noteworthy career in the 90s, half of Tripmaster Monkey moved out west, but this year they reunited for little more than the love of four friends making music together. For a record conceived and mostly recorded via the internet, it's shockingly the most cohesive record of Tripmaster's career and expands their patented alt-rock sound with decades of influences. It's not just a welcome reminder of the things that make the Quad Cities special. It's not just a feelgood story for a hometown newspaper. It's the best album of the year - period. 

COLUMN: Big City Boyfriend

I'm an evolved person. I should be wandering around a museum. I should be at a college lecture series listening to someone analyze post-war Scandinavian economic strategies. I should be sipping fair trade coffee around a table of literary snobs discussing the role of masculinity in the later works of Ibsen and Tolstoy. I should be doing things both hoity and toity.

Instead, I am sitting here watching the girl from Full House as she finds Christmas love. After that, I will probably watch the OTHER girl from Full House as SHE finds Christmas love. Curse you, Hallmark Channel. I am once again under your incredibly stupid spell.

Each Yuletide season -- and by Yuletide season, I mean pretty much half the year -- the otherwise innocuous Hallmark Channel turns into a tinsel-covered cheesefest I like to call "CCN": the Caucasian Christmas Network. Twenty four hours a day, for months straight, they air nothing but made-for-Hallmark holiday romance movies. Like Christmas clockwork, every two hours someone will find their soulmate and have the perfect holiday season. 

The Hallmark people aren't stupid. They know what people want, and they turn out dozens of these low-budgets lovefests every year. They all pretty much have the same plot. They all pretty much star Candace Cameron-Bure. And they're all pretty much insipid garbage. Yet every year, my TV drifts to that ridiculous channel. Sure, I should be watching C-Span. But you know what? It's cold outside, I'm sitting here with a cup of cocoa, and my house is bathed in magical twinkling lights and the smell of fresh balsam (courtesy Bath & Body Works. I'm not a heathen who actually brings nature indoors.)

Maybe I don't want to watch some esoteric art movie this time of year. Maybe I just want to watch people kiss under mistletoe and believe in Christmas magic. Sue me.

It really IS amazing how much these movies are alike, though. Most of them really DO have the same plot: Work-obsessed Big City Girl is in a loveless relationship with Big City Boyfriend, when she's suddenly forced into a last-minute holiday business trip to a small town that's economically depressed yet still looks like a Norman Rockwell paradise every Christmas. There she'll meet some hunky guy who's terrible at running his Christmas tree farm but great at being a single dad to whatever precocious child actor is assigned to Holiday Movie #304A. 

Over the course of 3-4 days, she will fall in love with the hunky guy AND use her big city wits to save his tree farm from foreclosure. Snow will fall. ONE kiss will occur. Everyone will live happily ever after.

Or will they? The more I think about these movies, the more I realize there's one big plot hole. You know who doesn't live happily ever after? Big City Boyfriend. He gets dumped for Christmas -- and the worst part? It's usually not his fault.

In the first year or two that Hallmark was churning these things out, Big City Boyfriend was usually a reprehensible jerk we couldn't wait to dump. Sometimes he was revealed as a cheater right out the gate. Boo on you, Big City Boyfriend. But Hallmark soon discovered you can't make Big City Boyfriend a complete ass, because it reflects poorly on our beloved heroine. If she's a perfect person (which she always is), how could she have ever had such lousy taste in men? 

In the more recent Hallmark movies I've seen, Big City Boyfriend is far less of a heel. Sometimes he doesn't even exist at all. Sometimes, our heroine's only boyfriend is her job. When Big City Boyfriend IS there, his biggest crime is that he works too much, or he works for the company that's trying to foreclose the Christmas tree farm. Either way, he's not that bad of a guy. He's just not THE guy.

Ergo, here's my idea for a TRULY great Hallmark Christmas movie: Big City Girl gets sent to Nowheresville, meets hunky guy, falls in love, blah blah blah. As is the common trope, Big City Boyfriend turns up in Nowheresville to surprise Big City Girl on Christmas Eve. They realize they've grown apart as people, and Big City Boyfriend is gently dumped. But instead of following her back to the party, instead the film follows the newly-minted ex-boyfriend back to the Big City.

We see him go home, microwave a Salisbury Steak TV dinner, and eat in lonely silence. Better yet, in a totally meta moment, we see him flip his TV to the Hallmark Channel and watch a stupid Christmas romance movie alone while a single tear rolls down his cheek. The next day, he goes to his family's house and we see the heartbreaking moment when his mom asks, "Where's Jill?" and he has to reveal that Jill is clearly an insane person who chucked their entire relationship away to move in with a stranger she met three days ago. 

But then we follow him to the station to catch the train home, and there's only one other person on the platform. It's Small Town Girl. She just finalized a bitter divorce with her jerk of an ex-husband. No longer would she have to put her dreams on hold for his stupid Christmas tree farm that only makes money one month out of the year.

"Say," says Big City Boyfriend. "Would you like to come over?"

"Sure," says Small Town Girl. "After all, my precocious child is staying with my ex this weekend."

"We could watch a Christmas movie on the Hallmark Channel?"

"Nah," replies Small Town Girl. "Let's just make out. Those movies suck."

Roll credits. Dear Hollywood, please send my check to the usual address. 

COLUMN: Rosario

Normally I shy away from politics in this column for one simple reason: you people rely on my expertise too much. As a beloved and cherished cultural icon, I know how much my opinion must mean to you all. An endorsement from Shane would clearly be a golden ticket to the White House for whomever I bestowed such an honor upon. For me to openly support a candidate just wouldn't be fair to the other campaigns. 

But the heck with it. You've pressured me long enough, and I'm willing to share ONE nugget of political wisdom with you all. After having weighed all the options and studied everyone's platforms, I can safely issue one proclamation: of all the candidates running for President of our great land, Cory Booker's girlfriend smells the nicest.

Okay, maybe no one cares what I think. That's probably a good thing, because I'm not very politically minded. If I were enough of a journalist to merit an interview with an actual presidential candidate, I'd probably just ask them about their favorite band. Worse yet, I'd probably vote based on their answer.

Still, I like to stay informed. Living a stone's throw from Iowa gives us a chance to see most of the major candidates as they inevitably stump through town. So when opportunity presented itself last weekend to check out both Cory Booker and Pete Buttigieg in the same day, I was in.

Up first was our paper's forum with Cory Booker at St. Ambrose University. It was great to pull up a bench and see a candidate in such an intimate setting. Little did I know how intimate things were about to get. All it took was a tap on my shoulder to wreck my world.

"Excuse me? Can I share this seat?"

"No problem," I whispered, before turning around and dying a little inside. Thus begins the story of how I spent an hour sharing a bench with Rosario Dawson. THE Rosario Dawson. In all the hubbub of Booker's appearance, I had completely forgotten he and the A-list actress were dating. I sure didn't expect her to be schlumping across Iowa with him. I assumed she had more, well, Hollywood-y things to do. 

What followed was an insightful hour of policy discussion, probing questions, and deep dialogue about the state of our nation. At least I think it was. People occasionally clapped, and I clapped along with them. Truth be told, I was only catching about every other sentence. Okay, truth REALLY be told, Cory Booker could have been advocating for the murder of toddlers and I would've absent-mindedly clapped along. My brain had other agendas:

OMG OMG ROSARIO DAWSON JUST TOUCHED ME. ROSARIO DAWSON IS SITTING NEXT TO ME. Someone who was once in a Tarantino film is sitting next to me. She KNOWS Tarantino. I wonder what Tarantino's like? Wait, who cares about Tarantino, IT'S ROSARIO DAWSON. Should I turn around and look at her? I should totally look at her. Wait, don't look at her. You'll look psychotic. I don't care, I'm doing it. Here I go, I'm caaaasually turning around.

OMG I LOOKED AT HER. SHE LOOKED BACK AT ME, SMILED, AND WAVED. I just made eye contact with Rosario Dawson. We are clearly now friends and she will soon ask me to co-star in "Rent 2." Shut up brain, stop it. You're a grown adult. Stop geeking out. Yes, she's a famous actress. So what? She's just a person. Except better. I want to look at her again. DON'T LOOK AT HER AGAIN. LOOK AT ANYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD.

See? There's Todd Mizener, our paper's marketing director, with his trusty camera. I wonder if he got a picture of us. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let him have gotten a picture of us. I AM NOW SENDING PSYCHIC VIBES TO TODD MIZENER TO TAKE OUR PICTURE. Please, Todd, please. Wait, everyone's clapping. I should clap, too. Oh wait, Rosario is snapping her fingers instead of clapping because she's just that cool. Should I snap instead of clap? I DON'T KNOW HOW TO SNAP MY FINGERS!

Okay, Shane. Get ahold of yourself. You're starting to sweat. Focus on what Cory Booker is saying. Something about education. Yes, Cory Booker, education is very important. God, she really does smell fantastic. Wait, if I can smell her, CAN SHE SMELL ME? Do I smell bad? Oh GOD, I had a hot dog at lunch. DO I HAVE HOT DOG BREATH? Am I sitting next to Rosario Dawson while she regrets sitting down with HOT DOG GUY?

Uh oh, my phone's vibrating. Let me just nonchalantly slide it out of my pocket and OMG ITS TODD TEXTING ME A PICTURE OF ME & ROSARIO. He knows me too well. Maybe I AM psychic! I'm SO stoked he got a picture of... NOOOO! She looks like a goddess and I look like a warthog. TODD, YOU HAVE TO GET A BETTER PIC. Can I casually text that to him? Let me try.. annnnd I just dropped my phone. Smooth, Shane.

Focus up. You have a task at hand. When this event ends, everyone's going to clap. And then you will have thirty golden seconds in which you can commence small talk with one of your favorite actresses. It has to be something suave. It has to be something you can tell ALL your friends about. It has to be PERFECT. And it certainly can't be about politics because you've only listened to about 20% of what Cory's been saying. Wait, he just wrapped up. Everyone's clapping. This is it, Shane. This is your moment. Don't dream it, be it. 

And that is when I turned to People's Choice Award nominee Rosario Dawson and said the following:

"HA HA HA THAT WAS WEIRD LIKE SITTING NEXT TO YOU! I'M A BIG FAN! YOU'RE GREAT! GO CORY! THIS IS SO WEIRD HA HA!"

At which point, MTV Movie Award nominee and "Men In Black 2" star Rosario Dawson looked at me and said:

"I hope not bad weird?"

To which I suavely replied:

"NOT BAD WEIRD! DEFINITELY GOOD WEIRD! HA HA HA, I'M WEIRD! IT WAS GREAT TO MEET YOU, WE HAVE TO GO NOW, YOU'RE SO COOL, BYEEEEE!"

And then I left before hyperventilating into a sea of embarassment. Ten minutes later, we were across town watching Pete Buttigieg, who was equally inspiring. I still don't know who I'll be voting for in the coming elections. For the record, I did NOT share a bench with Pete's husband Chasten, but in fairness, I bet he smells okay, too. 

COLUMN: Lights

I am bad at math. This isn't exactly a newsflash in my life. I came to terms with my disdain of numbers long ago.

I'm not entirely mathematically incompetent. When not writing this column, I sell ads for our various media platforms. I work with numbers all the live-long day. But when customers call, thankfully they can't see me counting on my fingers and gripping a calculator for dear life.

Most definitely I was one of those people who sat through algebra and geometry classes muttering through clenched teeth, "I will NEVER use any of this." And you know what? By and large, I was 100% correct. I can't think of ONE single time I've needed to know the square root of ANYTHING. I have never looked at a triangle and gone, "Man, if only I had the length of that hypotenuse." Math is for suckers.

Or so I thought. Every year about this time, I'm reminded of why geometry is a thing. You clearly need a deep math background in order to hang Christmas lights.

When I got my own house, the realization that I could finally have my own outdoor Christmas lights made my heart grow two sizes larger. Or maybe it was just the cholesterol. Either way, I was excited.

Don't get the wrong idea. I've never gone overboard, nor will I. My crippling fear of heights sees to that. I might be bad at math, but I can definitely tell you that an object weighing over 250 lbs. falling from a 20 foot ladder at a gravitational speed of 10.93 m/s reaching an impact energy of 6774.01 joules WILL HURT. A LOT. My December decor will always remain at ground level, thanks much.

I also prefer my Christmases holly and jolly rather than wacky and tacky, so no inflatables or animatronic Santas for me. Sure, there's a part of me that would love a display visible from space with lights sequenced to a yuletide dubstep soundtrack, but who has time for that? (Other than that one AMAZING house in Coal Valley everyone should see.)   

Instead, I play it simple. Each year, I deck the edges of my front porch with a modest arrangement of red Christmas lights. To the holiday connoisseur, it's probably a ho-hum display at best. To me, it's a triumph of the will.

I own exactly eight strands of red lights and five extension cords. This is all I need to run lights around the railings and support columns of my porch. And every year, I have to spend an hour remembering how to do it. Then I spend another hour actually doing it, then another hour realizing I did it wrong before tearing it all down and starting over. It is easier to solve a Rubik's Cube than hang these lights.

Light strands 1-4 plug into one another and cover the south and west railings. Strand 5 covers the north railing, while 6, 7, and 8 adorn the three support columns. Strands 1-4 plug into extension cord A, strand 6 plugs into B, and strand 7 plugs into C. Strand 5 plugs into D, which in turn plugs into 8, which plugs into E, which runs under the porch and plugs into C. A, B, and C then plug into power, and voila -- Christmas magic. And the reason I'm telling you all this is so I can re-read this column next year and remember how on Earth I did it, because I WILL ALWAYS FORGET.

This schematic is the only possible way to get all the lights to my available outlets without cords running across my porch like a snare trap waiting to string my mailman up by his ankles. This year, it only took me three days and two failed attempts to remember the pattern. It also doesn't help that the sun now sets a few seconds past noon each day, so if you were wondering about the idiot fumbling around in the dark stringing up Christmas lights to the glow of his smartphone, that was me.

I have no idea how the Griswolds of the world pull it off. Eight strands of lights is enough to do me in every year. But it's done and my house is officially festive. I've gotten some different feedback online, though. "All red?" one of my Facebook friends wrote. "Isn't that kind of evil?" Another said it's a sign that I'm running a bordello -- and if that's the case, there are SERIOUS problems with my business model, because customers are few and far between. Someone else said red lights on your porch now means you're showing solidarity with the anti-gun movement.

The only notion I want to show solidarity with is that red lights are pretty. My house is tan and brown, and red looks nice against it. Besides, it's the one month I can invite people over without making them figure out the exact address. "It's the house with the red lights." Boom.        

This year, I had a harder time than usual piecing together my tangled puzzle of lights and cords. I tried six different ways of stringing everything together before realizing I was missing a cord. Apparently sometime during the year, Cord E got stolen for DJ Gig A and never returned to the spare laundry basket I've dubbed the "holiday hibernator." But I was so bad at math that I didn't realize I was trying to do the impossible -- I just assumed I was being bad at math.

If anybody needs gift ideas for me, I could use a new calculator. Feel free to drop it off at my house. It's the one with the red lights.    

COLUMN: Jordan

I'm not one to dwell on mortality. I don't need reminders that I'm not immortal. I'd rather keep on writing about cats and bad TV and doing my best to coax some more smiles into the world. It's pretty rare for me to get all gloomy and serious.

But it's also thankfully pretty rare when someone I know gets murdered.

"I've never known a homicide victim," one of my friends eloquently stated this weekend. "I don't think I care for it." 

I have to agree. My friends and I have spent the past week running the emotional gamut from shock and disbelief to anger and confusion and just kind of a helpless unreal ache that something so awful could happen to someone we knew. But it did. Denial stops the minute you see it on page A1 in this very newspaper.

My friend Jordan Murphy was killed. Her body was found last week in the garage of her home. By the time the police issued an arrest warrant for her on/off boyfriend, he had already taken his own life in a Davenport hotel room. Those are the facts we know. While authorities try to piece together what led to this nightmarish outcome, all that really matters is our friend who's no longer with us, and it's sad beyond words. I just got back from her visitation, and it was a room full of other numb people not really knowing what to do or say.

Somebody asked me this week if I was going to write a column about Jordan or if "it'd be too hard to find the right words." Honestly, there's no pressure to find the right words, because there aren't any. No eloquent prose can undo the unthinkable. 

But I can take a few minutes to tell you about Jordan and why we all loved her, why we're going to miss her, and why she's way more than just a headline or a statistic. Jordan and I weren't BFF's or anything -- but for a few years, she was pretty darn important to my life.

I survived most of my adulthood to date with the unevolved skill sets, maturity level, and personal responsibility of your average college student. In my twenties, it may have been charming. In my early thirties, perhaps it could still be written off as quirky. But when you reach 35 and your apartment is still full of pizza boxes, trash, and irresponsibility, it's just pathetic. Then I logged onto Facebook one day and saw someone post, "My friend is looking to make some extra money cleaning for slobs and single guys who don't know how to use a vacuum. Any takers?"

I took.

Honestly, I had no idea what to expect. It was embarassing enough to let friends into my messy apartment, let alone a stranger. That's how I found myself in the ludicrous position of cleaning up the place to impress the person coming over to clean up the place. She knew right away. Maybe it was the look in my eyes. Maybe it was the smell of desperation mixed with bleach trying to cover up the bags of trash I'd just jogged out to the dumpster. Either way, she knew.

"Hi," she said confidently as she walked in and looked around. "I'm Jordan. You cleaned up for me, didn't you?" I sheepishly nodded. "Don't do that. I do that. You do your thing."

Thus began a paid friendship that lasted for years. I pretended to the world that I could live independently without a babysitter while Jordan wheeled by once a week to wash, clean, and brush away the evidence of my continued ineptitude. It was a partnership that got me through the better part of my thirties, and I couldn't have asked for better assistance.

Last week, we ran an article where a neighbor referred to Jordan as "withdrawn." The Jordan I knew was many things, but "withdrawn" wasn't one of them. She was loud, brash, funny, tough, cocky, opinionated, and had a laugh that could melt the icecaps. Half the fun of having her clean was just getting to hang with someone so hilarious. Even when life handed her lemons, which it did often and without mercy, she'd find a way to joke about it. Jordan's stories -- and there were ALWAYS stories -- were epic in scope and more salacious than soap operas. Her unsolicited advice, which flowed fluidly and without prompting, helped me on more than one occasion. From cleaning hacks to dating tips, she was a dispensary of wisdom. More than one of these weekly columns were read aloud to her for input -- if I could make Jordan cackle, it was ready to turn in.

Most of all, she was a lioness of a mother who did everything for her two kids. Tonight, I hugged her amazing daughter under the worst of circumstance. The last time I saw her, she was half the height, pouting on my couch that her mom had dragged her to the lame dude's house. When Jordan became pregnant with her son, it was bad news for me. "I can't touch the litterbox anymore," she said unapologetically. "No cat cooties for this momma."

Eventually, life took us in different directions. Just as I bought a house and make a concerted effort to finally grow up, Jordan went back to cutting hair and opened her own salon. We'd still bump into each other and share a laugh -- and a while back when my parents gave me just a day's notice of a visit, you can guess the first number I called for an emergency cleaning assist. She rearranged her whole schedule that day to help me out.

If you're looking for sage wisdom to cope with grief, keep looking. I'm not your guy. All I know is this: It's super easy to take a tragedy like this and say, "The world is horrible. I'm done with it all." But even in the worst scenarios imaginable, good wins in the end. It always does. At the visitation tonight, there were just as many smiles as tears. When I think about Jordan, I won't think about newspaper headlines. I'll think of her going, "Get off the couch and play some music. The least you can do is DJ for me while I clean!" I'll think of her mopping my kitchen floor while rolling around reclining in my desk chair. I'll think of the time she picked up a cat toy off the floor to discover it was, in fact, a very deceased and very REAL mouse. We both started screaming like ninnies, and when she caught me stifling a giggle, she deservedly threw it at my head before we both fell down laughing. 

She was my housekeeper. She was my hair stylist. She will always be my friend. We love you, Jordan.