COLUMN: Morrissey

I've been amusing myself this week with "Locke and Key," a good Halloween popcorn show on Netflix. In the series, a widower moves her family into a creepy house where they discover magical keys. One key opens doors to anywhere. You just think of a place, put the key in a lock, open the door, and you're there.

This got me daydreaming: If I had a magic key that could teleport me anywhere, where would I go? Would I explore far-off lands? Pay Katie Holmes a visit? Or would I just use it as a faster way to get to Walgreens? 

I think my first stop might be a concert venue in England, in order to see what might be the best cover band of all time, fronted by the unlikeliest of heroes. None of knew we'd need him in 2021, but he might just be our saving grace. At the very least, he'll never give us up, let us down, or desert us.

When you were a kid, was there a musician you idolized? Someone whose lyrics spoke to you, whose music moved you in a way you barely understood? Maybe you liked the cut of Elvis' hips. Maybe you grew up with a Jimi Hendrix poster on your wall. Maybe you were a Deadhead or a Fanilow. Heck, maybe you're a Belieber or a member of the BTS Army right now.

For me, there was one singer who sat on a pedestal above most others.

If you were a smart, awkward loner growing up in the 1980s, there was one voice you could always turn to. His name was Steven Patrick Morrissey, and he fronted one of the most important bands in the world: The Smiths. If you're unfamiliar, don't worry. Casey Kasem never once uttered their name. The Smiths didn't live on the radio or in dance clubs. Most people had no clue they existed. They even named one of their albums "The World Won't Listen." But to their fans, The Smiths were everything.

If you were an indoor kid who preferred books to sports, suddenly there was a pop idol you could identify with. Your parents might not have understood you, but Morrissey did. With a sardonic wit and a catchy hook, he could sing your life. His lyrics were depressing, charming, achingly funny, and self-deprecating -- often all in the same verse.

Morrissey wasn't afraid to tell you that life sucked, people were stupid, and most things were hopeless -- not exactly your stereotypical pop anthems. But Morrissey fans weren't stereotypes. For a weird and awkward kid like me, he was a hero.

But a few years back, things went sideways. As the years have passed, Morrissey's become less of a truthsayer and more of a... terrible human being. In a misguided attempt to call out animal cruelty, Morrissey thought wise in a recent interview to declare, "You can't help but feel the Chinese are a subspecies." His anti-immigration rhetoric is troubling at best, downright racist at worst. He even voiced his support for Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein, saying, "if you go through history, almost everyone is guilty of sleeping with minors. Why not throw everyone in jail right away?"

His fans are leaving by the droves. Even the Simpsons mocked him in a recent episode when Lisa meets a pretentious British singer named Quilloughby who sings a song called "Everyone is Horrid Except Me (And Possibly You.)" Any fleeting hopes of a Smiths reunion have forever been dashed -- the rest of the band want nothing to do with him.

I've stopped idolizing the guy, but I still love the music of The Smiths and those songs that helped me through adolescence -- songs that may have just been saved... by Rick Astley.

Yep, THAT Rick Astley. The corny radio-pop hero whose inescapable "Never Gonna Give You Up" has been Rick-rolling us on the interwebs for over a decade. As it turns out, Rick's actually a pretty cool guy. He's also one of those indoor kids who spent the 80s idolizing Morrissey. And he's got the pipes to match. 

So when Rick posted a short clip of himself belting out a Morrissey tune with the band Blossoms, Smiths fans around the world lost their collective minds. Now, he and Blossoms are actually playing a few select pop-up gigs as a proper Smiths tribute band. But instead of Morrissey's pomp and pretention, you get Rick Astley in a Hawaiian shirt pogoing around like your drunk uncle at a karaoke bar having a blast. The kind of blast I'd waste a magic key to witness.

I spent years hoping to see Morrissey. Now, I think I'd rather see Rick Astley onstage doing these brilliant songs justice in the least pretentious way possible. Or, as a rock critic at Vulture said last month, "It's settled. He's Morrissey now."

Anyone have a key I could borrow?

   

COLUMN: Battery

Last week, I wrote about heading down to the Spoon River Valley Scenic Drive. As it turns out, I narrowly avoided spending a whole lot of quality time with that scenery.

Over on TikTok, there's a 13-year-old pug named Noodle with over 2 million followers. Every morning, Noodle's owner Jonathan wakes the sleepy dog on camera and stands him upright. Sometimes Noodle stays aloft -- but more often than not, he collapses back into bed like he's made of Jell-O, leading Jonathan to declare it's a "no-bones day," where laziness and comfort win out over productivity and stress.

The other night, I left work after an exhausting day of professional newspaper-ing. I was dragging hard. My brain was mush, the yawns were plentiful, and I was utterly wiped. As I walked out the door, I thought to myself, "I should have listened to Noodle. Today is DEFINITELY a no-bones day."

I was right. I just didn't know my car thought the same thing.

I almost just typed "as I turned my key in the ignition," but that'd be a lie. I'm a modern, on-the-go guy with no time for the burden of inserting a key into an ignition and expending precious calories with all that cumbersome hand-turning. I now own a car with a button that says "START" on it. It turns out that button's occasionally a lie, too. 

I pressed START and my car just sort of... wheezed. CHUG... A... CHUG... A.  Uh oh. 

I suppose I should be grateful. Just days prior, I was in Fulton County, scenic-driving down roads less traveled on gravel paths a hundred miles from home. I should have been thankful my battery died in the office parking lot and not along the banks of the Spoon River. After all, roadside assistance can only assist when one knows WHICH roadside one is stranded upon. 

Yep, I was grateful that day. So grateful, in fact, that I decided to scream grateful profanities into the open air and slam my grateful head into the steering wheel for dramatically grateful effect. 

Strangely, it worked. Suddenly, my car started. It certainly didn't sound happy about it, but it started. While a rather loud voice in my head told me to go home and pretend it didn't happen, a louder voice in my head told me to go to a parts store right away and have them check my battery. That voice was my dad's, because I had him on hands-free speakerphone within seconds of getting the car started. I'm not sure why I called him for advice. I already knew what his advice would be, and I knew it wouldn't be to go home, eat a hot dog, and watch bad TV (which was MY plan.)

Instead, I wheeled into an auto parts store and had them check my battery.

"Oof," said the kid testing my battery. "It's not holding a charge at ALL. Game over."

He then recommended an expensive replacement battery they had in stock, but then told me I'd have to go to a mechanic to get it changed out. Apparently, my car puts the battery underneath some kind of hard-to-remove housing doohicky that's more than just an amateur swap-out. Great news.

Suddenly I worried that instead of needing a tow or a jumpstart from the parking lot at work, I might need one from the parking lot of an auto parts store. Thankfully, it started up again (barely,) and in desperation, I tried a different auto parts store down the street. Heard the same story from them - my battery was toast, but due to the housing, it would require a professional install. Noooo.

"Good thing I'm a professional," the guy said with perfect comic timing.

Huzzah! And that place just won ALL my future automotive business. A few minutes later, I left with a dented pocketbook but a shiny new battery and a fully-powered car that was no longer wheezing to life.

I wanted to go home and eat that hot dog. Instead, I sat in my driveway for 20 minutes on hold with the satellite radio people, trying to order a signal refresh. When my battery died, so too did all my radio presets. When it came back to life, the radio kicked on to Celine Dion -- and let's be honest, I'd rather walk home. But I eventually got sorted and was soon back to my usual playlist of Music To Irritate My Friends With.  

Still, the whole escapade has made me a little jealous of cars. Wouldn't it be nice if the next time it felt like a no-bones day, we could just walk into a store, change out our battery, and suddenly have a recharged lease on life? Unless, of course, we all started singing "My Heart Will Go On," in which I think I'll stick with no bones, thanks.

    

COLUMN: Scenic Drive

You'll never believe what happened to me the other day. Hard to believe, but I actually got to have a little bit of a weekend with my weekend.

More often than not, my weekends are just slightly discolored weekdays -- 48 hours when I get to take off my newspaper hat and instead put on my DJ hat. Any way you look at it, I'm still working. What little free time I have is often spent cleaning the house, doing laundry, buying groceries, and generally performing all those mundane responsible-adult tasks that may as well be considered work, just without that cumbersome burden of getting paid for any of it.

Sometimes, I don't want to wear the newspaper hat, the DJ hat, or the responsible adult hat. Sometimes I just wanna hang my hats up for a bit.

That's what I did last weekend. I went for a scenic drive. Specifically, a Spoon River Valley Scenic Drive.

Every year, Knox and Fulton Counties in Illinois hold a fall festival of beautiful vistas, scenic overlooks, harvest bounties, and a colorful spectacle of autumnal wonder and merriment. Or at least I bet that's what the brochures say.

In reality, it's pretty much just a yard sale. A really, really big yard sale. 

I grew up in Knox County, and Scenic Drive weekends were always a tradition in my family. In fact, outside of Christmas, the day we went Scenic Driving was usually my favorite day of the year. I'd stake my claim to the back seat of the mini-van, crank some roadtrip tunes on the headphones, and let the pavement -- or at least my dad -- guide us to wonder.

The main wonder, of course, being: "Who would buy any of this junk?"

I adore the Knox County and Spoon River Valley Scenic Drives, but let's be honest. There's not a whole lot of scenery along the main route, unless your idea of scenery is plastic tables and piles of rusty antiques. Basically, it's an excuse for everyone in Knox and Fulton Counties to go through their homes, find all the rusty garbage in their basements, and see if anyone's weird enough to pay money for it.

And I love it. I can waste an entire day wandering around amateur junk vendors, and if I can do so with an elephant ear and a lemon shake-up in my hands, all the better.

There's all kinds of different stuff to see, do, and buy along the Scenic Drive. There's crafters who must spend the rest of their year making stuff to sell just for this 4-day annual festival. There's a limitless supply of homemade jams, jellies, honey, and assorted things floating in vinegar and brine. There's antique dealers galore. There's people selling junk and people selling deep-fried junk. It's every Midwestern stereotype served up on a platter, often with powdered sugar sprinkled over the top. It's great.

I had limited time and limited objectives this year. I wanted apple cider, a hot donut, and a homemade pie to take home. All three of those were found in the tiny town of London Mills, a stop so popular on the Scenic Drive that it can back up traffic on the highway for over a mile. The vendors were on their A-game. There was a guy selling homemade root beer out of a barrel. There was a woman yelling "TAMALES! IF YOU DON'T LIKE THEM, YOU DON'T PAY!" In perhaps a sign of the changing times, there was more than one tent selling CBD oil and, umm, "decorative" glass pipes.

And there was junk. Oh, how there was junk. I fully appreciate the lure of food vendors and homemade jams, but I'll never wrap my head around table after after of rusty antiques in shoddy condition. I realize to some people it's a treasure trove, and I won't begin to argue the appeal of rusty antiques in the homeland of American Pickers, but I don't get it.

Case in point: At one stall this weekend, they were selling the beat-up remnants of a 1970's KerPlunk game for $8. Remember KerPlunk? Once upon a time, in the days before X-Box and Playstation, the height of gaming was pulling plastic straws from a transparent tube in hopes of not disloging the pile of marbles atop them. If you pulled the wrong straw, marbles would drop to the bottom of the tube, making a noise that sounded NOTHING like "ker-plunk."

It was, and still is, great fun. But THIS particular eight-dollar vintage Kerplunk game only had ONE remaining straw. Spoiler alert, but that's not going to stop too many marbles. That's okay, though, because the marbles were missing, too. Basically this guy was selling a plastic tube and a single piece of straw for eight bucks. Here's another spoiler alert: They still make KerPlunk. You can buy a brand new model at Wal-Mart for $14.95. I bet it has all the marbles, all the straws, and doesn't smell like it's been in someone's attic since 1963.

But again, I won't knock antique sellers. Maybe there's someone out there getting ready to open a board-game-themed microbrewery in need of a kitschy KerPlunk wall sconce (and if you're out there, hit me up -- I can cut you a deal on Broken Broken Hungry Hungry Hippo that's somewhere in my closet.) 

All told, the day made for a great escape. Pro tip: the main routes of the Spoon River Valley Scenic Drive might not be especially scenic, but the side roads ARE. We detoured off the main drag and got a fair share of fall foliage and fresh air. I even made a long-overdue detour to the rural cemetery where I could say hi to my grandparents and a good portion of my mom's family tree. It's a really nice place, except for the incessant barking dog in the distance that I reckon my grandpa routinely cusses out from the great beyond.

The world may change, but as long as the Spoon River continues to flow, so will the smell of fried food wafting up from Fulton County every fall. Here's hoping our children's children's children will enjoy the Knox County and Spoon River Valley Scenic Drives. They might even have a chance to buy that same KerPlunk tube. 

Enough talking. I have pie to eat. 

COLUMN: Outage

Congratulations, everybody. We made it.

There are times in life that try our souls. Events beyond our control can push us to the brink of oblivion. It's then and there we see our true selves and realize the fragility of mankind. But somehow, with persistance and fortitude, we manage to survive. Somehow, humanity musters the strength to soldier through suffering and adversity, and we live to fight another day. Proudly, we persevere.

That's right - we made it a whole five hours without Facebook.

On Monday, technical issues took down Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp for most of the afternoon. According to a headline in Tuesday's New York Times, "lives were disrupted." The world descended into madness. Chaos reigned supreme. Anarchy spilled into the streets. Pandemonium was everywhere.

Well, except MY office, apparently. I had no clue about the outage until I went to check a scheduled post on our newspaper's social media feed. Instead, I found myself staring at a white screen and an infinite hourglass icon. "Bummer," I said to myself. "Facebook must be down." By the time I got off work and checked again, everything was hunky-dory again. Clearly, my life had been irreparably and irreversibly disrupted.

Based on the news coverage of the outage, you'd think we were minutes away from the full collapse of Western civilization. Yes, life would forever be altered because for one brief afternoon, none of us could share pictures of our cats with people who Facebook calls our "friends" but in reality are more like "people we don't actively hate, whose existence we are somewhat aware of."

Once upon a time, we all got on fine without Facebook. You know, back in the olden days when you had to walk a mile through the snow if you wanted to show someone a photo of your cat.

I love aimless roadtrips, whether it's a vacation or a spontaneous escape where you end up in Beloit at 4 a.m. for no good reason. For decades, I would do this not just without Facebook, but without a cell phone altogether. I couldn't IMAGINE such a thing today. It seems completely insane and unsafe to travel even yards from your house without your phone. 

The other day, I went to work and forgot my phone on the kitchen counter. I could barely focus. Even though my phone seldom leaves my pocket when I'm at work, I couldn't stop thinking about it. On my first break, I had to run home and get it. Without it, I felt like a contestant on a reality survivalist show. 

I used to happily go about my business without a portable Facebook machine in my pocket. No one ever saw photos of my cats. I never felt the need to take glamour shots of my dinner. Twenty years later, we now live in a reality where Facebook and Instagram go down for an single afternoon and it makes national news. It was touch-and-go for a bit, but I somehow made it through the afternoon without a single status update from Kim Kardashian.

If I thought I had it bad, imagine my poor uncle down in Alabama. Somehow, he had to go five whole hours without sharing 72 different ways that Joe Biden's destroying the country. He spent an entire afternoon unable to call me a mask-wearing Communist snowflake even once. That poor guy.  

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-Facebook. I spend a ton of time on social media. I like silly memes, hearing from friends, and seeing the cool kids from my high school slowly turning old, fat, and bald. Sure, there's bad facets to social media, but blaming Facebook for its content would be like blaming the postal service whenever an annoying offer to extend my car's warranty shows up in the mail. 

I like Facebook just fine, but I don't think a five hour outage should "disrupt your life" in any meaningful way unless your last name's Zuckerberg. We're now 1.5 years into a pandemic that made us hide in our homes. We should be old hats at life disruptions by now.

If Facebook crashes again, I think I'll be okay. You see, I learned something Monday. You know that portable Facebook machine in your pocket? It turns out you can use that same machine to punch in some numbers and CALL those same friends and talk to them with that eating-hole thingamajig below your nose. I call it Facemouth.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to ring up 172 people and describe my cats to them in great detail. 

   

COLUMN: Graphology

Whenever a new colleague starts up in the office, I can usually expect to hear two general comments within the first week:

(1) "Can you turn your music down a little?" 

and

(2) "Your handwriting is freakishly neat."

I've always been strangely proud of my handwriting. It might be the only aspect of my life in which the word "neat" could ever be applied. But it didn't happen by accident. I was bullied into it by my own brain.

When I was a kid, I used to beg to go to the library. Just being in that building made me feel smarter. I'd hit up the new sci-fi arrivals, grab any humor book I could find, and spend a ridiculous amount of time in the paranormal/pseudoscience stacks, convincing myself that ghosts were real, houses in Amityville were oozing blood, and two sticks in your hand could magically point you towards gold. Life was fun in those days.

It was during one of those trips to the nonsense corridor of the Dewey Decimal System that I first became entranced by graphology -- the science of handwriting analysis. I suppose "science" here needs to be in quotes, because graphology's scientific attributes are sketchy at best. Still, I'm a firm believer. I poured myself that particular glass of Kool-Aid in junior high, and I still drink from it today. 

Graphology asserts that your handwriting is a window to your personality. Something as simple as a signature can paint your entire psychologicial profile. 

Most of us learn to write from identical tutorials. But somewhere along the way, each of us develops a slightly different writing style. You can probably recognize the handwriting of your family, friends, and co-workers -- everyone's is unique. Graphology claims the uniqueness of our handwriting is a direct reflection of our unique personalities.

Some of it seems like common sense. If a person writes with harsh and bold pen strokes, it's a likely indicator that they're angry or aggressive. Conversely, shy and timid people tend to write smaller, tighter, and lighter. If you're hurried or a fast thinker, you might forget to dot your i's. If you're an extrovert, you might tend to sign your John Hancock like, well, John Hancock.

But graphology dives WAY deeper than that. If you buy into it, naturally funny people use more wavy horizontal lines in their writing. Imaginative people have more disconnected letters in their cursive flow. The more your handwriting slants to the right, the more emotional you are. There's supposedly a million different tells in a person's handwriting, from the way you cross your t's to the way you balance your pen strokes.

I consumed everything our library had on graphology and fancied myself a young expert. At school, I loved when we had to grade each other's papers -- I was more concerned with studying the penmanship of my fellow students. My handwriting analysis was often spot-on. The bully in our class had every tell-tale indicator of brutality in his writing style, the teacher's pet used large capital letters indicative of wild ambition, and the artsy kid used long flourishing loops. 

Then there was that one kid who shall remain nameless. He was an unassuming guy who kept to himself. But I'll never forget the first time I saw his handwriting. Deformed letters, tall vertical loops, differential spacing between words, and a radical left-leaning slant to his script. Graphology left no doubt: he was psychotic. I sat next to that kid for years, convinced he was a lunatic, just waiting for him to snap. I have no idea what became of him. He might be a well-adjusted middle-aged man now. Or he might be the Zodiac Killer.

As for me? That was the biggest disappointment of all. I didn't hesitate to analyze my OWN handwriting, and discovered I was, by graphology standards, wholly unremarkable. My handwriting was average and boring. Yuck. So instead of trying to figure out what kind of person I was from my handwriting, I instead tried to change my handwriting to match the person I wanted to be: an artistic, creative free-thinker. Overnight, I started adding huge loops and swirls to my writing in hopes of spinning myself into a superstar.

Instead, it just looked silly. Out of frustration, I vowed then and there to stop writing in cursive altogether. My cursive may have been average and sloppy, but to my surprise, when I printed the words, they were super neat and tidy. Without me trying, I suddenly became The Guy With Freakishly Neat Handwriting, all because I was pouting over a book that told me I wasn't creative.

In today's digital age, we're losing the art of handwriting entirely. Some schools have even stopped teaching cursive altogether. Maybe one day, cursive will be a thing of the past, which also means we'll lose the art of studying that cursive to see if you're a homicidal maniac. Bad news for graphology fans, but I suppose good news for any aspiring psychopaths out there.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to work. Yes, I'll turn my music down.