COLUMN: Midnights

It's that time of year of again. Yes, that glorious week when we can forget our woes, ignore our differences, and heal our nation's great divide. Finally, we as a people can come together and focus on that which really matters in life.

That's right, the new Taylor Swift album is out. Our long national crisis is at an end. We made it, people. Who's running for office? The economy's doing what? There's a virus? Who cares -- have you SEEN the video for "Anti-Hero" yet?  

Based on this week's news coverage, you'd think the world came to a stop at midnight on Friday when the album dropped -- and it nearly DID. So many people were trying to listen to Taylor Swift's record at the same time that it nearly broke the internet. Spotify clocked 184.7 million streams on the day of its release -- and it would have been more had the site not crashed from overuse.

This isn't exactly new for Taylor Swift -- many of the sales and streaming records she broke last weekend were her own. One out of every 50 CD's bought on Earth is a Taylor Swift record. But the hype behind her new album didn't just break the internet -- it almost broke my patience.

I am a Taylor Swift fan. In MY circles, this is something akin to social suicide. I used to be one of those snobby jerks behind the counter at your favorite record store, smirking as I silently judged your inferior tastes in music. I'm not supposed to like Taylor Swift. I'm supposed to like bands with unpronouncable names that no one's ever heard of because their albums are only sold from the backs of beat-up Volkswagens parked behind seedy clubs. Taylor Swift isn't hipster approved.

Me? I couldn't care less. I have all her records, I've seen her live on multiple occasions, and I even (SQUEEEEEEE!) got backstage and met her once. I give props to any pop artist who writes most of their own material, and it's truly impressive how she can switch genres with ease. After spending the past few years dabbling with indie-folk, "Midnights" is all about dark synths and moody energy. It'll sell a million copies. Oops, it already did.

I'm a fan of Taylor Swift, but I might be at my limit for her marketing team. Nobody knows how to roll out a new record quite like Team Taylor. Every album launch is preceded by cryptic videos, pics, and clues designed to build hype and get chatrooms fired up. It's kinda like Q-Anon, just without all that pesky child-sacrifice stuff. By the time her albums actually drop, her fans ("Swifties") are already whipped up into a buying frenzy.

Here's where the true brilliance happens. "Midnights" came out on Friday in 20 different formats. Collect all 4 different CD covers! Collect all 4 vinyl covers! Get the autographed versions online! Don't forget the cassette! And oh, hey, there's exclusive versions at Target with 3 bonus tracks! Oh, and for all those people who rushed out and bought it at midnight? Sorry -- three hours later, she released a "3 a.m." version of the album with 7 additional songs and the only way to get them is to buy it AGAIN.

Taylor Swift has the most devoted fans in the world, and you know there's Swifties out there procuring all 20 different versions. I'm just surprised she stopped at twenty. Where's the limited edition 8-track? Why not release a special edition of "Midnights" only available on player piano reels that can only be played from special Taylor Swift pianos available in 8 different types of wood. Collect 'em all!

"Midnights" is less than a week old, and the hype machine is already revving up for her NEXT album. It's been all but confirmed that her next project will be a re-recorded version of one of her classic records, but which one? Well, if you watch her new video, there's a scene in an elevator -- and if you freeze-frame it, the elevator buttons are colored in a precise order that corresponds to the color of her dresses from each of her previous eleven album covers. She presses the button for the third floor, and Swifties think it's a direct sign that her next album will be a re-release of her third record, "Speak Now." Sadly, they're probably right.

But I may have stumbled onto something even more revealing. Write out all the lyrics to "Midnights" and assign each letter a corresponding numeric value. Add them up and then divide by number of cats Taylor owns and multiply that by the house number of her childhood home. Then subtract the # of boyfriends she's ever written songs about and divide THAT by Jake Gyllenhall's social security number. Then convert the total back into letters and YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT IT SPELLS!

(Okay, I have no idea what it spells, but shh! I just wanted to give Swifties something to do this weekend. I have a feeling some of them are awfully lonely people... like me.)

COLUMN: Cat Documentary

Channel-surfing through Netflix recently, I stumbled upon a documentary called "Inside the Mind of a Cat." It's an hour-long excuse to watch cute cat videos while world-reknowned cat behaviorists try to answer questions like: What are cats thinking? Are cats intelligent? Do our cats love us?

I learned a great deal from this show. Primarily, I learned that "cat behaviorist" is my new dream job and a racket I'm up for joining. It looks like they get paid a decent amount of money to hang out with cats and come up with new and exciting ways to state the obvious: cats are weird.

NO ONE can tell what cats are thinking. I'm pretty sure cats don't know what cats are thinking. I sometimes wonder if cats are even capable of thinking.

I have two cats who are gracious enough to allow me to share their house. Isobel is about to turn 19. Being a geriatric cat, one might assume she's full of wisdom and grace. Nope. She's every as bit as doofy as she was the day I adopted her. My other cat was a neighborhood stray who casually walked through my door one day like, "Oh, hi. I live here now. Food, please." 

By and large, my cats are pretty boring, and I'm cool with it. Izzy's old and prefers snuggling to playing. If I dangle a toy in front of the other one, she just looks at me like, "Get real, dude. I lived outside chasing REAL mice for years. Don't insult my intelligence."

Are my cats smart? It's up for debate. Are they weird? Absolutely.

Isobel has never touched human food in 19 years, not even milk or tuna. All she wants is standard Cat Chow, which she methodically removes from the bowl one piece at a time and politely eats. She's a dainty girl -- until yesterday.

Last night, I made pasta and paired it with a baguette and a small plate of olive oil, parmesan, and cracked pepper for dipping. I took everything to the table and went back for some water. I turned around in JUST enough time to see Izzy diving headfirst into the dipping plate. By the time I could even react, she turned to me with a face COVERED in olive oil and just sauntered off like this WASN'T the weirdest thing she'd done in years. She then spent the next hour in oily cat heaven, trying to lick her own face off while purring louder than I've heard in years. Positively inexplicable, but I figure she's made it to 19, so she's earned the right to dive headfirst into whatever she fancies.

As for my OTHER cat, purring and meowing aren't in her wheelhouse. When she wants something, she opts to make ghoulish noises that fall somewhere between squeaks, gasps, rasps, and wheezes. Imagine if Gizmo from Gremlins was a chain smoker, and you'd be close. I once asked my vet, "is this cat broken?" "Nope," she reassured me, "she just has a VERY unique meow." She's a perfectly normal, affectionate cat who just happens to sound like a demon. 

But then an odd thing happened. She jumped onto my lap one day, looked me square in the eye, and let out a perfectly normal meow. "Umm," I exclaimed in open-mouthed shock. "You can meow?" She looked at me again and meowed like a normal cat. Then she barfed all over my lap. All this time, I thought there was something physically wrong that made her sound like a demon. Nope, she CHOOSES to make those noises. If you come over and my cat meows at you pleasantly, you are about to be vomited on. She only sounds like a normal cat right before she pukes. 

I'm typing this from my couch. Six feet away, my cats are sitting on opposite sides of the living room, cold staring at me. It's as if their brains are in the OFF position. They've been at it for fifteen minutes now, and it's officially become awkward. I have no idea what they want. Food, water, and litter are provided. I have offered skritches to no avail.

The only thing I can surmise is that they're judging me. Perhaps my cats are world-reknowned human behaviorists. Maybe when I'm at work, they're off giving lectures to other cats about whether or not humans are capable of love.

"When you allow your human to eat, make them work for their food. If you don't, your human could become overweight and have difficulty navigating through tight spaces. Next slide, please. In this image, you see our overweight human. He is neither stalking prey nor marking his territory. Instead, this poor creature spends most evenings lying in a prone position, struggling to sharpen his claws on a scratching post he calls a 'Microsoft Surface Pro.' He doesn't even make normal human sounds. He usually just giggles and in a high-pitched squeak refers to us as his 'widdy biddy kitties.' Humans are weird."

COLUMN: Negative Ads

Whenever a challenge comes along, my usual coping strategy is to count down the minutes until it's behind me. If deadlines or responsibilities loom, I simply think, "Hey, only 4 more hours until this is over and done." "Only 3 hours left until I can breathe freely." "Only one nightmarish hour to go." Compartmentalizing chores and challenges into timed exercises makes everything seem more conquerable. Life might suck now, but it's going to suck a lot less in the near future.

To that end, I'm happy to report that we only have roughly 34,980 minutes until the midterm elections are over and campaign ads disappear for a while. With grit and perseverance, we can make it, people. 

We're presently in that sweet spot of the midterm build-up where we're being assaulted by campaign pitches on all fronts. They interrupt my TV shows, overrun my airwaves, clog up my internet, and take up precious space in my mailbox every day.

I am in NO WAY anti-advertising. How can I be? Those ads are in our papers and on our websites, too. They help keep our business afloat and pay my bills. I might be a little biased, sure, but political ads serve great purpose -- I WANT candidates to market themselves to me.

Without campaign ads and the amazing political coverage in your favorite local newspaper (cough), we might not have any idea who to vote for. And when we're all uninformed, we clearly have to do the next best thing and vote for the candidates with the silliest names. Don't believe me? Just think about U.S. presidents. Have we ever elected a John Smith or a Mike Jones? Nope, not while there's Millard Fillmores and Grover Clevelands to vote for. If political ads and news went away, we'd be inaugurating President Seymour Butts in no time, trust me.    

My problem isn't with the abundance of political ads out there. I'm just weary of their content. The only thing I'm learning about local candidates is how utterly terrible their opponents are. It's just negative ad after negative ad right now. If each of these ads is to believed, the entire political field must be full of terrible nightmare people who barely deserve to walk among us, let alone govern us. Every time I turn on the TV, there's some ominous voice telling me Candidate X wants to tax me into poverty or Candidate Y wants to take away my rights. Candidate Z is "BAD FOR IOWA, BAD FOR GOVERNMENT!" I don't even live in Iowa, but it's starting to feel like the state's very survival hangs in the balance of November's ballot. 

Here's the thing, though. I don't want to sound like I'm flexing (if so, it's a pretty weak flex,) but I personally know a few of the candidates running for election this cycle. And guess what? None of them are terrible nightmare people. I might not agree with their politics, but they're far from a menace to our society. I can't speak for everyone on the ballot, but the ones I know are all fairly nice folks who genuinely want to make a difference. Yet every night, I get to hear ominous voices telling me they CAN'T BE TRUSTED. 

Elections should be about positivity and optimism for the future. It shouldn't be about scaring people to the polls. In fairness, a lot of the negative ads aren't coming from the candidates themselves. They usually come from PACs with a vested interest -- that's why even the ominous voices often have to quietly issue a disclaimer at the end like, "Paid for the by the Committee for People's Justice of America's Freedom Liberties" or whatever. It all just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Until, that is, I recently discovered what's going on in Brazil.

If you thought OUR political propaganda was bad, check out what's happening down there. Brazil is currently in a heated presidential run-off race. In recent days, viral videos have accused one candidate of being a Satanist. His opponent, meanwhile, has fallen victim to a widely circulated video where an old interview was edited out-of-context to infer that he's a cannibal. That's right -- in Brazil, the negative ads are more like, "Don't vote for Candidate X, he eats people." "Oh yeah? Well, Candidate Y worships the devil!" It's as if their only PAC is Q-Anon.

Things are so bad, in fact, that one candidate actually had to post a five-point statement on Facebook refuting that he regularly speaks to Satan and did NOT, in fact, cut a deal with the devil for the presidency. I can only presume the voices in HIS ads are EXTRA ominous.

So we haven't sunk to THOSE kind of depths yet, but give it time. There's still three weeks before midterms, so anything's possible. I saw a dude still proudly walking around today in a Q-Anon shirt, so never underestimate the power of stupidity. Read up on the candidates, ignore the negativity, and make educated choices at the polls based on facts instead of ominous voices.

With any luck, it'll all be over in about 34,975 minutes.  

COLUMN: New Order

Breaking News: Contrary to what my brain routinely tells me, I am NOT 25 years old.

I miss my twenties. When I was a free-spirited youngin', I was constantly on the go. I can't tell you how many nights I'd leave work at 6 p.m., hop in my car, drive three hours to a 10 p.m. concert in Chicago, get back home around 4 a.m., and somehow be back at work the next morning. 

If I tried that kind of nonsense today, I'd die. And I know this because I pretty much just tried it.

Back in 2019, New Order and the Pet Shop Boys announced a dual headlining U.S. concert tour. Those two groups were almost single-handedly responsible for shaping my teenaged musical tastes, so I owed it to myself to catch them live. Then COVID hit, and all bets were off. The tour was postponed and rescheduled multiple times before finally settling on this weekend, and there was much rejoicing. Well, except from me. It turned out the rescheduled Chicago date fell on the same weekend as a friend's wedding I'd agreed to DJ. But the wedding was on a Saturday and the concert was on a Friday, soooo it's possible, right? Here's how it played out:

11 a.m. Friday - I depart the Quad Cities driving solo to the north Chicago suburbs to grab my friend Stuart. The plan is to buzz downtown, enjoy the concert, drop Stuart home, and head back to the QC. The show starts promptly at 7, so it should end around 10 p.m., putting me home by, what, 1 a.m.? That's not TOO bad, right?

12 noon - I should be excited about the concert. Instead, I'm just worried about the wedding tomorrow. I have to set up at 11 a.m. Do I have all the right music picked out? What if I sleep thru my alarm? What if my car breaks down? This is irresponsible, Brown. 

1:30 p.m. - For no good reason, "A Horse With No Name" by America has popped into my head. In an attempt to dislodge it, I am now listening to America's Greatest Hits. I'm confident I am the ONLY person driving to a concert of seminal counter-culture musical icons while listening to 70s soft rock. I'm way cooler than someone who listens to America. I click off the album and fire up my Spotify roadtrip playlist I created for such an occasion. It contains 6500 songs of all genres, styles, and cultures, and is a living testament to my superior cutting-edge musical tastes. I hit random shuffle, and the first song it plays is... "A Horse With No Name." 

2:00 p.m. - I stop for a stretch at the Belvidere tollway oasis. Multiple fast food options await me, but I instead opt for a chicken shawarma wrap from a food cart vendor. It is utterly delicious. And also utterly stupid, because I'm well aware of what happens when my stomach meets food it's not used to. I cross my fingers and wonder if there's Imodium in my glovebox. There is not.

4:00 p.m. - Having made it to my friend's house in the suburbs, we depart on a leisurely bumper-to-bumper rush hour voyage to the concert venue. The show is downtown at the Huntington Bank Pavillion, right along the lake on the former site of Meigs Field. Stuart has secured us a prime parking spot in a pay lot conveniently located 1.6 miles from the venue. My feet are never going to speak to me again.

7:00 p.m. - We make it to the show. It is amazing -- except all I can focus on is the wedding, the rental gear, the drive home, and the fact that it is NOT starting promptly at 7.

10:40 p.m. - Every song gives me chills. Or maybe it's just the bitter cold wind blowing in from the lake. New Order mean more to me than most bands. Their posters still adorn my bedroom. I hang on every word from frontman Bernard Sumner, awaiting some sagely counter-culture nugget that will justify my roadtrip and reaffirm my musical superiority. "Thank you, Chicago," he says, leaving the stage. "We love your pizza!"

11:15 p.m. - My feet are DONE. There's no way I can make it back to the car. "Leave me here to die," I tell Stuart. Instead, we hail what can only be described as a disco rickshaw covered in LED lights and blaring New Order songs from massive speakers. I'm convinced it's a feverdream, but it is not. It costs a fortune to ride this embarassing contraption back to the car, but it is worth every penny and eyeroll from strangers.

12:45 a.m. - My original estimate had me getting home about now. Instead, I am just now leaving the suburbs.

1:20 a.m. - "This was dumb," I tell myself. "GROOOOOOINK," agrees the chicken shawarma wrap from somewhere in my small intestine. Once again, I visit the scenic and exciting Belvidere toll plaza. Dinner this time are bottles of Frappucino and Imodium.

2:45 a.m. - In an effort to drive me completely insane, semi drivers along I-88 have spaced themselves just far enough apart that I can't ever use my brights. That's okay, because fog has rolled in. I see imaginary deer every 2-3 miles. It is a miserable drive home. I become convinced that the Quad Cities has somehow moved further away from Chicago while I've been up here. 

I got just after 4 a.m. In the words of Danny Glover, I am definitely too old for this you-know-what. Somehow, I woke up at 9 the next morning (well, the SAME morning,) and made it to the wedding powered on sheer willpower and the maximum recommended dosage of Advil. It is somehow a resounding success by most accounts. Lesson learned. I am no longer 25, no matter what my brain thinks. If I had to do it all over again, clearly I would do the mature thing and... oh, who am I kidding? I would DEFINITELY do it all over again. New Order rule.