COLUMN: Spooky Season

Spooky season is once again upon us -- and, as per usual, I've assumed my annual role as the Grinch-o'-ween, grimacing at most things that October fans adore.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I despise dressing up in costume. I despise other people dressed up in costume. I have social anxiety. Putting me into a party situation where I'm forced to small talk with people I barely know is a risky enough proposition on a GOOD day. But if you make me small talk with someone dressed up like Barbie or Chewbacca, it's basically like inviting me to a parade of panic attacks.

True story: one time I bumped into an old college friend at a Halloween thing. I was wearing normal clothes. He was dressed up like a Stormtrooper. He came up and did some schticky Stormtrooper bit, like "Halt! Identify yourself!" I laughed like a lunatic, turned tail, and legit RAN AWAY at a decent trot. That's how well I cope with not being able to recognize people in costume. Halloween parties are a swell time for me.

I also hate being scared. I've never been to a haunted house, nor will I. There are friends who count the days until haunted-house season every year. Heck, there are friends who count the days until they can put on make-up and go WORK at haunted houses every year. If that's your thing, groovy. If you want to squeal while my friends chase you around with rubber knives, have a blast. But it's definitely not MY thing -- and never more so than this year.

My usual response to haunted house invites used to be, "No thanks, you go have fun getting spooked. I know how many cheeseburgers I've eaten in my life, and I reckon my heart doesn't have too many scares left ha ha ha ho ho ho."

That joke loses its lustre after you spend the summer in cardiac rehab. You can keep your jump scares to yourself. There's a lot of things my life needs at the moment, but sudden bursts of adrenaline are NOT it. I'm on an all-tranquility diet with a side helping of blood thinners, thanks much. 

Last night, however, was a test of how well that cardiac stent's working. 

I went to the gym after work, so it was nice and dark and spooky as I was pulling down my alley. That's when I saw him. Standing in the middle of the alley, directly behind my garage, was a Random Creepy Guy. Like something straight out of a movie, there was a motionless figure standing perfectly still, Blair-Witch style, in the middle of the alley with his back to me. I quickly pulled into the garage and closed the overhead door while Creeper Guy continued to creep.

There's about six paces between my garage and my house, which is plenty enough room for a homicidal maniac to axe-murder me, I reckon. But it's also being filmed 24/7 by my security cameras, so if I DID get axe-murdered, at least my next of kin would have a nice snuff film as a souvenir. Before I opened the garage door, I pulled up my camera feed on my cell phone to make sure the coast was clear. There was nary a bogeyman in sight. Still, you can't be too safe. That's why I had a plan.

By opening my garage door, I was also silently setting off my security alarm. I knew I had exactly thirty seconds before it called the police. This would be just enough time to get into the house and deactivate the alarm, provided I had a murder-free stroll to my back door. I opened the garage door with every bit of my attention on the Random Creeper Guy in the alley. But with all my attention turned towards what was behind me, I didn't even notice what was in front of me.

At the top of my back steps, there's a little shelf to rest groceries or what-have-you while you open the door. What I didn't notice in the dark was the stray alley cat having a snooze on that shelf. Honestly, I don't know which of us was scared more. It hissed. I screamed. It jumped pretty much directly at my face. I nearly fell backwards off the steps. It zigged. I zagged. And somewhere in this fracas, my keys went flying to the ground. 

"Hey Siri," I yelled. "Turn flashlight on."

"What was that?" replied Random Creepy Guy from over my shoulder. I screamed again.

It wasn't a creeper after all. It was my neighbor, who had been taking a break from lugging some heavy stuff down the alley. In that spooky and dark October moment, though, I just assumed he was Freddy and/or Jason and/or Michael Myers wrapped up in a tidy little murderous bow.

But rather than axe-murder me, he helped me find my keys. Then I had the fun duty of getting inside and immediately calling my security company, who were in the midst of sending the police to my back yard. It was not my finest moment. THIS IS WHY I HATE HALLOWEEN, PEOPLE.

Except that I honestly don't. While I hate jump scares and things that go REDRUM in the night, I like creepy stuff. As long as nothing jumps out and yells "BOO!," I like ghost hunting shows and eerie movies and chills in the air. In fact, I'm DJing a spooky Halloween party on the 31st. I might even go in costume and (gasp) talk to other people in costume. Just don't force me into dumb small talk. The last thing anyone needs is their DJ laughing like a maniac and running out the door.

COLUMN: Workout Playlists

There's a lot of things to pay attention to when you're exercising regularly for the first time in your life.

Are my weights set correctly? What's my goal? What the heck are "mets" and am I achieving enough of them? How's my pulse looking? Do I need to add more resistance?

And then there's me, whose priority clearly seems to be: What music am I listening to, and have I quite possibly created the greatest workout playlist ever known to man? I'm pretty sure the answer is yes.

Ever since I started going to the gym, I've been fascinated by what everyone listens to. Almost every single person in the place is sporting a pair of earbuds or wireless headphones. What's everyone's go-to exercise soundtrack? I really wanna know, and I kinda wanna judge you for your answers.

I know it's exceptionally poor taste to spy on people, especially when they're exercising. Lord knows I don't anyone to cast a single glance my way while I'm wheezing on a treadmill. But sometimes it's hard not to take a quick peek at your exercise neighbors. Thus far, it's been alarming.

Last week, I was mid-workout when some random girl climbed aboard the treadmill next to mine and proceeded to run at a pace almost twice my speed. Of course, she was barely breaking a sweat while I was an exhausted pile of goo. I wondered what she must be listenening to in order to maintain such an impressive pace. I assumed it was some kind of uplighting, high energy, beat-driven dance frenzy. Then I caught a glimpse of her phone.

As it turned out, she wasn't even listening to music. Her phone was playing an episode of The Kardashians. She wasn't vibing to some motivational club anthem. She was watching vapid millionaires be vapid. I'm pretty sure it's the least motivational thing I could possibly think of to watch. But the more I considered it, it honestly makes perfect sense -- after all, whenever I see one of those Kardashian people pop up on my TV, my initial instinct is to run away at top speed. Why not do it on a treadmill and call it exercise? 

But nothing in my brain can rationalize the dude in front of me the other day. Again, I swear I wasn't trying to be nozy. But the guy was on an exercise bike directly in front of my line of sight, and he had his phone propped up so it was basically the only thing I could focus on when staring straight ahead. And on that phone, he was watching the astonishingly bad 1981 animated movie, "Heavy Metal." Now THAT is an impressively niche choice, my sweaty friend.

"Heavy Metal" is essentially a series of animated vignettes similar to "Fantasia," except instead of classical music, you get Sammy Hagar and Blue Oyster Cult. It's also really quite bad. Maybe it was cutting edge for 1981, but when viewed through 2023 eyeballs, it looks about as cool as an episode of "He-Man." Still, I was able to recognize the movie from a tiny phone screen feet away because I've seen it a kajillion times. No one my age watched "Heavy Metal" because it was good. We watched "Heavy Metal" because it contained a few titillating seconds of scandalous animated nudity, and thus every adolescent boy around that time declared it to be the greatest film of all time. Why one might watch it forty years later in a public YMCA, however, is beyond my understanding. To each their own, I guess.

I'm still experimenting with my exercise music playlist. It's a mix of dance music from the 70s to present, with a focus on newer club tracks that make me feel like a fit and active 20-something and NOT a 50-something chubster grooving out to tunes made by people half my age, played irresponsibly loud to make me feel especially young, dumb, and inspired. It's a work in progress, but I think it's great.

I did, however, inadvertently discover the music NOT to play while one works out. The other day, I thought I could multi-task at the gym. Local promoters Void Church are throwing a super spooky Halloween bash at Wake Brewing in Rock Island on the 31st, and I've been tapped to share DJ duties that night. It'll mostly be an evening of goth, industrial, and darkwave alternative music from yesteryear, so I've been going through tracks looking for some gems to dust off that night. At the gym the other day, I decided to peruse some of Spotify's goth playlists in hopes of finding some good spooky tracks for the party.

I hit shuffle on the playlist and hopped on an elliptical machine. Within seconds, my ears were greeted by a surplus of haunting, ethereal, and entirely inappropriate workout music. I went to skip ahead, but quickly realized my phone was in a cubby-hole just out of reach. I didn't want to stop the elliptical and ruin the good heart rate I'd worked up, so I decided to just power through for a half hour and let the playlist shuffle away. What followed was the weirdest workout of all time. The All-Music Guide refers to the British group Cranes as "chilling," "unsettling," and "nervously threatening," which is exactly the kind of vibe you don't need to conjure up at the YMCA. Yet the Cranes, This Mortal Coil, and Bauhaus soundtracked my evening jog on the elliptical that night.

So if you were wandering around the YMCA last week and saw a sweaty fat lunatic giggling to himself, he was NOT plotting your demise, I promise. He was just REALLY amused to be jogging to a soundtrack of death, despair, and loneliness. Maybe my new calling is to become the Richard Simmons of the counter-culture set -- I can lead classes called "Sweatin' With The Goths" where dour day-walkers in all-black shuffle around morosely to the dulcet angst of the Sisters of Mercy. You've got to admit, it'd be better than watching The Kardashians. 

COLUMN: Spin Class

I think I've officially figured out my least favorite part about the little, err, cardiac event I suffered earlier this summer.

Was it the pain? Nah. The multiple doctor visits?  The complete 180-degree lifestyle change I've had to make? The unwanted reminder of the fragility of existence? The taste of broccoli?

Nope. I'm pretty sure my least favorite part of this whole ordeal is that I can no longer make fun of people who exercise.

Let's not mince words: I was judging you people. From the comfort of my sedentary lifestyle with a burger in my hand, I was judging you and your sanctimonious, self-righteous ways. Every time you jogged past my house, I was judging you and all your friends with the unmitigated gall to run through life physically fit. I'm talking to all you people with your gyms and your hot yogas and your 5Ks thinking you're better than us lowly couch-dwelling folk. I mocked your very presence in our world.

And now? Now... I am one of you. I walk on treadmills and lift weights and stand upright on elliptical machines for TEN WHOLE MINUTES yesterday. I can no longer mock the exercised, for I have drank from their Kool-Aid. Their sugar-free, low carb, electrolyte-laden Kool-Aid. When I woke the other day at 7 a.m. and thought, "oh, I should go work out for a bit," that was the precise moment I lost any claim at mocking people who exercise. 

It didn't stop me from trying, though -- but karma saw through that right away. The morning I woke at 7 a.m. was the morning of the Quad City Marathon. As I crossed the Centennial Bridge en route to the gym, dozens of runners were also making their way across. It was downright chilly that morning, but of course in the thick of the runners were a couple dudes completely shirtless, jogging in little more than short shorts.

"You idiots," I thought to myself. "I bet you're freezing your little --" WHAM.

That was the precise moment when I got rear-ended by the car behind me. I have a feeling he was staring at and probably mocking the same dudes I was. My car was less dented than the front of his truck, but this was clearly karma telling me that my days of being mean and judgemental towards people with active lifestyles were probably over.

Except maybe for one last thing. Before I swear off mocking the exercise set forever, can we just talk about ONE thing real quick? Can we just, maybe if only for a quick second, talk about... SPIN CLASSES?

Now, I'm new to gym life and I'm sure these classes are wonderful. I've never stepped foot inside a spin class, but there's a room for it at the YMCA. I've never caught more than a stolen glance inside it -- mostly because they keep it super dark in there with disco lights flying around. Maybe there's WAY more to it than what I've seen. Maybe it's magically fun and amazing and awesome.

But from what I've glimpsed, it's basically a room full of exercise bikes, and you pedal them REALLY fast. Like, fleeing-a-crime-scene fast. Certainly faster than I'm capable of. And the whole time, beats are thumping, disco lights are flying, and there's a miked-up instructor screaming over the whole thing. I can't ever tell if the teachers are super motivational, super excited, or super mean. From outside the classroom, it's basically like listening to Charlie Brown's teacher, if Charlie Brown's teacher consumed WAY too much coffee that morning. 

I'm sure it's great fun, so please don't write me mean letters. But I know I couldn't handle the pace or the yelling -- and above all else, I certainly couldn't handle the music, which is usually the worst type of aggressively-caffeinated European techno imaginable. This makes sense, because whenever I hear music THAT insipidly obnoxious, my first instinct is to pedal as fast and far away from it as humanly possible. Maybe the people in spin class are like hamsters running endlessly on wheels in a futile effort to flee the Vengaboys.

I fear I may never know anything more about spin class, because me and the other chubsters give that room a wiiiiiide berth when we're at the YMCA. It is for svelte, sadistically healthy people and it frankly scares the rest of us. We don't even dare look in that direction. Honestly, if you were a nefarious group of evil-doers and needed a hideout to plan your evil-doing, you should do it in a spin class -- I promise you, none of us will ever bother you in there. Oh, and once you finally commit your evil-doing, you could probably just pedal quickly away with your toned physiques while the rest of us wheeze and high-five each other for walking a half-mile on a treadmill without vomiting.

I want to hate on spin class for pages and pages, but I can't. The people in there look like they're having fun. Well, some of them. The rest look like they're actively dying, but that's exercise for ya. It's sort of like wee tiny episodes of torture that are good for you. I'm sure spin class is a hoot. Just don't mind me while I look the other way, slip in my earpods, and listen to WAY better music.    

COLUMN: Teresa

My friend Teresa died last week.

The obituary in the paper was rather small. There will be no services. She lived alone, in a rental house about the size of my garage. She didn't have much of a social life. She mostly kept to herself.

But for about a decade, Teresa sat in the chair next to mine here in our newspaper's advertising department. She was a cherished member of our work family, and it's tough to accept that she's gone.

Did we get on each other's nerves? Heck yeah, we did. Like any family member you spend years with, we knew EXACTLY how to push each other's buttons. But was she one of my favorite people in the world? Absolutely. Teresa could make me laugh like few others could. Sometimes all it took was a glance. Good times or bad, we had each other's backs. 

Wherever she is right now, I guarantee she's mad as heck. Her obituary the other day may have been small, but it contained the one piece of information she never wanted any of us to know: her real age. She hid that number from everyone on Earth, and she hid it well. Once we had a work outing to a bar, and I begged the door guy to card her just so we could catch a glimpse of her ID. She straight up said she'd turn around and go home, and she meant it. That was nobody's business but hers.

We never knew her real age, but we had clues. One time, a Hendrix song came on the radio and Teresa out of nowhere just said, "Oh, he was so good live." And I was like, "Wait, what? You saw Jimi Hendrix in concert?" and she just casually replied, "Sure, yeah, a couple times. He was talented." And then she'd nonchalantly go about the rest of her day as if she hadn't just raised her level of coolness exponentially.

She didn't talk much about her past. She was married once. It didn't take. She seldom told stories of those days, but occasionally they'd slip out. Once, I was retelling a weekend adventure of driving back from Chicago on a starry night and pulling over to stare at the Milky Way. "Oh yeah," she replied, "That sounds like the night my ex and I went mountain climbing in Colorado." Again, we were all like, "Whaaat?" Teresa lived some exciting years -- she was just selective in who she let in to learn that side of her.

Another reason why she's probably mad as heck right now is that she shuffled off this mortal coil without getting to learn who wins this season of Big Brother. Teresa loved reality television with a fiery passion and just assumed everyone else did, too. I'd come into the office bleary on a Monday morning and she'd greet me with, "Could you believe what Jen said to Rob last night? I thought Cody was going to lose it!" She was on a first-name basis with every contestant on Survivor and Big Brother. Eventually, she wore me down and I started watching, too, mostly so we'd have something to talk about. A year later, she'd ask me, "Could you believe what Jen said to Rob last night?" and I'd spin and be like, "I KNOW! CODY WAS GOING TO LOSE IT!" I still watch Big Brother to this day, and it's all her fault.

With her gone, I also worry about the future economic stability and fiscal solvency of Asian restaurants in Moline. I remember when she was laid up at home with a bad back and I asked her if she needed anything. "Umm," she replied, "egg foo young?" I learned much about egg foo young from Teresa. What it consists of, which local restaurants make it the best, and even how to make it at home. Thanks to her, I am a walking encyclopedia of egg foo young knowledge. Note: I do not like egg foo young.

The only things Teresa hated more than red meat were spiders. She would never leave for break or lunch without first picking up her coat, examining it thoroughly, and shaking it violently to dislodge any potential 8-legged hitchhikers. Once when she was at lunch, I thought it would be funny to change her computer's desktop background to a big ol' spider because Shane's a funny guy, ha-ha-ho-ho. When she came back and that picture popped on her screen, she SHRIEKED. Not in a ha-ha-ho-ho way. In a horror movie way. In a way that all work in the building stopped and people came racing in from other departments assuming to find a murderer and murderee. In a way that I never messed with her again about spiders.   

Occasionally, she'd make amazing everything-but-the-kitchen-sink casseroles and bring them to share. The first time she brought in a casserole (and every time that followed), there was a Post-It note attached to one side that said, "SHANE'S CORNER." I was a bit confused as to why the casserole had assigned real estate.

"Duh," she explained, "I remember you saying you don't like onions, so I made sure to leave onions out of that one corner." True to her word, there was never an onion in Shane's Corner. I miss those casseroles. I miss those corners. I miss my friend.

The last year we worked together, she was having back issues worse than usual and it was her birthday. I thought I'd surprise her, so I got her a birthday shout-out video from Fessy Shafaat, her favorite contestant on Big Brother. Before he recorded the video, he sent a note asking how old she was turning. "Not sure," I wrote back. "Maybe 71. Maybe 51. Maybe 101. Maybe 21. No one knows for sure, and she'd like to keep it that way."