COLUMN: Attention Span

Last weekend, I watched the "Wonka" movie.

I was expecting to discover a quirky kid's movie with enough nostalgia to make a cynical adult smile. It delivered. What I was NOT expecting to discover was the self-diagnosis of a potential mental health disorder. 

Here is precisely how I watched "Wonka":

Press play. Movie runs for precisely eleven minutes. I get a text. Pause movie. Text is from friend informing me of an upcoming concert. I reply. Press play. Seven minutes later, another text. Pause movie. "No, I don't who's playing guitar on this tour." Press play. Four minutes later, press pause. Open laptop. Spend the next fourteen minutes researching who's playing guitar on this tour. Reply to text. Press play. Six minutes later, press pause and open Spotify to listen to one of the band's songs. Text: "Ooh the new album's good. We should go."

Press play. Six minutes later, press pause. Run a load of laundry downstairs. Wonder what I should make for dinner? Come back upstairs. Press play. Eleven minutes later, press pause. Open laptop and Google "what should I make for dinner?" Spend next 17 minutes looking for recipes. Find one that looks good. Press play, but immediately stand up and go to kitchen. Spend next 35 minutes ignoring movie and making food. Sit down with dinner. Rewind film 35 minutes. Press play. Immediately press pause and run back downstairs to put laundry in dryer. Come upstairs. Press play. Eat. Seven minutes pass. Realize there's a football game on, press pause. Switch to Bills v. Chiefs. Where's Taylor? Ahh, there she is. 

Halftime. Switch back to Wonka. Press play. Four minutes. I recognize that actor. What's he from? One minute. Press pause. Go to IMDB and research "Wonka" cast list. Discover the actor was in an episode of my favorite British sitcom, Peep Show. What a great show. Press pause. Switch to watch one episode of Peep Show. Switch back to "Wonka." No, wait, the football game! Switch back to football, watch Buffalo blow the field goal. Back to "Wonka." Press pause, eat some chocolate. Press play. Watch eighteen minutes before picking up phone and surfing TikTok for 1.5 hours. Back to "Wonka." Watch fourteen minutes while getting ready for bed. Lie down. Remember clothes in dryer. Get up and stomp downstairs in a huff. Fold clothes while surfing TikTok. Come upstairs and fall asleep with phone in hand. Wake up to four missed texts.

Why do I suddenly have the attention span of a squirrel? These days, I can barely do a thing without also wanting to do seventeen other things at the same time. And it's not the fault of poor "Wonka," either. It was a decent enough movie, and I enjoyed it -- but it shouldn't have taken me the entirety of my Sunday to watch a two-hour movie. But lately, this happens every time I try to sit back and focus on pretty much any task at hand. Don't believe me? Between the last sentence and this sentence, I just watched an entire episode of "True Detective" on HBO. Do I have middle-aged onset ADHD?

When I was a kid, I remember fuddy-duddy adults saying things like "kids today have no attention span" while we just rolled our eyes. The blame was usually focused squarely on MTV. Parents had no idea why their children suddenly wanted to watch a string of five-minute-long music videos instead of a whole movie. "It's rotting their brains!" 

These days, a five-minute pop song is something of a rarity. In 2018, Lil Nas X sold 10 million copies of his smash single "Old Town Road." It topped the charts for a record-setting 19 consecutive weeks. "Old Town Road" is 1 minute, 52 seconds long. You could play "Old Town Road" thirty times in a row and it wouldn't take you an hour. Many of today's biggest hits are shorter than three minutes in length.

I spend my weekends DJing in bars and clubs around town. From behind the DJ booth, you can actually see today's generation getting bored in real time if you let a song play for longer than three minutes. After one verse and one chorus, people lose interest. Half the floor stops dancing and just stands around chatting like some DJ nightmare. Last month, I caught myself thinking, "Man, this feels like it's twice the work it once was. Maybe I'm getting too old to DJ." I realize now that I'm not too old -- DJing really IS twice the work it once was because I'm playing TWICE the songs in the same amount of time. As soon as I pull off a mix, I'm already reaching for the next track because it's about to end.

This isn't MTV's fault. This isn't ADHD. Fuddy-duddy me puts the blame squarely on social media. J'accuse, TikTok! I fall under its lurid spell far too often. The moment your brain registers boredom, you can now just flick your thumb and be instantly watching something different on your phone. Before my lips can even form the words "I'M BORED," I've scrolled through 3 other videos. Last weekend when I was housebound and snowed in, I livestreamed a DJ set from my basement on TikTok for fun. While I'm proud to say I had a handful of viewers stick around and check it out, the average viewer watched my livestream for... eight seconds.  

I'm not the only one worried. According to a recent article in Time magazine, psychiatrists are inundated these days by patients convinced they have ADHD and seeking medical help. Usually all they need is a break from the internet. A study was done in the 2000s that tracked people using electronic devices and discovered their focus changed every 2.5 minutes. They repeated the study last year and found the average was now 47 seconds before boredom set in.

I'm a fan AND a victim of social media addiction. You won't catch me bad-mouthing the internet, but maybe we all DO need occasional sanity breaks and reality checks. If we're not careful, we could be heading towards a world where movies are ten minutes long and the #1 song in the country is just someone singing "aaaah!" for 3.5 seconds. I'd say more, but frankly, I'm bored of writing. There's TikToks to watch, people. 

COLUMN: Snowbound

Usually, I rely on real life experience to shape this column every week. But over the past few days, I haven't experienced a whole heck of a lot.

For all I cared this week, it could have snowed a kabillion inches and the temps could've been a brisk -4,327 degrees below zero. Once it snows more than 4-5 inches or the temps fall into the single digits, it's pretty much a guarantee you can find me hibernating at home. I did nothing of interest this week, because I was stuck at home doing nothing all week.

It's a good thing, then, that I am highly skilled and experienced in the fine art of doing nothing. I've been training my whole life.

Amongst the nothing I did this week:

* Binge-watched the entire new mystery miniseries "Fool Me Once" on Netflix. Highly recommend.

* Made an interesting soup from a cookbook gifted by mom and dad. Half an onion, half a bell pepper, 2 carrots, 1 sweet potato, 1 can each of black beans and diced tomatos, some garlic, some cumin, and some red pepper flakes. Easy crockpot gold. You can thank me later. It was great.

* Four loads of laundry.

* Two live-streamed DJ sets from my basement on TikTok.

* Successfully forgot to take down my Christmas lights before the snow, and hence I fear my porch may be holly and jolly until spring thaw.

My remaining time was spent tormenting my cat with a laser pointer and then watching her LOSE HER MIND when I let the kitchen tap trickle to avoid frozen pipes. She paced endlessly beneath the sink, deeply concerned about whatever creature was making the "plink plink" noise high above her. Next thing I knew, she was defying gravity and making the impossible leap all the way to the kitchen counter.

I immediately stoof up and yelled, "Hey, you are NOT allowed up there!" She turned to jump off the counter, but she's no spring chicken and I didn't want her to hurt herself on the landing, so I hustled to the kitchen to try and gently get her down. That's when my cat proved she's every bit as smart as I've always thought. As I jogged to the kitchen, she reached down with one paw, grabbed one of the lower cupboard doors, and opened it enough that she could use it as a step to jump down without harm. My cat is a genius, and now knows how to gain direct access to my food. This is probably NOT a good development.

But more than anything, what I really wanted to do this weekend was sleep. In the days preceding Snowmageddon, I'd cut myself VERY short on sleep, mostly out of my own stupid tendency to fall down time-wasting internet rabbitholes before bed. With four forced days of nature-made quarantine, I figured at the very least, I could catch up on some much-needed rest. Instead, I decided insomnia would be the best course of action for the weekend.

Did you know Spotify has an entire genre devoted to sleep playlists? If you're on their search page, keep scrolling past "rock" and "rap" and "dance" and eventually you'll find the genre simply called "sleep." Inside are dozens of playlists you're supposed to listen to in order to help you fall asleep. You can choose from options like "sleep," "deep sleep," and "dreamy vibes." There's an entire playlist called "night rain" that's just 340 different recordings of rainstorms. There's "white noise" (200 tracks of pure static), "green noise" (tinnier static), "pink noise" (less tinny static), and "brown noise" (which pretty much sounds like the Apocalypse,) all designed to help you descend into sleep into a hurry.

That night, I chose the playlist called "Floating Through Space" -- 145 tracks that are basically just someone on a Casio keyboard making pleasant "whooosh" noises and slow-moving angelic chords. The songs all have new-agey titles like "Hovering Sunset" and "Endless Hope." I thought this would be the perfect soundtrack to lull me to dreamland. Instead, I laid there, "floating through space" for nigh on two sleepless hours. It should have shut my mind off. Instead, it made me wonder if out there somewhere, there's a human being who earns a decent living making "whooosh" noises on a Casio keyboard. I want to be that person.

After yet another night of short sleep, I gave up. When it reached bedtime the next night, I went back to Spotify, but decided in my infinite wisdom to explore their "dance" genre playlists instead. If I was going to be up half the night, I might as well discover some new tracks to spin at the club, right? I remember turning Spotify on, I remember selecting the "dance" channel and pressing play. Next thing I knew, it was 11 a.m. I had slept for ten solid hours while thumping dance beats played around me. The "sleep" channel keeps me up all night, but the "dance" channel knocks me unconscious for almost half a day. I might be weird.

All things considered, it was somewhat nice to be a reclusive shut-in all weekend. I was lucky to have not lost power. I was lucky to have been able to stay indoors for most of the frigid weekend. The news said we essentially got an entire winter's worth of snow across a one week span. Maybe that means the worst of winter is behind us and spring is just around the corner. If Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow in a couple weeks, he and I will be having words. I'd really like to get these Christmas lights down before the 4th of July.

COLUMN: Miami Aliens

I think everybody's got it all wrong. All week long, the only thing I've heard out of people is SNOW this, SNOW that. Snow has been the only topic of discussion around every water cooler all week long. Look, I get it. After all, I'm known around the office as the guy who shares those apocalyptic early weather models where it says we're going to get 30 inches of snow before it invariably adjusts down to reasonable levels. I'm the king of winter worries.

Admittedly, this has not been an ideal weather week. But why are we so preoccupied by snow... when TEN FOOT TALL ALIENS WALK AMONG US? Where's your priorities, people?

Dateline: Miami, Florida. New Year's Day. Imagine this scenario: You're enjoying the evening from atop an umpteen-story skyscraper along the Miami coast, as one might do when one lives atop an umpteen-story skyscraper along the Miami coast. Suddenly, your New Year revelries are disrupted by the sound of sirens. You look down to see an armada of police cars rolling up across the street at the crowded Bayside Marketplace.

WHY are police arriving en masse? Because, claims the internet, you can "clearly" see what looks to be a gigantic humanoid alien walking down the street. 

This is exactly what happened a few days ago, at least according to a video that's gone viral this week on the world's most reliable news source: TikTok. Behold the first conspiracy theory of 2024 -- and it must be legit, because I've seen it with my own eyes. Well, KINDA, if I squint a little bit -- and perhaps have a good imagination.

Look, if you caption ANY video on the internet with "proof of a ten foot alien," I'm going to watch it. As a card-carrying nerd who's always up for a good tale of little green men (or, in THIS case, BIG green men,) I couldn't click the play button fast enough. Sure enough, you see a guy filming from some really high vantage point (either a skyscraper or a drone.) You see a ludicrous amount of police responding to some kind of incident. You hear what sounds to be gunfire. And yep, you see what appears to be some sort of impossibly tall creature wandering the streets of downtown Miami.

It's impressive -- but it's also blurry. Whoever our amateur cinematographer was, they didn't have a very good camera, and they're far away from the unfolding events. Any attempts to zoom in on our extra-terrestrial street-walker shows little more than a tall, human-looking blur.

So what's the official story? According to a Miami police spokesman, the officers were responding to multiple reports of teenagers fighting in and around the mall. Four teens ended up getting arrested. End of story. 

Except that's not nearly as good of a story as the one the internet has crafted, and it's easy to see why the video has (tall, alien) legs.

For one, there's a ridiculous amount of police on the scene. You can see roughly 50 police cars lining the street. If this was simply a group of troublemaking teens, why summon the whole of the Miami Police Department? Why were there noises that sounded like gunfire? And, of course, what of the inhumanly tall figure blurrily strutting around? For those who continually mine the internet for conspiracy theory gold, this video is a motherlode.

Well, not to burst everyone's bubble, but the police have an explanation for all that, too. Apparently the original call that came in to 911 claimed there was an active shooter at the mall, which explains the massive police response. The noises that sounded like gunfire? Apparently the teens were throwing fireworks at one another. As for our alien friend, police say the blurry image is, in fact, two or three officers walking down the street in tandem. When viewed from a distance, the video was filmed at just the right angle to make them look like one blurry ominous figure. 

Well, drat. Way to rain on the conspiracy parade with your party-pooping explanations, Miami Police. I'm not one to buy into loony internet theories -- but I AM one who likes to lurk in the comments section with some popcorn and watch the pots crack. 

Even though our extra-terrestrial visit was all but debunked, it's not stopped the fringier corners of the internet from keeping the dream of ten-foot aliens alive. It MUST be a government cover-up, they insist. Some swear they were there that night and DEFINITELY saw an otherworldly monster. Add some black helicopter sightings, a reported power outage nearby, and the Miami-Dade airport cancelling flights that day, and you've got proof positive that visitors are among us -- so sayeth the internet.

I'm a Doubting Shane. I think if E.T. decided to sashay his way down Biscayne Boulevard in full public view, there'd probably be more camera footage than just one dude atop a nearby skyscraper. But who am I to suck all the fun out of a fledgling conspiracy theory? If you are out there and friendly, my ten-foot tall tourist buddy, you're welcome to lay low at my place if you need a place to crash.

Bonus points if you're skilled at shoveling snow.

COLUMN: The Hum

I wear many hats here at the paper, including this silly column. But one hat I've never tried on? Investigative reporter.

I'm okay with this. We have an amazing staff of people who do that sorta stuff. Occasionally I pass them in the hallways. They always look like they're running late for something important. Frankly, I don't need that kind of stress in my life. But last Friday night, I maybe felt what it was like to be one of them for a few minutes.

It was 6 p.m. and I'd just gotten home from the office. Normally, my house is full of sound. There's always a TV on. Quite often, there's a stereo blaring at the same time. If that's not enough, I've usually got the comforting steady buzz of an air purifier running. Without its reassuring lullaby, I stand a chance of being able to hear my own conscience, and no one wants that, least of all me. 

But that night, I was in a rush. I had a DJ gig later that night, and I was woefully unprepared. As I ran around the house grabbing laptops and prepping playlists, I heard it. WHIRR-RRR-RRR-RRR-RRR-RRR. Somewhere outside, there was a weird industrial noise. It was loud enough to hear from inside the house.

I live in Rock Island, and I'm used to her delightful urban symphony: Police sirens. Freight trains. Lawn mowers. People who spend three quarters of the year souping up their cars for those two magical months they can drive around going "RNN-RNNN-RNNNNNN!" at stoplights hoping to impress the .001% of the populace who somehow think that's cool. And let's not forget Rock Island's favorite game: Was-That-Fireworks-Or-Gunshots?

But this? This was different. This was a noise I'm not used to hearing the outside world make. "Weird," I thought to myself, "it must be a street sweeper or something." You know, because street sweepers are such a common occurrence at 7 p.m. on dark wintry weekend nights. Regardless, I shrugged it off, turned the TV on, and went about my prep work. But I forgot to turn the air purifier on -- and an hour later, when the TV went quiet for a second, I realized the outside noise was still noising.

"What the...?" I said in my best responsible adult voice while cracking open the back door. The mystery sound was permeating the whole neighborhood. It was deep, ominous, and definitely mechanical in nature, with a pulsating WHIRR-RRR-RRR like a giant fan or motor emanating from parts unknown. I texted a friend who lives six blocks away: U HEAR THIS WEIRD NOISE OUTSIDE? She did. I texted another friend who lives six blocks in the other direction. He was hearing it, too.

My mind suddenly flashed to a few years prior, when I was driving back solo in the pitch middle of the night from a late Chicago concert. My only comfort during that commute was the infamous late-night radio show Coast To Coast AM, the wayward home for conspiracy theorists and lovers of all things that go bump in the night. That evening, the entire show was devoted to The Hum.

Around the world, people have reported hearing persistent and invasive mechanical-sounding hums. One of the most famous instances happened in Taos, New Mexico, where multiple residents in the 1990s reported hearing a pervasive droning noise of unknown origin. In 2011, Canadian officials actually asked the U.S. for help in determining a mysterious noise plaguing the residents of Windsor, Ontario. The source was never determined.

The internet is rife with theories about The Hum. Youtube is full of purported audio recordings of it. Some claim the hums align with underground gas pipelines. Others say it might be an effect of low frequency radio signals. Some think it's the Earth's shifting faultlines. One extremely weird website purports the noise is generated by the mating rituals of something called the "Midshipman fish," an erotic display I think we can all agree is left best unseen.

Of course, the wilder corners of the internet are convinced it's some sort of evil government experiment. Some claim The Hum causes autism and is responsible for sociopathic behavior. A few hums are purported to sound like blaring trumpets, which of course had caused people to speculate it's a sign of the Apocalypse. And there's always the internet's go-to answer for everything unexplained: ALIENS. I like to think I'm more level-headed than to assume a weird noise is clear proof of extra-terrestrials, but I can't lie: at one point when I was looking out my back door, I instinctively looked up, half-expecting to see the Parliament Mothership about to abduct me to Planet Funk.

I guess that's when my journalist instincts kicked in. I had a few minutes, so I dropped everything, grabbed my keys, and set off determined to find the cause of the hum. For the next half hour, I drove around Rock Island, employing the best scientific methodology I could muster: pulling over, rolling down my window, and listening.

After thirty minutes attempting to triangulate the source of the phenomenon with all the cunning street smarts I could muster, I can confidently conclude that the sound was coming from: somewhere. I honestly couldn't figure it out at all. Best I could tell, it was somewhere along the river on the west end of town. I rolled down my window once more for a full analysis of the situation -- and my window wouldn't roll back up, which obviously means THE GOVERNMENT HAS SECRET CHIPS IN ALL OF OUR CARS TO DEPLOY WHENEVER ANYONE GETS CLOSE TO THE TRUTH. 

Regardless, it was too cold for conspiracy theories and I was in no condition for Arctic investigations, so I went home and fixed my car window in the comfort of my garage. By the time I got home from the DJ gig, the noise had subsided. I swear I heard it again tonight as I got home from work, only much quieter. 

My foray into investigative journalism concluded with neither bang nor whimper, but with a hum. If anyone really knows what our Hum was, I'm all ears. Otherwise, by my best guess, it was a noisy barge. Or the government. Or aliens. Or weird fish doing unspeakable acts under the river. Back to you, Geraldo.