COLUMN: Inner Gold

WARNING: The following column features activities performed either by idiots or idiots under the supervision of other idiots. Accordingly, Shane must insist that no one attempt to recreate or re-enact any activity mentioned in this column.

Or, in short, please don't pee in your eye.

There was once a time when I would've assumed "don't pee in your eye" would be an unnecessary disclaimer in a world with common sense. But that was a world BEFORE the internet. We now live in different times. Stupider times.

I've spent the past few columns obsessing over online idiocy, and that's because I have nothing much better to do in the winter than sit around and scroll through TikTok in judgment of society. I've found videos claiming the Super Bowl was rigged and other videos offering "FINAL PROOF" that Taylor Swift is, in fact, a reptilian alien with a hidden agenda for global domination. I've watched cringe-worthy livestreams of individuals unburdened by talent who think they're great singers and/or captivating comedians.

On special occasion, I've even watched clips of people convinced that our Earth is flat as a pancake. Here's what I don't get about that argument: if the world were flat, which it decidedly is NOT, why the global (or, errm, rectangular) cover-up? Wouldn't we have just learned this flat factoid in science class? Why would our flat earth require some kind of epic conspiracy to keep us in the dark? Is it just so none of us dare sail off the edge into oblivion? I don't get it. 

But nothing I've run into on TikTok is quite like the page of one Suama Fraile.  

Suama is an "assistant metaphysical counselor," which is apparently something that one can be. When it comes to natural holistic medicine, she claims to be an expert. You can tell this because she exudes an aura of confidence (and possibly patchouli) in her videos -- and also because she paints a little sun on her forehead, which is something I always look for when seeking expert counsel.

When I'm fast-scrolling through dozens of videos on TikTok, you've got about 1.5 seconds to pique my interest or I'm flipping right past you. Well, Suama's video got my attention in record time by its opening line alone: "I will now tell you why urine is so wonderful." Interest level achieved. Well done.

According to Suama, we've all been doing this whole "life" thing wrong for a mighty long time. Some people say that laughter is the best medicine. Personally, I've always advocated that medicine is the best medicine. Suama is a firm believer that the best medicine is actually human urine. 

"We carry our own internal medicine that's perfect for us," she explains. "Wonderful herbs come out of the urine," she declares confidently. "It is loaded with minerals, like gold. Our own inner gold."

To prove her point, she then tells us that she's cured herself of astigmatism and myopia. How, you may ask? By pouring urine into her eyes on a daily basis, of course. How could we as a society have been duped all these years into wearing glasses and trusting optometrists when we can simply fix it all with our "inner gold"? Curse our foolish naivety.

You may have questions. I certainly do. Chief among them: who was the first person to attempt this, and WHY? Who was the legendary trendsetter who thought, "Hey, THIS stuff belongs in my eye!" Second, even if you wanted to partake in such an activity (which you should NOT), HOW does one even accomplish this? I would think there might be logistical challenges in such an endeavor. After all, you don't want to run the risk of an errant shot causing your forehead painting to run.

Like all of us (admit it), I have not been immune to one or two restroom mishaps in my life, but thus far nothing so tragic as to introduce my eyes to "inner gold." I did see a funny video once of a new father suffering a horrible fate while attempting his first diaper change, but I don't recall him throwing away his contact lenses in triumph. Instead, I'm pretty sure he screamed.

But questions are okay. Questions are good, and Suama's ready for them. She'll answer them all. All you need to do is provide Suama with your credit card and you can take her class to learn all the wonders of "urine therapy." She'll even teach you how to "make" something called "enhanced urine" (I'm not asking.) In another video, she tells of a secret mantra you can utter several times a day to fix all your woes. That's a separate class. Apparently, based on her fiscal solvency to consistently afford forehead paint alone, people are paying good money to learn how to mumble nonsense and pee into their own eyeballs. I love our world.

I did some research (and am now probably on some kind of FBI watchlist) and "urine therapy" really is a thing in some of the stranger corners of the holistic internet. REAL doctors even did a study you can find entitled, "The Golden Fountain - Is urine the miracle drug no one told you about?" Spoiler alert: It is NOT. Unsurprisingly, words like "contamination" and "bacterial growth" are abundant in their findings, and the study even shows that folks who recycle their "inner gold" for crazypants purposes are often prone to antibiotic resistance. In other words, DON'T DO IT. Like, ever.

But, I suppose, who are we to believe? Science and scientists and doctors and nurses and anyone with a shred of common sense? Or a nice lady with a forehead painting asking for my Mastercard? Maybe if we stopped listening to that pesky logic of ours and followed Suama's helpful advice, we could one day be able to walk down the street with perfect 20/20 vision, which we could then use to clearly see all the people pointing and laughing and saying, "there goes the crazy lady who pees in her eye."

COLUMN: RRHoF

We are a bitter, divided nation. The bickering, hatred, and putdowns have become too much. This week, all I've seen is division and squabbling and the ugliest sides of human nature in full display. Is it a fool's dream to think we can mend the fences, bridge the gap, and bring everyone closer in unity and harmony?

Somehow, some way, we need to come together... and just accept this year's nominees for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

As arguments go, this is one I'm okay with perpetuating. Do I have opinions on politics, vaccinations, Russia, immigration, and the current state of our economy? Sure I do. But, by and large, do I keep my yap shut? You betcha. For one, I don't want to alienate half my readership. For another, I'm fully self-aware of my lack of qualifications to talk about such things. You want political opinion? Turn to the opinion page. You want a bangin' mixtape? I'm your boy.

Music is my life force. I was changing records on my mom's hi-fi before I could properly walk. I can't dance to save my life, but it turns out you can still belong in a dance club if you're the one standing in the DJ booth shaping the playlist. The only reason I bought a house was because my record collection was outgrowing my apartment. The other day, I overheard some co-workers talking about music and all I felt was pure seething rage that they had the audacity to not include me in the conversation. I am music nerd, hear me roar.

And if there's one thing that pushes music nerds into overdrive, it's the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Every year, the closed-door nomination committee of the Rock Hall presents a shortlist of nominated artists, who are then voted on by an elite group of music industry experts. Artists qualify for induction once it's been 25 years since their first release. The winners are then inducted at a nationally televised ceremony. Following that, they're added to the ever-growing exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame & Museum in Cleveland. It's a fairly big deal.

And every year, they invariably get it wrong. No self-respecting music nerd is ever happy with the nominees, the winners, or the ceremony. The entire process seems less about honoring the inductees and more about getting fans upset about who DIDN'T make the cut. Either that or maybe I need to make different friends on Twitter. The music geeks I know get REALLY mad. Cursing and swearing mad. 

There's two common themes to the outrage. The first, and most obvious, involves the rather loose application of "rock & roll." Most people hear the term and think guitar/bass/drums. The Rock Hall thinks otherwise. There are country, soul, and pop artists in the Rock Hall. There are (gasp) rappers in the Rock Hall. This irks rock purists to no end.

The other argument is something along the lines of "how dare they nominate [any popular artist] when [some influential band who only 4 people on your continent have ever heard of] hasn't made it in?!" The righteous music nerd in me agrees with these sentiments to a degree. You might not have heard of The MC5 -- they're certainly not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But in greasy Detroit clubs in 1968, The MC5 pretty much invented punk rock. Search the Rock Hall all you want, but you won't find the industrial clangs of Throbbing Gristle or Einsturzende Neubaten, a German band known for playing homemade instruments made from scrap metal and power tools. But you WILL find Nine Inch Nails in the Rock Hall, a band whose very existence was predicated on those noisemakers paving the way (often literally, with onstage sledgehammers.) Two of the most influential bands of MY musical upbringing, The Smiths and My Bloody Valentine, have never made the cut.

But I get it. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame isn't just an honor-bestowing organization. It's a business. No one's gonna tune in to watch a band they've never heard of get inducted. The museum needs to draw more visitors than just pretentious record store clerks. Few people on Earth would make Cleveland a vacation destination in order to see a sledgehammer that Einsturzende Neubaten once dragged onstage. The Rock Hall needs Elton John's glasses. It needs Michael Jackson's glove. It needs Taylor Swift's catsuit.

This year's nominees were just announced. It is perhaps the least rock & roll offering they've ever assembled. There is much outrage. Even I was initally like, "Whaaa?" But the more I thought about it, the more impressed I am by this year's nominees.

You've got a handful of true rock artists in the mix: Ozzy, Peter Frampton, and Foreigner. Newly qualified artists like Jane's Addiction, Lenny Kravitz, and the Dave Matthews Band have made the shortlist. The late Sinead O'Connor has been honored with a nomination. But let's focus for a second on the ones the rock snobs are mocking. I argue they have every right to be there.

Mary J. Blige was the first artist to bridge the gap between R&B and hip-hop. Kool & the Gang have twenty-one Top 40 singles. When Liam Gallagher heard his band Oasis had been nominated, he said, "I don't need some wank award by some geriatric in a cowboy hat," which is pretty rock & roll if you ask me. Eric B. & Rakim wrote the blueprint for modern rap. A Tribe Called Quest made jazz cool again. Sade are far from rock & roll, but may have been the soundtrack to your conception. Mariah Carey has more #1 hits than I can count, and half of them are "All I Want for Christmas Is You" -- plus she secretly recorded a grunge album in the 90s just to see if she could do it, which is a seriously rock move. And let's face it, Cher belongs in EVERY Hall of Fame. There should just be a Cher Hall of Fame. 

So step off your high horse, my fellow nerds. Music is subjective, and that's what makes it such a powerful force. Last night on Facebook, I was greeted by a post from a friend IRATE about this year's nominees. The very next post was from a different friend saying, "The Rock Hall finally got it right this year! What a great list!" I don't need a museum in Cleveland to tell me what music's awesome. You don't need me to tell you what music's awesome (although I can if you want. In great detail. Just ask.) But if we've got to argue about SOMETHING on the internet, I'll take this over politics any day of the week.

COLUMN: Galactivation

Don't mind me. I'm just having an ideological crisis and questioning everything I know to be true.

Last week, in this very column, I said, quote: "I am a fan of social media." I use Facebook daily to chat with my friends. I use Twitter daily to try (and mostly fail) to chat with celebrities. I use Youtube daily to pack my brain cells with exciting new knowledge about the world. And then I use TikTok daily to destroy those brain cells in a blaze of glory.

Earlier this month, the CEOs of the major social media networks were brought before a Congressional hearing, where they were subject to a good old-fashioned Senate beatdown by politicians eager to lay the blame of cyber-bullying and online harm to children squarely upon their shoulders. As a steadfast fan of social media, I felt bad for them.

Look, I get it. There are terrible things that happen on social media. Kids get hurt on social media. Kids get victimized on social media. There are truly awful people out there right now doing truly awful things on social media. I don't for a single second want to minimize the dangers kids face online or disrespect ANYONE whose lives have been impacted by cyber-bullying or worse. It's a horrible problem and it needs to be addressed.

I just don't know if we're laying the blame in the right place. Social media is, at its heart, a vehicle for communication. It's a postal service for the new age, a modern way for humans to connect and interact in the world like never before. The problem is that a lot of humans are awful and need to be communicated with as little as possible. But when these terrible people do terrible things, is it the fault of the communication portal itself?

People sadly get scammed by malicious phone calls all the time. Do we blame the phone company? If you order something online and they send you a defective product, would you blame UPS? If your kid sneaks a peek at a dirty movie, would you sue the manufacturer of the TV they watched it on? Heck, if some nimrod drinks and drives and crashes into your house, would you drag automakers before Congress? Of course not. They weren't the instigators.

And if you... if you... and that's when it hit me while standing in the shower at 7 a.m. I ran smack into a sticky wicket, and it hurt. By the same logic I just used to defend social media, I'm essentially arguing against gun control. I'm arguing against drug regulations. I'm siding with cigarette manufacturers. Wait, did I just become a Libertarian? That can't be right. This wasn't the kind of internal monologue I wanted to be having with a head full of shampoo. I hadn't even had any coffee.  

Thankfully, I don't have to continue that ideological debate with myself. It was settled later that night, when I came across two things that made me realize social media is, in fact, a horrifying monster that needs to be destroyed at all costs.

For one, I discovered the magic and wonder that is... GALACTIVATORS. I don't know what led me to their nook of the internet, other than an unlucky swipe on TikTok. I'm a bit late to the Galactivation party. I found out later they'd already had their fifteen minutes of fame on America's Got Talent, where they were blessedly swept offstage in record time. Thanks to social media, though, they've built a loyal online audience.

The Galactivators are two middle-aged yoga instructors who perform improvisational hip-hop jams about Mother Earth and the wonders of the cosmos. And they sound EXACTLY as good as you'd expect two middle-aged yoga instructors rapping about the cosmos to be. It's magically insufferable. Every night, they livestream healing hip-hop chakras from their living room while dressed like refugees from a Las Vegas thrift store managed by blind drag queens. There are Norwegian death metal bands who spend their entire careers trying to fuel their fans into a frenzy of hatred and rage, and none of them do it half as efficiently as watching these two painfully rhyme "Redwood tree" with "galaxy." And yes, they'll play birthday parties. YOU ALL KNOW WHAT TO GET ME NEXT YEAR.

If that wasn't bad enough, remember last week's column when I talked about the conspiracy theorists claiming Taylor Swift is trying to rig the next election? Well, thanks to the online homework I did for that, Twitter now assumes I'm some bonkers Q-Anon enthusiast and has been filling my feed with all manner of fringe nutbags. The most intolerable one I've encountered is an influencer whose every post is vague clickbait designed to rile up ultra-conservatives. This morning, he posted a clip of Taylor Swift's crew walking to the stage to accept the Album of the Year Grammy with the ominous caption, "Isn't Taylor Swift's handler CREEPY??" 

Except Taylor Swift had no "handler" as she walked onstage. The guy in the clip he's referring to was Jack Antonoff, one of the most famous and recognizable music producers on the planet. He fronts his own band, Bleachers, who I adore. When it comes to pop music, he's something of a genius. A five-second Google search would've told this guy as much. But no, let's just ignorantly accuse him of being an Illuminati puppetmaster controlling the hidden ominous Taylor Swift political agenda. Swell. 

I expected to see a bunch of comments putting this guy in his place, but instead, the comments were mostly anti-Semitic hate speech. Wowzers. The Bill of Rights is neat and all, but some people don't deserve the freedom of speech. I'm just hoping all the sane people didn't comment because they don't bother reading his nonsense in the first place. Maybe this guy's entire Twitter following is just fellow morons who spend their days pointlessly instilling fear in one another until they all finally die off. 

Even after seeing the ignorance, feeling the hate, AND surviving galactivation, I'm still a fan of social media -- but man, do I detest some of the people that inhabit a good chunk of it. I'm not a proponent of harshly regulating social media, but I'd hear anyone out with a plan on how to regulate stupidity. Congress should hold a hearing.   

COLUMN: Superb Owl

Welp, the teams have been decided, the date's been set, and a superb owl is just over a week away. Kansas City and San Francisco are about to do battle on the gridiron. This can only mean one thing: It was all rigged.

At least, that's what my Twitter feed claims today. And yes, I know it's called X now, but no one calls it that. Twitter for life, baby.

I'm a fan of social media. Not in the "it's-enriching-our-world-for-the-greater-good-of-mankind" kinda way. I'm more of a fan in the "let's-see-what-the-crazies-have-to-say-today" kinda way. If you're a card-carrying member of the tinfoil hat collective, the internet is your stage and we're your anonymous audience. I'll be there in the front row with popcorn, promise. Conspiracy theory culture can be great entertainment. Heck, sometimes it can even be right.

This probably isn't one of those times.

The conspiracy theory du jour that's been popping up on Twitter this week goes something like this: The entire NFL season has been rigged to get the undeserving Kansas City Chiefs into the Super Bowl. Why? So that Taylor Swift, currently the world's most famous girlfriend, can have a huge audience in order to tell her legions of fans to vote for Joe Biden. If you believe that, I'll wait a few seconds for you to return to Earth from leaping over all that logic. It was probably a bumpy flight.

For the sake of a decent read, let's assume this was true. Let's say an entire football league -- 32 teams, 32 owners, 1,696 players, and 3,595 employees -- have all been in cahoots to throw this entire season to get the Chiefs into the final game. To what end? So that Kansas City can call a time-out in the 1st quarter and roll out a red carpet for Taylor to stroll across midfield in a "VOTE JOE" t-shirt? I don't see that happening.   

113,000,000 people watched the Super Bowl last year. That's less than half the people who follow Taylor Swift on Instagram. If Taylor Swift wanted to tell the world her thoughts on the political landscape, all she has to do is hit SEND. You'd think that would be way easier than commandeering an entire sports league. Taylor Swift is a kajillionaire. She could probably OWN the Chiefs if she wanted to. If she yearns for a public forum, she could buy a 60-second ad in the middle of the game with pocket change. Heck, she could probably win the presidency herself if she declared her candidacy tomorrow. 

I'm not sure how getting her boyfriend into the Super Bowl leads us down the path to Swiftie-fueled election interference. It's not like she's playing the halftime show or something. Satan already called dibs on that gig.

Yep, that brings me to the OTHER conspiracy theory I happened upon today.

"CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED," the ominous post on Facebook reads. "From occultists to ceremonial magicians, Illuminati elitists to Satanists, the big agenda and the occult’s purpose is playing out in plain sight in this high profile ritual event known as the Super Bowl halftime show, which has been Satan's biggest way for many years to sinisterly cast witchcraft spells and program the masses for the New World Order, and to receive the mark of the beast and seal their eternal demise."

Wow. The Black Eyed Peas' halftime performance a few years ago was terrible, but I didn't know it was bad enough to seal my eternal demise. Bummer. If the New World Order were to rise up in my lifetime, I would've at least hoped for a more dramatic soundtrack than "my humps, my humps, my lovely lady lumps." Curse you, Satan!

According to this post, though, the devil's crafty, and he knows the best way to corrupt young minds is through the ominous sorcery of lyrically-edited, lip-synced hip-hop. And who better to lead our new generation down this dark and twisted path of demonology than... Usher?

The best thing about pop culture is that it's always terrified the generations that have preceded it. Whether it's Elvis' hips or the Beatles' hair, the Fresh Prince got it right: parents just don't understand. If you think Usher's a bad influence, I double-dog-dare you to listen to today's Top 40 offerings. There's songs on the charts right now that make me blush when I have to play them at DJ gigs. I do sometimes fear the influence pop culture can have on impressionable minds.

But Usher? Come on. I saw him in concert two decades ago and he blew the headliner off the stage. But that was some time ago, and I don't recall any demons onstage whatsoever during that performance. No offense against Usher, but he's a few years past his pop culture sell-by date for today's generation. He's at that stage of his career where he's likely headed towards a successful Vegas residency and a legion of middle-aged fans who love the guy. In other words, he's the ideal kind of innocuous performer that the Super Bowl books: someone juuust old enough for adults to love while kids won't roll their eyes and change the channel.

For conspiracy theorists, though, he's also apparently the work of the devil, and those very people telling us not to watch the halftime show will be the same ones watching it back over and over again, hoping to discover some dance move or lighting set-up they can claim to be a clear symbol of evil forces at work -- because if there's one thing we all know about the illuminati, they love to reveal their nefarious plans through the art of interpretive dance.

So enjoy the game next week -- except don't watch it at all. Or at least look the other way during the halftime show or any possible camera shots of Taylor Swift cheering on her boyfriend. Maybe if enough people YELL IN ALL CAPS ON THE INTERNET, we can get rid of players' girlfriends and demonic halftime shows altogether. Maybe then we can finally get back to the wholesome, family-friendly activity we all love: watching profane barbarians give each other concussions. Go Team!