COLUMN: Skybridge

(Okay, yeah, I got the idea for this column in the paper based on some earlier blogging I did on this site. Apologies if the material is a bit "familiar." I'm waiting for snide letters from Davenport city council members.)

Six million, eight hundred thousand dollars. Wow, that's a lot of money.

If I had that kind of cash, I'd buy myself a fancy home and fancy car. Maybe I'd even get one of those guitar-shaped swimming pools. Granted, I don't know how to swim, but that's OK. With that kinda bread, I could hire Michael Phelps to teach me.

With $6,800,000, I could throw money around left and right. I could do something completely crazy. I even could build a block-long bridge that connects nothing to nothing.

Too bad the city of Davenport beat me to it.

Unless you're blind, you've seen it. The new crown jewel of Davenport -- the River Music Skybridge -- opened a few weeks ago. And yes, at a budget of $6.8 million, it's EXACTLY what Davenport needs.

Impoverished neighborhoods in desperate need of grants and revitalization? Pshaw, I say to you! A school system always in need of better funding and higher standards of quality? Don't be ridiculous! A levee to stop the entire downtown from flooding every five years? That's commie talk, mister.

No, we've spent countless man-hours assessing the REAL problem facing the citizens of Davenport, and that problem, obviously, is the pedestrian crosswalks of River Drive.

These menacing downtown intersections have plagued us as a people for far too long. Thank God the city finally has come up with an easy-to-achieve solution.

That's right, no longer will you have to wait those interminable 30 seconds for the light to change to cross the street. No longer will you experience that aching neck pain as you first look left and then right before proceeding through the crosswalk. (After all, it is SO hard to find a chiropractor in this town!)

Yes, thanks to modern technology, the solution to crossing River Drive now is as easy as going a block out of your way, scaling four flights of stairs, walking across a psychedelic nightmare, then back down four flights of stairs. Just like that, you have defeated the crosswalk menace.

Perhaps I'm being too hard on the Skybridge. As a rule, I like shiny new stuff.

Some of my friends are into antiques and old, cumbersome Victorian homes and such. Not me; I want angular, post-modern, technologically-evolved buildings that make me go "oooh." And you've got to give Davenport kudos for making that happen with their River Renaissance project.

No longer does the downtown look like some dilapidated Mark Twainian pipe dream. The addition of the Skybridge, Figge Art Center, and even last decade's River Center have given Davenport the kind of downtown I WANT to see on a postcard.

None of this, however, explains the purpose of the Skybridge. The thing is impressive looking, sure, but it doesn't change the fact that it connects NOTHING to NOTHING.

A cool pedestrian bridge like that should lead from one important tourist-trap destination to another. Instead, it leads from a stairwell to a stairwell, and that seems kinda pointless.

Of course, not pointless enough to stop me and my friends from going last week to walk the Skybridge. That was when the REAL shock and awe hit. If the outside of the bridge isn't weird and modern enough looking for you, wait till you check out the inside.

A rainbow of colored lights swoosh and whirl as you stagger across the bridge in a futuristic, psychedelic haze -- it's 2005: A Tacky Odyssey, right in your own back yard.

The 10-year-old in me LOVES it. The view from the Skybridge is awesome, and the light show on the inside was so impressive, in a juvenile way, that all I could muster was a nervous "hehehehe" all the way across.

But is that "hehehehe" worth $6.8 million? The 10-year-old in me says an enthusiastic "yes"; while the 34-year-old in me would like to comment, but he's too busy shaking his head in disbelief.

...Home.

Sorry for the lack of blogging this week... have been on vacation for a week and am completely wrecked as a result. Why is it that I enjoy doing such crazy stuff on vacations sometime that I feel like I need a vacation after returning FROM vacation? Ah well, live and learn... I'm sure next week's column will detail my activities in full.

COLUMN: Hot

Hmm ... this is NOT making sense to me. I need to scan the headlines for a sec. Let's see here. Supreme Court something or other ... BTK killer ... Wimbledon ... Nope. Absolutely no news stories at all on the earth moving closer to the sun.

I'm pretty sure it has, though. I don't own a thermometer, but my guess is that over the past couple of weeks, the daily high temperature has been, oh, if I had to ballpark it I'd say around 243 degrees or so. You know, I haven't seen too many of those famed black squirrels running around Rock Island lately. My guess is that they've all melted.

The point is, it's been REALLY hot out lately, and not your everyday kind of hot at that. This has been, to quote Neil Simon, Africa hot. When I'm walking a half a block to my car and breaking out in a sweat, it's hot. Well, or maybe I'm just THAT out of shape.

What happened to spring though? Seriously, it lasts for a week anymore. It's 20 degrees below zero, then you blink and it's 100. If push comes to shove, I most definitely prefer being cold than hot. When it's cold outside, you can put on a jacket. When it's hot, you just plain suffer.

Nowhere is this more evident than within the vibrant climatic atmospherics of my apartment. I live in a pretty big apartment complex. One floor below me lives a colorful old guy known to us simply as "Benny." He's a great guy, but ol' Benny keeps his apartment at around 102 degrees year round. In the winter, this is a GOOD thing -- I never have to run my heat. But in the summer, when Benny turns my apartment into his own personal crockpot, it means I have to have my air conditioner on 24 hours a day to keep up.

My air conditioner has two settings -- "ON" and "OFF." If I try to shut the air off, it's 95 within two hours. Instead, I keep it on all summer long, thus turning it into non-stop jacket weather in my apartment. Again, though, it's better than heat.

I found this out a couple weeks ago when my air conditioner decided to konk out on me. I called our maintenance folks, who gave me a one-week ETA on repair. I thought I could make it.

"You're a man," said the voice that pops up in my head only in times like this. "You don't need any air conditioning, you baby." Did Rambo have air conditioning when he blew up that town? I think not. Did Bruce Willis ever make "Die Hard Yet Climate Controlled"? That'd be a no. Did The Terminator say "I'll be back ... once I've cooled down a bit"?

I could do it. I could tough it out. And I did ... for approximately 22 hours. Then I called them back and whined until they sent someone straight out. Lo and behold, our maintenance guy showed up and the two of us along with a friend of mine grabbed a working unit out of an empty apartment.

Now imagine this scenario: The three of us are pulling my old, broken air conditioner out of the wall. Suddenly, I hear a noise. Make that several noises. I hear someone say something that can't be repeated in a family newspaper. I look up in just enough time to see an honest-to-gosh SWARM of bumblebees fly into my apartment. I couldn't quite understand their grievances, but my guess was that we had just leveled their condo and they were a bit unhappy.

I spend one calculated second examining the situation. Weighing my options, I proceed with the best and most rational choice, which involves making a noise like "eep," dropping everything (including the air conditioner, onto the floor, with a thud) and fleeing out the door while yelling what I'm pretty sure was "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" Although it could have possibly been "Iiiiieeeeeeeee!"

Eventually, while I supervised from several rooms away, my friend and the maintenance guy shooed all the bees out.

The moral of the story is quite simple: Summer is evil, and I need to move to Iceland. Unless there are Icelandic bees, in which case I simply need to move to the icemaker inside my refrigerator. There'd be no heat, no bees, an abundant supply of leftovers, and, most importantly, I could finally find out if the little light stays on when the door's closed.

Those Darn Hemadrones!!

Man, I sure hate it when I'm being chased by subterranean flesh-eating aliens.

COLUMN: Dancing With the Stars

It's been nice knowing you, everybody. No no, the column hasn't been cancelled. But the world IS about to end. I've personally spent the last two or three days giving backward glances out the window, looking for four guys on horses to come gunning for me.

I'm thoroughly convinced that we've got little time left, as just the other day I bore witness to an event that MUST surely be a sign of the Apocalypse. That was last week, back when I was a wide-eyed, innocent youth, checking out the internet for my weekly entertainment news. That was when I saw the evil, evil truth... "Dancing With the Stars" is the #1 rated show in America.

Ummm... WHAT? That's it, then. We've reached the ultimate low. It's a pretty accepted fact that we are the leaders of the free world. And, apparantly, what the leaders of the free world like to do in their down time is watch Evander Holyfield do the tango.

The first time I saw an ad for "Dancing with the Stars," I eagerly expected the Energizer bunny to come strutting across the screen, revealing the whole ad as a ruse. Nope, it's a real show. My friends and I sat, open-mouthed, and wondered just who the person was that could have green-lighted such a travesty, and naturally, what parking lot that person would be working in six months from now once they got canned for their ignorance. But noooo. THAT would be putting too much stock in society. Instead, the show is a verified hit. Way to go, people.

Have you seen the show? They assemble some celebrities, pair them up with professional dance partners, and have them compete for a panel of overly pretentious judges and the viewing public. Unfortunately, no celebrities appeared to be available, so they brought in Evander Holyfield and Joey New Kid on the Block instead (who, incidentally, is now Joey Old Kid on the Block.) People, this is the loosest definition of "stars" we've seen yet on reality TV.

ABC's ads have now been changed to include the phrase, "Don't miss the show that's captivated America and gotten everyone talking!" EVERYONE? Really?

I'm trying in my mind to figure out what these water-cooler discussions could possibly be about:

"Gee, did you watch 'Dancing With the Stars' last night?"
"Yup."
"Boy, that Evander sure can do the cha-cha."
"Yup."

Captivating, eh? How can you as a viewer keep your focus on this program without nodding off within 10 minutes? I tried! It's impossible.

Then it hit me. I basically did this whole monologue here for my co-workers, and suddenly the females in the room rose up en masse to properly lecture me on the innate joy and magic of this show. What I learned is that: (a) the "stars" apparantly practice really, really hard, (b) the guy who played J. Peterman in Seinfeld is "classy," and (c) the women's outfits are "really pretty."

Ah, that's it, then. I don't give stuff like this a chance because I'm estrogen-challenged. Guys don't care about hard work or classiness. We don't care if the outfits are "pretty." We only care if the outfits are see-through. Oh, and it might help if, somehow, as part of the competition, people's lives were at risk. THEN it would be a man's show.

So I think, in the sake of fairness, someone needs to develop a show along the same lines for we manly men to enjoy. That's where I come in. I've got a killer idea, and I just need to pitch it to the networks to make millions and be able to blow this popsicle newspaper.

Ladies and gentlemen -- well, mostly gentlemen -- I give you: "Blowing Stuff Up With the Stars." My premise is simple: assemble the celebrities (might I suggest Fabio, MTV's Martha Quinn, and the guy who played "Cooter" on The Dukes of Hazzard,) give them each 5 sticks of dynamite, and let them go crazy and blow up whatever's nearby -- a car, an empty home, Tom Cruise, whatever. Their work would then be judged by a group of pretentious munitions experts on Effectivity, Blast Radius, and Overall Awesomeness.

THEN, my friends, we would have some watercooler fodder.

"Did you see Martha Quinn get her hand blown off last night?"
"Yep."
"Wasn't that FREAKIN' AWESOME?!"
"YOU KNOW IT!!! HIGH FIVE!"

(Photo courtesy ABC.com)

Does Davenport Need Psychedelia?

(Photo courtesy this guy's cool site.)

So tonight me and my friend Jason went over to the Rhythm City casino. Did we go because we like to gamble? Hell no. (Though, it must be touted, I won $4.60 playing a slot machine called "Wild Dolphins.") We went because we wanted to see this crazy new Skybridge thing for ourselves.

Umm... whoa. That thing is CRAZY.

Point #1: The skybridge connects, essentially, nothing to nothing. If you're going to have a pedestrian bridge 4 stories above the ground, you might want to attach it to something more interesting than an elevator on each side. Really, folks, they're called CROSSWALKS. Not too confusing to use, and they don't require an elevator.

Point #2: So let's assume that, elevation aside, a skybridge is the way to go. I want to know who the person was who stood up in a development meeting and went, "Okay, so what if we took the lights inside the bridge and made them every color of the rainbow, and then let's make 'em flash and do funky patterns. That would be, as the kids say, dope."

I guess I just don't get it. But don't get me wrong -- I think it's super cool... and I'm surprised that the halls of the skybridge aren't already being usurped by college kids on mind-altering substances... coz it really is super neat to check out. But WHY go to the trouble? I'm just a bit confuzzled.

It's like, "Well, you've just lost your life savings on the riverboat. You feel sick to your stomach. Just to add insult to injury, we're going to make you walk home through a five-minute psychedelic nightmare. Come back soon, y'hear?"

It's like me and my cynical friend were saying tonight, it's only a matter of time before punk kids start spitting on people below... or worse yet, some emotionally fragile kid will decide that doing a 4-story belly flop onto the casino's pavement will be a boss way to end it all. Everything good gets ruined by cool kids doing something STUPID, just you wait.

Until then, I'm going to enjoy the tripped-out stroll across the skybridge that connects nothing to nothing. Kudos, D-port, on spending weird amounts of money on weird stuff. Remember that next time the river floods your whole downtown. I'll be safe, coz I'll be 4 stories up watching the chaos from my psychedelic skybridge.

COLUMN: Father's Day

When I first started this column, one of the cardinal vows I made to myself was that I'd never take it into cheezy territory. No sappy, feel-good, make-you-go-"awwwww" tales out of this journalist. No way, no how. Save it for Hallmark. Most of that touchy-feely sentimental stuff makes me want to puke.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, grab your barf bags. I need to break my rule just this once. I'll try to keep the schlockiness down to a minimum, but you're going to need to indulge me for a second. This weekend I need to pay honor to someone who's been an unsung hero in my life for far too long.

Put simply, my dad is the greatest of all dads. That's not opinion -- it's an actual fact. Many apologies to those of you who also might think the same of your father. Sadly, you're incorrect in your assessment. Your pop can only be #2 or lower. I called dibs.

I was sitting around thinking tonight. I'm 34 years old, and the greatest accomplishment I've been able to muster thus far in life is the ability to roll out of bed every morning, throw myself together, and make it to work within 5 minutes of when I'm supposed to be there. That's MY big resume.

When my DAD was 34, he was building the house that I grew up in. From scratch. His plans, his hands, his dream. I remember being 7 years old, watching my father put our home together, and thinking to myself, "Wow, when I get that moldy old, I'm gonna build a house, too." Well, here I am, old and moldy, and I can't even build a salad without covering myself in ranch dressing.

Yet this man put together our home from the ground up. Or should I say from the ground DOWN. See, my dad didn't just design and build any ol' home -- no, I grew up in an energy efficient, Earth-sheltered, "underground" home. My dad built us the cave of all caves. Virtually tornado-proof, completely earthquake-proof, heated and cooled by little more than the Sun and the earth itself. To the 7-year-old me, it was like living in a James Bond hideout.

He's our family's own personal superhero. The man can make ANYTHING with his hands. Beyond crafting much of the furniture in my apt., I've seen the guy make a pottery wheel, a miniature replica cannon, a fully working dulcimer for my mom when she mentioned it on a whim, it just goes on and on. I, meanwhile, can't craft a microwaved burrito without issues.

You'd think my dad was a professional carpenter or an architect. Nope. He's a railroader, one of the most thankless jobs on the planet. Home for sometimes as little as 8 hours at a stretch, then gone on a train for a day and a half. Yet, even with the insane schedule that he's known for 30+ years, I have NEVER witnessed the man put himself first.

Maybe my dad would've enjoyed a kid who liked to build things, too. Instead he got me -- Nerdy McWuss. But, darn it, lumber has SPLINTERS, and besides, it's usually found outside, and that's where the bees and snakes and bugs are. So I spent my childhood indoors glued to computers, video games, and TV -- but without a lick of disappointment from the old man. Besides, even Superman needs somebody to program the VCR.

I perpetually count myself among the lucky ones, as I've got parents who've stayed together and are as hopelessly in love with each other as the day they met. My folks brought me up on the straight and narrow -- but with kindness and support instead of discipline or fear. Everything I am today starts and stops with them.

Recently, I've gotten to see my dad play a different kind of superhero. For the past 2 weeks, my mom's been in and out of the hospital with what the doctors refer to as "thunderclap migraines." Don't worry - she's going to be fine. The point is, my father took two weeks off work to become the family rock. When you're hanging out with someone suffering from headaches, you've got to be prepared to spend a lot of time in a very dark, very quiet room. My father hasn't left my mom's side for the past 2 weeks, with little to do but sit, stare, sleep, and call me with status reports every other hour.

Watching all this made me realize that I'm still the 7 year old wanting to be just like my dad when I grow up. I might not be able to build my own house, but if I can one day fill a home with the kind of love and happiness that my parents have given me all these years, I'll be just fine.

I love you, Dad. Happy Father's Day.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

He must be stopped.

Awww, take all my fun away, why don't ya?

...and just when I was going to post names, photos, and home addresses of co-workers who are ugly and dumb.

Your loss.

Michael Jackson

It's official. The verdict is in. The jury has debated and reached their decision:

The kid is NOT his son.

COLUMN: Little Green Men

It's all my parents' fault.

When I was in fourth grade, my folks got me my first computer. What they thought to be a fantastic teaching tool instead pulled me straight into the social abyss of adolescent nerd-dom.

The facts are indisputable. Yes, I have seen "Star Wars" more times than I care to admit. Yes, I had a Dungeons & Dragons character named "Fokstarr." Yes, I ALWAYS was last picked in gym class.

And like all good nerds of my day, I was deep into science fiction, the paranormal, and pretty much anything and everything that went bump in the night.

I've never understood this about myself. I guess I'm a natural-born skeptic. I was the first kid in my group of friends to call Santa's bluff. When all my buddies were going nuts over pro wrestling, I was in the background, scoffing.

To this day, whenever I witness anything hokey or unbelievable -- from televangelists to psychics to weird e-mails claiming I can increase the size of my nether regions -- I'm usually the first person to stand up and (in the confines of a family newspaper) yell "Cow defecation!"

Yet, despite my inherent skepticism about most things in life, I AM a firm believer in little green men. True, there is more physical evidence to support the existence of the Easter bunny than there is to support life outside our planet -- but I don't care.

Look, the universe is one big place. I mean REALLY big. It's the Monster Thickburger of existence. There are MILLIONS of stars out there -- and to think that their only purpose in life is to set the mood when we're out parking with Little Suzie is ridiculous. We can't be alone, we just can't be.

There's a fundamental flaw with all this, though. It just so happens that, within the global community of Folks Who Believe in Outer Space Hocum-Pocum, 90 percent of our club's card-carrying members are, to use the technical term, complete and total nutbags.

Let's get one thing straight: Just because I believe extraterrestrial life is a possibility does NOT mean I believe the aforementioned extraterrestrials have little better to do with their interstellar lives than pop 'round to Nowheresville, Ohio, and abscond with plump, middle-aged housewives to perform creepy nether-region experiments on.

Yet, big shocker, these are the only examples of "believers" who show up in press -- usually on the front of the Weekly World News, usually claiming that aliens have impregnated them, and usually somehow also involving Elvis.

Every club needs a gathering place, and the wayward home for cosmic nutbags of all shapes and sizes can be found nightly on your radio dial. "Coast To Coast," the infamous overnight radio talk show, is without doubt THE most entertaining program you can possibly find.

Broadcast locally on WOC 1420, hosts George Noory and the legendary Art Bell are the ringmasters to a Cavalcade of Crazy. Rather than mock the show, I instead made a point of listening this week and writing down some of the stuff I heard. Here's a random sampling:

(1) "Hi! Long-time listener, first-time caller. I'm a long-haul trucker, and I just love your show. ... Now, I'm also a clairvoyant who can communicate with the shadow animals."

(2) "Well, George, I think the truth is obvious. Anyone who looks at the news can surmise that the Prophet Yahweh is working hand-in-hand with the Reptilians."

The REPTILIANS? I've already learned from this show to be afraid of shadows, jet contrails, ghosts, the air and ESPECIALLY the government -- now I have to worry about lizards??? Folks, I get PAID to write comedy, and I couldn't begin to top this stuff.

Sadly, though, I'm such a nerd that I've got to end this column by admitting that I actually DO know who "The Prophet Yahweh" is.

He's just your average everyday old man who lives in Vegas ... oh, and he can pray to the skies and cause UFOs to appear on command. Don't believe me? There's video on prophetyahweh.com. It's a little cool and a whole lot of crazy, and it makes my nerd arm-hairs stand on end.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to my busy life of video-game playing, sky watching, and girlfriend not-having.

Wow. I Needed This Today.

The picture on the front page of our paper today looks EXCEPTIONALLY psychotic.

I'm afraid the pic online doesn't quite do it justice, so if you're browsing the newsstands today, find the Dispatch or Argus and check it out for yourself.

As if Mariah Carey wasn't crazy enough on her OWN...

Check out her FANS.

Truly, folks, there are better people to stalk out there.

There are reasons why I don't exercise much.

This is one of 'em.

But I'd still like to get a "personal poop pail" as a gift someday.

(Thanks to Dave's blog where I blatantly stole this one from.)

Not that I'm a religious guy...

...but if YOU are, I could use your help.

Do me a favor and add my mom to your prayers tonight... she's now been in the hospital down in Galesburg for 3 days with some mysterious head ailment still undiagnosed. Not cool, though the view from her room is pretty boss.

(Blogging may be sparse until we can get her all better...)

COLUMN: Festivals

Flashback: January 2005. I distinctly recall sitting around my way-too-cold apartment, glancing outside at the snow meagerly trying to fall onto the bleak grey expanse of wintertime Rock Island. "Gee," I distinctly recall myself thinking, "I wish it were summer and I was outside at a festival or something." Chalk this up as one of the DUMBEST thoughts I've ever had.

I enjoyed the 2005 festival season for eight whole minutes this year. That's how long it took for some random drunken yahoo in the District the other night to lose half his beer down the front of my shirt. In that swift moment, I suddenly remembered what I hate about summer festivals: EVERYTHING.

As soon as the weather gets a heartbeat above freezing, why do we as human beings have this unnatural compulsion to gather together in celebration, revelry, and lemon shake-ups? It's something I've never understood. Look around you -- there are parks, trees, fields, hills, caves... a SURPLUS of interesting, outdoors-y type settings wherein one could get lost in thought and commune with nature from now until winter.

But nooo, we as a people would rather spend our weekends uniting en masse in a concentrated effort to create one pure, complete, and all-consuming body odor.

The ingredients for a successful summer festival are easy to understand. Step one: assemble the tacky souvenir vendors. Make sure that the vendors know that they can't charge less than a 200% mark-up on all items, including 5 cent necklaces for no less than $8 apiece. 50% of all displayed items must be tie-dyed. Encourage the vendors to burn patchouli incense at alarmingly lung-endangering levels.

Step two: bring in the food. Festival food can come in any shape and size, as long as said food item is incomprehensibly messy and impossible to eat. I have NEVER figured this one out. You're standing outside. There are few if any tables at your disposal. Napkins are an endangered species. Is this REALLY the time to eat ribs oozing with barbecue sauce and corn dogs dripping with ketchup and mustard?

The other day I was at an outdoor fest and looked down at the black shirt I was wearing to find it covered in tiny white flecks. I was about two seconds away from racing off to Walgreen's for some emergency Head & Shoulders when I realized what had happened. Note to self: If you're wearing black at a festival, keep a wide berth of the funnel cake trailer. The white on my shirt was powdered sugar, rising and floating through the air in a last-ditch effort to avoid its cholesterol-sealed fate.

But let's be honest, what I hate the most about festivals is the people. As a general rule, I'm a fairly nice guy. I don't dislike most people. Well, okay, I only dislike about 1 out of 10 people, which I've always considered to be a reasonable average. And when I'm standing in the middle of a festival with 2000 others, that means there are 200 people out there that I can't stand. And, yep, those people ALWAYS seem to find me.

I am a hopeless magnet for Weird Hippie Dancers. You know the sort, right? They could look just like you and me. They could be fine, upstanding members of society. They could be your friends, business colleagues, or trusted civil servants. But hand that person 1+ beers and present them with a funky bassline, and suddenly the gloves are off. Arms flail, feet stomp, twirling begins, and faster than you can say "damn dirty hippies," your personal space is non-existent and their 1+ beers are half on your shirt... and they don't care because they can feeeel the muuusic, maaaan. I, for one, am neither lookin' for fun nor feelin' groovy.

That's why I usually spend my festivals off in the corners, mocking the sorry excuse for society that we've become. Yet I strangely keep going to the things every year. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment. Maybe I like the combination of B.O. and stale beer. Or maybe I just need inspiration to be able to go, "Gee, I wish it was January and I was sitting around watching it snow."

People Love Their Ty Food

Jeez... I am getting some SERIOUS hate mail at the office over my column shredding "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." Ty's massive armies of female fans are besieging me with mail as though I desecrated their sacred cow or something.

I stand by my word. And that word is "SUCKS." Which is what that show does. Routinely.

I, meanwhile, am VERY excited about the musical has-been show premiering on NBC tonight. My money's on Arrested Development whupping some butt, though don't discount A Flock of Seagulls...

The Masochism Tango

Sorry for a few days of non-blogging there... I guess I was just caught up in all the excitement.

COLUMN: Extreme Makeover Home Edition

This column has me a bit nervous. I'm about to rip on one of America's most beloved TV shows, and it may end up costing me some fans. But I can remain silent no more. This show has tugged at my heartstrings for the last time, and it's time I tackled the emotional whirlwind that is ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."

If you've never seen the show, the premise is simple: A needy family is profiled, then whisked away to Disneyland while Ty Whats-his-name and his construction crew demolishes their house and rebuilds from the ground up. The family returns to a palatial estate fit for a king. Warm fuzzies infect the hearts of all. Grown men cry like babies. And I hate it all.

Every week, the family they choose to "make over" seems to fall into one of two camps. The first is the Family That Gives So Much To Their Community. Whether they've adopted 12 orphans or spend their days saving rainforests, the family is too busy giving unto others to notice that they're living in a rat-infested trailer. The other deserving recipients are the families suffering from Freaky Obscure Medicial Condition-itis -- like a child who's allergic to the color orange, and thus needs a carefully constructed orange-free abode.

Well, how is THAT supposed to be fair? I can't top a sob story like that! How can I compete against Orange Boy? I live in a crummy apartment, and hey, I want a new house, too. But my pre-show interview would be like, "Well, Ty, as you can see, my CD and DVD collections are outgrowing my tiny one bedroom apartment. And my closets are barely big enough to stash all my porno magazines. Won't you please lend a hand?" That's not going to make Ty cry.

These crews build an entire new home in SEVEN DAYS. Is that even safe? Now, keep in mind I know nothing about new home construction, but doesn't concrete and caulk and stuff like that have to DRY? How can they build and properly insulate a home in a week? Notice that they never show the completed home during a rainstorm. It's not a contest or a race, Ty, take your time and build these homes right. And who pays for the taxes on these properties? Here, Mr. Impoverished Citizen, here's your fabulous new home!* (*$70,000 property tax bill not pictured.)

But the thing that gets on my nerves the most about the show is what they always do to the poor children's bedrooms. Invariably, they walk into a kid's "before" room, notice one decoration that the kid has out on a shelf, and then theme the poor kid's entire new room around whatever knick-knack or toy he forgot to put away. For instance, in one episode, a kid had a little plastic dinosaur sitting out in his room. Ergo, the crack team from the show decided to turn his room into Jurassic Park, complete with a dinosaur bed and wall murals. To enter the room, you had to walk through a gigantic, snarling dinosaur mouth.

When I was a kid, I remember having some dinosaur stuff. Then 2 weeks later, it was Star Wars stuff. 2 weeks after that? Football stuff. Kids go through phases and change their interests and hobbies ALL the time. Yet poor little Timmy will be stuck in his creepy dinosaur room until he moves out. Let's be honest here -- eventually Little Timmy is going to be a hormonally-challenged teenager, and Little Suzie is NEVER going to let him get to first base as long as they're sitting around in the Land of the Lost. (Though, it must be said, "Hey, baby, wanna see my velociraptor?" has potential as a good pick-up line.)

I can't really knock the show TOO much. Last week, they built a home for the needy family of the first woman killed in recent combat in Iraq. I'm all for helping folks out. What I'm NOT for is how ABC milks the emotion out of the participants. It's almost as if you can sense a drooling producer just off camera going, "Ooh, ooh, she's about to cry! Zoom in!"

Charity is awesome. But charity for the sake of television ratings is just plain evil. It might feel good to watch those in need get the blessings they deserve, but it feels better to do it YOURSELF. Turn off the tear-jerky schlock, open your wallets, and donate what you can to the local American Red Cross or United Way. Then you'll know what charity REALLY feels like.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

I am NOT liking these clouds.

The world's most gorgeous week was spent working non-stop during most/all hours of daylight. Finally, a holiday weekend approacheth and... BAM - ugly clouds peel in outta nowhere.

I want it clear-skied and cool tonight for the magic of ZOSO. Who are ZOSO, you ask? Why, only one of the most recognized Led Zeppelin tribute bands out there right now! And tonight, they assault the outside (weather permitting) stage at RIBCo.

Go to the ZOSO website and check out the pictures. Dude is a SPITTING image of Robert Plant. I'm no Zeppelin fan by a long stretch, but watching a band do the moves and spit the riffs is going to be an INSANE amount of fun tonight.

Beyond tonight? Saturday AND Sunday, outside at RIBCo, none other than The Travoltas. I don't have to tell you to be there. Why? Because you've already got plans to go. I'm pretty sure every time the Travoltas roll thru town, 10% of the Quad Cities turns out en masse.

I'll be the one DJ'ing inside 2nd Ave. after the chaos. Come say hi. And pray for clear skies.

Archived Columns Are Up!

WOO-HOO!

I just got permission from my editor at the paper to be able to reprint my weekly newspaper columns here on this blog...

So... I just finished uploading all 35 columns that I've written thus far since starting for The Leader back in Oct. 2004 (which then started appearing in the Dispatch/Argus in Mar. 2005).

So should you feel like doing any spelunking through the archives, you'll find every column that I've written -- in their original, unedited glory. See, I tend to be a bit long-winded when I write... and one thing that I certainly suck at is keeping to my recommended 650 words a week. This means that some poor copy editor has to take my column every week and whittle it down into something publishable. Most often, the end result is a BETTER column... but once in a while, I feel like my best jabs get yanked before the column goes to print.

In posting my original, unedited stuff, you can now see it as it leaves my pen (oh, who am I kidding, I don't actually handwrite a thing.) This includes a column I wrote back in October 2004 on speed dating that never made it into the paper, but I thought was kinda funny so I've added it here. Enjoy. Or don't. It's YOUR call. ;)

A Long, Hard Look at the World of Advertising

Massive tastelessness awaits. Don't say I didn't warn ya.

There's trouble... right here in River City.

Okay, I suppose as a newspaper columnist, one of the things that I shouldn't do is make fun of the front page of my newspaper. Tough, it's gonna happen today.

Our headline on A-1 today reads: MAKING THE Q-C "COOL". First off, if you live in a town that's SO uncool that it requires study, concentration, and articles on how to make it cool, you've got a problem. Second of all, I really love how the headline reads: Making the Q-C "cool". Note the hip usage of the quotation marks around "cool," as though the paper was being soooo rebellious for using such a hip colloquialism as 'cool.' Ya know, cool's not a slang term any more. Look it up in the dictionary. It's meshed with our vocabulary at this point. Using the quotation marks just isn't "hip," or "gnarly," or "bitchin'."

Anyways, so some bright light bulb has decided that the Quad Cities needs to be "cool," so they need to bring in a consulting economist to explore the notion of "cool." Next Generation Consulting conducted a seminar called "Building a Cool Community" last night at the Mark apparantly. Because, that's right kids, whenever I think of the word "cool," what IMMEDIATELY pops into mind is, you guessed it, Next Generation Consulting.

Their coolness study apparantly revealed that the city needs to retain or bring in ages 25-44 to the community. Well, DUH. What the study DOESN'T mention, though, is the fact that 25-44's are usually the motivators to bring others here.

You can't have a 60 year old guy going, "Okay, let's get "hip," people!" You need young movers and shakers in order to attract other movers and shakers.

According to Next Generation, the Quad Cities "rates high in social activities." Umm... WHAT?! If this is high, I'd hate to live in a town that ranks LOW in social activities then... I'm thinkin' that's a town where even the cow patties are boring. I am PERPETUALLY bored in the Quad Cities, as are most of my friends. The Quad Cities has very little to do for someone my age other than eat, drink, and watch a movie. Young people like the hustle and bustle of big cities... and we are simply NEVER going to compare to Chicago. Why try? The Huck Finn lifestyle of living on the Mississippi doesn't really appeal to ANYBODY my age, does it?

That said, I wouldn't mind things a bit "cool"-er around these parts, so good luck to 'em... though, if I know my economist consultants, their end presentation will basically be, "We need more affordable housing and that will bring in more youth-oriented business to town" (read: ugly condos and another stinkin' bar. Yay.)

Sigh. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. "Sigh."

How Lame Am I?

Yes, it DOES mean you're an incurable idiot if you sat through all two hours of "Rob and Amber Get Married" on CBS tonight. But don't feel bad... I'm one too, apparantly. And I sat and watched it with a friend who told me I cannot EVER mention his/her name in conjunction with said activity.

It was either that or the Trump movie... and I can't take someone ACTING like Donald Trump, let alone Donald Trump himself... though we did occasionally channel flip to see the evolution of The Hair as the movie progressed. What dialogue we managed to catch was just shy of breathtaking as well -- things like, "Donald, this decision means everything. Everything." People don't really talk like that, do they? After we heard this exchange, my friend WHO DID NOT WATCH ROB AND AMBER GET MARRIED WITH ME (lie!) and I were cracking up, and I said, "Don't EVER turn to me and go, 'Shane, this next column you write means everything. Everything.'" To which my friend replied, "Are you actually attempting to equate your newspaper column with the construction of Trump Tower in downtown New York City?" That's when I realized maybe this IS all getting to my head a bit... ;)

Gadzooks

How can one's apartment get SO dusty in such a short amount of time? There's so much dust on my television screen, I feel like I'm wiping away HISTORY with every sweep of the paper towel.

I'm trying to clean because I'm hosting a Lost season finale mini-party tomorrow night. Nerd, thy name is Shane.

Why I Don't Watch "Desperate Housewives"

Having never seen a single episode of the show, this summary of the first season sounds patentedly ridiculous. Like, worse than "General Hospital" kind of ridiculous.

Festival #1 Over. Headache #1 Over.

Hornucopia in The District is officially over.

Still trying to figure the weekend out. The crowds were kinda thin, and tempers were kind of on edge as the bar owners seemed to be at each other's throats.

But all in all, I for one had fun.

The greatest band to ever play at a District fest, in my humble opinion, are The Pocket Dwellers. It's so fantastic that those guys make the journey down from Canada just to play our club from time to time.

Usually I have to DJ next door while they're onstage, but this weekend, I got to catch most of BOTH of their sets, so I was really happy -- and, thin crowds or not, they tore the lid off the District. Fantastic musicians and some of the nicest guys you'll ever meet.

The rumor is that they're pretty close to inking a major label deal (at least up in Canada.) Here's hoping their success comes fast and hard, as they REALLY deserve it. I just hope they don't get so big that they don't forget their friends in the Island of Rock. Losing them in the District would be a tragedy...

COLUMN: Internet Shopping

I love the internet. Nothing amazes me more than the knowledge that, upon returning home from a hard day's work, I am mere mouseclicks away from commerce, news, community, and/or hardcore pornography. That said, I've discovered one thing about the net that really bugs me.

Last week, I was having one of my patented Really Bad Weeks. The sort of week where everyone was ticking me off for little to no reason whatsoever. Blame it on sleep deprivation, blame it on my traffic violations, blame it on Renee Zellweger getting married to some country dorkus. Heck, like Milli Vanilli once said, blame it on the rain. I don't care. Whatever the scenario, I was in a deep, deep funk.

It was the kind of week wherein every little pet peeve I had of anyone in my proximity came out full circle. A close friend could have been telling me how much they value my friendship. An attractive girl could have been asking for my phone number. Ed McMahon could have been telling me I won a million dollars. My brain was simply rife with pet peeves. "Ed McMahon," my internal dialogue would have blurted, "I hate the way you breathe. Does he have to breathe this way the WHOLE time he's talking to me? Okay, okay, be cool. NO! I can't be cool when someone's breathing like that. Just stop breathing, okay? OKAY?" It was one of THOSE weeks.

Now, normally when one reaches mental states like that, there are a surplus of remedies. I could talk to my closest friends and find out what's really bothering me. I could take a slow walk through a park and get re-acquainted with myself. I could have a psychiatrist regress me to find out all my woes go back to when I spilled Kool-Aid on the carpet at my 4th birthday party.

Naw. Those cock-a-mamie solutions might work for Joe Q. Public, but not me. I have discovered through my 34 years of hard living one unbeatable cure-all for a foul mood: Spending foolish amounts of money on foolish things. There is NO hardship too great to not be overcome by a new video game. Or a DVD. Or a new CD. Or, heck, 10 new CD's. And, well, 10 new CD's need a home, so I might as well grab a carrying case, too. Etc., etc.

I am the KING of impulse shopping. I can walk into Border's for ONE item and walk out with 25 in a heartbeat. Disposable cash is the ONLY benefit to single life I can come up with... but my problem is that I dispose of ALL my cash, leaving me to live on the poverty line -- but at least I can watch my DVD's and play my video games until they come and shut my power off.

So I decided to fix my woes of last week with a little impulse shopping on the internet. Namely, at my favorite site, Amazon.co.uk. I have a weird fixation on English indie music, so shopping at a British website is a quick way to get my fix. I hopped on there, picked out some stuff, hit the "complete my purchase" button, and then set back to take a deep sigh of...

WOE. I still felt miserable. Turns out the most redeeming part of impulse shopping is to suddenly have fun new toys in your grasp, right then at that moment. I, on the other hand, had nothing, other than a 10-14 day estimated shipping time and a hole in my bank account. This wasn't a cure-all; this was mood suicide. Now I have to WAIT. And THINK. Think about how stupid it was to blow a bunch of money on useless junk. Think about how 70 British pounds sounds better than 128 US dollars but means the same thing. Think about how I'm going to throw my computer right out the window.

So. Lesson learned. No longer am I going to cure my bad moods with foolish impulse shopping on the internet. From here on out, I'm going to solve my problems the old-fashioned way -- at Border's, with a checkbook.

Rage Against the Hype

So here I sit on a lonely Thursday night. Yuck. I'm "on call" to DJ tonight at 2nd Ave. Augustana lets out today, which means there's a good chance that our club will get overrun by revelers, in which case they're gonna call me in around midnight to perform both the hipping and the hopping until close.

Until then, I'm just sittin' around kinda bored.

I just spent the past 2 hours in vain searching for these mythical copies of the new Star Wars flick that have supposedly shown up on the net. (For JOURNALISTIC reasons, mind you; not because I like free stuff. Downloading is bad, kids. Support the MPAA.) Regardless, the MPAA shouldn't be upset because I sure as heck couldn't find it. Supposedly it's out there on BitTorrent, a technology that I wholeheartedly do NOT embrace... just because I'm an impulse guy, and when I want something, I want it *now* and not after 3 days of non-stop downloading on BitTorrent.

Besides, Star Wars III should only be seen on a big screen; any random internet finds should just serve as souvenirs for the real deal. If you're seeing a LucasArts film without seeing in THX in a digital theatre, there's really no point.

That said, I am SO sick of the hype surrounding this Star Wars movie. I guess I'm really only a passing fan of the Star Wars world (I know, I know... take away my nerd badge now.) We went to see Ep. II on opening night, and I'll admit, that was fun... but only because we were there to point and laugh at the superdorks in costumes and such. I've never seen so much fuss made over a movie that EVERYONE KNOWS THE ENDING TO.

The thing that's the greatest part about this flick is that, obviously, Ep. III is going to have like THE best special effects and CGI stuff EVER committed to film. But then, if you were to watch the movies in their proper chronological order, suddenly the quality reverts back to 1977... it's as if Anakin's first role as Darth Vader is to start the Great Technology War, where all the hip cool stuff from I-III is transformed into cheap white plastic and model ships on string.

Don't get me wrong... I DO want to see the movie. But I'll wait 'til the hype dies down, thanks.

My cat may be gone...

But my love for dancing skeletons lives on and on.

Do a boogaloo in the memory of my Chelsea.

Chelsea Stomper, 1995-2005

Here's to the best damn cat that ever lived.

I am CRUSHED.

Feed Your Inner Geek

Check this bad boy out...

Key quote: "Looks and feels like a real lightsaber."

Umm. There are REAL lightsabers?????

Getting a Life (Back!)

Thank God it's almost over.

May sweeps are coming to a close, which means that I can finally stop watching all of those TV shows that have usurped what used to be a reasonably interesting life in favor of couch-potato-dom.

"Survivor" is over. Amen. What an irritating bunch of self-righteous schmos this season. I wanted Ian to win, and while it sucks that he basically gave up in the name of high morals or whatever, he HAD to have known that Tom was unbeatable and getting accolades for being the morally pure soul or whatever was probably his best shot at post-Survivor fame.

"The Amazing Race" is over. Boo. I'll actually miss this season -- easily the most engaging reality TV of the past 5 years. Boston Rob & Amber were hysterical, and it was nice to see some edginess slip into a show that's usually little more than team bickering and lame attempts at showcasing "world culture." Hopefully it'll usher in a new wave of more strategic, underhanded Amazing Racers.

"The Apprentice" ends this week. Hoorah. I want to go MONTHS without seeing or hearing Donald Trump. If Tanna wins, I'm gonna off myself. It makes sense that she's a successful Mary Kay sales rep. Nothing to me says "FAKE!" quite like Mary Kay, and no one's as fake as Tanna. I hope she loses by a mile. Who's with me?

"American Idol" has two more weeks. Good, get it over with. Now that Scotty the Body and Constantine are both gone, the show's become a bit... boring. (I know many of you hated both those guys, and I'm NOT saying that they're particularly GOOD, but they were at least so comically ill-placed in the competition that it made for amusing TV.) Now I'm yearning for Paula Abdul to flash her top at Bo or do ANYTHING to make the show more interesting.

"24" has only 2 or 3 more episodes. This, too, is a good thing, because frankly, Jack Bauer needs some sleep, and America can't take much more of this. This season we've already had a nuclear plant melt down, Jack's killed his lover's separated husband and tortured far more people than I care to count, and, as I type, a nuclear warhead is armed, launched, and flying through Iowa airspace. Don't you yearn for 24 hours of Jack Bauer's life that's NOT incredibly exciting? I feel so bad for the guy that I want to watch him take 24 hours OFF. Eat a nice meal... maybe catch a movie... spend family time with his incredibly attractive daughter (who's been MIA this whole season!)

"Lost" is almost done with Season 1. Also a good thing. It's starting to get TOO confusing. The decisions are coming fast and reckless on that show: Head off on a homemade raft into the middle of oceanic Nowheresville? Or stick around on the uncharted island with the polar bears, crazy French ladies, and hatchways into Hell? I think I'd take the island. Actually, I think I'd wait and see which one Kate took (she's pretty hot, even though she has a penchant for causing her lover's deaths.)

Then, and only then, can I go back to having a life. Now then, anybody have any ideas what I can do to fill my time?

COLUMN: Ticket

I was already running late for work when I stopped off at a nearby gas station for morning provisions. As I was busily procuring the necessary caffeine, another shopper approached me to offer condolences on the Katie Holmes/Tom Cruise thing (see last week's column.)

It blows my mind when people recognize me from the column and say hi. I find it perpetually hard to believe that people occasionally care about what I've got to say. I mean, prior to the launch of this column, the only thing I've been able to entertain on a regular basis has been my cat -- and when your only competition is a ball of yarn, it's not much of a challenge.

That said, I've written before about my lack of skill in carrying on small talk with near to complete strangers, so listening to PRAISE from strangers completely does my head in. I am SO appreciative of any positive feedback that I get, but in person, about the best I can muster is, "Wow, thanks so much," followed by so much nervous laughter that the person backs away slowly.

Needless to say, after this encounter, I was running REALLY late, so I jumped in the car and bolted for work. I was about five blocks away from the Dispatch offices when I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw the red and white flashing lights of a Moline police cruiser.

Aww, I thought, this really warms the cockles of my heart. Here's a perfect example of why I have indescribable appreciation for the law enforcement community. Somewhere, one of our citizens needs help, and this good officer is responding to assist. Perhaps there's been a robbery, I thought, or a fight that needed breaking up. Worse yet, perhaps a cat was stuck up a tree. Whatever the situation, I definitely needed to pull over and allow this brave officer to pass me by and head to the emergency.

But the weirdest thing happened. When I went to pull over, the officer pulled over directly behind me?!

Suddenly it dawned on me. The celebrities are right -- fame sometimes CAN be a bad thing. I was fully embarassed. Obviously, this keen-eyed officer had noticed it was me driving. He must be a fan of the column and wants an autograph or souvenir to show his family that he met me in person.

I tried to play it cool when he approached the vehicle. "I'm sorry, officer," I said with a knowing grin, "did you catch me speeding?"

"No," the officer replied. "But I do need your license and proof of insurance."

See! I told you he wanted a souvenir! Elvis' driver's license is on display at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. This guy could have mine in his HOUSE, and he wouldn't even have to drive to Cleveland. It was an awkward request, but who am I to say no to an officer of the law, so I handed him my insurance card.

"This expired last month," he tells me. Ooh, I thought to myself, that makes it a COLLECTIBLE. Your official Shane Brown souvenir could now fetch a tidy sum on eBay, Mr. Officer.

Sadly, it turns out he DIDN'T want to keep it as a limited edition collectible. In fact, he wanted to TICKET me for failing to put my new card in my glove compartment. And the reason he pulled me over? Not an autograph, not to share a cat story, not even a Katie Holmes condolence... apparantly in my hurry to get to work, I forgot to put on a seat belt when I left the gas station.

I complemented the officer on having a good eye -- I was wearing a black shirt and going 30 mph, and he STILL saw it. Frankly, that's impressive. He, however, was unmoved. So now I get to go to court, pay fines, and sign autographs on pieces of paper I prefer not to sign autographs on. All in all, NOT a good morning.

The entire escapade leaves me with a humble lesson or two well-learned, and one all-consuming, nagging question: What exactly ARE the cockles of one's heart, and are there any lingering medical effects when they begin to warm?

If There's One Thing That Screams, "Put This in Your Mouth & Switch It To the 'On' Position,"

This is NOT it.

Impatience

Man, I hate waiting for stuff I've ordered off the internet to show up. Just had to say that in print. Tick, tock, tick, tock...

UPDATE: Stuff showed up. Yay. I'm sure you can all sleep MUCH better.

You think mice are household pests?

Try living with a goblin.

(Thanks to Dave's blog.)

Umm.... Injecting WHAT? Into your WHERE?

Sometimes it's a GOOD thing that I'm not down with the latest fad.

CAUTION: This link is just plain... icky.

Thank God for REAL Journalism.

Finally.

No more of this poppycock nonsense that our paper calls "news." None of this phony "investigative journalism" stuff that we occasionally run. Finally a REAL newspaper has stepped to the plate with news that MATTERS.

I refer, of course, to the new issue of Star magazine, which I spotted in the checkout lane at Wal-Mart last night. (And don't get me started, I hate Wal-Mart and rail against it as often as possible, but last night there was a crisis involving cat pee and a new litterbox that overrode any ethical dilemmas I might happen to have.)

Anyways, I'm in the checkout lane and there's the new issue of Star. The ONLY newspaper with the guts (oh, heck, I'm not in the newspaper on this, so I'll say it -- with the BALLS) to report the TRUE facts, gripping drama, and MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION FACING OUR WORLD TODAY:

"Tom & Katie -- Are They Faking It? Signs Point to Yes!"

Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease let them be faking it. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease? Either that or all of us need to put our thinking caps together and figure out a way to break them up pronto.

I'm coming out of my cage and I've been doin JUST FINE.

So... just got back from the Killers gig.

If I could sum it up in one word? ...Mediocre.

Now then, keep in mind that I'm a huge music nerd. It surrounds my life, it... well, it IS my life. Ever since I could crawl, I've been obsessed with music... and as a result, my tastes are a little... beyond that of the common man. (Look, there are few things in life that I can claim to be BETTER AT than you. Analyzing rock shows is one of them. Forgive my ego if it rages out of control.)

Point is, The Killers have put themselves on one hell of a pedestal of late. "Hot Fuss" was easily one of the most confident debut albums ever launched upon our shores, and the magnitude of the record sent ripples through the entire indie rock community. In short, the record RULES, and anyone who has anything negative to say about the record JUST DOESN'T GET IT.

Ergo, I was looking for nothing less than a relevatory performace tonight at the Col Ballroom. Instead, what I took home was a band that I still have immense respect for, albeit marginally disappointed at the gig I just witnessed.

To me, as an amateur musicologist, The Killers were just running through the paces. Nothing exciting, nothing non-scripted. Just another show. Now, this is a band that's played 200+ gigs in the past year, so I suppose I've got to cut them some slack from a bit of over-the-road-itis.

You could just listen to the band onstage and realize that they've been rocking this same set for the better part of the year. Onstage, they seemed bored. In the crowd, I WAS bored.

All in all, it was a decent show. I wanted the band to come out and blow the roof off of all of their hits, which they did in no uncertain terms. Sadly, they did very little else. Definitely subscribing to the "we've-got-better-things-to-do-than-talk-to-the-audience" mentality of the indie bands of the 80's, I wanted The Killers to be engaging; instead, it was just song to song to song without any experimentation, improvisation, or anything else that makes a show noteworthy.

I had fun, don't get me wrong; but this show was put on a pedestal based on their outstanding record, and what we got tonight wasn't even worthy of a footrest.

In a couple years, if The Killers keep up their ambitions at the same rate they are now, they'll rule the world. For the time being, they're just a one-album indie band trying to play the game, make decent music, and score some hits on the charts.

I just wanted more, that's all.

Cavalcade of Crazies

Nothing like a lame news story to bring out all the crazies en masse. Check out these letters that were sent to the government of Duluth, GA in regards to the recent headline-grabbing runaway bride and whether or not to press charges against her. Very impressive collection of crazies.

(WARNING: This link has a LOT of profanities abundant. Don't say I didn't warn ya.)

Attack of the evil robotic cute children!

Run for your lives!

Okay, maybe not. But it's still pretty creepy.

Surely, if you're from the Quad Cities area, you're familiar with Maple Leaf Geneseo, the car dealership located just out of town in Geneseo. Now, before anybody accuses me of casting a disparaging comment towards Maple Leaf, let me get one thing clear.

I like their business, a lot. I've actually shopped for cars there in the past, and was treated decently. All of those Geneseo car dealers really ARE worth the trip in my opinion. Decent cars, decent staff, decent prices.

That said, I am haunted day-in, day-out by the hideous and eerie refrain of the Maple Leaf dealership. It could be 1 a.m while I'm lying in bed... it could be 9 a.m. while I'm in the shower... suddenly, and intensely, it strikes.

"DRIVE 20! SAVE PLENTY! MAPLE LEAF GENESEO!"

Yes, it's the Jingle from Hell, as sung by (I think) the owner's son. They had the little kid sing it so it would be cute and appealing to families... which it was... the first 500 times it aired. Now it's the Death Dirge, clawing away at the interior of my sanity everytime it airs.

But more to the core of the problem is the winking kid. He's basically become the trademark of the company. And yeah, it makes for a good trademark. I'm not ripping on the company's advertising one bit -- they do a good job... EXCEPT for one occurrence.

Ever traveled to Geneseo from the Quad Cities on Highway 6? If so, you know what I'm talking about. Somewhere out there in the middle of corn field hell is a barn. On the side of that barn is a painted billboard for Maple Leaf Geneseo, and another occurrence of the winking kid. Only thing is, where the kids winking eyeball should be they've placed a STROBE LIGHT that perpetually blinks 24/7, reminding us all to drive 20 and save plenty.

The effect, while effective (you DO look at the billboard,) makes the winking kid come across more as a blinking cyborg child from the year 2240, sent to Earth from an evil alien civilization to enslave us all, all the while singing, "Drive... 20.... Save... plenty!" I live in fear of the night that the Cyborg Kid enters my dreams (oh and it WILL happen, my nightmares are usually always low in creativity, high in terror) and chases me around with his blinking Eye of Doom singing the Jingle From Hell. Pity me that night, dear readers.

But again, I can't do enough disclaimers -- Maple Leaf Geneseo is a great business, don't forget about them when you're in need of a car. But, of course, none of us CAN forget about them because that jingle is embedded into our brains. (Which, while annoying, means that the jingle WORKS.) I need to find those jinglewriters so they can write a jingle for my column that will take over your souls. Then, and only then, will I be able to put my OWN billboard up. But in place of my head, I want a giant disco ball. My ultimate goal is that I want you guys to have a Pavlovian response -- you hear disco, you think "SHANE!" You think Shane, you hear disco. Some day....

The Killers are coming...

If you're not here tonight, you're dumb. Or at least horribly, horribly uneducated at the concept of GOOD MUSIC.

Duhhhhhhhhhh...

You ever have one of those days where you desperately, almost religiously... want to be creative, yet the creative part of your brain just turns to mush?

That's been me today.

I've spent nearly three hours now in front of the computer, waiting for inspiration or brain cells to kick in or what-have-you.

I think there's a part of me that thinks that creativity is a sort of necessary validation to my life... and that validation turns into poo-poo when the ideas just don't flow.

Grand plans are something I'm reeeeeally good at... executing those plans is what I just plain kinda suck at. There's a voice in me that's perpetually saying, "Shane, you need to write the great American novel." "Shane, you should try to write a musical -- that'd be a hoot." "Shane, you should write... ANYTHING, man, what's wrong with you?!"

But I also know better than to force myself to write when ideas are simply not flowing. Sunday's never been a productive day for me. It's simply a battery recharging day, and I've got to learn to treat it as such.

That said, I'm retiring for the evening. I've spent the past couple hours nursing my Katie Holmes / Tom Cruise heartbreak by treating myself to some of the finer episodes of Dawson's Creek Season 1. You know, that Kevin Williamson can write one wicked exchange of dialogue... but the plot points suck just as bad as 90210 or Melrose Place or any of those shows. That said, Dawson's will forever remain my favorite guilty pleasure, make no mistake about it.

Anyways, I'm off. Hopefully inspiration and comedy will return tomorrow. I'm concluding my battery recharging with a few more pages of the new Sarah Vowell, "Assassination Vacation." People, if there's one thing I can EVER influence you on in life, it's that Sarah Vowell is better than no one else at capturing the heartbeat and inherent humor of Americana. I am SO in love with her brain. Treat yourself and go buy the book. Tomorrow, I'll be funny again. Pinky swear.

COLUMN: Katie

Well, it's official -- there is no god.

I know that's a harsh thing to hear out of a humor columnist, but it's true. My faith was shattered last Thursday morning when I picked up a copy of USA Today and opened it to the entertainment section. There, staring me in the face, was evidential proof that my entire belief system until now has been a sham.

A higher power simply cannot exist in a world where Katie Holmes is dating Tom Cruise.
For the uninitiated, Katie Holmes is the former star of TV's "Dawson's Creek," the most perfect person in the world, and my future wife. Tom Cruise, meanwhile, is a white-toothed freak of nature from the Island of Improbably Attractive Movie Stars, whose sole purpose in life is to remind us normal guys on a routine basis that, when compared to him, we are all essentially dog doodie.

Okay, so wait. I take all that "there is no god" stuff back. There MUST be a higher power, because women like Katie Holmes can't just randomly occur without divine intervention. From the moment that I accidentally channel-flipped into an episode of "Dawson's Creek," I knew that Katie was the girl for me. Thanks to her, every week I would sit there, drool cup in hand, and become deeply engrossed in a television show clearly written for people ten years younger than myself. I could've cared less, and I've got the "Dawson's" DVD collection to prove it.

When the show ended a few years back, it was a very tense moment. Who would Katie's Joey Potter choose? Would she end up with budding film star and academic Dawson? Or would she choose the rebel-with-a-heart-of-gold Pacey? OR, would she tell them both off, hop in her car, and start life anew in the Quad Cities, whereupon she would meet and fall in love with a pudgy, slightly awkward newspaper columnist? Hey, a fella can dream.

For years, I patiently waited while Katie dated Chris Klein (the dopey kid from the "American Pie" movies.) This past February, they split up. Obviously, I assumed, Katie had heard about me and promptly shown ol' Chris the door. Finally, it was MY chance. For the past few months, I've been prepping the letter I would use to woo her. Thus far, I've got: "Dear Katie, You're real pretty. Do you like me? (Check this box.)" It worked for me in 5th grade, and it could work again.

Obviously, I waited too long. Having spent two months waiting to hear from her #1 fan, Katie must have decided to run off into the arms of the next best thing to Shane -- Tom Cruise. Sure, he doesn't have the sexy love handles, assorted neuroses, and violent housepets that I sport, but hey, not everyone can be the powerhouse of brute machismo that I embody.

But Tom Cruise. I mean, get real. Suddenly I feel a lot less like a pervert for lusting after someone as young as Katie. He's 42 and she's 26. If I dated someone 16 years my junior, I would be PUT IN PRISON. When Tom Cruise does it, he gets the cover of People.

Oh, great. See, this is the penance for my earlier crisis of faith. I just took a break from writing this column to watch some TV. At this very moment, "Top Gun," "Risky Business," and "The Last Samurai" are ALL playing -- it's like Cruise-a-palooza on my TV. First he takes my girl, then he takes my TV time? This madness must end. I can safely say that if your way of life involves obsessing over Katie Holmes, then TOM CRUISE IS A THREAT TO YOUR WAY OF LIFE (I just wanted to get that sentence in print.)

Or maybe I should just grow up, lose my obsessions with TV starlets, and go meet a nice Quad City girl. We could settle down, find a house with a white picket fence, and grow old together. That might be just what I need... to make Katie jealous enough to ditch that loser and give me a call.

The Trouble With Tribute Bands

A random thought that occurred to me last night...

The Trippin' Billies played at Ribco last night -- they're a Dave Matthews tribute band. Pretty nice guys, and pretty good musicians (though I'm no Dave fan by any stretch.)

But it got me to thinking about tribute bands a little bit...

The Dave Matthews Band is putting out a new record in a week or two, and early reports coming from the kids who are downloading the thing off the internet is that it's a *BAD* record. Earth-shatteringly bad if you believe what some of these kids are saying.

So what happens if the album comes out and it really IS just a horrible stinker of a record? I mean, I doubt it's going to be THAT bad, but let's assume for this scenario that the new DMB record flops as bad as Vanilla Ice's second record. Like, a career-destroying record.

What does that do to the stock of the tribute band?? These guys are paid to mimic and ape this band... Wouldn't it just absolutely SUCK to be a great musician in a tribute band that kids love, and then suddenly, your crowds get thinner... and thinner... and thinner... just because the band you're paid to ape loses popularity?

I bet the guys in Trippin' Billies sweat the Billboard charts and record sales of Dave Matthews Band records just as much as Dave Matthews himself does.

Moral of the story: If you're gonna be in a tribute band, wait until the band you're tributing (is that a word?) is dead. Preferably in some kind of tragic plane crash/accident, career-cut-short, isn't-it-a-tragedy, musical martyr, black-light-posters-aplenty-at-Spencer-Gifts kinda way.

Dude, I am SO Pledging This Guy's Frat.

Man, do those MIT kids know how to party or what?

(p.s. If the time travelers could be GIRLS, that would be ideal.)

I Knew I Liked Art

Well, slap my knee and call me an art lover, then.

Worshipping a False Idol?

Okay, okay... I didn't want to get into it, but it seems like the whole frikkin' world won't shut up about it. Let's talk for a second about this American Idol business.

First off, right outta the gate I've gotta give it up for my boy, Scott Savol, and say how bad it sucks that he got voted off last night. Say what you want about him but the kid can sing. I've voted almost every week since the show started, and my vote's always gone to Scott for a variety of reasons:

(1) Like I said, the kid can sing. He might not have one of those voices that can knock you on your butt, but we're not ALL looking for singers who can belt tracks out of the park. I don't listen to music to hear some girlie hit a note so high that glass shatters. Frankly, that's just not my idea of a good time. Some people like the singers who do all that "shoo-be-de-di-wop-wop" stuff with their voice to show off their range or whatever. Not me. To me, it just sounds like somebody's singing a scale.

(2) Scott's got the most marketable voice remaining in the competition. He's got a durable R&B voice that could easily make dents in the Top 40 charts. The same can't be said for the rest of the field. Carrie's got a good country voice, Bo's got a good rock voice, but go take a look at the Billboard Top 40 charts right now. Country and rock music just aren't havin' it. Billboard's about hip-hop, and Scott's the only one that can rock that style.

(3) MOST importantly, who WOULDN'T want a chubby, ugly kid with the personality of a wet noodle to win the contest?! Can you IMAGINE the horrors that the American Idol marketing dept. would have to deal with to make this kid sell records? The comedy factor ALONE should have caused you to vote for him.

Sadly, he's gone now. But there's WAAAAAAAY more important stuff to focus on.

Like this Corey Clark/Paula Abdul nonsense. The whole world -- well, at least my whole office today -- is abuzz with people debating whether or not the two of them got it on like bunnies.

Well, on behalf of the portion of the world WITH brains, WHO CARES.

So let's assume that it actually happened. Get past the fact that Corey Clark got kicked off the show for lying. Get past the fact that he's found one HECK of a gimmick to try and sell his new record. Get past the fact that he's a greasy-faced, bad complexioned thug with a limited vocal range.

Okay? Let's assume now that he and Paula did the nasty. Would someone PLEASE explain to me how this gives Clark a leg up in the competition?

They're saying on the news that "Paula Abdul was coaching Corey Clark and giving him career advice." No offense, but getting career advice from Paula Abdul is like getting hairstyle advice from Donald Trump. Paula Abdul's career lasted approximately as long as this sentence. ONE big album with 3 or so big songs. A second album that underwhelmed but did okay. A third album that may or may not have come out (who's to say? Know anybody who bought it?)

Point is, Paula Abdul is the DEFINITION of flash-in-the-pan. What advice could she give? "Always have something to fall back on"? "Never ever EVER date Emilio Estevez"??

I don't get the fuss. At worst, she picked him out a couple decent looking shirts and gave him song suggestions. The most she could have done to give him an advantage when it came to voting would have been to say, "You're a fantastic performer." BUT SHE SAYS THAT TO EVERY CONTESTANT, so who on Earth cares?

The only thing about this whole brouhaha that's made me mad is the fact that in order to write this, I had to confess here in a public forum that I watch the stupid show every week. THAT's the worst scandal I can think of.

There IS a God.

Stephen Colbert is the funniest guy on television. I approve, heartily. Check out the faux barbs between Colbert and Stewart in the article. Folks, when even the PRESS RELEASES are funny, this is destined for greatness.

If you want sexual cheerleaders...

...Then we suggest NOT going to Texas.

Key quote:
Edwards argued bawdy performances are a distraction for students resulting in pregnancies, dropouts and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

That's right, kids. Don't watch cheerleaders or you'll get pregnant and/or herpes. If that's true, God knows what prolonged exposure to a Madonna video could do to you... (psst: the answer is 'Cooties.')

There have GOT to be better people to stalk.

If you're gonna be a stalker, at least pick somebody worthwhile. Jeez.

Runaway Bride Gift Registry

Give the gift that says, "Good Luck in Your Impending Nuptials And Here's Hoping You Don't Catch Another Bus To Arizona Sparking Another Nationwide Manhunt."

The happy couple are still registered at Pottery Barn and at Macy's.

...& so the story begins.

Well, one day into this thing and I'm already starting to feel a bit silly. It seems to be that if you're running a blog, you fall into one of two categories:

(1) Someone really, really ticked off about politics.
*or*
(2) A 14-year-old girl.

Well, okay, I'm always ticked off about politics, but not enough to babble about it. You guys don't give a rat's a** about my political leanings... and if you DO give a rat's a**, then, well, I pity you. And more importantly, how did the phrase "I don't give a rat's a**" get into our vernacular in the first place? Was it once custom to wander about, giving rat a** to anyone who interested us? And if somebody who you DIDN'T care about happened along the way, then, hey, no rat a** for that guy.

So if I'm not doing a blog for political gain, that must mean that I'm a 14 year old girl. Sadly, also incorrect... Though we COULD spend this whole blog time spreading salacious rumours about friends and co-workers and goings on at the paper. Trouble is, I LIKE my friends and co-workers, and there's not much of a gossip machine here at work... so my salacious stories would only be things like, "Hey, this one girl here at work, she, um, came in like 2 minutes late! Can you believe it!?!" And, frankly, that just doesn't make for front-page-of-the-Enquirer kinda stories.

So instead, I'll use this blog to babble about meaningless and funny stuff that happens all around us. And then you can comment. And then I can comment on your comments. Eventually, with any luck, we shall rule the world. (Bwaa. Ha. Ha.)

I'm gonna do my best to update this thing VERY frequently... so check back loads. There's LOTS of stupid stuff in our world... and I DO so love to complain.

See ya in the funny pages,
-s-

Fanfare, please.

(ahem.)

Testing... testing...

Is this thing on?

COLUMN: Feline Felon

I can't believe all the fuss it's caused. A frequent subject of the media, convicted of a crime of auspicious circumstance and forced to live under house arrest, a prisoner in her own home. Martha? Martha WHO? I'm talking about my CAT here. Yes, every parent's worst nightmare has come true for me: My cat has a police record.

The story begins innocently enough last week with a sick kitty and a trip to the vet. My cat is a sweet and loveable lap cat -- until you take her outside the apartment and away from me, at which point she turns into something that would give Linda Blair nightmares. I like to refer to her as "socially awkward."

To say my cat gets aggressive when she gets scared is an understatement. You know the noise that cats make when you accidentally step on their tail? That's the noise she makes the ENTIRE time we're at the vet. She bites, she claws, she attacks... until you get her back in the car, when she starts purring and curls up in your lap.

So I took her to the vet and they did a great job making her all better, but this weekend she needed a quick follow-up blood test. I get to my vet's office in Bettendorf to find that I don't know any of the weekend staff. A vet tech immediately goes to grab the cat and take her back to the lab.

"I'll need to go with," I say politely.

"Oh, no, no, we've got her," the tech smiles back at me, unaware of her pending fate.

"No, really, I'll need to go with," I say politely again. "My cat can get a bit nasty when she gets scared." This scenario carries on until I've warned her FIVE times that she's playing with fire.

"Don't worry, I've dealt with millions of cats," she says, grabbing my baby and heading back to the lab.

"She's going to bite you!" were my last words to her. Thirty seconds later, I hear the cat start howling. Five minutes later, they bring her to me in a cardboard box. No, they didn't kill her. It was just the only way to get her out of the office without bloodshed.

"We weren't able to do anything," says the vet, sounding shocked. "She bit our tech."

Well, DUH. It was exactly as I'd anticipated.

What I DIDN'T anticipate, though, was a call from the Bettendorf police at 11 that night. Turns out the vet tech went to the ER, the ER called the police, and I'm told I have a "vicious animal" and that Iowa law dictates that the cat be immediately quarantined for 10 days.

I proceed to FREAK OUT. Do I need a cat lawyer? Should the cat and I go on the lam? Needless to say, I was at my vet's office when they opened the next morning. If they thought the cat was a "vicious animal," wait 'til they got a load of the OWNER.

At 8 this morning, I was thoroughly prepared to turn this column into a venomous attack on my vet clinic. Instead, I'm going to tell you how wonderful they were. I talked/bawled to the administrator and within minutes, the clinic was on the phone with Animal Control and the Dept. of Health discussing my feline felon.

The end result is that we took a plea and copped to 10 days of home quarantine. My friends are forbidden to come over by law. My cat might, umm, purr on them or something. I'm thinking about fashioning her a striped jumpsuit and teaching her to play the harmonica.

The sweet innocent cat on my lap is a menace to society, a Rebel Without Front Claws. Those times she disappears under the bed? She must be planning her next crime. Perhaps Jimmy Hoffa's under there. Maybe she's running a counterfeit Kibbles racket. Worse yet, maybe SHE'S the one who's been downloading all that free music off the internet.

Me, I'm just thankful that our tax dollars are being used so constructively to get this real criminal off the streets. We can all sleep easier. Well, except me. Not with a felon under my bed.

COLUMN: Taxes

They say that the only things certain in life are death and taxes. All I know is that I'm UN-certain about how I did my taxes, and it's got me scared to death.

April 13th might have been a nice spring day. The sun may have been shining, birds may have been chirping, kids may have been laughing, and the woman of my dreams may have been frolicking in a sun dress in a meadow somewhere outside my apartment. I couldn't tell you for certain. I couldn't see through the avalanche of spreadsheets.

Yes, as another step towards my ultimate goal of being named Most Irresponsible Person Alive, I decided that the best time to do my taxes would be two days before they were due.

My friends have had their returns for ages, and are probably off doing responsible, grown-up stuff with their money right now. Well heck, I can be grown up, too. In fact, I've got a great deal of money invested into CD's. I particularly like the ones by Jay-Z.

Once upon a time, taxes were almost fun to do. You fill out a quick little form, drop it in the mail, and presto, a few weeks later some extra money magically appears. Then I had to go and get myself a hobby.

As regular readers of my column know, I spend my weekends DJ'ing at a club in the District. Without doubt, this is the greatest hobby a human could find. I get to sit in an elevated perch at a hip nightclub, choose all the songs that are played, and get paid to spend the whole night watching cute girls dance. I should be paying THEM for the privilege.

DJ'ing for me really IS a hobby. When everything's said and done, I don't make a dime at it. Every cent that I get paid for DJing goes right back into it (music, equipment, computers, etc.) Yet strangely, the IRS still refers to it as one of those "job" thingies, and are strangely insistent that I have to pay taxes. Grr.

I have always been mathematically challenged. I count on my fingers to this day. Ergo, there was no way I could fill out any of these self-employment tax forms on my own. So, as I do every year, I went online and paid to have a company walk me through it. This is why I was confident in waiting until two days before the deadline to file my taxes.

The miracle of modern technology makes it easy to get your refund. You just log on, enter the information off the ol' W-2... add on the info from the self-employment... make a few mouse clicks... and... presto, you owe $1195.

Errr... pardon me? I OWE?? Obviously, my computer had a virus. I've NEVER owed taxes in my life. It couldn't be right, so I re-checked the form meticulously... same result. I erased the entire form and started over. Same results. Suddenly, it's getting hot in my apartment. I'm beginning to realize that they're called the INTERNAL Revenue Service because when they tell you that you owe them $1195, your INTERNAL organs begin to fail.

I'm pulling at my collar as my mind races through a series of troubling questions, such as: 'What is the depreciation value of a record needle?' 'Can I write off headphones?,' and 'How quickly can I flee to Canada?' Finally, cooler heads prevailed, and I did the mature and responsible thing.
I called my mommy.

While my mom isn't a tax guru herself, she DID offer one important suggestion: try another online tax service. So I restarted from scratch at another company, entered all the same stuff, and this service tells me I'm getting a $600 REFUND. Guess which online tax service I chose to go with?

But now I'm sweating. ONE of them is obviously wrong. I'm hoping it's the first service I tried. I'm usually not that lucky. Any minute now, some serious looking dudes in serious looking suits are going to burst through my door and demand their $1195, I know it. When that happens, I trust YOU, my faithful fans, to mount a serious letter-writing and/or fundraising campaign to free me from tax jail. Until that moment, or until my happy little return shows up in my mail, I remain nervously yours.

COLUMN: Air America

Writing about politics can get a little hairy. The only opinions that I'm usually comfortable with offering in this column are such controversial statements as "I think onions taste icky" or "I think Katie Holmes is super hot." You know, real weighty stuff.

That said, I guess I've never really made a secret of my liberal tendencies when it comes to politics. In fact, When I was first offered the chance to write a weekly column, I even got a friendly reminder from one of the editors not to use this column as a left-wing political soapbox.
I told him the same thing I'll tell you guys now: Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't know how. I stink at arguing about politics; I'll save that for the brainy types over on the Opinion page. Besides, I respect everyone's political point of view.

I'm a firm believer in the two party (if not more!) system of government -- it provides the necessary yin/yang needed to make the best political decisions. I might be a yin and you might be a yang, but that's cool by me. Without a varying opinion to keep our heads in check, our government could spiral out of control -- and the next thing we know, someone will be screaming, "Soylent Green is made of people!" Now while I don't think politics will ever devolve into the realm of bad 70's sci-fi flicks, you've got to admit that the contents of Spam DO raise an eyebrow or two (mostly because when one eats anything called a "processed meat product," odds are good that you're EATING an eyebrow or two.)

So as the self-confessed liberal that I am, my arch-nemesis is, naturally, Rush Limbaugh. Or maybe it's Sean Hannity. They're both evil and need to be destroyed at all costs. The easiest answer to all of this would be, of course, to choose NOT to listen to their radio shows; sadly, I'm a glutton for punishment. I get in the car for lunch, the radio turns to talk, and swiftly my blood boils.

That's why I was beyond excited that last week, local 1270 AM in town became a member of the Air America radio network. Finally, the left-wing cavalry has come to save me from the abyss of the unfair and unbalanced right. Al Franken, Janeane Garofalo, Marc Maron (a comic genius!) -- they may not have radio experience, but they've got the ideals that I share. I was on Cloud 9. Then I actually listened to it.

No longer did I have to suffer through the pig-headed, closed-minded, confrontational voices of conservative talk radio. Now I could listen to the pig-headed, closed-minded, confrontational liberals instead. And you know what? They're BOTH annoying.

The biggest lesson I've learned from political radio is that if you don't tow your chosen party line in all of your beliefs, you're treated like an idiot. For instance, all this week, the shows of Air America have been still going on about the Terry Schiavo thing. The preferred left wing stance is to side with her husband and right to die.

Well, I'm afraid I'm not in that camp. Take away my liberal decoder ring if you must, but I'm enough of a skeptic to value any kind of life more than the uncertainty of death. Simply put, if I were in the same tragic situation, I'd want to be kept alive. Just wheel a TV into my room, flip it to MTV, and I'm set. There are times that passersbys could mistake me for being in a persistent vegetative state already; I call those times "Sundays."

But as I listened to Air America go on and on about the case, I realized that my views were completely unacceptable to them. These guys are supposed to be on MY side, but within minutes of tuning in, I was already feeling like an outcast, as if Al Franken were about to pop out the speaker, slap my nose with a newspaper and scold, "Bad liberal! Baaaad liberal!"

Diversity makes politics work; pure bias just makes for shocking sound bites. I don't need Rush or Al or Sean or Janeane to tell me how I feel. I've got a brain, and that brain is telling me to turn the radio off.

COLUMN: Trivia

They say the first step is admitting you have a problem. I've been in denial for some time now. Addictions are for the weak, I've told myself. I'm better than that. At least, I thought I was. I DO have a problem. I need to face my demons head on, it's the only way. I need to come clean, right here and right now.

Hi, I'm Shane, and I'm a triviaholic.

Every weekend, when most of you are out living your lives and doing important things, you can usually find me cramped into a room with hundreds of strangers, attempting to prove my pop cultural self-worth at my favorite new fad: a trivia night.

These things are popping up at community centers and rental halls all over the QC. At trivia nights, teams of eight players battle other teams over the course of a 3-hour game. 10 rounds, 10 categories, 100 questions in all. It's usually $10 a person to enter, and the winning team can take home anywhere from $100-$1000 depending on the event. Most of these trivia nights are fund-raisers, with your entry fee usually going to a good cause. And if I keep this up, don't be surprised if one of those good causes will soon be to send me to a trivia rehab facility.

See, I tend to pride myself in knowing a whole lot of completely useless stuff, and very little else. I couldn't change a tire if my life depended on it... but I could likely rattle off Madonna's entire discography, including tracklistings and tempos of all major singles. And I don't even like Madonna. Why do I know this stuff? I couldn't begin to tell you. The other day, one of the questions we had was, "Name all of the letters of the bottom row on a typewriter." The room let out a collective groan; I grabbed our answer sheet and wrote "ZXCVBNM" without hesitation. Again, no idea why that's in my brain; it just IS.

My fear, though, is that one day the useless junk in my head will overtake the important stuff. Someday I'll turn on MTV, learn that Madonna has a new album coming out, suddenly forget how to breathe, and presto, Death By Trivia.

But trivia nights are the one event where knowing useless stupid stuff can come in handy. People of all ages and all walks of life gather together to share food and laughter and be entertained by fun trivia questions all night. It's not about competition; it's about having fun with friends, and all the teams understand that and take the game lightly.

All the teams except one, that is. Oh, don't get me wrong, my team understands that it's all about having fun... and the best way to have fun is to WIN AT ALL COSTS. We are a lean, mean, useless trivia machine. Every member has their own assigned specialties: one's good at sports, another's good at history, another's great at geography, etc. Me? I'm our team's pop culture guy - music and movies are my forte. And we don't stop until we've won.

This, you would think, should definitely make all of the other teams hate us. Strangely, though, no one has flung food at us yet, despite our frequent trips to the judges table to debate the validity of the "official" answers. A few months ago, one of the questions was identify-the-song. The emcee played 15 seconds of the tune -- which was obviously Phil Collins' "Another Day in Paradise." We knew the answer and thought it would give us a clear lead in the round. Then an announcement from the judges: "We will accept either Phil Collins or Genesis" for the answer.
WHAT? They practically had to hold me back. "Another Day in Paradise" was CLEARLY a Phil Collins solo track and not that of his old band. By that logic, if the song had been John Lennon's "Imagine," could we have put down 'The Beatles'? A few questions later, we were faced with a "Name this book of the Bible" question. The answer was Luke; but that didn't stop me from putting on our answer sheet, "But you'll also accept Genesis, right?" I'm also surprised that the judges havent hurled food at us yet, either.

I AM over-exaggerating a bit, though. While our team makes no qualms about coming out to win, it really IS fun just to be there, and I really DO encourage everybody to check area calendars to see when one's coming up in your area. In today's world of who's-got-the-shiniest-dance-club and what-can-entertain-me-the-most-effiently, it really IS nice to shuck all that in favor of a trivia night. There's something unbelievably old-fashioned and genuine to it... and the sense of community you get at one of these nights is priceless. Unless, of course, I don't win. Then it's just lame.

COLUMN: Ashlee Simpson

They call television "the idiot box." That's ridiculous. Television itself can be quite intelligent; it's me who's the idiot.

I'll prove it. As I write this, it's Easter afternoon. A quick look through TV Week tells me that, right this minute, I could be watching West Side Story... or a special on how religion impacted our early Presidents... or a documentary on the problems facing Chinese commerce. C-Span is currently showing a "Q&A Session with Paul Weyrich." I'm certain this session could prove both informative and insightful, and might even answer important questions, such as "Who is Paul Weyrich?"

The point is, there are hundreds of channels providing a diverse array of culturally and politically stimulating content. I, meanwhile, have been watching an all-day marathon of the Ashlee Simpson Show on MTV. Idiot, thy name is Shane.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you already know about Ashlee Simpson. She's the spunky but reasonably talentless younger sister of pop culture phenom Jessica Simpson. Ashlee's MTV's show chronicles her successful attempt to make a name for herself as a singer. The problem is, she made a name for herself as a singer by getting busted lip-synching on Saturday Night Live, causing every major media outlet around the globe to, for once, stop talking about Paris Hilton for a few fleeting seconds.

In all honesty, though, I feel bad for Ashlee. Does anyone out there truly feel personally let down that Ashlee lip-synched on SNL? If so, PLEASE contact me; I'd like to meet someone lamer than myself, I really would. We live in a country where we recognize varying degrees of murder (murder in the first degree, second degree, etc.) The same rules should apply to scandal. Michael Jackson giving Jesus Juice to a cancer kid? That's Scandal in the First Degree if I've ever heard it. Ashlee Simpson caught lip-synching? That's Scandal in, oh, the 11th Degree or so.

No one should be out there gasping that Ashlee's compromised her artistic integrity. If you thought Ashlee Simpson had artistic integrity in the first place, you're missing the whole plot. Ashlee Simpson is simply a pop star, and pop stars have no "art." They're there to look cute, sound cute, and make you want to get off the couch and do the Awkward Shimmy around your apartment (or is that just MY dance?) And for what it's worth, Ashlee does all that pretty effectively.

None of this, however, is an excuse for me to watch six solid hours of her inane TV show. Yet it's strangely hypnotizing and engaging. I've learned much. Primarily, I've learned that no matter what Ashlee does, she's REALLY EXCITED about it. Her chirpy voiceovers are always like, "Today I have to go meet 800 of my screaming pre-teen fans... and I'm really excited about it!" Or, "today I get to go do 18 radio interviews where they'll ask me the same questions over and over again... and I'm really excited about it!" "Now I'm going to go use the restroom... and I'm really excited about it!"

There should be an Ashlee Simpson drinking game, where you have to take a shot every time she gets "really excited" about something. I'm pretty sure you'd die from alcohol poisoning by the third commercial break. On the plus side, though, you wouldn't have to watch any more episodes of this tripe.

How I let myself get roped into liking this schlock is beyond me. But a couple hours into it, I realize that Ashlee's getting her hair cut and I'M really excited about it! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? I fear I may have an addiction to bad TV. But then it hits me: if a reasonably normal human being like me can get sucked into this abyss, the simple answer for me to succeed in this world... is to HAVE MY OWN REALITY SHOW and suck all of you people into it! They could just film me sitting around on my couch, watching other reality shows and making snarky comments. It'd be genius. And I can assure you that I, for one, would be really excited about it.