COLUMN: Ewarto

Some of you probably think I applied to be a columnist out of a lifelong passion for writing and/or a desire to uplift our community.

Nope.

There's obviously two reasons why I wanted to be a columnist: (1) To score a hot babe, and (2) make gobs and gobs of money. I think I just did both.

If, that is, a certain message I just received on Facebook is true. And who can we trust if not a complete stranger on the internet? I've read it five times now, and it seems super legitimate:

"HI SEXY!"

(Already we're off to a rollicking and completely accurate start.)

"My name is Ewarto Sawadogo."

(Umm. Okay, I'll never fault anyone for the name they were given. That said, this is NOT the sexiest array of vowels and consonants I have ever come across.)

"And I believes you is my SOULMATE. I am 26 years old woman --"

(Folks, Ewarto is HOT. Based on her profile photo, she's a dead ringer for pop songstress Ariana Grande. In fact, I'm pretty sure the photo she provided IS Ariana Grande, especially given the fact that's she's standing on the red carpet at the Grammy Awards. Or perhaps this simply proves Ewarto is a fan of music like myself. Who am I to question my soulmate?) 

"-- from Moldova."

(Wait, is that a real place? Or is that the fake country from Dynasty where they shot up the royal wedding in that big cliffhanger finale? Hang on, I need to check... Okay, Moldova IS a real place. Moldavia is the one from Dynasty. Whew.)

"I have searched the internets for my one true love, and I have finally founded you."

(Took you long enough.)

"I can see from your recent posts that you are good handsome man of high virtue worthy of my affections."

(My last three Facebook posts: 1. a picture of my cat. 2. a review of the movie "Dune." 3. a post that says, and I quote, "I'm sooo bored. Anyone wanna hang out?")

"My father runs powerful candy company."

(Wait, IS YOUR DAD WILLY WONKA? Or Willy, umm, Sawadogo?)

"But he has been accused of crime he did not commit"

(Umm, just what kind of saga am I stepping into here? I'm down for the soulmate stuff, but I'm not looking to reenact "The Fugitive" here. Just my luck that I find my soulmate and she's, like, a member of the A-Team.)

"I am coming to America to escape jurisdiction of the World Police"

(Oh dear! Not the dreaded "World Police!" So wait, you're being chased by GLOBAL authorities? My soulmate is an international fugitive? And you want to come HERE? What about Candy Dad? Is he coming, too? There's only so much room in my house. I want to chew gum in peace without a dozen Oompa-Loompas popping out to sing me a lecture. We need to discuss logistics.)

"Please if you has love for me like I has love for you, help me. I need to protect father's 3.4 US MILLION DOLLARS in United States bank account where World Police cannot steal."

(I think I see where this is going. You look exactly like Ariana Grande, you're inexplicably in love with me despite having never met me, AND you're vastly wealthy with unlimited access to European candy? I'M THE LUCKIEST MAN ALIVE.)

"Do you has a bank account where we can put money and begin new life together?"

(Sure. In full disclosure, last week someone hacked my debit card and used it to rack up $124 in Amazon charges, but I'm pretty sure it's safe. We can probably fit an extra 3.4 US MILLION DOLLARS in there. No problem.)

"I am devoted to you and cannot wait to hold you in my arm."

(Note: Singular. "Arm.")

So, if you don't hear from me for awhile, please assume that I'm securing my future with my one-armed soulmate who may or may not be pop sensation Ariana Grande and possibly her fugitive candy baron father. So far, this is turning out to be a decent week. 

I tried writing her back, but her profile had strangely been deactivated (curse you, World Police!) But I trust that my sweet Ewarto and our 3.4 US MILLION DOLLARS are en route. You're all invited to the wedding. There will be candy.    

COLUMN: Morrissey

I've been amusing myself this week with "Locke and Key," a good Halloween popcorn show on Netflix. In the series, a widower moves her family into a creepy house where they discover magical keys. One key opens doors to anywhere. You just think of a place, put the key in a lock, open the door, and you're there.

This got me daydreaming: If I had a magic key that could teleport me anywhere, where would I go? Would I explore far-off lands? Pay Katie Holmes a visit? Or would I just use it as a faster way to get to Walgreens? 

I think my first stop might be a concert venue in England, in order to see what might be the best cover band of all time, fronted by the unlikeliest of heroes. None of knew we'd need him in 2021, but he might just be our saving grace. At the very least, he'll never give us up, let us down, or desert us.

When you were a kid, was there a musician you idolized? Someone whose lyrics spoke to you, whose music moved you in a way you barely understood? Maybe you liked the cut of Elvis' hips. Maybe you grew up with a Jimi Hendrix poster on your wall. Maybe you were a Deadhead or a Fanilow. Heck, maybe you're a Belieber or a member of the BTS Army right now.

For me, there was one singer who sat on a pedestal above most others.

If you were a smart, awkward loner growing up in the 1980s, there was one voice you could always turn to. His name was Steven Patrick Morrissey, and he fronted one of the most important bands in the world: The Smiths. If you're unfamiliar, don't worry. Casey Kasem never once uttered their name. The Smiths didn't live on the radio or in dance clubs. Most people had no clue they existed. They even named one of their albums "The World Won't Listen." But to their fans, The Smiths were everything.

If you were an indoor kid who preferred books to sports, suddenly there was a pop idol you could identify with. Your parents might not have understood you, but Morrissey did. With a sardonic wit and a catchy hook, he could sing your life. His lyrics were depressing, charming, achingly funny, and self-deprecating -- often all in the same verse.

Morrissey wasn't afraid to tell you that life sucked, people were stupid, and most things were hopeless -- not exactly your stereotypical pop anthems. But Morrissey fans weren't stereotypes. For a weird and awkward kid like me, he was a hero.

But a few years back, things went sideways. As the years have passed, Morrissey's become less of a truthsayer and more of a... terrible human being. In a misguided attempt to call out animal cruelty, Morrissey thought wise in a recent interview to declare, "You can't help but feel the Chinese are a subspecies." His anti-immigration rhetoric is troubling at best, downright racist at worst. He even voiced his support for Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein, saying, "if you go through history, almost everyone is guilty of sleeping with minors. Why not throw everyone in jail right away?"

His fans are leaving by the droves. Even the Simpsons mocked him in a recent episode when Lisa meets a pretentious British singer named Quilloughby who sings a song called "Everyone is Horrid Except Me (And Possibly You.)" Any fleeting hopes of a Smiths reunion have forever been dashed -- the rest of the band want nothing to do with him.

I've stopped idolizing the guy, but I still love the music of The Smiths and those songs that helped me through adolescence -- songs that may have just been saved... by Rick Astley.

Yep, THAT Rick Astley. The corny radio-pop hero whose inescapable "Never Gonna Give You Up" has been Rick-rolling us on the interwebs for over a decade. As it turns out, Rick's actually a pretty cool guy. He's also one of those indoor kids who spent the 80s idolizing Morrissey. And he's got the pipes to match. 

So when Rick posted a short clip of himself belting out a Morrissey tune with the band Blossoms, Smiths fans around the world lost their collective minds. Now, he and Blossoms are actually playing a few select pop-up gigs as a proper Smiths tribute band. But instead of Morrissey's pomp and pretention, you get Rick Astley in a Hawaiian shirt pogoing around like your drunk uncle at a karaoke bar having a blast. The kind of blast I'd waste a magic key to witness.

I spent years hoping to see Morrissey. Now, I think I'd rather see Rick Astley onstage doing these brilliant songs justice in the least pretentious way possible. Or, as a rock critic at Vulture said last month, "It's settled. He's Morrissey now."

Anyone have a key I could borrow?

   

COLUMN: Battery

Last week, I wrote about heading down to the Spoon River Valley Scenic Drive. As it turns out, I narrowly avoided spending a whole lot of quality time with that scenery.

Over on TikTok, there's a 13-year-old pug named Noodle with over 2 million followers. Every morning, Noodle's owner Jonathan wakes the sleepy dog on camera and stands him upright. Sometimes Noodle stays aloft -- but more often than not, he collapses back into bed like he's made of Jell-O, leading Jonathan to declare it's a "no-bones day," where laziness and comfort win out over productivity and stress.

The other night, I left work after an exhausting day of professional newspaper-ing. I was dragging hard. My brain was mush, the yawns were plentiful, and I was utterly wiped. As I walked out the door, I thought to myself, "I should have listened to Noodle. Today is DEFINITELY a no-bones day."

I was right. I just didn't know my car thought the same thing.

I almost just typed "as I turned my key in the ignition," but that'd be a lie. I'm a modern, on-the-go guy with no time for the burden of inserting a key into an ignition and expending precious calories with all that cumbersome hand-turning. I now own a car with a button that says "START" on it. It turns out that button's occasionally a lie, too. 

I pressed START and my car just sort of... wheezed. CHUG... A... CHUG... A.  Uh oh. 

I suppose I should be grateful. Just days prior, I was in Fulton County, scenic-driving down roads less traveled on gravel paths a hundred miles from home. I should have been thankful my battery died in the office parking lot and not along the banks of the Spoon River. After all, roadside assistance can only assist when one knows WHICH roadside one is stranded upon. 

Yep, I was grateful that day. So grateful, in fact, that I decided to scream grateful profanities into the open air and slam my grateful head into the steering wheel for dramatically grateful effect. 

Strangely, it worked. Suddenly, my car started. It certainly didn't sound happy about it, but it started. While a rather loud voice in my head told me to go home and pretend it didn't happen, a louder voice in my head told me to go to a parts store right away and have them check my battery. That voice was my dad's, because I had him on hands-free speakerphone within seconds of getting the car started. I'm not sure why I called him for advice. I already knew what his advice would be, and I knew it wouldn't be to go home, eat a hot dog, and watch bad TV (which was MY plan.)

Instead, I wheeled into an auto parts store and had them check my battery.

"Oof," said the kid testing my battery. "It's not holding a charge at ALL. Game over."

He then recommended an expensive replacement battery they had in stock, but then told me I'd have to go to a mechanic to get it changed out. Apparently, my car puts the battery underneath some kind of hard-to-remove housing doohicky that's more than just an amateur swap-out. Great news.

Suddenly I worried that instead of needing a tow or a jumpstart from the parking lot at work, I might need one from the parking lot of an auto parts store. Thankfully, it started up again (barely,) and in desperation, I tried a different auto parts store down the street. Heard the same story from them - my battery was toast, but due to the housing, it would require a professional install. Noooo.

"Good thing I'm a professional," the guy said with perfect comic timing.

Huzzah! And that place just won ALL my future automotive business. A few minutes later, I left with a dented pocketbook but a shiny new battery and a fully-powered car that was no longer wheezing to life.

I wanted to go home and eat that hot dog. Instead, I sat in my driveway for 20 minutes on hold with the satellite radio people, trying to order a signal refresh. When my battery died, so too did all my radio presets. When it came back to life, the radio kicked on to Celine Dion -- and let's be honest, I'd rather walk home. But I eventually got sorted and was soon back to my usual playlist of Music To Irritate My Friends With.  

Still, the whole escapade has made me a little jealous of cars. Wouldn't it be nice if the next time it felt like a no-bones day, we could just walk into a store, change out our battery, and suddenly have a recharged lease on life? Unless, of course, we all started singing "My Heart Will Go On," in which I think I'll stick with no bones, thanks.

    

COLUMN: Scenic Drive

You'll never believe what happened to me the other day. Hard to believe, but I actually got to have a little bit of a weekend with my weekend.

More often than not, my weekends are just slightly discolored weekdays -- 48 hours when I get to take off my newspaper hat and instead put on my DJ hat. Any way you look at it, I'm still working. What little free time I have is often spent cleaning the house, doing laundry, buying groceries, and generally performing all those mundane responsible-adult tasks that may as well be considered work, just without that cumbersome burden of getting paid for any of it.

Sometimes, I don't want to wear the newspaper hat, the DJ hat, or the responsible adult hat. Sometimes I just wanna hang my hats up for a bit.

That's what I did last weekend. I went for a scenic drive. Specifically, a Spoon River Valley Scenic Drive.

Every year, Knox and Fulton Counties in Illinois hold a fall festival of beautiful vistas, scenic overlooks, harvest bounties, and a colorful spectacle of autumnal wonder and merriment. Or at least I bet that's what the brochures say.

In reality, it's pretty much just a yard sale. A really, really big yard sale. 

I grew up in Knox County, and Scenic Drive weekends were always a tradition in my family. In fact, outside of Christmas, the day we went Scenic Driving was usually my favorite day of the year. I'd stake my claim to the back seat of the mini-van, crank some roadtrip tunes on the headphones, and let the pavement -- or at least my dad -- guide us to wonder.

The main wonder, of course, being: "Who would buy any of this junk?"

I adore the Knox County and Spoon River Valley Scenic Drives, but let's be honest. There's not a whole lot of scenery along the main route, unless your idea of scenery is plastic tables and piles of rusty antiques. Basically, it's an excuse for everyone in Knox and Fulton Counties to go through their homes, find all the rusty garbage in their basements, and see if anyone's weird enough to pay money for it.

And I love it. I can waste an entire day wandering around amateur junk vendors, and if I can do so with an elephant ear and a lemon shake-up in my hands, all the better.

There's all kinds of different stuff to see, do, and buy along the Scenic Drive. There's crafters who must spend the rest of their year making stuff to sell just for this 4-day annual festival. There's a limitless supply of homemade jams, jellies, honey, and assorted things floating in vinegar and brine. There's antique dealers galore. There's people selling junk and people selling deep-fried junk. It's every Midwestern stereotype served up on a platter, often with powdered sugar sprinkled over the top. It's great.

I had limited time and limited objectives this year. I wanted apple cider, a hot donut, and a homemade pie to take home. All three of those were found in the tiny town of London Mills, a stop so popular on the Scenic Drive that it can back up traffic on the highway for over a mile. The vendors were on their A-game. There was a guy selling homemade root beer out of a barrel. There was a woman yelling "TAMALES! IF YOU DON'T LIKE THEM, YOU DON'T PAY!" In perhaps a sign of the changing times, there was more than one tent selling CBD oil and, umm, "decorative" glass pipes.

And there was junk. Oh, how there was junk. I fully appreciate the lure of food vendors and homemade jams, but I'll never wrap my head around table after after of rusty antiques in shoddy condition. I realize to some people it's a treasure trove, and I won't begin to argue the appeal of rusty antiques in the homeland of American Pickers, but I don't get it.

Case in point: At one stall this weekend, they were selling the beat-up remnants of a 1970's KerPlunk game for $8. Remember KerPlunk? Once upon a time, in the days before X-Box and Playstation, the height of gaming was pulling plastic straws from a transparent tube in hopes of not disloging the pile of marbles atop them. If you pulled the wrong straw, marbles would drop to the bottom of the tube, making a noise that sounded NOTHING like "ker-plunk."

It was, and still is, great fun. But THIS particular eight-dollar vintage Kerplunk game only had ONE remaining straw. Spoiler alert, but that's not going to stop too many marbles. That's okay, though, because the marbles were missing, too. Basically this guy was selling a plastic tube and a single piece of straw for eight bucks. Here's another spoiler alert: They still make KerPlunk. You can buy a brand new model at Wal-Mart for $14.95. I bet it has all the marbles, all the straws, and doesn't smell like it's been in someone's attic since 1963.

But again, I won't knock antique sellers. Maybe there's someone out there getting ready to open a board-game-themed microbrewery in need of a kitschy KerPlunk wall sconce (and if you're out there, hit me up -- I can cut you a deal on Broken Broken Hungry Hungry Hippo that's somewhere in my closet.) 

All told, the day made for a great escape. Pro tip: the main routes of the Spoon River Valley Scenic Drive might not be especially scenic, but the side roads ARE. We detoured off the main drag and got a fair share of fall foliage and fresh air. I even made a long-overdue detour to the rural cemetery where I could say hi to my grandparents and a good portion of my mom's family tree. It's a really nice place, except for the incessant barking dog in the distance that I reckon my grandpa routinely cusses out from the great beyond.

The world may change, but as long as the Spoon River continues to flow, so will the smell of fried food wafting up from Fulton County every fall. Here's hoping our children's children's children will enjoy the Knox County and Spoon River Valley Scenic Drives. They might even have a chance to buy that same KerPlunk tube. 

Enough talking. I have pie to eat. 

COLUMN: Outage

Congratulations, everybody. We made it.

There are times in life that try our souls. Events beyond our control can push us to the brink of oblivion. It's then and there we see our true selves and realize the fragility of mankind. But somehow, with persistance and fortitude, we manage to survive. Somehow, humanity musters the strength to soldier through suffering and adversity, and we live to fight another day. Proudly, we persevere.

That's right - we made it a whole five hours without Facebook.

On Monday, technical issues took down Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp for most of the afternoon. According to a headline in Tuesday's New York Times, "lives were disrupted." The world descended into madness. Chaos reigned supreme. Anarchy spilled into the streets. Pandemonium was everywhere.

Well, except MY office, apparently. I had no clue about the outage until I went to check a scheduled post on our newspaper's social media feed. Instead, I found myself staring at a white screen and an infinite hourglass icon. "Bummer," I said to myself. "Facebook must be down." By the time I got off work and checked again, everything was hunky-dory again. Clearly, my life had been irreparably and irreversibly disrupted.

Based on the news coverage of the outage, you'd think we were minutes away from the full collapse of Western civilization. Yes, life would forever be altered because for one brief afternoon, none of us could share pictures of our cats with people who Facebook calls our "friends" but in reality are more like "people we don't actively hate, whose existence we are somewhat aware of."

Once upon a time, we all got on fine without Facebook. You know, back in the olden days when you had to walk a mile through the snow if you wanted to show someone a photo of your cat.

I love aimless roadtrips, whether it's a vacation or a spontaneous escape where you end up in Beloit at 4 a.m. for no good reason. For decades, I would do this not just without Facebook, but without a cell phone altogether. I couldn't IMAGINE such a thing today. It seems completely insane and unsafe to travel even yards from your house without your phone. 

The other day, I went to work and forgot my phone on the kitchen counter. I could barely focus. Even though my phone seldom leaves my pocket when I'm at work, I couldn't stop thinking about it. On my first break, I had to run home and get it. Without it, I felt like a contestant on a reality survivalist show. 

I used to happily go about my business without a portable Facebook machine in my pocket. No one ever saw photos of my cats. I never felt the need to take glamour shots of my dinner. Twenty years later, we now live in a reality where Facebook and Instagram go down for an single afternoon and it makes national news. It was touch-and-go for a bit, but I somehow made it through the afternoon without a single status update from Kim Kardashian.

If I thought I had it bad, imagine my poor uncle down in Alabama. Somehow, he had to go five whole hours without sharing 72 different ways that Joe Biden's destroying the country. He spent an entire afternoon unable to call me a mask-wearing Communist snowflake even once. That poor guy.  

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-Facebook. I spend a ton of time on social media. I like silly memes, hearing from friends, and seeing the cool kids from my high school slowly turning old, fat, and bald. Sure, there's bad facets to social media, but blaming Facebook for its content would be like blaming the postal service whenever an annoying offer to extend my car's warranty shows up in the mail. 

I like Facebook just fine, but I don't think a five hour outage should "disrupt your life" in any meaningful way unless your last name's Zuckerberg. We're now 1.5 years into a pandemic that made us hide in our homes. We should be old hats at life disruptions by now.

If Facebook crashes again, I think I'll be okay. You see, I learned something Monday. You know that portable Facebook machine in your pocket? It turns out you can use that same machine to punch in some numbers and CALL those same friends and talk to them with that eating-hole thingamajig below your nose. I call it Facemouth.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to ring up 172 people and describe my cats to them in great detail. 

   

COLUMN: Graphology

Whenever a new colleague starts up in the office, I can usually expect to hear two general comments within the first week:

(1) "Can you turn your music down a little?" 

and

(2) "Your handwriting is freakishly neat."

I've always been strangely proud of my handwriting. It might be the only aspect of my life in which the word "neat" could ever be applied. But it didn't happen by accident. I was bullied into it by my own brain.

When I was a kid, I used to beg to go to the library. Just being in that building made me feel smarter. I'd hit up the new sci-fi arrivals, grab any humor book I could find, and spend a ridiculous amount of time in the paranormal/pseudoscience stacks, convincing myself that ghosts were real, houses in Amityville were oozing blood, and two sticks in your hand could magically point you towards gold. Life was fun in those days.

It was during one of those trips to the nonsense corridor of the Dewey Decimal System that I first became entranced by graphology -- the science of handwriting analysis. I suppose "science" here needs to be in quotes, because graphology's scientific attributes are sketchy at best. Still, I'm a firm believer. I poured myself that particular glass of Kool-Aid in junior high, and I still drink from it today. 

Graphology asserts that your handwriting is a window to your personality. Something as simple as a signature can paint your entire psychologicial profile. 

Most of us learn to write from identical tutorials. But somewhere along the way, each of us develops a slightly different writing style. You can probably recognize the handwriting of your family, friends, and co-workers -- everyone's is unique. Graphology claims the uniqueness of our handwriting is a direct reflection of our unique personalities.

Some of it seems like common sense. If a person writes with harsh and bold pen strokes, it's a likely indicator that they're angry or aggressive. Conversely, shy and timid people tend to write smaller, tighter, and lighter. If you're hurried or a fast thinker, you might forget to dot your i's. If you're an extrovert, you might tend to sign your John Hancock like, well, John Hancock.

But graphology dives WAY deeper than that. If you buy into it, naturally funny people use more wavy horizontal lines in their writing. Imaginative people have more disconnected letters in their cursive flow. The more your handwriting slants to the right, the more emotional you are. There's supposedly a million different tells in a person's handwriting, from the way you cross your t's to the way you balance your pen strokes.

I consumed everything our library had on graphology and fancied myself a young expert. At school, I loved when we had to grade each other's papers -- I was more concerned with studying the penmanship of my fellow students. My handwriting analysis was often spot-on. The bully in our class had every tell-tale indicator of brutality in his writing style, the teacher's pet used large capital letters indicative of wild ambition, and the artsy kid used long flourishing loops. 

Then there was that one kid who shall remain nameless. He was an unassuming guy who kept to himself. But I'll never forget the first time I saw his handwriting. Deformed letters, tall vertical loops, differential spacing between words, and a radical left-leaning slant to his script. Graphology left no doubt: he was psychotic. I sat next to that kid for years, convinced he was a lunatic, just waiting for him to snap. I have no idea what became of him. He might be a well-adjusted middle-aged man now. Or he might be the Zodiac Killer.

As for me? That was the biggest disappointment of all. I didn't hesitate to analyze my OWN handwriting, and discovered I was, by graphology standards, wholly unremarkable. My handwriting was average and boring. Yuck. So instead of trying to figure out what kind of person I was from my handwriting, I instead tried to change my handwriting to match the person I wanted to be: an artistic, creative free-thinker. Overnight, I started adding huge loops and swirls to my writing in hopes of spinning myself into a superstar.

Instead, it just looked silly. Out of frustration, I vowed then and there to stop writing in cursive altogether. My cursive may have been average and sloppy, but to my surprise, when I printed the words, they were super neat and tidy. Without me trying, I suddenly became The Guy With Freakishly Neat Handwriting, all because I was pouting over a book that told me I wasn't creative.

In today's digital age, we're losing the art of handwriting entirely. Some schools have even stopped teaching cursive altogether. Maybe one day, cursive will be a thing of the past, which also means we'll lose the art of studying that cursive to see if you're a homicidal maniac. Bad news for graphology fans, but I suppose good news for any aspiring psychopaths out there.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to work. Yes, I'll turn my music down.     

COLUMN: Van Meter Visitor

2021 has been a year of challenges: life in a pandemic, trouble in the Middle East, political divides, racial strife, you name it.

I just wasn't expecting to add NINE-FOOT TALL BAT MONSTER to the list. But honestly, given the year we're having, it kinda tracks.

I'm a sucker for any good paranormal show on TV. Heck, I'm a sucker for the bad ones, too. I can waste hours contentedly watching people chase ghosts, UFOs, Bigfeet, and any number of things that go bump in the night. Life can get a little boring without some magic now and again. When it comes to chasing the unexplained, I'm all in.

There's endless paranormal shows out there, and they all tend to follow the same formula. Someone reports seeing something scary. A crack team of investigators descends upon the scene with a van full of high-tech gadgets, which they will carefully employ in order to find... nothing. But they'll find that nothing in the scariest and most needlessly dangerous of ways.

"What's that? You saw a UFO hovering above these very woods just eight months ago? Well, we'd better rappel into this cave at 3 a.m. on a foggy moonless night and check it out. You know, for aliens and stuff."

At the end of the show, one investigator will usually conclude the legend is false, while another will offer some grainy video footage or a bone that supposedly proves the location is most definitely haunted by alien goat creatures or whatever. It's ridiculous, but if one of these shows pops on my screen, I watch with bated breath thinking it might just be the episode where they finally film an alien turning a cow inside out (as aliens are wont to do.)

This explains why I found myself last weekend watching the latest episode of "Expedition X," which is a spin-off of "Expedition Unknown," which is itself a reworking of "Destination Truth," and I know all of this because I've sat through every episode of these ridiculously wonderful shows. I'm jealous I don't live anywhere where there's legendary bogeymen. 

Or so I thought.

This episode started off like always. The team has been called to investigate the legend of the Van Meter Visitor, a giant bat-like creature reported to have terrorized a small town in 1903. "And now," the show said, "new sightings have been reported. Has the Van Meter Visitor returned?"

"Sweet," I said to myself as I dunked a chip in some salsa -- a chip I would choke on roughly two seconds later as the announcer returned.

"We begin with a recent sighting in the nearby town... of IOWA CITY."

WAIT, WHAT?  Van Meter is in IOWA? The bat monster is in our backyard? SHUT THE FRONT DOOR.

As it turns out, Van Meter IS in Iowa, but it's far from what I'd call "nearby" to Iowa City. It's actually southwest of Des Moines. Van Meter is known for two things: it's the home of baseball Hall of Famer Bob Feller, and it's also the home of a 9' winged bat-monster that terrified townsfolk in the fall of 1903. The creature was sighted by several reputable citizens of Van Meter, who did what any reputable citizen would naturally do: they shot it. Repeatedly. Turns out our winged bat buddy is bulletproof. As the old newspaper clippings tell, the creature smelled foul and stalked the citizens of Van Meter for four days, until a posse of townsfolk cornered it in an abandoned coal mine, which they sealed off forever... OR DID THEY?

According to "Expedition X," an Iowa City college student and his girlfriend recently came face to face with a similar monster at a local park -- and he MUST be telling the truth, because he got the monster tattooed on his arm as a permanent reminder of his ghastly encounter. Awesome.

Other than the dude's arm, I've now seen two illustrations of the Van Meter Visitor, and I'm sold. In the first, which I think dates back to the original 1903 news story, it's depicted as a total Game-of-Thrones-style dragon, flying off into the distance WITH A FULLY GROWN HORSE IN ITS MOUTH. In the second, it's depicted as looking kinda like Charizard from Pokemon, but with lasers shooting out of its forehead.

Oh, I'm sorry, did I forget to mention that part? It's a flying bulletproof horse-eating bat monster THAT SHOOTS LASERS FROM ITS SKULL. Not only do we have a cryptid in our 'hood, we might have the best one of all time. Bigfoot can't fly. The Loch Ness Monster isn't bulletproof. Not even Godzilla can shoot laser beams from its skull. Score one for the locals!

"This thing looks like a Pokemon," I texted my friend Jason.

"Maybe Pokemon just exists to desensitize children to the horrors of the world," he replied.

"If so, they did a great job of it," I texted back. "Maybe every time we drive to Iowa City, we're just ignoring the laser dragons flying off with horses."

Driving around rural Iowa for no good reason is, like, my third favorite pasttime. There's barely a back road I haven't been on at some point. I've seen a lot of weird stuff, but you'd think I'd remember a nine foot horse-eating bulletproof laser bat-dragon. Maybe not. Maybe there was a good song on the radio at the time or something.

If you want to hunt the monster yourself, I'd recommend the Van Meter Visitor Festival -- which just happens to be this weekend, and features walking tours, vendors, and cryptid experts from all over the country. Maybe they can figure out a way to trap it in another coal mine. We might not be able to shoot it, but never underestimate Iowan ingenuity - if we put our heads together, I guarantee we can figure out a way to deep fry that sucker and sell it on a stick with a lemon shake-up.

COLUMN: Gen X Crossroads

I need to talk to my fellow Gen-X'ers for a minute.

Never did I think I'd say those words. I've never bought into the stereotypes of the generation gap. The differences are there, I suppose. But I've never considered myself part of the Gen-X club.

I think I stopped maturing in college. I don't care what the calendar, my grey hairs, or my waistline have to say about it. I'm pretty sure my brain still thinks it's 1990, just with WAY worse music and more bills. I still have nightmares that I've overslept for my final exams and haven't studied. There's a good portion of my noggin that steadfastly refuses to believe I'm an adult.

But this week, my age may have caught up to me a little bit. I fear I've entered a Gen-X technological crossroads.

As you may know, for the better part of the past year, our local cable company has been in the world's lamest game of chicken with one of our local TV stations. Contract renewal talks didn't go so well, and as a result, our local ABC affiliate has been "temporarily" dropped from our cable lineup. 

Stand-offs like this aren't uncommon. It's a frequent tactic in contract negotiations between cable companies and affiliate owners. If the two parties hit a brick wall and can't reach an agreement before deadline, the station gets blacked out on the cable line-up. This usually causes immediate public outcry and in short time brings both parties back to the bargaining table until they can hammer out a new deal.

This time, however, I think somebody got lost on the way to the bargaining table. This particular staredown started back in December. I haven't seen a single ABC show yet in 2021, and that's a bummer.

Don't ask me to pick sides, because I won't. Back in January, the owners of our local ABC affiliate claimed the cable company "refused to reach a fair, market-based agreement." Meanwhile, when you call the cable company to complain, you're greeted with a looped recording saying they're "OUTRAGED" by the station "pressuring us to raise the amount of money we collect from hard-working customers like you."

Who's to blame? I have no clue, and I honestly don't care. I just want 'em to put on their big boy pants and hash it out. It's bad enough I willingly hand over a disturbing percentage of my annual income just to watch people play-act on a picture box in my living room. But if I'm going to pay a king's ransom every month, I'd at least like to be able to watch shows like... like... okay, I'm not even sure what's even ON ABC any more, but I bet I could waste some quality time in front of it regardless.

So I decided to take matters into my own hands. We as a society existed for decades without needing cable television. I even have vague memories of what that was like. I needed to go old school. I needed -- rabbit ears.

Here's where I hit the Gen-X crossroads. I feel like our generation may have reached an era where we're too old for new technology, but too young for old technology.

A couple years ago, I got suckered into buying one of those curved flatscreen TVs with 3D capability that was amazing for the two days after I bought it and I'm pretty sure I've never used the 3D mode since. Still, it's a decent TV and has everything I need -- except any kind of obvious plug-in for a set of vintage rabbit ears. And it would be really stupid looking to have this futuristic TV on my wall with a rinky-dink antenna jutting out of it.

Still, I'd put up with a rinky-dink if it meant sticking it to The Man, so the other day, I got up, got dressed, and set off to Radio Shack to buy some rabbit-ears. Until, that is, I realized there are no Radio Shacks left in town. This is sad. Future generations will never know the joy of that stupid yapping robot dog they always had on display, or spending 20 minutes trying to find the right adapters to hook six hi-fi's together in an ill-fated attempt to make a MEGA-STEREO in your friend Mark's basement.

I'm too old for the new school, but too modern for the old school. I don't even know where one buys rabbit ears in a Shack-less society. I ordered a pair online -- and yep, the package got stolen right off the porch. I ordered a second set and had them sent to work, but the doohicky on the end definitely doesn't match the doohicky on the back of my TV. I give up.

So before I get old and feeble and start complaining about the weather making my bones ache: I beg of you, Tegna and Mediacom, sit down and work this out. It's getting old. Until then, I guess I'll have to make do with my other 246 channels and 9 different streaming services. Somehow, some way, I'll figure out a way to perservere. After all, I'm Gen-X -- it's what we do.

COLUMN: The Vast of Night

In a year when you can barely read the headlines without openly grimacing, I've decided it's best to stop wasting blood pressure spikes on hot-button topics our society will never agree on. Instead, I'm trying to direct my ire needlessly onto mundane pet peeves that drive me into silent fury.

I've got a new favorite gripe.

Is there nothing worse than watching a REALLY great movie and wanting to talk to everyone you know about said movie, except none of those people have SEEN said movie? I saw a flick this week that was super cool, but the only other viewers I know who've seen it are my cats, and they didn't seem quite as impressed.

Well, there's one other person who's seen it -- my best friend. He's the one who recommended I watch it. He enjoys weird esoteric indie films that no one's ever heard of. He's into highbrow black-and-white dramatic think-pieces. That's usually not my kind of movie. Watching a two-hour flick where someone slowly succumbs to alcoholism or discusses philosophy over dinner isn't exactly my idea of entertainment. 

I have what you might call "questionable" taste when it comes to movies. I own "From Justin to Kelly" and "Spice World" on DVD. I've sat through every Adam Sandler flick. I can recite full lines of dialogue from "Mega Python vs. Gatoroid." When it comes to cinema, I have little depth.

But my friend told me I would love "The Vast of Night," and he was not wrong.

If you haven't seen it, it's on Amazon Prime and definitely worth a stream. It might be a small-budget indie film, but it's a remarkable directorial debut for filmmaker Andrew Patterson and shoves you head-first into a world you don't want to leave.

That world, specifically, is a small town in 1950's New Mexico. No spoilers, but the whole film happens in real time and involves a late-night radio DJ, a telephone switchboard operator, some amazing cinematography, acting triumphs by a virtually unknown cast -- and maybe a UFO or two.

"The Vast of Night" doesn't just make me yearn to discuss the movie with friends. It makes me want to be in New Mexico -- or at least the New Mexico of the 1950s. And it definitely makes me want to see a UFO, like, right now.

Okay, maybe not RIGHT now. Right now I'm alone in my house. If a UFO came down this very second to say hi, I'd probably pee my pants and have a heart attack. Seeing a UFO by yourself is sheer terror. But if there's one thing movies have taught us, it's that seeing UFOs with friends, especially if you're in a small town, is usually an exciting adventure. That's what I want: a weird light in the sky, maybe a spirited car chase, and a chance to ponder the nature of human existence while staring at the stars with some close friends.

I don't think it's too much to ask for. It's not a stretch to imagine life existing on other planets. The universe is REALLY big. It seems pretty conceited to think we're the only dot in the sky with a tadpole plucky enough to grow legs and step out of the mire. BUT the odds of another planet developing INTELLIGENT life is a tougher pill to swallow, let alone life intelligent enough to develop interstellar space travel. 

If there IS life out there, it's probably going to end up being a planet full of angry space cicadas or something. And even if there's intelligent life out there, they're probably only capable of seeing our sun as a dot in the sky like we see theirs. Maybe somewhere out there, there's a cicada monster lying on his back right now (do cicadas have backs?) staring at the night sky wondering if there's life outside Planet Cicadus and fearful the aliens will be fleshy monsters with only 2 arms, 2 legs, and 2 eyes. 

I don't think I have the steely constitution it would take to actually meet a sentient alien, and I don't know if I'd ever want to. They're probably not friendly. Remember: there's a big difference between an alien inviting you TO dinner and inviting you FOR dinner. I prefer my aliens to be the weird-light-in-the-sky variety, NOT the sharp-fanged, lay-eggs-in-your-belly variety. 

All I know is that it's unfair. I've been on countless moonlit drives in the country on countless gravel roads that would make a SPECTACULAR setting for a close encounter, and the best I've seen are some meteors, a comet or two, and a few lucky glimpes of the International Space Station whizzing overhead at umpteen thousand miles an hour.

So, my alien friends, if you're out there reading this, feel free to do a flyover anytime you fancy. And if you're nice and a vegetarian NOT hungry for my flesh, feel free to stop by. I've got a movie you should TOTALLY check out.   

COLUMN: Silent Disco

I recently had an unsettling high school flashback.

Last weekend was Davenport's Alternating Currents, a marathon of music and art and theatre and one of the best festivals I've experienced in the Quad Cities. The organizers should be commended, and I swear I'm not just saying that because I was a part of it.

One of the features this year was a silent disco on the downtown Skybridge. It's a trendy new fad: a dance night soundtracked to absolute silence. Instead of being greeted by thumping bass beats, attendees are given a pair of headphones. Three DJs blare jams simultaneously through a wireless transmitter, and you tune your headphones to the DJ of your choice.

It's a novel way to enjoy dancing with your friends without having to scream over the music, plus it's kinda fun to see dozens of people dancing in a silent room. Gratefully, I was asked to be one of the tunesmiths this past weekend.

Each DJ could pick a different genre. They already had one guy mixing uptempo house music, and Planet 93.9 was there to provide alternative rock. I decided to throw caution to the wind and come armed with a set of 80's pop and new wave nostalgia. It's the music I grew up with, so why not? We had NO idea who was going to show up. We had no idea if ANYONE was going to show up.

It ended up being fairly packed, which was fantastic. EXCEPT it was packed with younger folks who mostly gravitated to the other DJs and looked at me with disdain like I was DJ Grandpa from Planet Yesteryear. Honestly, though, who could blame them? It's been FORTY YEARS since new wave was even a thing. When I was in high school, if I'd have gone to a dance and the DJ was bumping Glenn Miller, I'd have looked at him with disdain, too. There's just as much time difference between me and Glenn Miller as there is between today's kids and Cyndi Lauper. Time is a weird thing.

Thankfully, though, I had a small but magnificent crowd of 80s fans rocking out with me to New Kids on the Block and Duran Duran, and it ended up the most fun gig I've had in a long time. But the whole thing definitely made me laugh. Every time some kid walked by sneering at me, I felt like I was right back in high school (and the fact that it was being soundtracked to The Safety Dance and Electric Avenue probably didn't help matters.)

It made me think about those awkward days -- being SO desperate to fit in, SO careful to listen to the right music, SO concerned with wearing the right clothes. If I had to re-live those days, I'd either lose my mind or become the weirdo loner in the corner, doing my own thing and not caring one iota about what anyone else thought. If it were The Breakfast Club, I'd totally be Ally Sheedy.

Do kids today have the same sort of cliques we used to have? I'm inclined to think it MUST be different.

When I was in high school, cliques were everything. Even something as simple as your taste in music could define an entire caste system in our cafeteria. There was a table full of metalheads, a table of wannabe rappers, a table full of goth and punk kids. There was a jock table, a cheerleader table, a table full of nerds and a table full of theater kids. Navigating the social hierarchy practically required a map.

Then there was me. I was desperate to fit in with ALL of them, which thusly meant I fit in with NONE of them. I loved theatre, but I wasn't a great actor. I was a huge nerd, but I was terrible at video games. I loved goth music, but I also loved The Beatles and Run-DMC. And let's be honest, my mom pretty much dictated all my fashion choices, which was probably a good thing considering some of the choices in my present-day wardrobe. 

In the least creepy way possible, I'd love to be a fly on the wall at a high school cafeteria today just to see what it's like. While I'm sure there are still cliques, I don't think they're as defined as they were back in my day. I spend an unhealthy amount of my free time in record stores, and I see what kids bring to the counter. Just today, I saw a school-aged kid buy 3 albums: Judas Priest, Billie Eilish, and ABBA. Where were these people when I was in high school? 

My guess is it's all thanks to the internet. With the advent of the information superhighway, you don't need to carefully choose what album to spend your allowance on. For a monthly fee, you can now have access to nearly every song, movie, and TV show ever made. You don't have to drive to Chicago to experience goth culture. You can just say, "Hey Siri, play Bauhaus." Kids today have it easy.

I'm the last person to give advice to today's youth. For the most part, I sucked at it. But if I had a do-over, I wouldn't change a thing. There's nothing better than finding like-minded people who dig the same stuff as you -- but you shouldn't ever like something just because you want to fit in. Listen and watch whatever you want. Trust me, when you get older, NONE of it will matter. 

In the meantime, there's already rumors we haven't seen the last silent Skybridge dance party. Hopefully they invite me back. Maybe next time I'll dust off some disco records and get even weirder looks. 

COLUMN: Backwater Gamblers

Quad Cities, I am finally one of you.

Okay, so I've been one of you for a long time since moving here for college in 1988. But even if you've lived here for decades, there's a few things you need to check off your bucket list before you can officially declare yourself a true Quad Citian.

You need to have a Magic Mountain at midnight at Ross' Restaurant. You need to ride the Channel Cat. You need to cheer on the Bandits at Modern Woodmen Park. You should probably have filled at least one sandbag in your life. You need to hear Taps waft out from the Arsenal at dark. You need to experience the rush of adrenaline that can only come from having spotted Paula Sands in the wild. 

And until last week, there was one important rite of passage I'd yet to cross off my QC bucket list. It's finally done.

I went to a Backwater Gamblers show.

I shouldn't have to tell ANYONE here about the Backwater Gamblers. If you're from the Quad Cities, you should already know that we have one of the best nationally-recognized water ski teams around. In fact, we have the FIFTH-BEST team in the whole country, according to the 2021 Show Ski National Championships, which is a thing that apparently exists. And every Wednesday and Sunday from Memorial Day to Labor Day, they're out there on the Rock River, putting on a free show for anyone who turns up.

Last week, I turned up.

Why had I never done this before? The most I'd ever seen of the Gamblers were pictures and a few lucky glimpses of practice sessions. When you drive over the Rock and look downriver, you might expect to see a boat or some pelicans. But every once in a while, you spot a human pyramid on water skis and go, "Hmm, don't see THAT every day."

Why have I never gone to one of their shows before now? I'm kicking myself. It was a solid hoot.

As far as I'm concerned, what they do is next to impossible. I can't even swim. A full year of lessons and my proudest accomplishment in the pool was kicking to the deep end while openly sobbing and clutching one of those floaty paddleboard thingys for dear life. I am not cut out for aquatics, unless they one day start handing out medals for speed sinking.

I barely comprehend how people can even swim, let alone strap a piece of wood on their feet and go river-surfing. I have no earthly idea how one stays upright on water skis. But to then take said skis up a ramp, do a backflip, and somehow land without ripping your legs clean off your body? It's just magic to me.

But the skiing feats weren't half as great as the corny scripted comedy. You can't just send people on skis over ramps for an hour straight. Even superheroes need a quick breather. So while the team sets up for their next sequence of tricks, the rest of the Gamblers act out a kitschy Old West storyline full of cheeseball chuckles that somehow manages to be both ridiculous and wonderful at the same time. My kudos to the writers.

It kinda makes me wanna be one.

Now that I think about it, I'm hard-pressed to think of a story that WOULDN'T be bettered by water skiers forming a human pyramid in the middle of the plot. I vote we merge the worlds of local theatre and local competitive water ski performance teams into a dramatic juggernaut of epic proportions.

We could have slapstick comedy on the weekends and cutting edge ski-dramas during the week. We could create "As The Water Churns," the world's only aquatic soap opera with new plot twists daily. We could re-enact historical dramas -- imagine how much more kids would dig history if Thomas Jefferson signed the Declaration of Independence while doing a backwards barefoot flip turn.

I attended the show with a few of my closest friends. Halfway through, I turned and said, "Oh man, what I wouldn't give to write the scripts for these shows. We could have a --"

"Why?" interrupted my friend Reid. "It's absolutely perfect the way it is."

He's right. There's a reason the Backwater Gamblers are a cherished institution in town. It's like the water-skiing equivalent of a bear hug. If you haven't been in a while, I highly recommend crossing the Gamblers off your bucket list before the season's up. Have a Kona Ice, laugh and groan, and watch people strap sticks to their feet and defy gravity.

It's the best way I've spent a Wednesday in quite a while. Finally, I feel like a Quad Citian. 

COLUMN: Disco Balls

I'm not much of an activist. The one time I tried to write a funny column opposing urban chicken coops, poultry enthusiasts stormed our lobby demanding my head on a platter, sunny side up. I learned my lesson.

I might be too chicken for activism, but our next generation isn't. Today I learned of an underground movement for change, started right here in the Quad Cities at Washington Jr. High School. It's definitely an important cause we can all get behind.

Almost a year to the day after we all painfully added the word "derecho" to our vocabularies, another freak windstorm assaulted our area on Wednesday morning. While it wasn't bad enough to do terrible damage, it DID down some trees, blow up a couple transformers, and temporarily knock out power to a goodly portion of Rock Island.

Brandy VanDeWalle is a good friend of mine and the owner of Skeleton Key Art & Antiques, an amazing shop you could easily get lost in for days, which you probably shouldn't because it's a former funeral home and I'm pretty sure it's haunted even though she assures me it's not.

When Washington Jr. High lost power on Wednesday, Brandy's 13-year-old son Alex knew precisely what to do. He sprang into action, launched a petition drive, and gathered the signatures of his classmates. The students have spoken. They demand change, and they demand change NOW. Brandy shared Alex's petition with me, and I couldn't agree more.

It reads, and I quote:

"PETITION TO INSTALL GENERATOR-POWERED DISCO BALLS IN THE SCHOOL HALLWAYS FOR THE NEXT BLACKOUT." To date, this important movement has garnered an impressive 19 signatures. We have a movement on our hands, people.

This is a cause I fully endorse. I have lived through many a crisis in my lifetime, and I can safely tell you not one of them wouldn't have been bettered in some way by emergency disco balls. The power goes out? BAM. Disco balls light the way. A global pandemic keeps us house-bound? BAM. There's no vaccine for disco. Your best friend ditches you? BAM. You can leave your friends behind, because your friends don't dance and if they don't dance, well, they're no friends of mine. 

I needed insight, so I met with Alex about his urgent plea for disco-fueled change.

SB: So... why disco?

AVdW: Many people believe disco died in the 70s, but the heart and soul lives on in the disco ball. Disco didn't die, it evolved. Also, blackout raves seem fun.

SB: You realize disco music is about the same age as your mom. In fact, I can attest to personally witnessing your mother having danced to disco on multiple occasions. Do you often jam out to a funky disco beat?

AVdW: I'm going to have to get back to you on those funky disco beats, but I do enjoy older music. Also, sorry about my mom. Sounds like she's embarassed both of us in public.

SB: Can I tell by the way you use your walk that you're a woman's man with no time to talk?

AVdW: Mom had to explain that to me, but I'd like to think so, yes.

SB: Disco balls are often employed during slow jams to smooch with your sweetie. Be honest, is this your end goal?

AVdW: Maybe, but I won't tell.

SB: How would school be improved by the implementation of emergency blackout hallway disco balls?

AVdW: On a day like today, it could be used as entertainment for students and faculty. Also, if there were an intruder, it would distract them until authorities arrive. It's multi-functional, people.

SB: I couldn't help but notice someone named Ava signed your petition with a signature eight times larger than everyone else. Be honest, is she eight times cooler than you?

AVdW: Yep, she put her John Hancock in the smack dab middle. She wears glorious eyeliner and helped us get teachers to sign the petition.

SB: Do you see a future career in political disco activism?

AVdW: There's potential, but I'm keeping my options open. I'm thinking of taking this all the way to Washington. Disco is the next political party. Come on, Gen Z, back me on this!

In these trying times, it's good to know that tomorrow's leaders already have a sense of urgent priorities. At the next election, I'm taking a stand. I'm voting with the Disco Party. And Alex, if you decide to throw a rally in support of your movement, I'm available to DJ on the cheap. I promise I won't let your mom dance... much. 

COLUMN: Pity Party

Somebody better alert the Guinness people. I may have just set a record for The World's Shortest Pity Party. 

I've got no right to complain about my life. I have a great job, a wonderful family, a roof over my head, and an ever-growing army of cats to carry out my evil bidding. I've amassed some of the greatest friends a fella could ever have -- and one of the oldest and dearest of those friends recently paid me a visit.

I've known Chad since junior high. I was a super nerd in those days, and we met in the nerdiest of ways: computer club. Chad was, and still is, the smartest human I've ever known.

I wish I had cool nerd stories to share, but we weren't cool nerds. We didn't start a fraternity or seek any revenge, and we never built a robot girlfriend who taught us life lessons (but if anyone ever COULD, it's probably Chad.)

About the wildest we got were slumber parties where we'd chug Jolt Cola and play video games 'til sunup. We were THOSE kinda nerds. 

In high school, Chad moved away to some Fancy Academy for Super Smart Kids, but we've stayed in touch over the years and try to get together whenever he visits home. These days, he gets paid to teach computers how to think. When the day comes that robots become sentient and try to enslave humanity, it'll probably be Chad's fault. Whenever we hang out, I reckon there's always a decent chance that a time-travelling Arnold Schwarzenegger's going to bust through the door any second to either kill him or save him. 

It was fun having him in town, and I'd like to tell you we spent the day as mature adults reminiscing over a lovely dinner or something. I certainly don't want to tell you that two 50-year-old men wasted an entire Saturday eating frozen pizza and playing Nintendo until 3 a.m.

At one point, though, we set the Nintendo down long enough to head out and replenish our junk food cache. That's when I took Chad on a little detour.

"I need to sidetrack for a second," I explained. "It's Record Store Day."

That's a real thing. International Record Store Day is my favorite holiday of the year. On that day, music companies issue small quantities of limited-edition records to select independent shops around the globe. Most are already collector's items before they even go on sale. Music nerds start lining up at the crack of dawn to be first through the door. I call it Vinyl Christmas

There were a couple pieces I wanted to procure, so I dragged Chad over to Co-Op Records real quick.

On the way there, that's when it hit me. There I was, fifty years old, still a nerd, still hanging with my nerdy friend, wasting an entire day playing Nintendo and then driving around talking about the Nintendo we'd just played.

The ugly thoughts came fast and furious. My mouth was somehow still talking about video games, but my brain was having a pity party. YOU'RE PATHETIC. NOBODY LIKES YOU. YOU'RE STILL A NERD. GROW UP. NO WONDER YOU WERE PICKED LAST FOR GYM CLASS, YOU RIDICULOUS MAN.

By the time we got to the store, I was internally questioning my life choices while still mindlessly talking about Zelda and Mario. Then I walked through the door.

At some point in my life, my nerd focus shifted from gaming to music, and record stores shall always be my happy place. If there's a heaven, mine will be lined with crates of vinyl and a limitless number of people with whom to argue the merits of Weezer and My Bloody Valentine for hours on end.

That afternoon, Co-Op Records was packed with masked shoppers. And I swear to you, I took two steps in and a majority of them turned and gleefully yelled out, "SHANE!" 

They had no idea, but my fellow music nerds saved me from an existential crisis that day. I might be a nerd. I might even be pathetic. But I have my people, I have my friends, and I have my happy place. I'm not ever getting a seat at the cool kids table, but I don't think I want one. Honestly, it looks like hard work.

I'd rather be a life-long nerd with my life-long nerd friends. We have crazy fun, we know the meaning of real friendship, and I'll guarantee we have much better taste in music. Next time I have a pity party, it's gonna have loads of video games and a great soundtrack.         

COLUMN: Handball

I write this column every 4 years without apology, and I'll continue to do so until America starts celebrating the greatest sport in the world.

It was the olden times -- you know, the 1990s -- and I had just returned home from a long night of DJing. It was 3:30 a.m. and I was WAY too amped to sleep. That's when I remembered the Olympics were on. I turned on the TV thinking I could drift off to swimming or basketball or gymnastics. But at 3 a.m., you don't see those events. You see the WEIRD stuff.

For the next hour, I sat transfixed by the most awesome sport I'd never heard of. That was the night I became a HUGE fan of team handball.

Imagine water polo -- without the water. And instead of water, they replace it with PURE UNADULTERATED VIOLENCE. Team handball is the most pointlessly high-impact sport I've ever watched. If you want the energy and insanity level of rugby, except INDOORS, team handball is the sport for you.

Like soccer, it has goals on each end of the court and a goalie tasked with defending them. Teams of 7 advance a ball the size of a cantaloupe up and down the court. You can carry the ball for no more than 3 steps and no longer than 3 seconds, at which point you have to pass or shoot.

From what I can gather, the goal of team handball is to leap through an army of defenders while chucking the ball at breakneck speed squarely at the goalie's head. Sometimes the ball will miss the defender's head and instead accidentally sail into the net, thus scoring a point. The winner is presumably the team with the most points or fewest decapitated goalies by the end of the match. It's amazing to watch.

Don't believe me? Every Olympic sport has its own logo, right? Track-and-field has a little stick figure running, cycling has a little stick figure on a bike, etc. Stop what you're doing right now and go look at the Olympic logo for team handball. The little handball stick figure is on a suicidal dive, arm cocked back, ball in hand, milliseconds away from decapitating some hapless goalie. EVEN THE STICK FIGURE LOOKS INSANE AND THREATENING. If it had a mouth, it would have fangs and be yelling, "MURRRRRDERRRRR!"

I'm not a bigtime sports enthusiast. If you want to watch me fall asleep, turn on a baseball game. Soccer can take an hour for anything to happen, and the "anything" is often a tie. Handball games end in scores that are like 52-41. I'm sure there's strategy involved, but from an amateur spectator standpoint, it just looks like crazed bloodlust for an hour straight. It's the sports equivalent of a mosh pit and crazy fun to watch.

The problem is figuring out when and how TO watch it. Team handball isn't exactly a high priority in America, and Team USA seldom qualifies for the Olympics, so it's the kind of thing you can usually only catch at 3 a.m. on CNBC or something.

It's a shame, because this sport needs to be seen. We should be cheering on American handball players like Amar Amitovic, Maximillian Binderis, and Abou Fofana. (Even their NAMES sound intimidating!)

I think the first time I wrote a handball column years ago, I said I wanted to play. I take that back. I prefer to keep my head safely ON my shoulders, thanks. But I WOULD pay good money to see a handball match live. Maybe Team USA needs an official DJ? I'm all in and mostly available between the hours of 3-5 a.m., unless something even weirder's on TV.  

COLUMN: Switch

What's the best way to achieve a stress break? I honestly want to know, because I think I'm doing it wrong.

Last week was crummy. There wasn't anything especially challenging about past 7 days. No particular ills befell me. It was just one of those weeks, y'know? I prefer to live a relatively unstructured life, free of burdens and plans. Sure, I work and eat and sleep and all that, but in my down time, I'm not one to make schedules. LAST week, though, it felt like my every hour was mapped out with mundane activities and chores that certainly weren't high on my to-do list. 

Ergo, I was grumbly.

By the time the weekend hit, I needed a break. Just one day of full-throttle, unbridled, no-responsibility ME TIME. I woke up on Saturday unwilling to meet the day head-on. Determined to stay in bed as long as possible, I rolled over, grabbed my phone, and thought maybe some wacky internet videos would put me in a better mood. 

For once, Youtube's "Recommended For You" suggestions hit the nail right on the head. Its top suggestion for me that morning was a video simply entitled, "Why You Need A Nintendo Switch."

Okay, realistically, no one over the age of fifteen needs a Nintendo Switch. There's not many occasions in my adult life where I've gone, "You know what I need right now? A hand-held video game console."

"But," said my mind, "You know what might be crazy fun right now? A hand-held video game console."

Maybe a Nintendo Switch was just what the doctor ordered. It really is a pretty great device. It looks stellar when connected to a TV, but then you can just unplug it and take it on the go and bust out some Super Mario Brothers anywhere you fancy. I realize this is fairly unnecessary in the lives of most 50-years-old. But I am NOT most 50-year-olds. Finally, I had my reason to get out of bed.

Two hours later, I walked back into my house with a shiny new Nintendo Switch in hand. What a great idea this was. If I ever again find myself stressed out by life, I can just take a five minute break, pull out the Switch, and for a few precious moments, my only care in the world shall be helping my buddy Mario rescue Princess Peach from the evil Bowser.

Poor Mario. I thought I had it bad. Just getting to work in the morning is sometimes enough to send me over the edge. Imagine doing it while jumping over barrels, bouncing off mushrooms, and falling into a never-ending array of pitfalls and pipes. There might be days I wish I wasn't at work, but it sure beats a world where the only apparent source of income is bashing your head against boxes all day hoping one of them contains gold coins. 

So I plugged in, turned on, and prepared to let all my cares float away into a haze of nerdy abandon. I just need to move Mario a little to the left here annnnd -- oops, I died. Okay, I just press X to jump to this platform thingy annnd -- I died again. But then I jump onto this little mushroom here annnd -- the mushroom killed me. Grr.

As it turns out, whoever said video games are a stress relief is a moron, or at least someone who's never played video games before. Within five minutes, I was cursing into the open air. Ten minutes after that, I threw the game controller in disgust, causing one of my cats to jump about five feet into the air. By the end of the hour, those poor cats heard about every swear word in the book, and a couple new ones I made up on the spot.

This isn't stress-relieving. It's stress-INDUCING. I spent another half hour learning 27 new ways for poor Mario to die before I gave up in disgust.

Later that night, I had a couple friends over and we all decided to try our hand at Super Mario Brothers like some kind of geriatric tag-team. Thankfully, I wasn't the only one terrible at it.

"This game is awful," my friend said.

"It's the exact same game we played for hours straight in college," I said.

"It's gotten harder," my friend insisted.

"Dude," I replied. "I think we've gotten softer."

As of press time, I've yet to reunite Mario with his beloved princess. It's probably for the best. I get the feeling Princess Peach could probably do better than a vertically-challenged plumber with an accent so bad it borders on being a hate crime. I think I'll set the Switch down for a bit and go back to being stressed out. Now, if someone would kindly point me towards any boxes I could break open with my head, that'd be swell. I need to find some gold coins to pay off this thing.  

COLUMN: Aesthetic Time Warper

"You're not a real journalist, Shane," they say. "You just write silly columns about the internet and your cats."

That changes today.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a genuine scoop. A full-on, no-holds-barred, stop-the-presses piece of breaking news that could shake our fundamental understanding of the world, and it's all thanks to my relentless search of the truth.

Or maybe it's thanks to those tacos I ate too close to bedtime.

Either way, I was up late last night riding out a case of insomnia by pointlessly scrolling thru the TikTok app, watching moron after moron lip-sync and dance their way to fleeting moments of internet fame. That's when I found him -- perhaps the most important human being on our planet today.

Except I have no idea who he is. No one does. All we know is his TikTok handle, @aesthetictimewarper.

If Mr. Aesthetic is to be believed -- and who can you trust if not a complete stranger on the internet -- we're in for a doozy of a year.

You see, @aesthetictimewarper claims to be a time traveller from the year 2714 who has come back to 2021 in order to, well, tell us stuff.

Seems super legit to me. After all, if you lived in a future world with time travel, what would you do? Go back in time, kill baby Hitler, and stop World War II? Nah. Maybe you'd go to Max Yasgur's farm in 1969 and experience Woodstock first-hand? How boring. Would you jump to prehistoric times and see dinosaurs roaming the Earth? Blah.

No, if you lived 693 years in the future and had time travel capabilities, clearly the first thing you'd do is journey back to that one year when a killer virus plagued the earth and hop on a social media app to impress teenagers. Makes perfect sense to me. 

If I were trying to scam the world into believing I was a time traveller from the future, I'd offer some vague predictions that could easily come true. "Tomorrow, someone famous will die!" "Next week, a climate event will occur!" Then I'd find the nearest obituary and/or thunderstorm and go, "SEE? HEED MY WARNINGS, MORTALS!"

That's not how @aesthetictimewarper rolls. He goes for broke. Among his predictions on TikTok:

* On August 3rd, NASA will discover a "mirrored Earth, with opposite everything, including physics, gravity, and motion." Umm, ok. If NASA discovered a parallel Earth, I don't think they'd announce it with glee. They wouldn't even put that in Area 51. They'd put it in, like Area 58 or 59 at the very least. But what does "opposite motion" even mean? A world where everyone walks backwards? For a while, I entertained myself wondering what Opposite Shane might be doing right now. But if there's "opposite gravity," wouldn't that mean he'd be floating away into the empty vacuum of space? Bummer for him.

* On September 14th, "a Category 6 hurricane will hit South Carolina." Wow. This is especially impressive, considering there are only five categories of hurricanes. When someone pointed this out, @aesthetictimewarper revealed it'll be SO destructive, they'll have to make a sixth category. Dang. My buddy just moved to South Carolina. Bummer for him.

* On February 22, 2022, "three scuba divers will find the ruins of Atlantis, along with fish-human hybrids." To date, there is no mention as to whether or not these fish-people pair nicely with a white Zinfandel and some tartar sauce. If so, bummer for them.

Also: Bigfoot is real and lives in Brazil. Underground worms will attack us next decade, humans will soon develop superpowers, and aliens called Nozics will soon infiltrate the US government (but I'm pretty sure that one's already happened.)

As much as it pains me to admit, maybe @aesthetictimewarper is full of hooey. Then again, people would probably think I was full of hooey if I travelled back to 1850 and told everyone that in the future, you could log on to your phone and watch strangers lip-sync and dance. Then they'd ask me what a "phone" was.

I wouldn't answer, because I'd have already travelled back to the present. Time's a-wastin', and I've got an Atlantis Hotel to start constructing. Our restaurant will serve the best fried fish-people around. Senior, Nozic, and Sasquatch discounts available upon request.  

COLUMN: Fireworks

I've spent most of my life trying (and failing, rather spectacularly) to be cool. The last thing I ever want to turn into is a jaded and bitter old man past his prime using this platform to air some grievances.

That said, forgive me right now while I use this platform to air some grievances.

Well, okay, just ONE grievance -- and yes, I'm perfectly aware that it sounds like something straight from a manual on How To Be A Jaded And Bitter Old Man. But come on, Quad Cities: Can we just have a tiny talk for a couple seconds about fireworks? Look, I wanna be cool. I wanna be in with the in-crowd. But please, oh pretty pretty please, can we maybe cool it with the pyrotechnics for a bit? Say, until next July 4th?

We've already succeeded in turning the winter holidays into a three-month celebration that may as well just be called Thanksmas'oween. There's no need to turn Independence Day into Independence Month. The bastardization of Christmas can be blamed on retail fever and capitalist greed. But from what I can tell, the only reason we start celebrating the 4th of July in mid-June is that we, as a people, like to watch stuff blow up. 

By and large, I'm okay with this. I like to watch stuff blow up, too. If Netflix ever released a series called "Stuff Blowing Up," I'd binge-watch the whole season in one day, guaranteed. But "Stuff Blowing Up" should not be the ONLY TV show on the air -- for 24 hours a day -- that you're forced to watch for a month straight.

Ever since firework stands opened this year, my neighborhood's been a haze of gunpowder and smoke. Each night, the arrival of dusk has been heralded by a cacophony of pops, bangs, booms, and what I presume are majestically-colored fireworks illuminating the night sky. I wouldn't know, because I'm usually inside. I just get to hear the mortars and explosions.

I hate jump-scares. That's why I don't watch horror movies. I don't get the fun in getting the bejeepers spooked out of me. I'm also painfully aware of the amount of French fries I've consumed in my lifetime. I'm pretty sure my arteries have a finite number of jump-scares left. Let's not waste them on things going kaboomie in the night sky.

I'm all for fireworks that have a gentle little pop and make an aerial spectacle. But those aren't the kind of fireworks my neighbors buy. They tend to prefer the ones so loud they rattle windows. At some point, they stop being really impressive fireworks and start being really mediocre bombs. They might not decimate a village or anything, but they're certainly capable of putting the "hyper" into hypertension.

If you want to make a loud noise, that's fine by me. I hang out in DJ booths all weekend -- disturbing the peace is my usual side hustle. But if you're going to detonate explosives in the neighborhood, maybe a heads up? If someone knocked on my door like, "Hey, we're about to explode a dozen firecrackers," I'd be first in line to watch. But don't wake me up in a cold sweat at 2 a.m. with them, that's all I ask.

My one pandemic present to myself was a fancy new air purifier for my house. I thought it might help my tendency to start the day with a 21-sneeze salute to hay fever. It has a fancy gizmo that monitors the indoor air quality and doesn't even turn itself on unless it senses dangerous impurities. It has a gauge that displays toxic whatzits. Usually it reads 0-5 microns. If I use the Instant Pot, it goes up to 50-75. If I fry bacon, I've seen it raise to 125. 

On July 3rd - not even the holiday proper, mind you - I took a bag of trash out to the curb. I probably had my back door open for no more than fifteen seconds max. By the time I got back in the house, the air purifier had kicked on at max power and the readout was displaying 215 microns of particulate matter. That's how quick it took for the air quality of my home to go from "good" to "extremely poor / severe." That just can't be healthy.

Independence Day is an awesome holiday. As long as you keep a fire extinguisher nearby and aren't overly concerned about the number of fingers you'd like to retain, I'm cool with you blowing up whatever (legal) fireworks you want on the 4th of July. But maybe less so on the 3rd. Or the 5th. Or mid-June. Or, as the case may be, RIGHT NOW (one just went off a few doors down from me this very minute.)

Or maybe you should just let the professionals handle the red-white-and-booming and not waste your money on something that will literally explode before your very eyes. Better yet, just give ME your money and then sometime in the coming month, I promise to sneak up behind you and yell "BOOM!" real loud. Unless, that is, I'm at the record store -- if I'm going to make an unholy racket every night, I promise it'll at least have a beat you can dance to. 

COLUMN: Blog Stats 4

Once upon a time, I was an avid blogger.  It lasted about three months.

Back when I started this column 15 years ago, a friend of mine suggested I start maintaining a public online blog.  "Yes!" I immediately agreed. "It is unfair that the poor souls of the Quad Cities can only experience my wisdom once per week. I must have a platform from which to bestow my keen insights unto the world on a daily basis. PREPARE THY BLOG!"

Turns out, I was a horrible blogger.

It's hard coming up with ONE thing to write about, let alone anything worthy of communicating daily. My excitement rapidly turned into posts like, "I am having a sandwich for lunch. Here's a picture of it. What are YOU having for lunch?"

I stopped posting after just a few weeks. But a couple times a year, I still upload my weekly columns to it, just in case someone feels like binge-reading my archive. Honestly, though, there's just one reason I've kept it around: the analytics.

Anytime I fancy, I can see how many people visit my blog. I can see where they're visiting from (I appear to have one ardent fan in Belarus.) I can see which entries people read. But best of all, I can see what keyword searches brought them to my blog.

Let's say you hop on Google and search for "hotels near me." There's a SLIM chance you might get to my blog because I've probably used the words "hotels," "near," and "me" collectively in my columns over the years. My site tracks these keyword searches, and the things you learn from them is amazing.

These are actual keyword phrases people have searched recently that have led them to my blog:

"I LIKE BIG COWS WITH SPOTS" - And I'm fine with that. To each their own cow fetishes. I just want to know what you were hoping to accomplish by entering that into Google. I'd also like to know how disappointed you must've been to be taken to MY website.

"IS A SEXY PIC QC WEATHER MAN?" - Every year I look at these keywords, and every year I find at least one person visiting my blog through a search for intimate photos of local meteorologists. Is there a secret fanclub for people who want to see weathercasters in their skivvies? Is someone right now cutting out heart-shaped pictures of James Zahara and Erik Maitland? I'm nothing if not a committed journalist, so I went straight to the source on this one. WQAD meteorologist Eric Sorensen is a local fan favorite, and this is his last week on-air before leaving to explore other opportunities. The time was now or never to get some answers.

So, Eric, are there weather groupies out there?

"Yes, they exist!" Sorensen replied eagerly. "But I've never thought those people think of me as anything more than just their morning weather guy."

But Eric, the public (and clearly the internet at large) are eager to know. Can you officially confirm or deny: "Is a sexy pic QC weather man?"

"There are... not," Sorensen sadly confirmed in this exclusive. "None of those exist. I'm thankful all my college shenanigans occurred in the days before digital photos."

Sorry to disppoint, Quad Cities. But there's always hope. Theresa Bryant had no comment as to the existence of sexy pics. Mostly because I didn't ask her.

"COTTAGE CHEESE LOOKS GREEN, IS IT SAFE TO EAT?" I am neither a food scientist nor a nutritionist. I can barely microwave a hot dog without burning my house down. But hear me now, stranger: The answer is no. It is not. Whatever's growing in your cottage cheese is likely to either cause or cure cancer. Throw. It. Away.

"IS SHANE BROWN SEXY?" Well, let's take stock of the situation. I'm writing this column while laying on my couch in an ill-fitting t-shirt with a recent salsa stain while watching a re-run of Ghost Adventures and eating a chalupa. You tell me. Is Shane Brown sexy? You're darn tootin' he is.

Or maybe you're looking for a different Shane Brown. There's a Shane Brown on the internet (shanebrown.net) who sells performance horses. He wears jeans and cowboy hats and denim shirts with his own embroidered Shane Brown logo and seems to enjoy belt buckles the size of Silvis. I guess he must be sexy, in a guy-who-sells-performance-horses kinda way. Which brings me to:

"SHANE BROWN PERFORMANCE HORSES" The other Shane Brown must be SERIOUSLY irked that when customers try to find him online, some instead end up on a webpage where a weirdo newspaper columnist talks WAY too much about his cats. And they're not even PERFORMANCE cats. They just mostly lie around. Sorry, Horse-Shane. But if you ever find this column, please send me one of those embroidered denim shirts. I would wear it every day.

"TOM CRUISE IS AWFUL" No matter what accolades or achievements I may earn in my remaining years, nothing will make me prouder than creating a landing page for people searching the phrase, "Tom Cruise Is Awful." He's just the worst. He stole Katie Holmes from my heart, and that's unforgiveable. Who's Katie dating now? According to gossip, it's some guy named Emilio Vitolo. He's awful, too, whoever he is. He can't be sexier than me or Horse-Shane, that's for sure. He probably doesn't even own embroidered shirts with my name on them. 

"PEOPLE WHO ARE AWESOME" Someone searched for "people who are awesome," and it took them to MY blog? Some poor soul out there now has a seriously twisted idea of what "awesome" is.

Sometimes we all feel a little weird. But the next time you're feeling like a square peg in a round world, just sit back and realize there's always someone weirder than you. Right now, someone somewhere could be trying to Google sexy pics of local weathermen. Someone somewhere is thinking long and hard about eating green cheese. Someone might think that I'M awesome. Maybe you're more normal than you realize.