COLUMN: Washer/Dryer

If you grew up watching The Jetsons like me, don't you feel cheated a little?

For a good portion of my childhood, I fully expected that once I became an adult, I would live in a house in the sky, drive a flying car, get around on moving sidewalks, and own a sassy robot maid that did my every bidding.

Well, thus far the future seems woefully lacking in sassy robot maids. There isn't a moving sidewalk in sight. And, apart from that one time I took a backroads hill in the country a little too fast, my car hasn't had much flight time whatsoever. I hate to say it, but the future's kind of a rip-off.

I guess The Jetsons got a FEW things right. We do have video phones, smart watches, and flatscreen TVs. Siri isn't especially sassy, but she WILL answer questions, give me directions, and tell me lousy jokes. There was a time when the internet probably sounded every bit as far-fetched and futuristic as flying cars, and now I feel like I'm in mortal danger of being cut adrift from society anytime I leave the house without a smartphone in my pocket. In a lot of ways, we ARE every bit as future-cool as The Jetsons.

But this week, I took future-cool up a notch at Casa Del Shane.

If you happened to read last week's column, you know I had a bit of an issue recently wherein my basement decided to temporarily identify as a swimming pool. With the whole basement torn up and drying out, it was the perfect opportunity for an appliance upgrade.

My old washer and dryer came with the house, and I've never been a big fan. I honestly don't think they were too great when they were spanky new, let alone a couple decades old. The washer's spin cycle made the whole unit convulse up and down like it was at a Ramones gig at CBGBs circa 1979. It was about as loud as a Ramones gig, too. The dryer seemed more concerned with slowly turning all my clothes into lint than it did cleaning them. As long as I had everything disconnected and the basement torn apart, I figured I might as well use the opportunity to step up my laundry game.

I am now Future Laundry Awesome Shane Guy. I've had my new washer & dryer for three days now, and I'm still basking in this strange novelty feeling where, for the first time in my life, I actually WANT to do laundry. I'm guessing this sensation will pass in about two hours.

This is perfect timing, because two hours is also roughly the length of time it takes to wash one load of whites in the new washer, which is why I'm very confused. I kind of assumed that a high-tech, high-efficiency washer of the future would mean that your clothes cleaned in record time. My old funky washer would clean a load of clothes in roughly 25 minutes and then the dryer would take roughly an hour to beat them into submission.

These new futuro machines are the exact opposite. It only takes my new dryer about a half hour to fully dry a load of clothes, but that's because the washer has spent the past hour-and-a-half whirling them into oblivion. The load of whites I just did seriously had a 20-minute spin cycle. I would think that after five or ten minutes of spinning, you'd exhaust the limits of physics when it comes to spinning away water molecules, but I am clearly no laundry scientist (as exemplified by the little specks on many of my t-shirts from the day I learned the hard lesson of why you SHOULDN'T just toss a dishrag in the laundry that you just used to clean your counter with a Clorox spray.

It turns out "high efficiency" doesn't mean "I get things done fast." Instead, it must mean "I get things done with very little water." In my inaugural load, I was surprised to see the washer only fill up about a third of the way before it started making my clothes do the Harlem Shake. At first, I thought it was broken. Then I discovered that's "high efficiency" - it cleans your clothes in WAY less water, but it takes twice as long because it needs to shimmy all your clothes down into the small tidepool of water it's working with. I'm going to save quite a bit on my next water bill, which is great, because I'll need it for the power bill increase from running my washer for twice as long. 

It took a while, but I did eventually discover the future technologies at play in this washer/dryer unit. Growing up, whenever our family dryer would finish a cycle, it made an alert that sounded like a sad clown honking an air horn. When my old dryer here finished a load, it had the unlimited gall to simply shut off without issuing ANY kind of alert. My NEW dryer, however, plays a spirited one-minute-long electronic fanfare of beeps and boops that sounds like Kraftwerk covering a sea shanty. Clearly, this was well worth emptying my savings for.

So here's to you, new washer and dryer. At the end of the day, they clean my clothes pretty well and they're about eleventy times quieter than their predecessors. They might not be flying cars, but I still feel like I'm living just a little farther in the future than I was last week. I still don't have a sassy maid, but I DO now have a dryer that just sent me a text message because it talked to my washer, found out it's washing a load of delicates, and is wondering if it needs to set itself to "tumble dry low." If that's not the future, I dunno what is.

COLUMN: Basement Flood

Who among us doesn't love a good shortcut?

I take my laziness seriously. If there's a way to cut a corner or speed up a process, I'm all for it. If I stumble into an ad for some new product designed to make life easier, even if it's some sketchy 2 a.m. infomercial, I'll usually at least take the time to hear 'em out. There's nothing better than discovering a new household hack with the potential to simplify an annoying chore, thus enabling me to focus on more pressing matters -- specifically, the matter of me pressing my butt onto a couch cushion.

This much dedication to the art of lethargy requires focus, fortitude, and commitment. Excelling in laziness takes innovation, trial and error, and thinking outside the box.

Take some mundane task like -- oh, I dunno -- doing a load of laundry or something. Laundry is a time-consuming and resource-wasting affair that just seems full of huge gaps of wasted time where you're idly standing around waiting for some machine to stop running. That time could clearly be better spent laying on a couch watching bad TV or staring into space thinking about absolutely nothing. As all the infomercials say: "There's GOT to be a better way!"

For example, think about how long it takes your washer to empty. Every single time you run a load of laundry, you've got to stand there for an eternity while all that dirty water drains out of the wash basin. What a waste of time, am I right? Well, here's where thinking outside the box really pays off. Hear me out, now -- WHAT IF, instead of waiting for that dirty water to travel allll the way through your pipes and out to the sewer, you instead simply dumped all that water directly onto your basement floor. Wouldn't that be a great timesaver?

Answer: No. It would not. Trust me on this one. I have officially tried it out.

My first clue should've been my cat. At 7:00 p.m., I had thrown a load of laundry in the wash. One of my cats loves to lie down in front of the washer and demand belly-rubs from any passing human, even if said human is lugging around piles of dirty clothes. But when I went back to move the clothes to the dryer, I noticed my cat had moved from the floor to higher ground on the couch. The second thing I noticed was that my feet were wet.

Yep. Somehow my washer had backed up and dumped an entire wash cycle AND an entire rinse cycle full of water alllllll over my basement floor. The carpet was sopping. The clothes waiting for the next load were sopping. Water was pooling up on the opposite end of the basement. It was everywhere.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU COME GET ME?" I yelled at my cat. She looked back at me and said, and I quote, "Meow." I'm pretty sure I meowed back but it may have just been an angry scream.

I'm not saying I had a ton of hot plans for this week, but none of them involved attempting to set the world record for the number of dehumidifiers running simultaneously in the same basement. It's been four days now, and things are starting to get better. I think its safe to say we've now moved from wet to moist, which is an improvement. Much of this is due to my dad, who has been dutifully driving up from Galesburg every day to solve the mystery of what happened.

At first, we assumed the washer had suffered some sort of tramautic rupture, but we learned that wasn't the case when I ran some water down the kitchen sink only to have it jet out the washer pipes as if my basement was the fountains at the Bellagio. Nope, there was a blockage somewhere in my pipes.

Dad ran a 25' snake down the sink to try and clear it out. Then we second-guessed our work and did it all over again for good measure. Then we third-guessed our second guess and paid a pro to come out and ensure that every drain in my house now empties swiftly into the bowels of Hell.

This also brought about the realization that my washer and dryer -- which came with the house -- were pretty old and funky, and what better time to replace them than while they're disconnected and decommissioned to higher ground? So I've been unexpectedly appliance shopping and rapidly realizing I have no idea what I'm doing. Front load or top load? Direct drive or belt? Doors that open to the left or the right? 

I checked out reviews of the top models in an attempt to narrow down the field some. Instead, I learned things like, "Great wash options, but sometimes has problems connecting to wi-fi." Wait, WHAT? There are SMART WASHERS now?? We actually now live in a world where I can sit on my couch, pull out my phone, and tell my washer exactly when to start a new load? And it'll send me a text message the second the clothes are done? Sign. Me. Up. 

Let the cavalcade of laziness commence! Well, as soon as the floor's dry enough to install new appliances, I guess. No one sells self-drying, Bluetooth-enabled Smart Basements, do they? 

COLUMN: Grusch

If you're a regular reader of this column, you likely know I'm a sucker for any good tale about UFOs, UAPs, aliens, or any unexplained and/or potentially extra-terrestrial weirdness in the skies. Every time I look up at the stars, there's a tiny part of me that hopes to see a flying saucer wave back. In reality, these are NOT ideal things to wish for. I have a feeling most aliens cruising past our planet are likely less interested in having us to dinner as they are having us FOR dinner.

But it might be time to make those dinner plans now. A new report is out, and, spoiler alert: Aliens are real. UFOs are real. This information comes to us in a shocking new allegation by Some Random Guy. And frankly, what kind of world do we live in if we can't listen to the warnings of some random guy and believe every word he says without a shred of credible evidence? After all, this seems to be a policy that's worked successfully for people on the internet for years.

This particular Some Random Guy, though, might merit a listen. His name is David Charles Grusch, and he comes with a pedigree that sounds awfully impressive. In fact, the big article this week in which Grusch turns alien whistleblower seems less concerned about Grusch's claims than it does listing his resume in hopes of proving he's more than your run-of-the-mill nutbag pointing to the sky and yelling "aliens!" He was a former combat officer in Afghanistan. He's a veteran of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, which are both apparently real things that exist. On paper, his credibility seems solid.

And Grusch says alien ships are real and we've got 'em.

According to his claims, the U.S. government has been sweeping up crashed UFOs for decades, and that the objects retrieved are "of exotic origin (non-human intelligence, whether extraterrestrial or unknown origin) based on the vehicle morphologies and material science testing and the possession of unique atomic arrangements and radiological signatures." In other words, according to our boy Dave: UFO's are real, we've got some, and we've been covering up their existence for decades. He hasn't actually SEEN any of these otherworldly Ubers, but he's talked to people who have.

Dave's story has been making headlines all week, because he's certainly one of the more credible voices to ever turn UFO whistleblower. In fact, he vetted his disclosure with the Department of Defense first, who approved his statements as "cleared for open publication" back in April. Of course, Dave doesn't offer much in the way of evidence, and his statements are broad and generalized. It's not as if he said, "And one of the UFO's is in a bunker in Indiana. Here's the address. Ask for Doug and tell him you want to speak with Voltrax of the planet Gorgon 5."   

But for the government to even allow a generalized vague statement purporting the existence of UFOs, let alone a claim that we're secretly collecting and studying them, would've been unthinkable just years ago. But over the past few administrations, it seems like the government has slowly been warming to the idea that it might not be entirely out of this world to admit that there are some things in the night sky that could be entirely out of this world. I'm not quite sure how I feel about this.

I grew up on a steady diet of science fiction. I was a nerd and my friends were nerds -- and as such, we had a duty to oft contemplate the existence of little green men. I'm fully convinced that we are not alone in the universe. As I've said before, it seems a little egotistical to look up at the night sky and assume that we're the only planet whose inhabitants had the wherewithal to grow legs and walk out of the primordial ooze. 

For most of my life, I've yearned for full transparency from our government as to any evidence of aliens or UFOs. But my opinion may have changed on that.

After what I've witnessed from society lately, I'm starting to think maybe some secrets should just stay secret. We've all had a front-row seat of just how well everyone coped with the introduction of ONE new viral microbe into our festival line-up. Imagine how well things would play out if a flying saucer came down on national TV and a Martian named Kevin jumped out like, "W'sup?"

Somehow we'd instantly find a way to make it political. Would we see Kevin the Martian as a friend or an enemy? CNN and Fox would endlessly debate it to death. Twitter wars would erupt over which bathrooms we'd allow Kevin to use. Maybe Kevin would endorse a brand of beer and cause half the country to lose their minds. Taylor Swift could go on a date with Kevin and break the entire internet, causing global unrest and mass pandemonium.

So, to my new friend David Grusch, I say this: "Shh." We've spent the last decade sailing this ship directly into the middle of a typhoon, so maybe we shouldn't do anything to rock the boat any harder. I mean, you could tell ME, though. I'm trustworthy. I certainly won't write a column about where the aliens are and/or ask you 1,436 times for a ride in your UFO. Promise. 

COLUMN: Brat Emergency

If there's one thing life's pretty good at, it's knocking you down a peg or two whenever you get a little full of yourself.

The list of things I'm pretty good at is ever-evolving, but it's not especially long. I'm pretty good at picking music for a party. If a song comes on the radio, I can generally tell you with a decent degree of accuracy how many beats per minute its tempo is. I'm rather skilled at watching TV for problematically lengthy time periods. I know an absurd amount of useless pop culture trivia. I strangely have a decent sense of direction and seldom get lost.

Oh, and one other thing: I've become pretty good at cooking. I mean, probably not as good as most of you. But compared to where I was a few years ago? I'm Julia Child compared to THAT guy. There was once a time when my greatest culinary triumph was successfully adding the Helper to the hamburger, and I've even been known to screw THAT up. But during the pandemic, I decided it was time to learn some basic cooking skills. One Instant Pot, one air fryer, and eleventy-jillion Youtube videos later, I can actually make meals for myself without burning the house down.

Or so I thought.

Last Friday, I decided to grill a couple brats on my lunch hour using the "smokeless grill" setting on my air fryer. It lied. As they were cooking, nature came a-calling, so I used the opportunity for a quick rest in the restroom. It wasn't quick enough. Nothing puts a spring in one's step off the toilet quite like thick smoke rolling past the bathroom door. 

Apparently no one told the air fryer it was "smokeless." The brats had split their casing, and all that deliciousness was dripping to the bottom of the grill and turning into a toxic fog cascading out of my kitchen in dramatic fashion. It looked like the Sisters of Mercy were about to play a gig in my dining room. 

I unplugged the air fryer and opened a nearby window, but it was too late. Before I could even utter a single swear word, my upstairs smoke detector started going off. I raced upstairs to shut it off and suddenly found myself completely clueless as to how one does that. There was no obvious off-switch or reset button. The sound was so shrill, so loud, and so piercing that I couldn't even think. In desperation, I ripped it off the wall and it just kept on beeping. I ran with it downstairs, popped the back off the thing, and spent the next five minutes desperately trying to pry the batteries out of their hermetically-sealed compartment.

All the while, the alarm is Bluetoothed to my security system, which meant somewhere someone in a monitoring center was dispatching a fire brigade to my house. By the time I got the infernal alarm shut off and reached them to cancel the call, I was a nervous wreck. My ears were ringing. My cats were running concentric circles around the house. Instead of a relaxing lunch hour, I returned to work with frayed nerves and a wicked migraine and frayed nerves. But that was just the opening act of my holiday weekend.

On Sunday, I stayed up way too late watching bad TV and didn't get to bed until the wee hours. At about an hour past wee, I woke up to the gentle lullabye of my security alarm once again shrieking. I always felt safe going to sleep in the comforting knowledge that my house was being guarded by a security system. I never realized that triggering it in the middle of the night runs the distinct risk of scaring me dead.

My first thought was, "AM I DYING?" My second thought was, "IS THE WORLD ENDING?" My third thought was re-assuring: "No, silly, it's your security alarm going off. The world isn't ending. You're simply about to be murdered is all." Someone must have been breaking in. Good thing I had left a deadly weapon on the nightstand. That deadly weapon? A dessert fork. Whoever was breaking into this house picked the wrong midnight snacker to mess with.

I crept out of the bedroom with dessert fork in ninja attack stance. The alarm was just as shrill and migraine-inducing as ever, but the second I walked out of the bedroom, it stopped and I almost screamed. Suddenly, a voice echoed throughout my house and I DID scream. "Mr. Brown? Sanjay at monitoring. Are you alright?" It was my security company.

"I have no idea," I yelled into the air. "Someone might be here, Sanjay. But I'm armed!" (I left off "...with a dessert fork.")

"Mr. Brown," Sanjay said, "The sensor is indicating that someone has tampered with your smoke detector which is what set off the alarm. Can you verify please?"

I don't know much about home intruders, but here's what I do know. Odds were pretty slim that a na'er-do-well would break in and sneak up flights of stairs while carrying the stepladder necessary to maliciously reach and tamper with said smoke detector. Apparently, when I remounted the smoke detector to the wall last weekend, I messed something up.

"Sanjay, no one tampered with my smoke detector except me a few days ago."

"Sir," he replied, "Can you try turning it off and on again?"

The list of things I'm pretty good at remains small. I'm no longer including cooking on that list. However, the list of things I'm BAD at now most definitely includes "rebooting smoke detectors at 3:24 a.m. with my friend Sanjay."

For the record, those brats were pretty tasty. 

COLUMN: Slenderman

I'm not a fan of horror movies.

Eerie movies? Sure. Creepy movies? Fine. But movies with jump-scares where hatchet-wielding maniacs might pop out all boogity-boogity at any second? Hard pass. I'm well aware of the number of fast-food drive-thrus I've visited in my life. I'm pretty sure my arteries have a finite number of jump-scares left in them, and there's no need to waste any on a screening of The Conjuring Pt. 14 or whatever. 

So, as someone fairly inexperienced in the realm of horror, a question: How do you know if you've been visited by a supernatural bogeyman, and, if so, what can one do about it? Asking for a friend.

Last weekend was interesting. I DJed for a nice crowd of kids. I went grocery shopping and made some carnitas. I went on a relaxing drive up north to breathe fresh air and check out some wildlife. Oh, and I'm pretty sure I saw Slenderman.

What's that, you say? Slenderman isn't real? He's just some fictitious monster from online creepypasta memes invented to give little kids jump-scares? Yep, I'm well aware. I don't even think there's a universally agreed-upon storyline behind the meme. Slenderman is just a tall, thin, faceless guy in a dark suit who shows up ominously in the background of your family photos as he stalks and abducts people, right? It's a silly urban legend that will probably one day be a terriblde five-part movie franchise. 

Except that I'm pretty sure Slenderman is real and I saw him this weekend. 

Saturday's plan was a roadtrip up north with a friend for an aimless drive through Grant Wood country. I'd received a text from my friend that he was on his way, so I was hanging by the front door, waiting to hop in his car and head for parts unknown. I'm not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, and I'd had a late DJ gig the night before, so I was still waiting for my brain to boot up. As I stood there in dire need of caffeine, I was totally zoning out and staring at the view from my front porch.

Across the street from my house is a vacant lot. Behind that is an alley. Whatever sits behind that alley is unknown to me, because there's a sizeable privacy fence that blocks my view of any goings-on. I was just absent-mindedly staring thataways-ish when the privacy fence suddenly swung open, revealing a doorway I never knew existed. And peering around the corner of that doorway was a pale face.

Keep in mind, this is all happening a good distance away from me at the far end of the vacant lot, so I couldn't really make out any features on the face (BECAUSE SLENDERMAN HAS NO FEATURES.) Then, the entire figure emerged from around the corner of this mysterious door. I couldn't make out much (BECAUSE NO ONE CAN CLEARLY SEE SLENDERMAN), but out walked a tall and thin bald man dressed in a dark suit. 

"Well, that's creepy," I announced to my cats and the thin air, but curiosity got the better of me. I stood fixed in the doorway, staring back at my odd new friend. He took several unnatural-looking steps forward and was now at the edge of the vacant lot across from me. His arms hung limply to his sides. And then he just stopped. And stared. At me.

He was a ways away, but it certainly looked like he was staring me square in my eyes. Eventually, I gave a quick little wave at this utter nightmare. I made sure it was not a wave that said, "Hi, please come over. I want to be your friend." It was clearly a wave that said, "I'm a busy guy with many things to do, but I acknowledge your existence and let's carry on with our day, shall we?"

Did Slenderman wave back? Nope. Did Slenderman instead remain motionless while slowly cocking his head to the side like a confused puppy? Yep. Did I pee my pants a little? No comment. I said a few more things to my cats and the thin air, but it's nothing I could repeat in a family newspaper, so let's just pretend I said, "Gosh, that's scary." He (it?) kept staring forward (at me? through me? into my soul?) for a few seconds more, and then slowly turned around and walked back through the gap in the fence in the same unnatural, fixed-arms manner as before.

There's no reason I can think for anyone to come out of that house, wander ominously towards me, and then retreat. A few minutes later, my friend showed up. I could've greeted him with a hello or even a "HAVE I GOT A STORY FOR YOU." Instead, you KNOW you have a best friend when you can greet him with, "QUICK, DRIVE UP THAT ALLEY. SLENDERMAN IS HERE" and he doesn't miss a beat and immediately heads up the alley. But nothing was there. Slenderman was gone.  

My best friend is also clearly smarter than me. "Wouldn't that be on your security camera?" he asked immediately. I hadn't even thought about that. I have cameras recording my front porch 24/7. Or should I say 23.9/7, because of the hours and hours of footage from this past week, the only missing video was the ten minute stretch when my new terrifying friend made an appearance. I did manage to get one grainy still-frame image as a memento of my daymare. It's about as conclusive as your average Bigfoot pic, but I know what I saw.

Okay, so maybe I have no idea what I saw. It was probably just a random person coming out of their house. Maybe they were waiting for THEIR best friend to pick them up. Maybe they had no idea how creepy they looked. Maybe they came out to get a closer look at the creepy guy staring at their house from across the vacant lot. Maybe I'M the scary one. If you thought Slenderman would make a good horror movie, wait 'til you catch the demonic terror of Awkwardfatguy. Hollywood, I await your call. 

COLUMN: Basement DJing

Well, it's official. I'm a celebrity. 

The guy who writes silly columns for the paper? Check. The dude who spins records for people half his age on the weekends? Check. The occasional fill-in clerk behind the counter at your favorite record store? You betcha. And now I can officially tack one more thing onto my resume: SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCER EXTRAORDINAIRE.

That's right, at 7:05 p.m. on Monday night, I officially became one of the cool kids. I went live on TikTok for exactly seventeen minutes. And it was every bit as awkward and anti-climactic as you'd expect.

It all started during the COVID lockdowns. Nightclubs were closed and DJs were bored. Instead of taking extended vacations from the wheels of steel, many DJs instead turned to social media and streaming platforms. All it takes is a webcam and some streaming software, and you could suddenly be bringing the party into the homes of countless strangers tuning in. Watching online DJs helped keep me sane during the pandemic, and the fad hasn't stopped.

If you log on to TikTok right now, there's probably over a hundred different DJs broadcasting right now. For the past half hour, I've been watching a guy in Hawaii live-streaming from a beachfront DJ booth. A quick scroll and now it's a girl blaring house music from what I think is downtown Kuala Lumpur. Swipe up and now it's a guy playing records to himself in a musty basement. One more swipe and it's a kid spinning ear-shattering EDM music in a tiny bedroom equipped with about 3.7 nightclubs worth of DJ lighting and lasers.

Is it ridiculous? Absolutely. Is TikTok an app made for people half my age or younger? Definitely. Was I super jealous of all these streaming DJs and did I secretly want to be one? Most certainly. Look, I'm a realist. I have no fancy lighting. Lasers would traumatize my cats. Some of these DJs look like Swedish supermodels and I look more like a Swedish meatball twenty years past his prime. But I'm not half bad at mixing records together. And I quickly discovered there's a niche group of old DJs like me who stream vintage and classic jams from back in the day, and they get a decent audience of viewers. I think I wanna join this party.

I had that thought about a year and a half ago. That's how long it's taken me to slowly gather the necessary equipment to livestream. Remember above when I said "all it takes is a webcam and some streaming software"? I forgot to mention you also need a digital interface, about six different adapters, multiple computers, hard-wired ethernet, and a whole lot of patience. 

Thankfully, I never have a shortage of nerdy tech friends to help with this sort of thing, and they're used to receiving texts from me like, "Hey, do you have one of those thingamajigs that mounts an audio doohicky to your phone?" One of my friends got so sick of my many questions that he stopped by, dumped a box of gear at my door, said I owed him fifty bucks, and said, "you're all set." My basement now looks like a Fisher-Price version of Baby's First Television Studio. There are cables and lines running across the floor. There are multiple tripods. I even have one of those ridiculous ring lights down there for enhanced portraiture of my pretty face -- so if DJing doesn't work out, I have all the gear necessary to start filming makeup tutorials or showing off my graceful choreography skills.

And so it was that last night, after a year of thinking about it, watching WAY too many tutorial videos, and slowly assembling all the necessary equipment, I gave live-streaming a quick test run. I thought it'd be fun. It was mostly just nerve-wracking.

How do our children film themselves every day without a care in the world? As I sat there watching the timer count down to my first livestream, I had about EVERY care in the world. I HAD ALL OF THE CARES. "Whoa, lookit me on that screen. I'm super old and fat and ugly! Gross. Do my arms look weird? How am I supposed to hold my arms? Are arms supposed to bend like that? Does this look too casual? Not casual enough? Is it too loud? Too quiet? AM I FORGETTING TO BREATHE?"

It was all just a bit much. I now understand why younger generations seem prone to anxiety issues. Those were seventeen of the most anxious minutes of my life. To get over my crippling insecurities, I ended up positioning the camera so that the only things visible were my hands and the DJ controller, and I STILL felt self-conscious.

The internet is SUCH a weird place. Even though the only thing I aired was 17 minutes of a pair of hands pushing some buttons on a DJ controller, 283 strangers tuned in. They can't ALL be the Chinese government spying on me, right? Over 75 of them "liked" my livestream. One person followed me. Clearly, my hands are well on their way to becoming viral sensations. Maybe I'll score a lucrative sponsorship deal with Isotoner or something.

I'm still not sure how often I'm going to livestream, what I'll even do with it, or if I'll ever show my face. Maybe I'll try a weekly mix of vintage 80's new wave. Maybe I'll just livestream my practice sessions and play whatever I fancy. Maybe if I keep the camera pointed at my hands, I can play new jams and the kids won't realize their DJ is old enough to be their grandpa. Or maybe I'll find something more fun to do and give up my dreams of becoming a basement celebrity. Who knows for certain? I mean, other than the Chinese government, who know everything about all of us thanks to TikTok. Here's hoping they're big fans of Depeche Mode.

COLUMN: Pothole

Every day in the news, it seems like there's some new threat-du-jour to our way of life. Whether it's political strife or civil unrest or war or the economy or even the weather, sometimes it feels like everything's out to get us. When faced with these existential threats, I'm usually the first one to ring the bell of optimism and say, "Buck up, people. You're over-reacting. It's not that bad." I might have been wrong. It might be THAT bad.

There IS a threat out there, people, and it's challenging our very way of life -- or at least MY patience and wallet. If we don't get to work on fixing this national nightmare, we may not make it through this crisis. The time to act is now.

I speak, of course, about potholes.

When I was a kid, I loved it when my dad would accidentally hit a pothole. It was fun, right? The car would bounce up and down, everybody would got a free little amusement ride, and life was grand. Somewhere along the way, though -- perhaps when I bought my first car -- potholes became considerably less fun. If you don't believe me, try joyriding along Rock Island's 15th Street on the blocks leading up to the Centennial Bridge. That particular stretch of road is less a street and more like a series of gaping wounds loosely held together by asphalt.

Tough winters and tough summers play hell on our midwest roadway, and this spring, potholes are popping up -- or way, way down -- everywhere. 

Last Saturday was a great day. The weather was exceptional, and it was the perfect time for a good old-fashioned aimless drive. My best friend and I headed out of town on little more than a wing, a prayer, a Hyundai, and a well-crafted Spotify playlist. The entire day was spent on the back-est of back roads, exploring hills and valleys and small towns aplenty. We even stumbled into one town's spring festival, where you could buy elk jerky from one vendor and save the world from a zombie apocalypse escape room in the next. There was even a woman selling, I kid you not, Mountain Dew jelly. 

It was a delightful day full of everything that makes the Midwest great. We rolled back into town with just enough time for me to drop my friend off and get to the charity trivia fundraiser I'd agreed to play in that evening. I have ridiculously smart friends who take their trivia VERY seriously, and every so often they ask me to tag along in case there's any inane questions about Taylor Swift or trashy TV. The event was on the outskirts of town, so for the second time that day, I headed out to the boonies.

The one good thing about solo drives is not having anyone telling you to turn down the radio, so I took full opportunity to load up one of my favorite songs and jack the volume to a wholly irresponsible level. Said volume-jacking required me to look down for the splittest of split-seconds, and you can guess what happened.

BAM!

That was the sound of my right tire falling into a pothole I didn't see coming. Actually, pothole is too forgiving of a word here -- this was more like a pot-chasm. This was no run-of-the-mill, whoopsie kind of pothole. This was the kind of impact where it felt like the car was going to come to a complete stop and flip end-over-end like a cartoon.

The good news is that the impact seemed to be cushioned. The bad news was that it seemed to be cushioned entirely by parts of the male anatomy that should NEVER be used for cushioning purposes. So if you were driving past, saw a car wipe out on a pothole, and heard the driver hurl a stream of obscenities in a high-pitched soprano wail while gasping for air, you're welcome for the comedy gold.

I have no idea how my tire stayed attached to my car, let alone stayed inflated. I nursed both car and pride to the parking lot and gingerly went in to show off my trivia skills. At break, I went out to check on the car, and it was not good. There, on the side of the tire by the rim, was a noticeable bulge. I know little to nothing about automotive maintenance, but I'm pretty sure your tire should never resemble a "before" photo from Dr. Pimple Popper. 

A friend of mine followed me home to ensure I wouldn't be stranded on a roadside somewhere, wiping my tears with shredded rubber. The next morning, I managed to book an appointment at a tire shop and make it there without a blowout. The mechanic told me it likely only had hours left. I won five dollars and a door prize at the trivia night, and all it cost me was $180 for a new tire and perhaps the ability to procreate.

I still don't regret how the last election turned out, but I'm pretty sure I remember a campaign promise about investing eleventy kajillion dollars towards infrastructure and putting all of America to work repairing roads and bridges. Is all of America on a long lunch hour from this job? I hate road construction as much as the next guy, but I'd rather contend with a detour than keep taking the pothole express to the Land of the Lost. I'd like to leave behind a better legacy than a reserved seat at Tires Plus.

COLUMN: Strike

Well, it's official. Life is temporarily meaningless.

As I'm typing this, the Writers Guild of America has just gone on strike. Unless it gets resolved in a hurry, it's likely that all late-night talk shows will be in reruns by the time you read this. If you were anxiously awaiting Pete Davidson hosting Saturday Night Live this weekend, you'll need to keep on waiting. Already there's talk of the anticipated fall slate of new TV shows getting pushed back to winter or later. The storytellers are on the picket lines.

This is a huge bummer. TV and film writers shouldn't be struggling for money. Writers have the thankless job of creating people, places, and events exciting enough that'd we'd rather stop living our own lives and watch the lives of pretend people instead. That kind of skill deserves fair compensation. And now with streaming networks where "seasons" of shows can be 8-10 episodes instead of the traditional 24, some writers are having to work for multiple shows and flicks at the same time just to make ends meet.

With all the problems in the world right now, it might seem frivolous to pay good money to people whose job it is to entertain us. But without them to create characters with rechid, problem-soaked lives, we'd have no means of escaping our own rechid, problem-soaked lives. I would certainly rather watch "Homicide: Life on the Streets" than live it.

So it's bad that writers aren't making a fair share. It's also bad that I'm so addicted to television, I'm not sure how I'll survive this strike. I guess it'll have to be a return to the classics. Goodbye, new episodes of "Ted Lasso." Hello, reruns of "Parks and Rec." Leslie Knope has never let me down, and I don't think she ever will. There's no telling how long this strike could go on, so we'd better be prepared for a long summer of reruns and terrible reality TV. 

Unless...

The way I see it, it's the fault of the Writer's Guild of America for not inviting small Midwestern newspaper columnists to join their ranks. The Guild might be on strike, but I'M not. Us writers have gotta stick together, so you'll never see Shane Brown crossing any picket lines to do any scab writing. Good thing, then, that I'm willing to work from home. 

Give me a call, big network TV producer types. I'll get to writing and keep all your franchises afloat, don't you worry about a thing. What should my first project be?

Ooh, I know. Give me the reins of "Bridgerton." I'll take over head writing on the ridiculously popular Netflix series while the strike goes on. You're welcome, everyone. Let's see, first thing's first. Quick, someone tell me what "Bridgerton" is about because I've never seen it. Ah, who cares. I'm pretty sure "Bridgerton" is a stodgy show about old-timey England, right? Except with, like, LOADS AND LOADS of whoopie-making, yeah? It's basically "Downton Abbey" if soundtracked by Marvin Gaye, right? From what I gather, it's just petticoats and nookie as far as the eye can see.

I can handle that. Okay, so maybe I don't know a thing about romance shows or England in the 1800s. But I know the key to success for any good show is securing a younger audience. Well, I watched one of those "Twilight" movies once, so I'm pretty sure I know exactly what "Bridgerton" needs to get a younger audience.

Bridgerton S3 E1, a Shane Brown Joint:

Camera OPENS on an old-timey 1800s estate bedroom. In walks LADY WHATSHERNAME and THE DUKE OF WHEREVER. 

DUKE: Hark, what light through yonder window breaks? Tis the east, and Lady Whatshername is the sun! Let us commence with thy nookie!

LADY WHATSHERNAME: Actually, I'm over here on the other side of the room. That light is just the full moon.

DUKE: Wait, did you say... FULL... MOON...? Nooooo!

Everyone turns into werewolves. Much whoopie is made. It is ridiculously sexy, but it is mostly just ridiculous. The end. 

Hire me as your new head writer, and I'll prove you can NEVER have enough werewolves. Don't ask me why, I have no clue. But if those "Twilight" movies are any example, ladies just love werewolves. Put me in charge and I'll add them to every show.

Let's be honest, who among us WOULDN'T watch a TV series called "Law and Order and Werewolves"? Admit it, if there were even the slightest chance that District Attorney Jack McCoy could transform into a blood-thirsty lupine killing machine, you wouldn't miss an episode. "In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime -- and the werewolves, who eat people's faces off. These are their stories." THAT'S RATINGS GOLD, PEOPLE.

In honesty, I stand in solidarity with the Writer's Guild of America. Well, mostly I sit in solidarity with them, usually in front of the TV where their work is on nightly display. I hope the strike gets settled amicably soon. Mostly because I don't want to wait for the second season of "Severance." And also because I don't think America is ready to handle my magnum opus, "Everybody Loves Raymond Except Werewolves."

COLUMN: Retirement

I'm not sure I can write a column this week, folks. I've been a little traumatized. Besides, given my advanced age, I'm not sure I have the strength or fortitude to type this entire thing before I'm all tuckered out and need my rest.

Let's put what happened to me in the correct perspective:

I woke up last Saturday in a good mood, feeling refreshed and eager for life. Having no DJ gig the night prior, I actually managed to get a rare and full eight hours of sleep. I made a nice breakfast for myself and then went shopping for groceries -- and by "went shopping," I mean I went to the living room, picked up my computer, and ordered groceries online to be delivered. Still, it felt productive. Usually, my pre-noon Saturday agenda consists mainly of scratching myself and occasionally grunting.

I cleaned myself up, put away the freshly delivered groceries, and set off on an afternoon of fun, freedom, and adult responsibilities. My first stop was a much-needed haircut, and I walked out of the salon with a spring in my step, feeling a touch snazzier than usual. I spent the rest of the afternoon running errands that took me to all corners of the Quad Cities and back again.

Later that evening, I went to the memorial gathering for a former co-worker we lost a few months back. I'd tell you that it was a horribly sad affair, but it absolutely wasn't. Jane Woodward was a spitfire whose huge heart was matched only by her booming voice and infectious laugh. If you made her mad, she'd sure let you know about it. But if you made her smile, you could hear her cackle from the third floor. She was one of my favorite people at the paper, and I'll miss her for the rest of my days -- but I refuse to be sad about it. I'd rather be happy for having known her. 

Besides, if she knew people were all sad and mopey at her memorial service, she'd come back and haunt us all. I'm pretty sure she even told me that once.

Jane's celebration of life was packed with friends, family, and colleagues, including some former co-workers I hadn't seen in a mighty long time. In fact, I bumped into one former colleague I don't think I'd seen since she left probably some fifteen years ago. We were in the depths of that awkward "OH-WOW-I-HAVEN'T-SEEN-YOU-IN-AGES" small talk when she said it:

"Are you still at the paper? Oh, wait, what I am saying? YOU'RE PROBABLY RETIRED BY NOW, surely?"

Umm... whut? 

It turns out nothing kills the buzz of a looking-good, feeling-good kinda day faster than someone assuming I'm more than a decade older than I actually am. For most of my entire life, I've proudly been the guy who's looked YOUNGER than I actually am. I was getting carded well into my thirties. Recently, I asked a friend what age they thought I came across as. "You have the face of a 40-something," she replied, "and I'm pretty sure your brain is about 14." I am perfectly okay with this evaluation.

But never before has anyone assumed I'm much older than I am. Was today's haircut less awesome than I had previously assumed? Is my ironic wearing of old-guy shirts ceasing to be irony? Perhaps. On that day, I was feeling like a spring chicken. However, according to at least one person, I must have looked like it was time to put me to pasture.

None of this has helped my mindset this week, because as I type this, I am two days away from potentially feeling even older than I do right now. I am about to DJ a themed club night of all goth, industrial, darkwave, and synthpop music down at Wake Brewing. I'd invite you, but by the time you read this, it will have already happened. Maybe you were there. Maybe it was awesome.

I am most likely going to look super silly. Goth culture is usually a younger man's game. You sure don't often see anyone who appears to be past retirement age wearing black eyeliner and a Cure t-shirt. Goth music is dour, foreboding stuff specifically designed for angsty teens to play at top volume in order to freak out their parents. I'm pretty sure the people running this event are half my age, let alone the ones who will be attending.

But once upon a time, that angsty music was a super important part of my life. After having spent the better part of this week in my basement dusting off decades-old records and memories, I officially do not care how silly I look turning up to DJ this thing. I might be the least gothy-looking goth DJ of all time, but I'm going to have a blast. Who cares if I'm starting to look past my prime? I'm inviting some of my old goth friends from yesteryear to come down, relive our glory days, and see if today's goth culture can learn a thing or two from the old guard.

After all, you know who IS past retirement age and still wearing black eyeliner and Cure t-shirts? THE CURE, that's who. They're the grandpappies of goth, and they're going on a world tour this summer. If ol' Robert Smith can tease up his grey hair and take to the stage every night, I'm certainly capable of spinning his records.

So don't worry, folks. I have no plans to retire any time in the near future. Based on the current size of my nest egg (or lack thereof,) that day may never come. Wait, unless there's gifts. Are there gifts?

COLUMN: Couchella

Ahh, paradise. Did you all enjoy that thirty degree temperature drop this weekend? I missed the whole thing. While you were all getting frostbite while covering up your plants, I was soaking up the rays from the California desert. I spent the whole weekend watching some of the trendiest musicians in the world at the Coachella Music & Arts Festival in Indio, CA. Attending the legendary festival has always been a dream of mine, and this year's lineup didn't disappoint.

Best of all? I didn't even have to get off the couch to do it.

I really had no intention of staging a Coachella weekender from my own living room. I'd just retuned home from work on Friday when I remembered the festival usually streams a handful of performances on Youtube. What I didn't know was that THIS year, they were live-streaming nearly every performance from all six stages, dozens of bands parading through my televison screen in real time. I tuned in for a brief channel-flip, but next thing I knew, I was parked in front of the TV all weekend as a long-distance concert-goer.

For me, Coachella instead became Couch-ella. As far as I'm concerned, every music festival needs to do this.

Here is a list of things I love about music festivals:

#1: The music.

That's the whole list. I have loved music for as long as I can remember, and there's nothing like the exhilaration of a live concert. Listening to a record can be great. Watching a music video can be fun. But witnessing one of your favorite artists bringing that music to life in front of your very eyes? It's magical.

Here is a list of everything I hate about music festivals:

#1: Absolutely everything else.

Massive festivals are great, except for all the festivity. I hated large crowds of people BEFORE the pandemic. I hate them even more now that we live in a world where any number of people I'm swapping oxygen with could turn out to be plague carriers.

There's a sea of humanity at these events -- and as we all know, most of humanity is annoying and terrible. And when it comes to concerts, the annoying and terrible people ALWAYS manage to find me. If you're one of those types who likes to scream along off-key to every word of every song, you're probably standing on my left. If you like to use concerts as improvisational interpretive dance recitals, you're probably on my right. If you're eleventy feet tall, you're standing directly in front of me. If you're precariously balancing three beers in your hand while pogoing up and down like a lunatic, you are invariably standing behind me. 

But now let's take the "fun" of standing in a polo field elbow-to-elbow with the entire metro population of Davenport and let's add a couple other exciting Coachella elements: It's the California desert. There is no shade. The people surrounding you have been camping for three days. I use Mitchum deodorant, whose motto was once proudly, "So effective you could skip a day." Even if I lathered myself head to toe in that stuff, I wouldn't trust it against the California sun. I fear the music might not be the only thing that's funky in the Coachella crowd.   

Once upon a time, I could attend music festivals, wander around all day, and felt a little tuckered out by day's end. But now I'm old and fat. Last autumn, I went to an outdoor concert in Chicago and had to tap out on the walk back to the car and hail a cab. (And by "cab," I mean one of those rickshaws with neon lights and disco music. It was a vibe.)

My friend Stuart was actually at Coachella last weekend. He and his girlfriend flew to California to be in the desert throng. At one point, I texted him to see how things were going. He simply replied with a screenshot from his Apple Watch, confirming the 20,969 steps he'd taken that afternoon alone. No thanks. Stuart runs marathons, and if HE was tired of walking, there's not enough disco rickshaws in the world to keep me out of the medical tent.

Watching from home was definitely more my speed. Besides, I think a 3-day Coachella pass runs around $500. I watched the whole weekend and all I spent was $20 on a pizza. Based on the pics Stuart sent, I had WAY better seats than he did. And when a terrible artist came on, I could hit the mute button, something that most concerts don't come equipped with.

What could've been a sad, lonely weekend was anything but. A couple other friends were watching from THEIR living rooms, so we were texting and chatting like we were there. And of course Stuart WAS there, so he was calling in with live reports and we were texting him to let him know which stages were worth hiking to. It sounds silly, but I ended up so immersed in the festival that it kinda feels like I was there, minus the sunburn.

During his flight home today, Stuart texted me to see if I wanted to attend Lollapalooza with him in Chicago later this summer.

"Sure," I replied. "Which channel will it be on?"

COLUMN: Spider Attack

Hurray! Good weather is finally here! Short sleeves and windows rolled down! Beaches and boats! Backyards, burgers and brats! Green grass and blue skies! Sunshine and love all around!

...annnnd I'm good. Let's roll winter as soon as possible. Mr. Frost, do your worst. Ice and snow, please.

Don't get me wrong, I love it when it starts getting nice out. I have it on good authority that in the summertime, when the weather is high, you can stretch right up and touch the sky, and I guess that's a good thing. I love nice weather.

Specifically, I love it for about three weeks. That's how much magic time I usually get every spring before two things start happening: (1) The air fills with pollen, turning me into an allergy-riddled cartoon character for most of the spring, and (2) the air and ground quickly fill with all manner of creepy-crawlies who have the decency to die off and/or bury themselves all winter long. 

Antihistamines usually keep my allergies in check during the summer, but in the springtime, all bets are off. I'm a sniffling, sneezing wreck of a human being, which is super fun considering we now live in an era where sneezing in public makes everyone around you assume that you're a plague rat. I have horrible hay fever, but the worst allergy I have is to bees. The last time I got stung, I was teeny-tiny, but I puffed up like the Michelin Man. There's a fair chance I've since outgrown the allergy, but I'm in no hurry to find out. I suppose I could get tested and carry around an epi-pen in case of emergency, but my long-time strategy instead seems to be acting like a ninny and fleeing in terror any time anything remotely bee-sized or bee-shaped comes near me. 

Last weekend, I was excited to soak up the good weather. I walked outside, felt the warmth of the sun, took in a deep breath of fresh air... and swallowed about a half dozen gnats. What happened to my few fleeting weeks of bug-free spring bliss? This past Monday, I realized they were gone. It was a beautiful morning, and I was optimistic about the work week. I headed to my car with a coffee in one hand and a bagel in the other. It only took one breath to feel it: that little tickle in my nose that meant an allergy fit was seconds away.

Sure enough, as I stepped into the garage and pushed the button to open the overhead door, I started rapid-fire sneezing uncontrollably. That's when things got real.

No sooner had I pushed the button to open the garage door when, out of absolute and complete nowhere, a spider roughly the size of Cthulhu base-jumped from parts unknown and fell directly onto the back of my right hand. Why this happened, I have no idea? Was the spider suicidal? Did my sneezing terrify it? Was it a big fan of my column and desperately wanted a selfie? We may never know the answers.

I had no idea what kind of spider it was, nor did I ask. If I had to guess, I'd say it was most definitely a brown-widow-recluse-antula that feeds on a diet of human suffering. When I was recounting the story to one of my friends, she asked if it had a distinctive violin marking on its back. I didn't check, as I was a little preoccupied trying not to have an aneurysm. 

Keep in mind that one hand was holding coffee, the other clutching a bagel, and I was still sneezing uncontrollably. Before I could even react to the horrifying reality of a giant spider falling onto my hand out of nowhere, it scampered up my arm and BEHIND MY BACK and that's where things get blurry.

The next second went by quickly. I yeeted the bagel cream-cheese side down onto the front windshield of my car. I dropped the coffee square onto my foot, where it pretty much exploded and sprayed coffee all over the garage, my white car, and the light tan khakis I was excited were back in season. Unburdened of both coffee AND bagel, my hands were then free to claw at my shirts, desperately ripping the fabric from my body like the lamest Hulk movie ever made, until I stood in the garage half-naked and still sneezing.

Was I screaming, you might ask? No, don't be absurd. Screaming requires some sort of cognitive function. A synapse in my brain would've needed to make that conscious decision and conveyed the order to my mouth, lungs, and larynx. There was no time for such frivolity. Instead, the noise that came out of my mouth was entirely outside of the control of my brain. It was guttural, it was primal, it was pure instinct. It also sounded a lot like "wfuugaaaahfrarkel." It's also a noise not recommended to make while sneezing, which caused me to bite my tongue so hard it started to swell.

I spun around like a dog chasing its tail, desperately yelling, "Ith it off me? ITH IT OFF ME?" That's when I saw my new spider-friend hustling away from the coffee-soaked laundry pile that until recently had been half the clothes on my body. Also, don't forget the whole time this was occurring, my garage door was opening triumphantly as if it were the opening curtain rising on my bravely experimental one-man thinkpiece, "Shane and the Amazing Coffee-Colored Dreamcoat Full of Spiders." I can only hope and pray no neighbor saw me. They already think I'm a little weird, and I'm pretty sure people have been institutionalized for less dramatic performances than my public salute to arachnophobia.

So we're less than one week into good weather and I've already had multiple 30-sneeze salutes to the morning AND been mugged by a spider. This doesn't bode well for the summer season. Please send help to come kill the spider. Also, make sure the help you send doesn't touch my garage door, because it's now covered in enough Raid to kill a small cow. Happy spring, everyone. I'll wave to you from the air conditioning.

COLUMN: Tornado Season

I think we can all agree that we had a fairly easy winter and got away pretty lucky. Sure, we had a few days of super low temps and a couple of quick snowfalls, but for the most part, this winter season was blessedly boring.

I didn't realize, however, that we'd be making up for it by enjoying DANGER SPRING. Frolic at your own risk, I guess.

There's a few things you can trust me to never shut up about: The merits of UK indie music circa 1988-1992. The cultural signifigance of "Twin Peaks." UFOs. Ghosts. Contemporary DJ philosophy. How my cats are da cutest widdle kittles on da whole pwanet. And, most definitely, how very badly I someday want to see a tornado with my own eyes.

There are, however, caveats to my tornado viewing request. I only want to see one from a VERY safe distance, and only if it's majestically tearing through an empty pasture or something and not ruining lives. Essentially what I crave is a tornado zoo. I would pay good money to watch a tornado safely lay waste to an uninhabited dusty field.

The only problem? Tornados are not especially known for their safety or cooperation.

Tornados don't patiently whirl around fields while we choose the best selfie pose. Tornados don't know the difference between empty pastures and shopping malls. You seldom hear things like, "an EF-5 tornado touched down last night... and everyone was fine." Tornados are scary and powerful, dangerous and humbling, and the reason words like "awesome" were invented. 

The good news is that we have some excellent meterologists in town devoted to storm tracking. But, it turns out, I can barely see them -- anytime the weather acts up, my local cable provider continually interrupts the TV signal with robot-voiced emergency announcements from the National Weather Service. This would be great if I'd been watching a Law & Order marathon, but when I'm already watching comprehensive local weather coverage, the constant interruptions are nothing less than maddening. There was a moment last Friday when my TV, my weather radio, my home security system, my cell phone, AND the sirens outside were all blaring at once. I have stood in the fifth row at a My Bloody Valentine concert and been less sonically assaulted. I was indeed alerted to the storms, but now I have tinnitus. Yay.

I grew up in a house that was virtually tornado-proof, so I never feared tornados the way tornados need to be feared. All it took was a first-hand look at communities hit hard by twisters to instill that needed fear. I saw Fruitland in 2007, I saw Washington in 2013, and this past weekend, I drove through Charlotte and once again saw the aftermath of nature's ugly middle finger.

Tornados also don't usually look as photogenic as the ones you see on TV. Sometimes, you can't even see them at all. Oftentimes, tornados are wrapped in horrible storms and just sweep across the landscape like grey and gloomy blankets of wind, muck, and especially hail. I've found that my enjoyment of storms is considerably less as a home-owner than when I was renting. I remember a day when I thought hail was "neato." Now, even the mere mention of the word makes me cringe.

But my LEAST favorite storm threat is the one happening as I type this. It's currently 8:19 p.m. on Tuesday night and we're under a tornado watch. I don't know what I could possibly watch for, though, because it's pitch black outside. Darkness takes whatever excitement I harbor for tornados and just turns it into fear. Earlier today, a tornado caused havoc and damage just a few miles away in Colona. Tonight, they say one could pop up unexpectedly at any time -- in the pitch middle of the dark. Nighty night, sleep tight, don't let THE FLYING DEBRIS IMPALE YOU, I guess. 

I have zero confidence in my ability to stay atop of overnight storms. Last night, we had a doozy of a thunderstorm roll through at 5 a.m., dropping sheets of rain, loud claps of thunder, and a considerable amount of hail. At least, that's what people tell me. I slept right through it all.

The only reason I even knew anything happened is because I woke up to a kajillion expired alerts on my phone. While sitting roughly three feet from my head, my phone was sounding alarms throughout the night and I slept through it all like it was playing Brahm's Lullaby. The only reason I know it hailed is because I rewound my outdoor security camera and watched it. If a tornado were to attack at 3 a.m., I'd probably wake up four hours later surrounded by singing munchkins, wondering which lady with weird shoes my house just landed on.

I'd go on cursing Danger Spring, but I don't want to jinx things. Tornado season has barely begun, places up north are still getting snow, and last I heard, we have somewhere between a 0 and 251% chance of spring flooding, which is definitely NOT the destination I want to reach when I get to the end of Tornado Alley. In the meantime, I shall batten down the hatches (which I'm pretty sure means we're supposed to line our windows with baseball bats, right?)

Last one to Oz is a rotten egg!

COLUMN: Vomit Infamy

Life as a mega-famous local columnist can often be grueling. I know I'm an incomprehensibly sexy and beloved public figure, but can I not get just ONE moment of peace and serenity in my glamorous life? Oh, what I wouldn't give to walk down the street without being chased by paparazzi, autograph hounds, and stalkers screaming their daily marriage proposals and devotions. I'm sure the mere sight of me must leave you normies in a state of awe and wonder, but I promise you that beneath all my celebrity pomp and elegance, I'm just a regular joe. Fame and adoration just come with the territory -- it's the burden of being me.

Orrrrrr maybe not. At best, I'm about as famous as that dog at the end of your block who barks too loud, and I'm pretty much okay with that. Based on the occasional interactions I've had with readers out in the wild, I'd make a lousy famous person.

Don't get me wrong, I love meeting readers. I still find it insanely weird that I even have readers, let alone ones that would ever want to meet me. I feel bad for those folks, though, because it's almost a certainty that I'm a huge let-down. In person, I'm not especially charming or witty. Unless you hand me a pen and paper and give me a half hour or so, I'm not full of comic hijinks. I'm terrible at small talk. If you've ever met me in person and I held eye contact with you for more than a second, take that as a win. I'm the whole package, provided the package you ordered is both awkward and off-putting.

But for a few minutes last week, I felt next-level famous.

I'd spent the afternoon running some annoying but necessary errands that I was in no mood for. Being good and responsible sucks -- so I decided to treat myself with a deliciously unhealthy dinner as a finale. It was there, in line at the fast food joint, that I spotted them. Or, rather, they spotted ME. A couple walked in, made eye contact with me, and immediately lit up.

"Wow," I thought to myself, "they must be fans of my column." Maybe I was just imagining it, so I looked back. Nope, they were definitely pointing and whispering and staring at me. These were big fans. We were on opposite ends of the line by this point, so I couldn't really communicate with them. Besides, Captain Awkward, what would you say if you could? "Yep, it's me. I'm him -- that guy who writes about cats too much. Great to meet you. Fancy an autograph? I have some 8x10's in the car!"

But it WAS kind of awkward, because they were definitely staring at me. I figured my best move was to make a subtle gesture of acknowledgement. I was aiming for some kind of head-nod / cheeky-grin combo that would clearly say, "Hey, I appreciate you reading my column and being a supporter. You're aces in my book." That's the gesture I was going for. I'm pretty sure the gesture I ended up making looked more like, "Hey, there are ants in my pants and for some reason I'm smiling about it. Watch out, I might follow you home!" 

When I looked back, both of them had phones in hand and were now clearly taking pictures of me. That's officially weird, right? Suddenly I became the most self-conscious person in the restaurant. How should I be standing? Do I have a dorky expression on my face? Please tell that my fly's buttoned.

It was mostly awkward, but maybe a little flattering? I'm pretty sure I floated home from the restaurant on an ego high. Am I camera-famous all of a sudden? IS THIS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE TAYLOR SWIFT? Then I got home, took two paces into the house, stopped, and went, "Eww!"

There, on the second step to my upstairs loft, was a giant pile of vomit. Gross, but as a cat owner, it often comes with the territory. I did wonder, however, why it was so spread out and extra disgusting.

Every morning, I take a shower, get dressed, head into the living room, and put on shoes. How do I put on those shoes, you might ask? Why, by sitting on the second step to my upstairs loft, of course. And do you think on that morning that I paid close attention to that step? Nope. Was the vomit spread out and extra disgusting because I'd sat in it hours earlier? Perhaps. Was I wearing tan slacks and unknowingly wandering around with puke smeared all over my butt? Yep. Did I just run an entire afternoon of errands with what looked like poo hanging off my pants? Most definitely.

Was my fanclub at the restaurant taking pictures of Shane, their favorite newspaper columnist? Or were they taking pictures of some random fat guy grinning maniacally at them while wearing poo-pants? I have a feeling I know the answer. Frankly, I'm just glad I have ANY kind of feeling, because it's clear that I must have a numb butt to have not noticed sitting in a pile of puke.

I wonder what it's like to be famous. After this week, I don't think I want to know. Knowing my luck, if I ever achieve fame, it won't be from doing anything cool. I'm just praying it won't be from becoming Mr. Viral Poopy-Pants. Keep your fingers crossed and your browsers closed.

COLUMN: Caprese

I didn't want to have an existential crisis. I just wanted to watch TV. And now I need your help to find out if my entire grasp on reality is broken.

Stop what you're doing right now and think about a salad. Not just ANY salad. Think about that fancy Italian salad that's comprised of fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and sweet basil. Do you know the salad I'm talking about? If so, say its name out loud right now.

I'm referring to a caprese salad. Hopefully you're familiar.

For 52 years, I've lived a relatively comfortable existence, fully and completely convinced that the word "caprese" was, is, and has always been pronounced "ka-PREE-zee." You know, like "breezy."

Tonight, I was in the kitchen doing dishes. As is often the case, the TV in my front room was blaring some rerun for background noise while I tidied up the joint after dinner. That's when an ad came on for Jimmy John's. Apparently they've got a new menu offering for the spring season: a "Caprese Salami Pesto Sandwich," which actually sounds pretty good, right?

Except one thing. When the announcer pronounced it, he called it a "ka-PRAY-ZAY" sandwich. Ka-PRAY-ZAY, with hard exaggerated American ayyyys. It was so weird, I walked straight out of the kitchen with wet, soapy hands. I rewound the DVR. I'd heard it correctly. "Ka-PRAY-ZAY." 

There's no way I've been running around for fifty-two years straight-up mispronouncing "caprese," is there? "Ka-PRAY-ZAY" sounds ridiculous, but who am I to question the vernacular validity of Jimmy John's? The mispronounciation of words has long been a hang-up of mine. I hate when other people do it, and I'm appalled when I do it. I think it goes back to elementary school, when I was addicted to reading Hardy Boys mysteries. Joe Hardy has a recurring girlfriend throughout those books. Her name is Iola.

I had never heard the name Iola, nor have I ever heard it since (probably because we don't live in 1927 when those characters were invented.) I still have no earthly idea how you're supposed to say the name Iola. Is it "eye-ola?" "ee-ola?" "yola?" Whenever she'd pop up in a story, I'd cringe and come full stop. I often wondered if even Joe Hardy knew how to say her name. "Say, fellas, you've met my girlfriend, right? Guys, this is... umm... Eye-hole-ay?"

It's one thing to struggle with pronounciation, but it's another thing to discover you've been blindly mispronouncing a word for years. After finishing up in the kitchen, I went straight to Google and searched "caprese" for the final verdict. Not only does it give you the Oxford dictionary pronounciation guide for the word, it also gives you a recording where you can listen to the correct pronounciation of the word. 

Immediately a voice came on and, with confidence, said "ka-PRAY-zee." It's... wait, WHAT? Google gave me a THIRD pronounciation of the word different from the way I've been saying caprese my whole life AND different than the Jimmy John's ad. According to Google, "caprese" should rhyme with crazy or lazy. I'm so confused.

I tried Googling "how to pronounce caprese" to see if I could find answers. Instead, Google pulled up a DIFFERENT pronounciation guide with a DIFFERENT recording, and THAT one said "ka-PRAY-ZAY" just like the Jimmy John's ad. So even Google's confused and offers two completely different pronounciations of "caprese," but NEITHER of them rhyme with "breezy," so I'm pretty sure I'm a moron.

There is, incidentally, a Youtube video entitled "How To Pronounce Caprese Correctly." In it, an Italian native instructs on the proper way to say "caprese," which involves rolling the "r" and doing that Italian trill thing where the "R" kinda sounds like an "L" and it ends up like "ka-PLLLAY-zay." But frankly, I don't trust any language where the word "bruschetta" is somehow pronounced "brew-sketta."  

I'm officially declaring caprese anarchy. I'm gonna keep saying it like "ka-preezy." Feel free to say it like "schnauzer" for all I care. Caprese salads don't exactly come up much in day-to-day conservation. If you're silly enough to pay good money for a hunk of cheese and a tomato and some basil and think you're getting an amazing salad, then you're silly enough to say "caprese" however you fancy. I'm just worried it's the tip of the iceberg and I'm about to find out the word "chair" should be pronouned "tz-ay-ruh" or something. 

So I guess pull up a tzayruh if you've ever been a member of the Mispronounciation Club. We'll be the ones in the corner -- and we need more dressing for our salads.

COLUMN: I'm Sick

I'm sick.

It's nothing bad, I hope. Pretty sure it's just a head cold. But it sucks regardless.

Having made it to post-pandemic life, it now seems rather poor taste to whine about something as mild as a cold. There's not going to be much sympathy for the common cold after we've spent three years trying to duck and cover from airborne cooties with the potential to send you to the hospital or worse. This is disappointing for someone like me, a well-trained and highly gifted whiner. I humbly request: (a) my mommy, (b) a bowl of chicken noodle soup, and (c) maybe a Planet of the Apes marathon.

Say what you will about masks, but for those two years when most of us were wearing them, I didn't catch so much as a sniffle. Since I stopped wearing mine on the daily, I've managed to contract COVID, the flu, and now this rotten cold. My body has essentially become a winter rental for vacationing viruses. I'm pretty sure my sinuses must be listed on Airbnb. I think I might miss masks.

You know what else I miss? The ability to call in sick to work. Once upon a time, if you felt lousy, you could call your boss and say, "I feel icky. I'm not coming in today." Your boss would then say something like, "That's a shame. Get some rest and feel better!"  Today, I called my boss and said, "I feel icky. I'm not coming in today." And my boss said something like, "That's a shame. Good thing you're still set up to work from home!" Note to self: research who invented the remote desktop and send them a harshly worded e-mail that perhaps questions the beauty, weight, and/or moral character of their mother.

I've now spent three days working from home, and it didn't take long to remember the pros and cons.

PRO: The break room here has much better snacks.

CON: I can't taste anything and all food sounds disgusting.

PRO: I have a proper desk in my basement office that's an ideal setup to work from home.

CON: Too bad I'm not using it. I've found I much prefer belly-flopping onto my living room couch where I am presently sprawled out in the least ergonomic manner possible. I am in full beached-whale mode.

PRO: That last one wasn't a con. Beached whale life kinda rules.

CON: Except for one thing. I'm used to sitting in front of two oversized monitors where I can have umpteen open documents allowing me to multi-task all the live-long day. When I work from home, I have a teeny tiny laptop that I have to squint to even see what I'm doing. I might have to buy a pair of cheaters on my next drug store run (and that, friends, is the most fuddy-duddy sentence I've ever uttered in my life.)

PRO: The office is sadly lacking in cats. As I type this, there's currently one asleep on my back.

CON: When I got up a few minutes ago to grab a soda, my cat decided to take a leisurely stroll across my keyboard, which in turn caused an e-mail to go out to my most important client which read, and I quote,  "fjjkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkbn".

PRO: I just had a productive 8-hour work day while unshowered, pants-free, and wearing a ratty t-shirt.

CON: I was so loopy from cold medicine that I forgot about our department-wide Zoom meeting, which left me five minutes to dive into a sweater, wet my hair down, and try my best to NOT look like a degenerate on camera. I don't think I fooled anyone.

PRO: Working from home can be relaxing and productive.

CON: But not when you have Kleenex shoved up both your nostrils and Vicks smeared on your chest. Even the cats are keeping their distance now.

All things considered, it's actually been pretty nice working from home this week. When lunch hour hits, I can just roll over and take a nap. I actually had an Amazon order overnighted to my home address without fear of porch larceny by the time I usually get home from work. And being able to work from home has kept me from focusing on how terrible I feel, which is what makes me whiny in the first place. 

I don't think I could do this full time, though. I miss human interaction and I've already started to go a little stir-crazy. Today, I caught myself holding a full and detailed conversation about work with my cats and asking their opinion on how I should best proceed. Their consensus opinion was "meow." Also keep in mind that I'm talking to cats through laryngitis AND a fully plugged nose, which makes me sound like a sad cartoon character on his last legs. Except I'm not even ON my last legs, because I'm sprawled out like a beached whale on the couch.

Hopefully, in a few days, I'll be back in fighting form, ready to rejoin society. Until then, it's Kleenex and Netflix and bedrest (err, couch-rest) for the foreseeable future. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some sneezing I've been meaning to get to.

COLUMN: e85

I did a really dumb thing. 

I've been debating all week whether to even write this column. Honestly, I was planning on sweeping this entire episode under the rug forever and telling this story to precisely no one ever. But if owning up to my stupidity can help even ONE person as clueless as me out there, it's worth the shame. Besides, none of you can make me feel any worse about this than I already do, trust me.

Remember last week when I wrote about my phone getting stolen? That wasn't the only major drama that went down that night. Earlier that same evening, the "check engine" light on my car's dash came on. Sadly, my car's starting to reach the age where occasional warning lights might not be uncommon. It was driving just fine, though, so I nursing it along over the weekend, hoping it was a simple sensor issue. I made a mid-week appointment to get it checked out.

It was a sensor, alrighto -- one that was trying to warn me that my car was being murdered.

I dropped the car off at my dealership around 8 a.m. and got the diagnosis a couple hours later: my car was full of bad gas. It had already done serious damage to my spark plugs. Their immediate recommendation was to drain the fuel tank, install a new set of spark plugs, and perform a full flush of the entire fuel system. The estimate was staggering. How could this have happened?

How could this have happened? On most Fridays, I get off work, go home and chill for a bit, then head out to my weekend side hustle, slinging records at dance clubs until the wee hours. But this past Friday, in-between Jobs 1&2, I opted to play on a team at a charity trivia night. I needed gas, so I left the trivia event with JUST enough time to swing through a gas station, drive home, get my DJ gear, and make it to the gig with minutes to spare.

It was shortly after I filled up the tank when the warning light first appeared on my dashboard.

I was in shock over my car getting poisoned by some gas station, but there was nothing I could do to prove it. I didn't have a receipt or anything, but I wanted to let them know about the problem, so I sent an e-mail to their corporate customer care center, and was surprised to get an immediate response. Within hours, I got a call from the district manager, who was super nice and went back and pulled up their security camera footage from that night.

"Pretty sure I found you on the tape," he said, confirming my car's model, color, and the shirt I was wearing. Then he said words I wasn't expecting: "Do you know what e85 gas is?"

Let the record state, I did not. Let the record also state that I sure do now.

e85 is a fuel blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. It burns cleaner, costs less, and is good for the environment. Unless, of course, the environment in question is the internal combustion engine of an older model Hyundai. It is considerably less good for THAT particular environment. e85 blend is only compatible with certain (newer) car models. Mine isn't one of them. My car was indeed poisoned, but it turned out the attempted murderer was ME.

Flabbergasted, I conducted a quick straw poll of my close friends. Based on their comments, it appears everyone on Earth has known about e85 gas for years and I've been living under a rock. As God is my witness, I had never heard of e85 until last weekend.

I'm fully aware that I can sometimes be ridiculous. I'm not exactly brimming with common sense. I can't swim. I have no earthly idea how to snap my fingers. I usually wear slip-ons because I'm lousy at tying my shoes. But seldom do I find myself ridiculously uninformed like this. I read the news every day. I drive around aimlessly and have visited hundreds of gas statioms over the years. How is this an entirely new thing to me?

Apparently e85 pump handles are yellow and say "FLEX FUEL," which is how I'm supposed to know I can't use it. I saw it and just thought "FLEX FUEL" was some cutesy name for their gas. Shell calls THEIR premium gas "V-Power" and I have no idea what that means, either, but it doesn't destroy my car when I pump it. I had no idea "Flex Fuel" was something you used to euthanize old cars in record time. 

I probably should just claim that I was in a hurry and not paying attention. That's still dumb, but its at least somehow better than thinking "flex fuel" was a silly name for gasoline and then pouring it into my car without a second's hesitation. I guess I'm just lucky I didn't elect to top it off with some diesel and a splash of antifreeze for color.  

So, yeah. I feel like a moron. But my mom didn't know what e85 was, either, so I'm not the only one. Maybe there's a handful of other people out there unfamiliar with the car-destroying yellow gas pump of doom. And maybe I just saved them from a similar fate. That doesn't make me any less of a moron, but at least perhaps it makes me a HEROIC moron, and I'll take what I can get this week.

Lesson learned. I just wish this particular lesson hadn't cost as much as a college credit hour.

COLUMN: Phone Stolen

I don't think I could ever pass myself off as an optimist. 

I'm a realist and I know the world isn't always sunshine and lollipops. That said, I've always stood firm in my belief that, by and large, humanity is good and kind and not a dumpster fire of nightmare people. But if there were ever a decade to disprove this theory, it might just be the 2020s. It was one month ago that I was whining in these very pages about having accidentally left my cell phone at home and struggling to survive without the warm, comforting embrace of 24/7 internet connectivity in my front pocket. I think I jinxed myself.

This past Friday night was spent in the same way mine usually are: in a DJ booth, playing records for people half my age -- people whose entire existence might very well have hinged on me having played records for their parents' hook-up decades ago. It's been my life-long hobby, and there's still few places on Earth I'd rather be than behind DJ decks staring down a packed dancefloor.

For a while that night, I was in the zone. I had a packed dancefloor, people were feeling my playlist, and it was one of those nights when songs were mixing like butter. "This crowd is awesome," I thought to myself. "I need to post a video!" 

That's when I reached for my phone and instead found myself pawing at an empty table.

My phone never leaves my side while I'm working. I usually keep it right beside the DJ controller, but it wasn't there. I checked all my pockets, checked under my coat, and looked all around. It was gone. More specifically, it had been stolen.

I should've been instantly mad. In all honesty, I was mostly just impressed. It wasn't like I'd left the phone somewhere far away. It was inches from my hand at any given moment, but it still somehow managed to grow legs and walk away. Whoever lifted that thing was good. This was a lesson learned: I needed to keep that thing in my pocket.

But I rapidly went from impressed to indignant, as soon as I saw an instant message from one of my friends pop up on my laptop. It reminded me that my laptop computer was connected to the internet, and I was hotspotting that internet signal from my cell phone. That message was proof my computer was still online, which meant my phone was still close enough to sync to my laptop. Someone on that packed dancefloor right in front of me was a phone thief. 

What could I have done? Cold stopped the music, grabbed the mic, and yelled "J'accuse!" into the open air? Stomped my foot and refused to play another song until someone ponied up the phone? There was no cool way to handle this scenario.

Instead, I stood there for another hour, fully aware that one of the people in front of me was a thief. Instead of focusing on the task at hand, I was instead trying to spot any tells or anyone giving off a guilty vibe. Eventually I glanced at my laptop and watched helplessly in real time as my wi-fi signal slowly dropped from five bars to zero as my phone was somewhere walking away from the club and into the night. 

I tried to keep the energy up for the remainder of my DJ set, but I was no longer in the zone. I was mostly just mad. The minute we closed, I was able to remotely lock and erase the phone, so congrats on your relatively worthless piece of hardware, friend. I changed all my important passwords and reported the phone stolen.    

Oh, and I almost forgot: I KNOW WHO YOU ARE. YOU'RE ON TAPE. I HAVE THE FOOTAGE. There's cameras all over that place, including directly over the DJ booth. I also don't think you planned on pilfering my phone. You were really nice when we spoke that night. But you were also pretty drunk, and I think you grabbed my phone by mistake. If that's what happened, just bring it back. Mistakes happen, especially when Funky Monkeys are involved.

If my phone's gone forever, I guess it's not a big deal. I had one payment left on that busted old phone and was planning on upgrading this month anyways. Enjoy my cracked screen and that broken button on the side. Maybe you can clear level 494 of Bricks & Balls, because I sure can't. Still, it'd sure be nice if you brought it back and proved me right that humanity is innately good. I'm not optimistic.