COLUMN: ASMR

My name's Shane, and I'm a media-holic.

God forbid I spend even a single moment alone with my own thoughts. I guess it's just comforting to know that the world continues to spin even when I'm in my own private Idaho. There's nary a second of the day that I'm not plugged into multiple media sources. 

You think I'm kidding? I often bring speakers into my bathroom so I can listen to podcasts while I'm in the shower. As I'm typing this now, I also have a second window pulled up on my laptop where I'm watching tornado chasers livestream from Kansas. Over my right shoulder, someone just missed the answer to Final Jeopardy. Over my left shoulder, Alexa awaits my every command. My police scanner is on. Downstairs, music is playing from a stereo no-one's listening to, while my bedroom TV is playing a looped film of some random guy's birdfeeder in case the cats need their own media fix. I may have a problem.

I'm even media-obsessed when I'm unconscious. Yep, I'm one of those weirdos who can't sleep unless there's a TV on in the background. The problem is, I can't find the right thing to watch -- or, more specifically, NOT watch and sleep through.

For years, I just tuned in overnight to one of the local networks with the sound nearly muted. After years of sleeping my way through Agribusiness Today, you'd think I'd be subconsciously well-versed on soybean futures by now. 

Lately, though, I've been experimenting with some new overnight options. The results have been decidedly mixed.

Do you guys know what ASMR is? It stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, although I'm pretty sure it really stands for Absolutely Stupid Mindboggling Ridiculousness. Its a new fad that's crept up from the oddest corners of the internet over the past few years, and it might be my favorite thing ever.

ASMR is a recognized form of paresthesia -- a tingling sensation that some people claim to experience when watching or listening to certain triggers. (I'm not one of them.) Most people who experience ASMR describe it a pleasant euphoric experience. I'm guessing it's sort of like fingers on a chalkboard, but in a GOOD way?

There are self-styled ASMR gurus online who claim their videos can can induce the phenomenon. Trust me, it's must-watch TV at its finest.

Traditional ASMR triggers are said to include: soft or whispering voices, repetitive noises, watching someone perform mundane tasks, tapping, clicking, breathing, and close-up hand movements. I've yet to have an ASMR video give me tingles, but they've definitely induced laughter.

If you've ever wanted to watch a 48-minute video of a guy leaning over a microphone making squirrel noises with his mouth, ASMR videos are for you. If you get euphoric tingles from watching a girl click two Lego pieces together for 17 minutes, ASMR videos are for you. If you want to watch a complete stranger brush their teeth for twenty-four straight minutes, ASMR videos are for you.

Personally, I don't care HOW good those tingles might feel, NOTHING is worth the uncomfortably close-up video I just watched of a guy's mouth as he slowly and loudly ate an entire bag of Doritos. 

Some people find ASMR videos incredibly relaxing, so I thought I'd try some as background noise while going to bed. I typed "ASMR" into Youtube and hit play on the first video that came up. Naturally, it was titled "100% ASMR Ear Licking." What followed were 29 of the least relaxing, least euphoric, and most hysterical minutes of my life, as I couldn't stop watching this asinine video of a girl licking a microphone for a half hour straight.

Even the cats looked at me like, "Have you gone weird, my man?" 

ASMR trigger videos do NOT help me sleep. They DO help me feel gross, awkward and especially worrisome about future generations -- and frankly, I'm already skilled at those feelings without the need to watch 29 minutes of faux ear-lickery. 

I tried some other relaxation videos instead. Norway's public television is famed for their all-day marathon shows of trains, sheep shearing, and people quilting for entire afternoons. There's oodles of rain sound effect videos. There's even videos labelled "sci-fi ambience" that are apparently supposed to emulate the feel of being aboard a spaceship, but in reality just kinda sound like muffled vacuum cleaners.

I also noticed most of those videos have now changed their titles to add "ASMR," as if now ANYTHING that's boring and long can now claim to be an ASMR trigger. I should just film myself typing this column and upload it as "ASMR Typing Trigger" and see how many views it gets. You might think all of this is weird (I sure do,) but in ONE month, "ASMR 100% Ear Licking" has been viewed 637,003 times. When your video's been viewed by more people than live in Wyoming, it gets tougher and tougher to argue that it's weird.

All I know is nothing made me tingly OR tired. I tried watching a 12-hour video of a guy driving cross-country and I found myself Googling road signs he was passing so I could map his course. I tried the app where celebrities read boring stories to put you to sleep and I ended up getting WAY into the stories. I think tonight I'll try this radical new sleep trigger I've been reading about online - it's called "silence."  I guess you turn off all your electronics and just, like, lay there in the dark. It sounds SO weird. 

COLUMN: Bad Week

Citians of Quad and Islanders of Rock, I have always championed you.

But some of you are seriously trying my patience this week.

I came to the Quad Cities by way of Augustana College. A good chunk of Augie's student body hails from the Chicagoland area, including many of my college friends. Some of my friends really liked the Quad Cities, but most of them treated our area like some sort of backwoods prison camp they were forced to endure in order to get a decent education.

I know, right? It seems impossible that ANYONE could happily exist in a metropolitan area with only THREE major shopping malls and few if any daily traffic jams, but somehow, we unfortunate backwoods country folk manage to survive.  

I always had a different take on the Quad Cities. Growing up in Galesburg, when the cool kids at my school talked about going to "the city" for the weekend, they didn't mean Chicago. They meant HERE. The QC is fancy big-city livin' compared to Galesburg. I remember the first day I ventured to Rock Island on my own, I turned the wrong way down the 7th Ave. one-way. About 72 people honked at me and I nearly wet my pants. I questioned whether I could ever hack life in such a big city.  

Growing up, my family seldom traveled to the Quad Cities, but I knew a lot about the area thanks to QC television channels. I came to college with a bucket list already in mind. I wanted to eat at the Choice Smorgasbord. I wanted to see Orby the Super Van Man. I wanted to visit the Showcase Cinemas in Milan, buy records at Co-Op, and rent videos from Time Travellers.

My friends may have thought life in the QC was tortuous, but I loved the place -- and I still do. After graduation, I planted roots. The Quad Cities was plenty big for me, and life here has treated me just fine. 

All this time, I've remained in Rock Island. Our town sometimes gets a bad rap, but I've always defended her. Rock Island's got amazing character. The hilltop area has great shops and eateries. The District has its highs and lows but will forever be my nightspot. Rozz Tox, Ragged, and Wake make the east end of downtown special. Broadway has some of the coolest homes in the Midwest. It's a town rich in culture and history. It's my home.

I love my neighborhood. My neighbor to the right barbecues every weekend and brings me ribs. My neighbor to the left doesn't speak a lick of English, but for years and without having ever been asked, he comes over in the middle of the night and rolls my trash to the curb. I like my neck of the woods.

But this week's been testing my allegiance to our town. A few days ago, I was playing with cats when my silent alarm system triggered. A quick glance at the cameras revealed someone trying to break into my garage in broad daylight. Based on the footage, I'm pretty sure it was the same kid who stole a package off my porch last week. This was deja vu, as last year someone tried a similar move and made off with my childhood bike. This time, I had a reinforced door, a spanky new security system, and a fast hand to 911.

My uninvited guest ran from the cops, but hopefully now realizes I'm not the easy mark he must've taken me for. Thanks to my security cams, we now have many stylish photos of him in action, so the cops have a good chance of tracking him down. But they may have bigger fish to fry.

It was three hours later when my world suddenly filled with sirens. A car chase in Davenport had made its way over the bridge and ended up careening through my neighborhood, as a speeding car followed by multiple cops barreled down my street at scary speeds. Thankfully, the cops cornered those idiots and caught most of them.

The next morning, it was a beautiful spring day that felt like a rebirth. Gentle rain on the sidewalk, birds chattering all around -- and, suddenly, rapid fire gunshots that had me heading for the basement. It was several blocks away, but still way too close for comfort. 

I just don't get it. I don't understand hating someone enough to draw guns at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday. I don't understand the thrill of stealing a car or breaking into someone's garage or ripping stuff off a stranger's porch without guilt or remorse. 

"We're living in a different world," a few people have told me, and sure, that may be true. Once upon a time, Elvis shaking his hips on TV was a global scandal. Today, Cardi B gives us graphic updates on the state of her nether-regions and we declare it an important moment of empowerment.

The world IS different. Change is inevitable, and if you don't think you should have to adapt, ask the Mayans or the Cahokia or any other stubborn lost civilization that refused to roll with the changes. But just because the world is different doesn't mean it has to be WORSE. I still believe most people are innately good. We've survived wars, depressions, derechos, divisive politics, and now a global pandemic. We're nothing if not resilient.

Is there an answer? Probably not an easy one, and I'm certainly no expert. But I'm not giving up on my community and neither should you. If you're a do-gooder, do a lot of it this week. If you're a do-badder, give it a rest. It's been a rough year, and we need to get back on track. I didn't just spend a lonely year indoors in order to NOW be too afraid to leave the house. Bad stuff's bound to happen now and again, but it shouldn't be the norm. We're better than this. The Quad Cities are better than this.

All I'm saying is give peace a chance. Be kind to your fellow man - or at the very least, leave their garages alone (FYI: it's EMPTY, people. Do I LOOK like the kind of guy who owns tools and sporting goods?) 

COLUMN: Porch Pirates

Stupidity, thy name is Shane.

Sometimes I can't help but marvel over my own idiocy. This was one of those weeks.

I work in media -- specifically, in this very company's advertising department. Over the years, I've had a front row seat to product pitches, exclusive offers, and countless ways to drive consumer interest. By now, I should be well and fully jaded when it comes to most marketing efforts. Surely I could never fall prey to a sales pitch, right?

Wrong. Advertising works, people.

As regular readers know, I'm a music junkie. When I'm online, I'm usually talking about some band, listening to some band, or listening to someone else talk about some band. Therefore, it's no surprise that when Facebook's marketing algorithms look at my user profile, they immediately go, "Fish on the line. Serve this guy as many ads about music stuff as possible."

Every time I hop on social media, I'm bombarded with products for music geeks. Just today, I've seen ads for a tape dispenser shaped like a DJ turntable, an area rug that looks like a vinyl record, and custom lighting that pulses in rhythm to any music you play. If I bought every nerdy item pitched to me on Facebook, my house would be a tacky pulsating discotheque, but with cats.

Good thing, then, that I only buy SOME of it.

It started innocently enough. A few months ago, I got served an ad for a t-shirt company that made me chuckle. In the small ad, the company offered glimpses of two music t-shirts they were selling: one for Metallica, and one for The Carpenters. This is not exactly the kind of mash-up one normally sees in an ad. If you are a fan of both The Carpenters AND Metallica, you are officially VERY strange and we should probably be friends.

I HAD to check this company out, so I clicked the link. Immediately I was taken to a sketchy website that looked like it was thrown together in a hustle. Nothing fancy, just dozens and dozens of music-related t-shirts and click-buttons that said "BUY!" It was pure musical chaos. ABBA t-shirts next to Marilyn Manson t-shirts next to Garth Brooks, Megadeth, and Cher. They even had t-shirts from some of MY favorite bands. You know, those snooty indie bands that no one but record store clerks and that one irritating guy at your school listened to? I was that one irritating guy.

I knew this website was less than legit. There's no way some fly-by-night t-shirt company owned the rights to all these images. When I buy band merch, I like to make sure it goes to the band, not some seedy company somewhere in Cyber-third-world-istan. BUT it's not every day you run into someplace selling My Bloody Valentine t-shirts, either. And they even had them in Fat Newspaper Columnist size. It was too much to resist.

I ordered ONE shirt on a whim. I expected to be out $25 and have a cautionary tale to tell. Instead, my shirt arrived two weeks later, exactly as promised. The package came from China and had the oh-so-legit return address of "Joe Doe," but the t-shirt was there nonetheless, and it was shockingly decent quality.

I ordered another and it showed up, too. That's when I threw caution to the wind and placed an order for 6 of the coolest shirts they offered. Soon I would be the king of music-nerd fashion, even if it meant being a 50-year-old strutting around in a t-shirt better suited for a 20-something, except 20-somethings wouldn't know any of these bands. 

The days ticked by. No shirts. "It's okay," I thought, "maybe there's a traffic jam in China somewhere. Have faith." As it turned out, I should have had more faith in the sketchy company and less faith in Rock Island.

A quick review of my security camera revealed that the package had, in fact, arrived. It lasted on my porch for approximately thirty minutes before some kid sauntered up and stole it. My pirated t-shirts got plundered by a porch pirate, and a stupid one at that.

The money I lost on the shirts was almost worth the comedy captured on my security cam, as the dude took almost six minutes attempting to look casual while failing repeatedly to do a sly reach-around, as if he were just learning the length of his own arms in real time. Eventually he just gave up and showed his face to the camera while running off with the package. I just REALLY wanna see the look on his face when he opened it up to find weird obscure t-shirts of bands no one's ever heard of before.

I almost felt embarassed filing a police report over such a ridiculous purchase, but I did -- and the thief's picture is now being distributed to officers around town. The only thing more embarassing than wasting money on a bootleg My Bloody Valentine t-shirt would be getting arrested for stealing one, so good luck, kid.

The officer suggested I write the company to see if they carried insurance and could possibly re-ship. I did -- and prmptly received the following response: "Thanks you for contacting we! Much of happy to service of your shirts. The mail will be order delivery of very important! Please you for my patronage." I clearly can't say enough about Joe Doe's customer service -- mostly because I can't speak Joe Doe's language.

So, lesson learned. My days of ordering sketchy stuff from sketchy websites is done. Now, this OTHER website I just found that sells plaid flannel shirts in color combinations that match your favorite album covers? Well, that's just about the nerdiest thing I've ever seen -- and of course the shipment arrives tomorrow.

NO, WAIT, IT DOESN'T. THERE IS NOTHING TO SEE ON MY PORCH. KEEP WALKING, FRIEND.

COLUMN: Shoegaze Revival

I think I was twelve years old when I discovered the Beatles.

There was a kid at my school who was the absolute coolest. He was tall, good-looking, and had the uncanny ability to grow facial hair in 7th grade. All the girls swooned over him and all the boys wanted to be him. 

He was too cool to listen to the radio. All he ever played on his boombox was vintage classic rock, and you couldn't catch him anywhere without his faded denim jacket covered in Beatles pins. Suddenly, it seemed like our whole school became Beatles fans overnight. I was no exception -- except I wasn't cool. I was obnoxious.

I quickly procured all the Beatles albums. I went to the library and checked out all the Beatles books. I wore a pair of round Lennon specs. Within a week, I fancied myself an expert on the Fab Four, and every day when my parents would pick me up from school, I'd spend the drive home explaining the Beatles to them as if they hadn't lived through it.

"Did you know Ringo's real name is Richard?  Did you know if you abbreviate 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,' it spells LSD? Did you know Paul is probably dead and they replaced him with a look-alike?" It's a wonder my parents didn't throw me out the car to be raised by raccoons (and raccoons that likely didn't care about George Harrison's middle name.) 

I just got a taste of what my parents had to endure.

Someone once said there's no music better than whatever you listened to in college, and that's absolute truth for me. But I'm honestly convinced that the best music of all time just happened to get released between 1988 and 1992.

My tastes in college were all over the board. I was learning to properly DJ, so I listened to a ton of dance music. But I also worked at the college radio station and developed an ear for esoteric, left-of-center indie rock -- especially the underappreciated bands that critics dubbed "shoegaze." It's still my favorite music to this day.

The dictionary defines shoegaze as "a subgenre of indie rock characterized by ethereal vocals, guitar distortion and effects, feedback, and overwhelming volume." Shoegaze originators like Ride, Slowdive, and My Bloody Valentine would famously spend months in the studio layering simple guitar chords with enough reverb and effects to punch holes through speakers. When I saw Slowdive play Chicago in '92, I remember having to grab the railing after every song, because when they'd stop playing, I'd be dizzy from the change in equilibrium. It's like if your favorite musician was, in fact, a jet engine.

It's definitely not the music for everyone. I don't know many people on the fence about shoegaze. You either really get it or you really DON'T. I read a review once that said shoegaze was like listening to a mermaid fall into a black hole. My mom told me it sounded like a vacuum cleaner. Even the term "shoegaze" was originally an insult hurled by a music critic, aghast that people were paying money to watch musicians stare stoically at a bank of effect pedals on the ground.

But shoegaze was MY music, and being a fan felt like membership into a secret club. You'd see the same people at shows. You'd nod respectfully at anyone you spotted wearing a Ride t-shirt. For once, I finally felt like the coolest kid in school, hip to something no one else understood.

That is, until this week -- when I saw an article on Vice entitled, "Gen Z are Resurrecting Shoegaze for their Bleak Post-COVID World." Unbeknownst to me, today's cool kids have rediscovered those esoteric little bands from my youth, and those hard-to-find albums are now in heavy rotation on Spotify.

I went to TikTok and it's eleventy times cringier than me trying to teach my parents about the Beatles. There's kids making viral dances to Slowdive songs. There's shoegaze make-up tutorials. Girls are posting videos where they burn incense and fondle crystals to "manifest a shoegaze boyfriend." There's blog articles entitled, "What your favorite shoegaze band says about you."

Worst of all, it seems like the overwhelming consensus among the new generation is that shoegaze is supposed to be the soundtrack to mopey depression, sadness, and pandemic isolation. I guess it's now supposed to be the music you listen to when you need a good cry. It was never that way for us back in the day. If anything, the layered guitar effects and sonic maelstrom of shoegaze made me feel happy, alive, and blissed out. Not once did I listen in order to mourn my own existence. That's why God invented goth music, you sillies. 

I'm not sure whether to be appalled by these new fans getting it all wrong, or if I should feel like a golden god for being a card-carrying member of the original shoegaze fanbase. Part of me wants to find these teenagers and lecture them on proper music appreciation. The other part wants them to think I'm a cool kid, too. 

Except I'm not a cool kid. I'm a 50-year-old dude who happens to like the same music as a bunch of pretentious trendy kids right now. Maybe some of them are telling their parents interesting facts about Slowdive as I speak. I think I'll just stay off TikTok and let the kids have their mopey shoegaze moment. Their misappreciation and misappropriation of my favorite music is appalling, but if it results in Slowdive going on another reunion tour, we all win (except the people who think they sound like a vacuum cleaner.)

I'll be the blissed-out 50-year-old sore thumb in the back row and I won't care one bit.

COLUMN: Livin' La Vida Awful

Well, this is a first.

I've been writing this column every week for 17 years now, and I can safely say this is the first one composed on a cellphone. But that's how desperate I am to escape my present situation. As I painfully type this one thumb at a time, I'm getting work done on my car, and I'm currently being tortured by the devil's Muzak while sitting in the waiting area / infinite purgatory of the dealership. 

I should be feeling good. This is maturity at work right here. I'm adulting like heck. I have a burned-out tail light, something I've known for weeks and relegated to the lower mid-section of the "to-do" list like an irresponsible idiot. But last week, I drove home to Galesburg and made the mistake of letting my dad notice. If I didn't sort this out post-haste, I guarantee it would be the lead topic of every phone call home. Plus I'd rather not get rear-ended OR a ticket, so it's time for action. Specifically, the action of sitting here indefinitely while time crawls to a halt.

In all honesty, it's a lovely waiting area and a great dealership. Everyone's super nice, it's clean as a whistle, there's unlimited beverages, and their COVID mitigations are top-notch. There's just one big problem.

The overhead radio is presently tuned to one of the many kazillion satellite stations out there. If I had to reckon a guess, I'd say we're listening to the Middle-Aged White People Party Jams channel, or perhaps a channel whose theme is simply Shane's Least Favorite Songs of All Time Ever. If it's insipid, over-played, inescapable, and terrible, it's on this playlist. I've been here for a half hour and I'm ready to pull my ears clean off.

I'm fully self-aware that I'm an elitist music snob. Listening to me prattle on about music is likely ten times more tiresome than this playlist could ever be. If there's a band you love, odds are good that I (a) sincerely hate them, (b) secretly love them but still insist I hate them, or (c) am about to tell you how they're derivative of some far superior Scottish indie band from 1982 that precisely 17 people on Earth have ever heard of. Sometimes it takes great patience to be my friend.

But I don't think you have to be a snobby elitist to hate this channel. We all come from different walks of life. We all have different tastes, passions, and stories. But if there's one thing that unifies us as a people, it's the shared truth that none of us EVER need to hear "Livin' La Vida Loca" ever again. Ricky Martin himself probably doesn't want to hear that song ever again.

That's the kind of schlock this channel's been pushing down my earholes for some forty minutes now without rhyme or reason. Well, I guess there's rhyme, if you count "loca" and "mocha." 

But worse than their song selections is the way they're assembled. It makes absolutely no sense. They just played that Cher autotune song -- "Do you beeeLIEEEEEEVE in life after love??" -- followed immediately by Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love." Is there anyone on Earth who's a hardcore fan of both Cher and Led Zep? If so, you're downright weird. And should probably be my friend.

Fifteen minutes have passed. I can now say with some certainty that I have no idea who let the dogs out and I frankly don't care. Nor do I care that you've been through the desert on a horse with no name. I cannot see paradise by the dashboard lights and I do not want to come sail away. It is quite unnecessary to celebrate good times, come on. These songs already live in the deepest, darkest earworm-riddled corners of our brains for all time, there's absolutely no reason to bring them out for a refresher. If "Mmm Bop" comes on, I swear I'm walking home.

WHOA. I just discovered what this channel is. It's the satellite channel "Road Trip Radio: Music To Drive To." If this was my required road trip soundtrack, I'd be a MUCH bigger homebody.

Now it's Icona Pop's "I Love It," which is actually a bop, but I'm trying to sort out why "Road Trip Radio" would feature a song whose main lyrics repeat, "I crashed my car into the bridge, I watched, I let it burn." This does NOT bode well for your roadtrip safety, people.

Perhaps this is all just a genius sales technique. I'm half-tempted to buy a new car just so I can get out of earshot. "Sure, give me the keys, I'll sign on the X, just don't make me listen to 'Love Shack,' I'm begging you." 

We have warped ahead 30 minutes. I'm home. Just as the gentle strains of "Eye of the Tiger" were kicking up, my car was done. All in all, a good experience -- as soon as I remembered I had my noise-cancelling earbuds in my pocket. I can definitely tell you what channel I did NOT listen to on the road trip home. If you were annoyed just now by the car zooming past with two shiny tail lights blaring some Scottish indie band from 1982 that only 17 people on Earth have ever heard of, my deepest apologies. And my work here is done, because you're now #18, congrats.  

COLUMN: Galesburg

They say "you can't go home again." I've clearly been proving them wrong.

I've spent a good chunk of this past week in my hometown of Galesburg. My mom took it upon herself to book an unexpected two-week stay at the fabulous bed & breakfast resort known as OSF St. Mary's Medical Center, so I've been doing a fair share of commutes lately.

Don't worry, she's home now and doing much better -- and it wasn't anything COVID-related -- but it definitely wasn't the most fun couple of weeks a person could have.

When I say Galesburg's my hometown, I'm kind of lying. Technically speaking, I don't have a hometown. I grew up in the country, about five miles northeast of the 'Burg. When I go home for a visit, I don't even need to go into town -- I usually just head straight into the sticks.

But between hospital visits and food runs, I've been spending quality time within the city limits of the town I used to run amok in -- and things ARE mighty different. 

Back in my day, the area around St. Mary's was truly the edge of town. The hospital was effectively in the country. But a few years back, they built a fancy new Wal-Mart in that corridor, which means the former edge of town is now bustling with fast-food joints and strip malls. Honestly, for once I'm a little jealous of my parent's locale -- they've got a Buffalo Wild Wings and a McAlister's and a Burger King and a Pizza Ranch all within five minutes of my once-isolated childhood home.

Of course, I'm not especially jealous of my mom right now, because the only haute cuisine she's been enjoying is water and Jello. When I asked what flavor it was, I was told "green." Seeing as how it's fairly impolite to sneak food into the hospital room of someone who can't eat, I was resorting to scarfing down burgers in the hospital parking lot, trying not make a spectacle of myself as the staff went about their shift changes.

It must have worked, because the first time I visited, I didn't even discover until later that I wasn't supposed to have made it through the door. I just walked in, nodded at the attendant, and went straight to the elevator up to my mom's room. I didn't even realize that COVID-19 protocols were still in play, and every patient was only allowed ONE support person (in this case, my dad.) They were supposed to have cross-checked me against a list of approved visitors. They were supposed to have checked my temperature and issued me hand sanitizer.

I didn't know any of this. I just strolled on in and nobody stopped me. Only later, when a surprised nurse walked in and gave me the third degree, did I realize I was in breach of protocol. Clearly this can only mean one thing: I must resemble a neurosurgeon. The attendant must have noticed my confidence, poise, and profound level of maturity and naturally assumed I was an important doctor here to do important doctorish things. I'm sure its nearly impossible to tell the difference between a cardiac surgeon and a chubby newspaper columnist wearing a t-shirt that says "your favorite band sucks."

I was summarily and justifiably booted from the premises. Given my hermitic ways, I'm pretty sure I was in more danger of catching COVID-19 from them than they were from me, but rules are rules and safety first. Thankfully, a couple days later they eased back the protocols. Mom was allowed two designated visitors and I made the list (sorry, Aunt Merry, you missed the cut.)

Once upon a time, a simple roadtrip home wasn't a big deal. I love any excuse to go for a drive. Once I left the house on a food run and ended up in northern Wisconsin. Roadtrips are my jam. But the older I get, the longer that stretch of highway gets. Instead of just hopping in the car, I'm running through checklists in my mind like a mature person (gross.) Do I have water? Check. Mask? Check. Advil? Check. Imodium? Can't be too cautious. Anything could happen on the mean streets of the Illinois interstate system.

Advil turned out to be a good idea. I fell on the ice two winters ago in a comically ridiculous way, and I'm pretty sure my butt's still broken. Get me in a car for longer than a half hour and there's a good chance my tailbone will start screaming. I should probably see somebody about that, lest I become a crochety old man whose butt predicts the weather ("Uh oh, my coccyx is flaring up. Hard rain's a-comin'!") 

Driving down Henderson Street in Galesburg always reminds me of high school weekends, when the required social activity was cruising the strip from the McDonalds on Henderson to the McDonalds on Main over and over again. Do teenagers even do that any more? Have I reached the age where I just sit around and start stories with, "Back in MY day..."? Apparently so, since I already started a sentence with those very words a few paragraphs above.

Change is inevitable. My mom liked to amuse me with stories about life before television. Our generation's children are equally blown away by our tales of life before cellphones. THEIR children will probably be saying things like "do you remember the olden days when cars used to roll around on WHEELS?" But whether we have to walk, drive, fly, or teleport, family will always be family, and I'm lucky to have one that will always welcome me.

It might not look the same, but you can DEFINITELY go home again.      

COLUMN: Second Shot

Well, it's official. I have been double-stabbinated and fully vaccinated. If all goes well, by this time next week, I will be 100% impervious to all disease and an immortal superhero with direct 5G access to Bill Gates and the Illuminati.

Or, just maybe, I'll be a normal human being who can interact with other human beings without a mask, Plexiglass, or six precious feet between us.

It's been a rough year. A microscopic (and, let's be honest, silly-looking) virus has taken the lives of an estimated 2.87 million people across the globe. The amount of tragedy, loss, and suffering caused by COVID-19 is horrific and incomprehensible, and that is the ONLY reason why I'm not spending the rest of this column whining about HOW MUCH MY ARM HURTS RIGHT NOW. Ow.

Honestly, though, I didn't experience any of the occasionally reported side effects from the vaccine. No nausea, brain fog, chills, or fever, and that's awesome. But I can't pretend my arm isn't sore right now. I'm literally typing this one-handed. But if a sore arm is the required price for concerts to happen again, I'm glad to pay the piper. For the love of rock & roll, go get stabbed. 

Where's the one place you'd want to be right now if you could travel anywhere? Most of you would probably want to be on a tropical beach or a majestic mountainside. Me? I wanna be at Codfish Hollow, the barn concert venue tucked into a little hidden valley just outside Maquoketa. If you haven't been, you're missing the greatest secret in the Midwest. Thanks to COVID, we've all been missing it for over a year now -- but word on the street is they're hoping to re-open later this summer, so fingers crossed and masks up, people.)

At this point, I'd go see ANYONE in concert. I'd pay money to watch Nickelback open for Milli Vanilli. I would sit through a polka band doing a twenty minute version of the Chicken Dance. I just want music and life and people and smiles. It's coming. I can feel it.

We need to be patient, though. Just because some of us are now fully vaccinated doesn't mean we're free to roam around mask-less, licking doorknobs with carefree abandon. Vaccinated people might not feel the effects of COVID-19, but they think we can still spread it to folks who are vulnerable, and that's no good. Herd immunity's on the horizon. For now, though, us vaccinated folk can get together in small groups and hug each other until it gets SUPER awkward, and that's a good start. 

Finally, I might be able to think realistically about post-pandemic life. COVID's changed the way we all live, though -- and for me, some of that will NOT be changing.

WHAT I'LL STOP DOING IN A WEEK: Disinfecting my groceries as they enter my house. The CDC already said it's probably overkill, but I got in the habit early on and have yet to stop. When I was at the store to get my second vaccine, I saw a little kid with his grubby little kid hands feeling up every can and box as he skipped maskless down an aisle, so I'm good with over-caution. Still, there are no seconds in a day longer than the ones where I'm wiping down groceries, especially the ridiculous times I've caught myself disinfecting cans of disinfectant. When you're wiping down Lysol bottles with Lysol, you may have a problem.

WHAT I WON'T STOP DOING IN A WEEK: Using a delivery service for groceries. I've grown to love it, pandemic or no. Sure, it's spending needless money on delivery fees, but I've done the math and I'm honestly SAVING money using a home delivery service. When someone else is hitting the grocery store on your behalf, you can't impulse shop. I'm spending less at the store because I'm not foolishly grabbing anything that looks tasty on a whim. 

WHAT I'LL STOP DOING IN A WEEK: Avoiding uncooked food. I realized the other day that I've spent the past year shying away from things like salads and sub sandwiches, and it's probably out of a subconscious fear that someone's coughed on them. I'm well aware how ridiculous this is. The odds of catching a virus from a ham sandwich are slim to none, but cooked food just seems safer and more comforting. That said, when I choose which restaurant I'll walk into next week for the first time in over a year, odds are pretty high it's going to rhyme with Bungry Bobo. 

WHAT I WON'T STOP DOING IN A WEEK: Cooking more at home. If nothing else, the pandemic's forced me to get pretty good at kitchen-y stuff, especially if it involves the Instant Pot, God's gift to single people who never learned how to cook. I got into a debate online last week with someone about caraway seeds. Never in my life did I expect to one day care about caraway seeds. A year ago, I didn't even know what a caraway seed was. But now, I'm SO insistent they're vital to Hungarian goulash that I picked a fight about with a stranger on the internet. WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME?

WHAT I'LL STOP DOING IN A WEEK: Being judgey towards people. You should never read a book by its cover, but on those rare occasions when I get out and about, I'm still catching myself looking at people and thinking, "Well, THAT dude looks super COVID-y." If you see me strutting by you briskly, I'm likely worried that you're toxic. There's even a chance that behind my mask, I'm holding my breath. Don't take it personally. I'm an idiot.

But soon, I'll be an idiot who doesn't have to live in a constant state of caution and pananoia. No longer will I have to spend my days sitting around alone wishing there was something to do, and I can finally get back to my normal hobby of CHOOSING to sit around alone wishing there was something to do. There's light at the end of the tunnel. With any luck, I'll be able to move my right arm by the time I reach it.

COLUMN: Coloring

As I've mentioned in previous columns, it was NOT a terrific winter for yours truly.

Some scary health symptoms combined with some ill-advised self-diagnostics on the internet led me to believe I was on the brink of death. Suddenly faced with mortality, I decided the best course of action would be to hole up in my house, stop answering the phone, and essentially suffer a fear-induced breakdown. In retrospect, I can't say this was an optimal way to spend the holiday season. It was NOT, as the song promises, the most wonderful time of the year.

My journey into self-isolation and panic wasn't without its upside, though. Had it not been for my temporary descent into madness, I wouldn't have discovered my newest hobby. And I'm proud to say, on the grand list of time-wasting hobbies out there, this one might very well be the stupidest.

I have acquired a fondness for online coloring apps.

Coloring books were never a big thing for me as a kid. I owned a few, sure, but it wasn't an activity I ever yearned for. I was always too worried about coloring outside the lines, using the incorrect color, or having an ugly finished product.

Online coloring apps take away all those worries. In fact, they take away any ounce of creativity whatsoever.

The app I downloaded, "Happy Color," works in a familiar manner to those old-school coloring books of yore. Each day, you can download a new array of black-and-white images full of tiny numbers. Each number corresponds to a color on the accompanying color palette. To complete each picture, you highlight one of the numbered colors, find its match in the image, and simply tap on that area of the image to have it magically colorize.

One image can easily have over 1000 of these numbered areas, so it can take hours to fully color in one image. There's no coloring outside the lines - the app won't let you. There's no using the wrong color - the app won't let you. You're just essentially matching the number from column A to the identical number in column B. It's just that column B happens to be a picture of a horse. Or a meadow. Or a horse in a meadow.

Essentially, Happy Color is little more than an excuse to waste hours furiously tapping on your phone for no real reason. It's ridiculous, it accomplishes nothing, and it's EXACTLY what I needed.

When you spend two months assuming you're moments from death, wasting hours furiously tapping on your phone for no real whatsoever is JUST what the doctor ordered. (Well, that and multiple colonoscopies.) But when I'm fooling with Happy Colors, for those few pleasant moments, I can switch my brain off and worry about nothing more than finding the right shade of blue. 

It's cathartic and calming and centering. And a bit crazy.

"Happy Color" prides itself on its wide variety of images, and they're not exaggerating. There must be thousands in all, and they add new images daily. Last time I opened the app, there was a pic of a cat. And a motorcycle. And a saxophone. Oh, and a picture of a wide-mouthed bald woman with razor-sharp teeth glaring psychotically at a terrified rat. Wait, what?

I'm all for variety, but this image could give ME nightmares, let alone some hapless little kid. Only later did I discover it's a still image from "The Witches," a recent film adaptation of the popular children's novel by Roald Dahl. This makes perfect sense, because Dahl is an author whose literary canon is full of Willy Wonkas and Giant Peaches and is basically a nightmare factory for children. This is, after all, the same man who once turned an innocent girl into a hideous blueberry monster, all for the unspeakable crime of... chewing gum? I know nothing about Roald Dahl's children, but I reckon they were terrified into some seriously good manners.

Yesterday, I opened "Happy Color" to find an image of... well, I'm not even really sure WHAT it's supposed to be. It's an elephant. Specifically, it's an elephant standing upright on an urban street corner. More specifically, the elephant appears to be having some kind of unspeakable romantic liaison with the side of a building. I know no other way to explain it. My friend thinks maybe the elephant is meant to be hiding and peering out from around the corner of the building. But I spent WAY too long coloring that image, and it sure looks more bawdy to me. No time is a good time for pachyderm pornography. I'm beginning to wonder if the artists of "Happy Color" get out of the house less than I do.

Oh, and if you think coloring these photos is a stress reliever, think again. The game won't let you complete an image until you've colored in every single space. And, invariably, as you reach the end, there will always be some teeny tiny uncolored sliver that can take FOREVER to find. So it's all quite charming and relaxing until you get to the end, when you have to play an agonizing round of "Where's Waldo" hunting for that last elusive uncolored piece.

Of course, the app offers hints to the location of the uncolored pieces, but to view the hints, you have to sit through a sixty second ad for some other time-wasting app. Frankly, I'd rather be turned into a hideous blueberry monster than suffer through one more ad for Crazy Birds. 

Honestly, though, I love this utterly stupid app, and I can't recommend it enough. It is the video game equivalent of "just take a second to breathe." If you're having a tough time making it through these (hopefully) last days of the pandemic, I feel your pain. Trust me, I've been there. But maybe things aren't as bad as you think. Maybe you just need a little color in your life.

    

COLUMN: Hope

Nothing makes me feel older than sitting around and letting my mind wander back to the good old days. And there's nothing like a pandemic to give you PLENTY of time for mind-wandering. When you're stuck on the same couch for the better part of a calendar year, suddenly good old days start feeling like GREAT old days.

Truth be told, I was fairly miserable for most of my youth, mostly of my own doing. I specialized in being the annoying nerdy kid, desperate to impress friends and fit in at all costs. I've grown up a heck of a lot since then, but I'm sure there's a part of me that still yearns for acceptance and hopes people think I'm cool.

Maybe we're all guilty of it. After all, is there any reason to post on Facebook other than to say, "Look at me, am I cool?" It makes me wonder. I'm a music geek through and through, but do I volunteer to DJ parties because I love music or because I love being in CONTROL of the music? This past weekend, I was wasting an afternoon practicing some DJ mixes, and I'll admit it: I cranked the music a little louder than necessary because I knew my window was open and the neighbor kids were playing outside. 

Am I that desperate for acceptance that I need 8-year-olds to think I'm cool? That's kinda sad. I haven't the slightest clue what impresses 8-year-olds these days, but I'm guessing it's NOT house music or the dorky neighbor playing it louder than he should've.

A friend asked an interesting question last week: Who was my first crush? And we're not talking celebrity crushes, because I prefer to overlook the salacious era of "the Debbie Gibson years." Celebrity crushes are silly and adolescent and that's why I definitely don't own every season of Dawson's Creek or find Katie Holmes to be a goddess (cough.)

I can barely recall all my celebrity crushes -- but I certainly know who my first real world crush was.

When I was growing up, my mom had one close friend. Whenever the two of them would get together, I'd usually be forced to tag along. This wasn't a huge sacrifice for me, because my mom's friend had a daughter my age, Maria. I probably SHOULD have had a crush on Maria, but she intimidated the heck out of me. She was smarter than me, more sarcastic than me, and she was even better at video games than me. My adolescent brain couldn't process anyone that cool. 

But one fateful day, our moms got together for an afternoon and I was along for the ride. But Maria had a friend from out of town visiting for the weekend. Her name was Hope. She was from Chicago. And after one afternoon together, I was positive she was my soulmate.

That afternoon was over 35 years ago, and honestly, I barely remember it. I can't recall Hope's face or a single thing we talked about. But I remember she smelled like strawberries, she laughed at my dumb jokes, and I went all wobbly when she touched my knee. And the best part? I wasn't trying to impress her. I wasn't desperate for her to think I was cool. The three of us just hung out all afternoon and had fun.

Afterwards, I asked Maria for Hope's address, and I wrote her an epic love letter, spilling the depths of my soul with romantic prose, passionate longing, and elegantly-crafted expressions of desire. Or, since I was in 7th grade, it probably consisted of "Do you like me? Check this box." She responded in kind with an equally romantic reply (she checked "YES,") so for a few fleeting days of pre-teenery, I had myself a girlfriend.

I took her letters to school, showed my friends, and spent every waking moment pining for her. Well, for about two weeks. In the short attention span of youth, our love was not meant to be and this stallion needed to roam free. But the simple question of "who was your first crush" brought fond fuzzy memories to mind, and I suddenly had an idea.

I haven't spoken to my friend Maria in over twenty years, but it didn't stop me from messaging her out of the blue to see if she was still in touch with Hope. She wasn't -- but she DID remember her last name and the suburb she lived in, which is more than I could recall about my soulmate of yore. That was good enough for a Google search. How great would it be to find her after all these years, see if she ever had fleeting thoughts of me, and find out how her life turned out? It could make a great column.

And it would have, except my Google search immediately pulled up an obituary for someone matching her name, age, and last known location. Ouch. That's a bummer. For what it's worth, Hope has/had a VERY common last name, and it might not even be her. I sure hope this Hope isn't MY Hope. I definitely didn't want a column about good memories turning into a wistful treatise on the fragility of life.

That was absolutely enough research for me. I'm content leaving her fate a mystery. I'm not telling Maria what I found, either. The only thing more awkward than "Hey, I know we haven't spoken in years, but remember your hot friend?" would be following it up with, "yeah, she might be dead." I'd rather just remember what I can about that perfect weekend and the magic of a hand accidentally brushing against my knee.

Take it from me, don't worry about fitting in or trying to look cool. Some days might seem long, but life is short. Don't waste it. I might never be the cool kid in the room, but after all these years, I'm kinda glad that I'm not. If you stop trying to fit in and start being yourself, you might just find your real passion. You might even find some Hope in this world.      

COLUMN: Rachael Ray

Exciting news, all: I have a new BFF.

Sorry, Bruce. You were the first to earn the title of Shane's Best Friend, and I couldn't imagine surviving high school alongside anyone but you. Sorry, Jason. You've been my closest confidant and other-mother brother since fate assigned us adjacent dorm rooms in college. And sorry, Dianna. I know there's one only one person who would come over at 7 a.m. just to help me change the battery in a smoke detector.

You're all amazing people that I couldn't imagine my life without. But you've all been replaced. I have a new bestie... and her name is Rachael Ray.

Some might say I've fallen into a pandemic routine lately. But when you're working from home like I've been for the past few months, there's no such thing as "routine," unless your idea of routine is having to leave a conference call because a cat just vomited in your lap -- which, to the fellow attendees of my Zoom meeting, appeared as if I suddenly and spontaneously glanced down at my crotch, screamed "Ewww!! Gross!!," and disconnected. It wasn't my best moment. 

But as much as I miss my co-workers and annoying them with Belgian house music quietly pumping from my cubicle at 9 a.m., I kinda enjoy working from home. If someone were to walk in here right now, they'd have little clue I'm working. It's me sprawled across the couch like a beached whale as usual. I just have a different laptop in front of me. At 5 p.m., I'm like, "Ahh, quitting time." And all I do is close my work laptop, set it aside, open my personal laptop, and remain in the exact same position. Welcome to my pandemic life.

The only real routine I have these days is waking up an hour before I have to log in. I use this time to saunter into the living room, imbibe caffeine, and catch a few minutes of the "Today" show while my brain boots up. When it's time to work, I simply grab the laptop and hit the mute button on the TV, which stays on throughout the day as my silent work buddy and comforting proof that I'm not the last person alive on Earth. 

But when the Today show ends, it's followed by the smiling Rachael Ray, whose delicious daily dishes are tough to ignore, even when she's muted. I often find myself catching glimpses of fabulous culinary creations, which is hard to take when my fridge contains little more than Lunchables and leftover pizza.

So for the past couple months, I've been taking my lunch hour with my new buddy Rachael. She's been teaching me how to cook, or at least trying her best. Rachael Ray has the amazing ability to make every recipe seem incredibly simple to pull off. At least once a week, she whips up something that makes me think, "I could do that."

As it turns out, sometimes I actually can. I made a decent soup the other day using one of her recipes. Last weekend, I successfully braised short ribs. I recently followed a Rachael Ray Show recipe for sausage & shells that turned out to be single tastiest thing that's ever come out of my kitchen. Am I becoming competent in the kitchen?

Of course, not all attempts are winners. A few weeks back, I attempted a recipe from her website called "Rach's Stupid Good, Silly Easy Sausage and Apple Tray Bake." I opted for a slight variation on the recipe, a creation I renamed "Shane's Stupid Bad Charred Husks of Blackened Things That May or May Not Have Once Been Sausages and Apples But I'm Honestly Not Sure." One minute, things looked fine in the oven. The next, it was culinary cremation.

I'm also starting to think my new bestie isn't entirely honest with her viewing audience. For one, bok choy isn't delicious, it's slimy and gross. And no, Rachael, I can't "add a dollop of Calabrian chili paste" because no one but you has Calabrian chili paste in their pantry.

Last week, Bobby Flay was on, sharing his recipe for Bucatini all'Amatriciana, which I believe is Italian for "spaghetti topped with a buttload of bacon." What's not to love, other than maybe your next cholesterol checkup? Just like Bobby, I carefully added my ingredients to a pot and set it to simmer. Just like Bobby, I checked on it after twenty minutes and added fresh oregano (or maybe oregano from a jar I'm pretty sure I've had since the 1990s, shh!)

But I definitely don't recall any part of Bobby Flay's video where a rogue drop of boiling sauce flies directly into his left eyeball, which was MY experience. And while I was cursing and trying to rinse my eye out with cold water, MORE drops of boiling sauce started flying everywhere around my kitchen. The end result tasted amazing, but it destroyed a perfectly good t-shirt and left behind a Dateline-worthy crime scene in my kitchen. 

Overall, though, Rachael Ray makes a pretty good pandemic pal. I usually can't stomach traditional cooking shows. Nothing makes my eyes roll faster than a studio audience gasping with appreciation at someone adding onion to a pan -- and no show is usually guiltier of fake audience reactions than Rachael Ray. But these are not usual times. Since the pandemic, Rachael and her hubby have been making the show on their own from their mountain home (actually, their GUEST home, but that's a whooole other story my bestie can tell you about.) The homemade DIY format so much better than a glossy studio full of people "ooh"-ing and "ahh"-ing chicken stock as it simmers.

So for the time being, I have a new best buddy, and it's just like most friendships. Sometimes she acts like she's better than me. Sometimes she tells me I need to cut back on my salt intake. We get along great, but sometimes we disagree. A couple weeks back, I said to myself, "Okay, this weekend I'm making whatever Rachael makes today." And then she said, "Welcome to the show! Today we're going to make Onion & Brussels Sprout Pasta," at which point I decided that maybe I needed a different best friend, so I changed the channel and met some exciting new people on CBS. I don't know much about them, but they seem quite young and restless. Wish me luck.     

COLUMN: Vaccinated

I may have been on this planet for some five decades now, but nothing seems more preposterous than the idea of some young person turning to ME for sagely wisdom about life. Frankly, I'm just not real good at this "existence" business. I will never pretend to be better than you, because I know I'm not. I don't even know HOW to get on a high horse.

But yesterday? For one brief second, I got to play the hero. I was brave, and I did a good thing: I got stabbed in the arm. If all goes well, in a matter of weeks, I will be an invincible superhero -- or at least able to shop for groceries within six feet of another human being, and that's close enough.

You should do it, too.

I'm not here to pick a fight with you anti-vaxxers. Nobody wins. Some people are afraid the vaccine isn't safe. Well, fine, I guess. Whatever. I'll put my faith in scienc-y people, because I sat next to some of them in high school and they seemed really smart. For me, it's a risk I was willing to take. "Could I suffer a side effect?" vs. "Do I ever want to attend a concert again?" Concerts won out.

Then there are people out there -- we all have that ONE uncle on Facebook -- who think the vaccine is part of a sinister plot to subjugate us all to the nefarious plans of, I dunno, I guess Dolly Parton and Dr. Fauci. Or the vaccine contains secret tracking chips so Bill Gates can spy on us.

I hate to break it to your over-inflated sense of self-importance, but Bill Gates most likely does NOT care about what you're having for dinner tonight. A similar rumor hits social media every year without fail. You know, the one that claims Facebook is going to claim ownership of all your social media content unless you post something that says, "No, Mark Zuckerberg! You may NOT have my photos!"

Mark Zuckerberg owns approximately eleventy kajillion dollars. He does not need the selfie of you in the red dress at the club. With just the spending money in his wallet, he could probably buy the club, the dress, and pay Kim Kardashian to wear it there. Honestly, if Mark Zuckerberg wants the 18 photos of my cats that adorn my Facebook page, he's welcome to them. 

Are there creepy violations of our privacy happening online? You bet. Do some websites track where we go online? Sure -- but they're mostly doing it in order to serve us ads based on our interests. Websites need to sell ads to make money. And if those sites are going to shove ads in my face, I'd rather they be for products I might actually care about. If Bill Gates really DID just put a tracking chip in my arm, he's welcome to spy on my exciting life ("My God, he's STILL on the couch. It's been ten hours. Do you think he's dead?")

The only fear I had to overcome when it came to getting the vaccine wasn't the vaccine. It was the "getting" part.

I'm terrified of needles. I remember the last time I got a vaccine. It was a booster shot I needed in grade school. I remember the nurse telling me "it's just like a little bee sting." I'm allergic to little bee stings. Little bee stings can kill me. I screamed so loud, I broke all the blood vessels in my face and walked around purple for a week.

But yesterday I did the unthinkable. Of my own free will, I went up to a nice lady and said, "Hello, I'm here for my injection, please." If you go out today, please be mindful -- the forecast calls for freezing hell and flying pigs. 

The down side? I may have caught COVID-19 from the dude next to me in the vaccine line. Mine took place at the grocery store, where there's a helpful smile in every aisle -- and a woman who stabs people with needles. Afterwards, they ask you to stick around for a few minutes, which is admittedly less than resassuring. "The vaccine is perfectly safe, but go wait here for fifteen minutes to make sure you don't die."

Worse yet, the guy ahead of me appeared to already have COVID-27 or 28. The entire time, he was coughing up a lung -- and with each cough, he thoughtfully reached up and pulled DOWN his mask to hack open-mouthed into the air. I was supposed to wait fifteen minutes, but I snuck out after five. I'd rather die of an allergic reaction on MY terms than catch grocery store cooties before the vaccine has a chance to do its trick.

It's trick, by the way, is to make your arm hurt so bad that you forget all about COVID. It's already much better now, but yesterday was unpleasant. I went to pick up a cat last night and about screamed. But it goes away. 

With any luck -- and a lot of needles -- so will COVID. 

COLUMN: Weekend From Hell, Pt. 2

Last week, I selfishly used this column as therapy. I just wanted to whine about my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad weekend. What started as an earnest attempt to organize my kitchen turned into an all-nighter of clutter and chaos. Then I was awakened the next morning after three hours sleep by a malfunctioning smoke detector. 

Little did I know, the fun was just getting started.

After convincing myself that the house was not, in fact, on fire, I spent Saturday organizing music files on my computer, because I am nothing if not a party animal.

But at 8 p.m., I got the chills. Remember the health problems I had earlier this winter? It all started with a kidney infection and me getting the chills. "Swell," I thought while grabbing a sweater and some cranberry juice. That's when my eye happened to catch the living room thermostat. It read 64 degrees. I had the chills, alright -- my heat was out.

I have no idea why, but I headed to the basement like I knew what I was doing. "Yep, that's a furnace," I said to myself, which is pretty much the extent of my HVAC knowledge. It wasn't on fire, so yay for that. I executed the only troubleshooting maneuver I was qualified to do: I turned it off and back on. No dice.

I called a couple 24-hour HVAC places, who were happy to come diagnose the problem for roughly 18% of my annual salary. I knew after-hours prices were steep, but man. If those poor Texans on the news could tough it out, I could, too. I bundled up and went to bed.

Sunday morning, I woke up to a 52 degree interior. Even the cats were looking at me like, "Ummm...?" Ergo, I did what you're NOT supposed to do -- I made a beeline for the kitchen, opened the (electric) oven, and set it to broil. In fact, as long as I was standing there monitoring it, I figured it'd be safe to turn on the stove burners, too.

I had made the beeline for the kitchen before making the morning pilgrimage to the bathroom, so I was standing in the kitchen doing a little jig that was half for warmth and half because I had to pee, so I hustled to the bathroom for a quick second.

The morning prior, I had indulged in a bowl of cereal. What I didn't know is that somewhere in the cereal-pouring process, a rogue Frosted Flake had absconded from my bowl and landed in the well of one of those stove burners. By the time I returned from the bathroom, the aforementioned Frosted Flake was on frosted fire. It was not "grrrrrreat." 

It burned out in seconds, but not before setting off EVERY smoke detector in the house, including the dreaded one in my bedroom. Whoever installed that smoke detector is a sadist. I have vaulted ceilings, and it's on the weeee tippy top. Shutting it off involves an aerial escapade on a telescoping ladder that requires teamwork and a degree in physics just to open, let alone climb. 

I only have one friend who I knew would be awake, and it's the same friend who helped with my kitchen not 24 hours earlier. If you know Dianna Saelens, give her a socially distant high-five and tell her how awesome she is. She arrived with space heaters, batteries, and the willingness to scale a two-story ladder without vomiting. I contributed the best way I knew how: bacon. I handled breakfast duty.

At one point, I noticed one of my poor cats scared out of her mind, heading behind the couch in a space she shouldn't be in. That's when the morning went from bad to worse to... indescribable.

I have three cats. Two are the geriatric sisters I've had for years. The third is the young feral I took in last year. It is NOT one big happy family. Bez, my grandma kitty with bad hips and bad kidneys, has long been the alpha of the house. She is NOT a fan of our young new tenant. But lately, things had been better. The new cat keeps to the basement, Bez patrols the main floor, and there's been less conflict.

When I pulled out the couch, I discovered why. I spend most of my time, especially this past year, camped out on the couch. Whether it's watching TV, working from home, or writing this column, it all happens here on this couch. Yet somehow, I've been sitting here completely oblivious that Granny Bez has been going behind the couch and using it as her own personal litterbox. For what appeared to be weeks.

I get paid to write, and I have no words. How it didn't make an unholy smell is beyond me. How my house wasn't declared a HAZMAT violation is beyond me. The noise I made upon discovering the hidden cache is beyond me. Why I'm even telling you all this is beyond me.  

Two days later, it's all hopefully ancient history. The smoke detector got reset. Space heaters got fired up. My carpet got cleaned. On Monday, I paid a man $260 to walk downstairs, open my furnace, and push a button. My house has heat again. Thankfully, he showed me how to push said button next time it happens, so I'm counting that as PERSONAL GROWTH, people. There is no longer a path to get behind the couch and there are ample litterboxes on every floor.

Who knows, maybe there's a moral in here somewhere. Cats are terrible, except when they're not? Smoke detectors are terrible, except when they're not? Never barbecue breakfast cereal? Or the REAL moral, which is "everyone needs a Dianna." Were it not for her, I might be writing this column from a hotel room.

If there's a better moral hiding in all this, I'll let you find it. I'm going to bed.

COLUMN: Weekend From Hell, Pt. 1

Good columnists usually have a purpose to their writing. Opinions they wish to convey, points they'd like to make, reasons for putting pen to paper. It's a good thing I'm not a good columnist.

Sometimes writing these weekly missives is little more than stress relief, a necessary means to exorcise the past week and purge those memories from my skull. This is one of those times. If you're looking to grow as a person or learn a valuable life lesson, pick a different article. Forgive me, but I just need to whine about my weekend. There are good weekends, there are bad weekends... and then there are SHANE weekends. Set phasers to "complain," Captain Kirk. 

I suppose it all started on Friday. Thanks to the pandemic, I've been getting to know the room I normally pass through on the way to more exciting rooms: my kitchen. After cooking at home far more than usual, I'm getting irked at the lack of storage space in my kitchen. Truth is, I have a ton of cabinets in there - they're just jam-packed with silly stuff I never use. The other day, I had to pull out seven items just to get to my one lonely saucepan. I recently gave up after fifteen minutes of searching for a cutting board I definitely own but couldn't find.

Not once did it dawn on me that perhaps I could reorganize and get rid of some of this junk I never use. When the thought finally crossed my mind last week, it was a revelation. For instance, I have a full tea service in my cabinet. I don't drink tea. I have a mug that says "I Still Look Sexy at 40," which is a SUPER important thing to have because (a) I often rely on tableware to validate my sexual self-confidence, and (b) I'm 50.

On a mission, I walked into the kitchen, opened all my cabinets, and set to work. And by "set to work," I looked at things for 30 seconds, realized I had no idea how to even begin, and promptly gave up. Thankfully, I have a friend who thrives on organization, so I called her to see if she might be willing to help.

"I've dreamt of this day," she said. "I'll be over in ten minutes."

I sort of expected she'd have a system to help free my kitchen of clutter and magically make everything better. And she did. Her system was to empty the contents of every cabinet into an ungodly pile on the kitchen floor. We were at it until 1 a.m. And by we, I mean her. My job was essentially to stand there and argue why I didn't want to throw away a set of cheap wine glasses embossed with the logo of a local home improvement company.

"What if I want to impress a girl one day?" I pleaded.

"No girl will be impressed by wine that offers a 20% discount on windows and siding," she explained while tossing them.

So my Friday was spent top-billed in my very own episode of "Hoarders," which was just swell. We ended up with several boxes for Goodwill and my basement. Best of all, I finally found that cutting board.

NOT best of all? I also found, high atop the refrigerator, a half-eaten cherry pie from 2016 -- or at least the plant-like creation that half-eaten cherry pies spawn into after a half-decade atop one's fridge. It was up there next to a solidified honey bear and the owner's manual from the car I sold seven years ago.

Also: I apparently own FOUR jars of garlic powder. Every time I've ever said to myself, "Ooh, I need garlic powder," I most certainly did NOT. I am now ready and armed to fend off an army of vampires, or at least ensure I will never be kissed again. Also: what is "summer savory?" Does it perchance become MORE savory over multiple summers? I'm pretty sure I purchased it in 1992, when I graduated college and decided that adulting meant owning spices, and we all know how crucial summer savory is to most recipes.   

With my kitchen back to some semblance of order, my friend (thank you, Dianna!) left somewhere around 2 a.m. and I made it to bed a while later, eager for a full night's sleep.

I settled for three hours. At 6:07 a.m., for no reason whatsoever, my smoke detector went off. Not in a you-need-to-change-the-battery kinda way. This was most definitely a YOUR-HOUSE-IS-ON-FIRE-YOU-BETTER-RUN alarm. So imagine, if you will, stumbling half-naked into your living room in an incoherent haze of confusion and adrenaline, when suddenly a voice over your shoulder says, "Mr. Brown?"

I straight up screamed.

My smoke detector is hooked up to my security system. When something goes off, it alerts someone in a monitoring center in who-knows-where, and suddenly that person was talking to me through my alarm system's speakerphone. "Mr. Brown, do I need to send fire response?"

"Ummmmm," I said, still looking for a fire. "I have no idea. I don't think so. But I don't know. I'm asleep. Kinda. Hang on."

I ran around the house, ready to stop-drop-and-roll at a moment's notice. I even ran outside through the snow to check the perimeter. There was no fire.

"I think we're good," I told the spectral voice haunting my living room.

"I will cancel the alarm," she reponded. "I just need your password."

Seriously? I have umpteen passwords for umpteen devices, and you're expecting me to play memory games on three hours sleep, 43 seconds of consciousness, and a battery-powered nightmare machine on the ceiling trying its best to shatter my eardrums? 

I just started yelling potential passwords into the open air, hoping and praying I was picking the right one.

My fifth attempt proved accurate. That's how my weekend kicked off. Me, half-naked in my living room, playing Password with a disembodied voice while my house may or may not have been burning down.

I have no clue why the smoke detector issued a false alarm. The troubleshooting manual says false alarms are most often associated with (a) cooking misadventures, (b) steam from showers, or (c) "less common: bugs in and around your sensor." My cats looked suspicious, but none were wearing chef's hats or shower caps. So hooray, my house wasn't on fire. I just, umm, have bugs? Yay.

I'd like to tell you things got better from there. Sadly, it was just the opening act of the weekend from hell. More next week.

COLUMN: Whee Doggie

If there's a silver lining to be found in this pandemic, it's that isolation and quarantine can often be educational. Every day, I'm learning something new.

For instance, this week I learned there really IS such a thing as 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning. Until now, I honestly wasn't sure if Saturday HAD mornings.

I've spent the last 30 years moonlighting as a DJ at dance clubs and parties. On most weekends, I'm lucky to make it to bed before sunrise and wake up at the crack of noon. But thanks to the party-pooping pandemic, I'm not jockeying too many discs these days. As a result, I've found myself keeping the same sleep schedule on the weekends as I do during the week. Can't say I'm a fan.

What do people DO at 6 a.m. on the weekends other than sleep? I'm not sure I've figured it out. But this weekend, I saw something I'd never experienced before.

By and large, I am NOT a sports enthusiast. I was always the last guy picked in gym class, I've never found bowls to be particularly super, and I'm the only person I know whose college transcript contains a P.E. credit for "Independent Study Walking." But for reasons I can't begin to explain, I love NASCAR. I've tried to hate it, I swear. I'm fully aware that NASCAR culture stands in direct opposition to, well, everything else about me. But I've long come to terms with my secret shame. I like to watch cars go around in circles. Sue me.

Last weekend was the kickoff to the 2021 NASCAR season, so when I went to bed on Friday night, my TV was still tuned to Daytona coverage. But when I woke up at 6 a.m. Saturday, the sports channel wasn't showing action on the track. It was showing considerably less action -- on the water.

I had accidentally tuned into live coverage of a bass fishing tournament. And for two of the weirdest hours of my life, I watched it.

I've never understood the "sport" of fishing. I appreciate that getting out in nature can be zen and tranquil and relaxing. I sometimes enjoy nature, too. I've just never thought, "You know what would make this nature better? If I could kill some of it." (Except wasps. Nature would be lots better with more dead wasps. If ESPN aired a wasp-killing tournament every Saturday morning, I'd set my alarm to watch.)

Now, before the greater fishing community of the bi-state area gathers their pitchforks and demands my head on a fish taco, I know I'm being hypocritical. You can't take me seriously when I have a fridge full of tuna steaks and salmon patties. Fish are tasty, and if catching them is your bag, don't let me stop you. Fish away. Just don't get upset when I don't tag along.

Begrudgingly, I accept fishing as a hobby -- but waking up early on a Saturday morning to watch OTHERS fish on TV in real time? That's where I draw the line. And the rod. And the reel. 

My worry was that a televised bass-fishing tournament would be nothing but people floating around on boats in stoic silence. After watching the riveting action for two hours, I can now tell you with some authority: Yes, that's exactly what it was.

In the first hour, one guy caught one fish. They replayed it five times. They awarded it "Replay of the Day!" It was pretty much the ONLY play of the day. 

Yet despite the lack of any action whatsoever, it didn't stop the pair of tense, hush-voiced announcers from offering crucial insight. The coverage was peppered with commentary like, "He's got a talent for knowing what's on the end of his line," and "there's a hundred thousand cypress trees lining this river, and under one of 'em, there's gonna be a spawning female. And when you find her? WHEE DOGGIE."

Whee doggie, indeed. The competition was intense. At one point, a guy named Gary caught a fish that weighed 4 ounces less than the one caught by a guy named Bryan. But Gary was fishing along the edges of a cypress grove, while Bryan was center lake fishing off some reeds. This was a unique strategy because it had rained earlier followed by quick sunshine, which led Bryan to believe that spawning females would naturally migrate towards a more --

Annnd that's when I changed the channel because I realized I was thiiiis close to finding a tiny element of bass fishing interesting.

But the true excitement came during a commercial break, when I discovered that thankfully, there's still time to enter a draft for the 2021 bass fishing FANTASY LEAGUE. That's right, you can draft a fantasy team of your favorite real-life bassmasters and vicariously live the excitement of standing motionless in a boat for hours. No offense to the world of pro bass fishing, but I just assumed these tournaments were held on a Saturday so these guys could get back to their day jobs on Monday.

Here's where I got my REAL pandemic education of the day: Bryan ended up beating Gary and won the tournament. His total tourney haul of 79 lbs., 7 ounces netted him a take-home of $101,000. I can crack snide jokes about fishing all the live-long day, but no one's ever handed me $101,000 to DJ a party, even though I'm pretty sure I could rock a dancefloor better than Gary OR Bryan.

So here's to you, competitive bassmasters of the world, and any of you weirdos who wake up at 6 a.m. on a Saturday to watch them. Now if you'll excuse me, I have fish sticks to get in the oven. It's almost time for my fantasy league draft. I call dibs on Bryan. Whee doggie.

COLUMN: Live on Patrol

I've spent most of the winter stuck at home enjoying a fun menu of health issues, which has been just swell. And when you're spending most days in the same room on the same couch convinced you're dying, you start to go a little stir-crazy. I've spent months looking for an escape to take my mind off winter, the pandemic, and the fluctuating state of my colon.

I just never thought I'd be escaping vicariously to St. Paul, Minnesota every weekend.

I'm a sucker for Youtube. I usually try to avoid it, because here's what happens:

"Hmm, I'm feeling like a casserole for dinner. Maybe there's a good recipe on Youtube. I'll just log on and type: C-A-S-S... oh, whoa. A live clip of Cass Elliot? I should totally watch that..."

Three hours, the Cass Elliott clip has led to a 10-minute video about the song "Leaving on a Jet Plane," which in turn led to six videos on aviation disasters, which led to a guy documenting his flight from New Jersey to Singapore, which led to a 20-minute cycling travelogue of Singapore, which led to a video on mountain biking, which led to a video diary of a guy climbing Everest, and so on and so on.  

 Next thing you know, I've lost an entire evening with little gained except the knowledge that (a) mountain climbing is a ridiculous hobby, and (b) Bugis Street is the best place to go for authentic yu wan mee pok next time you're strutting around Singapore with a hankering for fish balls. Good to know.

But one of those endless Youtube rabbit-holes led me to this winter's saving grace: Sheriff Bob Fletcher and his buddy Pat.

Unless you're younger than six months old (and if you ARE, congrats on your reading skills,) you know there's been much controversy when it comes to our nation's police. Several high profile incidents of excessive police force have led to civil unrest, protests, and some much-needed discourse on the role of law enforcement in our country.

It also caused two of my guiltiest pleasures -- "Cops" and "Live P.D." -- to leave the airwaves. When you're having a bad day, sometimes there's nothing better than watching other people have WORSE days. Intellectually, I know the cancellations were merited - police reality shows do nothing to alleviate stereotypes, and even if some criminal's an idiot, they probably don't deserve their worst day to be nationally telecast. But darnit if those shows weren't entertaining as all get out, and I miss their presence on TV.

But then I discovered Bob and Pat. Bob Fletcher is the sheriff of Ramsey County, Minnesota -- otherwise known as St. Paul and some other towns less interesting than St. Paul. When Sheriff Bob saw cops getting a bad rap, he decided to take it upon himself to remedy the situation and educate the public about the routine lives and responsibilities of your average officer.

So every Friday night, Sheriff Bob goes "Live on Patrol" -- and takes us with. He streams his entire shift on Youtube, start to finish. Bob does the driving, and his buddy Pat (a data analyst and retired cop) rides shotgun and mans the camera. And by camera, I mean a cellphone. 

The result is pure Minnesota magic. If you're looking for a white-knuckle thrillride, keep surfing. Over the course of an entire shift, Bob and Pat seldom leave their squad car -- except for gas-station corn dogs and soda. 

Have you ever watched Brooklyn Nine-Nine? Imagine if Hitchcock & Scully had their own TV show and you'd be close. What bills itself as a police patrol turns into hours of aimless banter that runs the gamut from gossip to sports to casual discussions about serial killers and carjackings, occasionally interrupted when rolling up on people with a jovial shout of "What's goin' on?" When the duo DOES respond to an actual police call, it's mostly them sitting in their car serving as a backup unit narrating the action. Most of their nights are spent looking aimlessly for stolen vehicles -- I've yet to see them find one. 

I'm a "Live on Patrol" superfan, and I'm not the only one. People are tuning into Pat & Bob by the thousands. Viewers in St. Paul watch for the squad car heading their way, and they race outside with sodas and gifts when the much-loved duo pass by. Watching these big-hearted crime-fighters in the big city is akin to imagining Andy Griffith taking the reins of "Law & Order: SVU." Instead of ticketing jaywalkers, Bob and Pat are more prone to buying them pizza. A random person on the street will turn out to be Bob's wife's cousin's roommate's barber. I'm pretty sure Bob knows everyone in St. Paul.

At first, I thought Sheriff Bob was kind of a yokel -- until I did some research. He's been the sheriff of Ramsey County since 1996, and a quick internet search finds him passionately and professionally defending his department, the role of police, and his livestreams. When the county board voted to slash his police budget, he sued them. When he's not telling you about his favorite hockey game from 1986, he's advocating for COVID safety and giving tips to avoid car thieves. 

Oh, and just when I thought Sheriff Bob didn't do much actual police work, I tuned in the other night to see him sporting a huge shiner. Turns out the ONE night I skipped "Live on Patrol," Sheriff Bob had to break up a domestic scuffle and ended up taking an elbow to the eye.

I've now watched "Live on Patrol" so much I seriously think I could navigate around St. Paul despite having never been there. If we make it through this winter, it might just be a worthy roadtrip come spring. If you need a small-town hug from some big-city cops, search Youtube for "Live on Patrol" archives or join in every Friday night, when the weekly livestream fittingly starts at 9:11.

It might just fix your winter blues. The only problem? I never DID find that casserole recipe, and now I'm STARVING.

COLUMN: M.I.A.

Sooo... how were YOUR holidays?

If you've been paying attention, you may have noticed the recent absence of my serene face from the weekly pages of the paper.

I'd love to tell you I was on some kind of exotic vacation, welcoming in the new year from some sandy beach while vision-questing a greater understanding of the world.

No such luck.

As it turned out, I thought it'd be swell fun to spend the winter holidays having a nervous breakdown. In hindsight, I don't especially recommend it.

Maybe it wasn't actually a nervous breakdown. I didn't get a professional diagnosis. As it turns out, not getting a diagnosis has been a recurring theme of the past few months.

I'll never be a cover star for Men's Health magazine, unless they do a cover piece on what NOT to do. I avoid doctors like the plague, especially when there really IS a plague in the air. I know they say living a sedentary life on the couch is ill-advised, but I've always argued that it cuts your risk of sports-related injuries dramatically.

I've had an iffy relationship with my gastro-intestinal tract for years now, which I'd long shrugged off as some sort of undiagnosed Crohn's / IBS / Too Much Taco Bell syndrome. But just after Halloween, some scary symptoms popped up that couldn't be ignored.

Rather than immediately consult a medical professional, I instead attempted to self-diagnose on the internet, which of course informed me of the vast menu of fatal diseases I likely had. For much of the fall and early winter, I was perfectly convinced I was on my last legs. When you're already living in a world where you're isolated and quarantined, a good solid brush with mortality does little for the psyche.

I attempted everything possible to ignore my terminal self-diagnosis. I meticulously organized my music collection. I cleaned my house from top to bottom. I threw away anything embarassing that I wouldn't want someone to find when they eventually broke down my door to dispose of my body. In hindsight, it sounds utterly ridiculous. At the time, I was completely petrified, sleeping less than two hours a night and pacing around my house like a lunatic.

Finally, I gathered what steely resolve I could possibly muster and went to the doctor. He seemed a tad less fatalistic than myself, but still agreed that I needed a delightful variety pack of assorted 'oscopies to rule out the terrifying terrors the internet insisted I was dying of. So that's the main reason I've been MIA - I've spent the past few months having FAR too many people enjoying views of the inner workings of my colon.

My first colonoscopy was incomplete because, as it turns out, I've been graced with -- let me get the exact medical phrasing I received from the doctor -- "an extremely long and floppy colon." Faaaaantastic. Apparently my colon is three times the length of a normal human's. This is NOT the superpower I've dreamt of. 

That colonoscopy led to a CT scan and a "virtual" colonoscopy -- which is "virtually" as much fun as a real colonoscopy -- which led to ANOTHER colonoscopy thanks to some suspicious narrowing showing up. My diet for the past two months has consisted mostly of water, things that taste like water, and colonoscopy prep kits that I WISH tasted like water. If you've ever had what you consider to be a poopy birthday, stop exaggerating. I spent mine this year doing colonoscopy prep, and I know the true meaning of the phrase.

The end result - no pun intended - is still up for grabs. Whatever's going on with me, my colon doesn't appear to be the culprit. I was sent home with a wing, a prayer, and some probiotics that don't seem to be doing much. Oh, and the CT scan DID reveal that I'm the expectant father of a bouncing baby kidney stone the size of a small Volkswagen, so that's next on the to-do list, I reckon.

All the while this has been going on, my mom's been having scary health issues as well. So between me, my mom, and the overall contents of the nightly news, it's been fairly easy to convince myself that life's a meaningless parade of pain and death -- a stellar mindset for someone whose usual passion is writing silly columns to make people smile.

I'm hoping one day I can look back on this and laugh it off as my Howard Hughes phase. When youre working from home, not seeing any other human beings for weeks on end, and think you're dying, things can get weird on the quick. I went almost two months without leaving the house. I stopped shaving. I basically stopped moving. But it's time I listened to Taylor Swift and shake it off.

I cracked some windows and got fresh air. I stepped outside. I stopped babbling to my cats. I reached out to friends I'd ghosted. I shaved MOST of my Unabomber beard (I couldn't resist currently wandering around my house with a 70s cop moustache because it makes me laugh every time I pass a mirror.) I'm sick and tired of acting sick and tired.

So who knows what the future holds. 2020 almost beat me -- but it didn't, and I'll take that victory for now. Six months ago, I was rolling my eyes every time I saw someone on social media talk about loneliness and being unable to survive a lockdown. Trust me, I get it now. I've spent months in a SUPER dark place, and it's high time to feel the light again. It's a new dawn, it's a new day, and for right now, I'm feeling good. I hope you are, too.