Monday, March 17, 2008


I am SO not a morning person.

The only thing that allows me to function as a somewhat productive member of society is the morning ritual. Set the brain to autopilot and hopefully wake up at work. Complete all steps efficiently and I make it to work on time. If anything louses up, I'm late. I hate being late. Almost as much as my boss hates me being late.

Everyday's the same. Crawl out of bed. Plop down in computer chair. Suck some coffee and Google up the morning headlines. (I suppose, as a newspaper employee and all, that I should tell you how I get all of the day's pertinent info from my morning paper. Truth be told, my neighbor steals my paper every day before I awaken. I'm pretty sure she uses it to line her vast multitudes of birdcages. I'd say something, but I'd hate to jeopardize our market reach to the much- coveted cockatiel demographic.)

Eventually I drag myself into the shower and throw on some clothes (hopefully in that order.) Grab a coat. Walk to car. Unlock car...

And that's where I froze up last Friday. After doing the hand-in-pocket shimmy for comically too long, I finally realized that I had left my car keys inside. So I trot back up to the apartment... but they're not there. In fact, they're nowhere to be seen whatsoever.

When something is lost, a new kind of ritual takes over that defies all senses of logic and reason. This usually involves two things:

(1) Looking in inane places. Hmm, did I set them inside the microwave? No. Okay, hmm, maybe they fell into the toilet. Nope, not there either. How about this drawer I haven't opened since the mid-1990's?

(2) Checking, re-checking, and re-re-checking my pants pocket, as though my first four searches somehow weren't thorough enough. This invariably ends in me emptying all of my pockets onto the kitchen counter to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that wee key faeries didn't sneak them into my pocket while I wasn't looking.

By this time, I'm in full panic mode and breaking a sweat. Five minutes later, I give up. My car key has obviously somehow been sucked from my apartment in some kind of anti-matter vortex. No choice but to call a cab.

I say "A" cab because it seems that, in the Quad Cities, there is only one. Seriously, I think I've had to use a taxi five times in my life, and every time, it's been the same dude driving. And whenever you need him, he's in Silvis, or Dewitt, or Djibouti.

Keys don't just get up and walk away. That's when I started looking at my cats with a harsh glare. They sure looked innocent. Maybe TOO innocent. I was just about to interrogate when my cab showed.

After a nice five minute lecture from left-field on the FDA's regulations of hot dogs (Why, cabbie guy? Why at 9 a.m.? I was ALREADY sick to my stomach!) and a $20 hole in my pocket (that's $.54 PER BLOCK,) I made it to work. As soon as I could, I called my dealership to find out what would happen if my key was, in fact, lost in the ether.

"No problem," said the parts dude. "I can order you up a new one. It runs about $150. And you'll need to get it programmed, that's another $50." $200? FOR A KEY???

"Well, yeah," he explained. "These electronic keys have some pretty serious technology."

Now, I own a remote control that runs my TV, stereo, X-Box, DVD player, and I'm pretty sure it can make you coffee if you ask nicely. It cost me $20. Serious technology, my fanny. That settled it, I needed to find my key. And the only way I could do it was with the help of those I call the SuperFriends.

"GREAT NEWS!" I exclaimed to friend Jason over the phone. "You've been selected to participate in the 1st Annual Shane Brown Celebrity Pro-Am Treasure Hunt!"

"Uh oh," came the reply.

"At great personal expense and sacrifice, I have hidden one slightly used key to my car. The first one who finds it shall be declared WINNER!"

He didn't buy it, but he still came over after work, as did my friend Linn. We tore the place up. We dared disturb the fragile and delicate ecosystem of the underside of my couch. The upshot of this was finding $42 in pocket change, but no key. We decided the last step would be to cut open the lining of the couch and learn what exactly comprised the bulbous tumor of debris sticking out of its back corner.

"Okay," I said, but I'd gotten so warm I first needed to lose the sweater I was wearing. I went to toss it into the hamper when a gleam of silver caught my eye. There, in the very bottom of my clothes hamper, was my elusive key. How it got there remains a mystery. I wasn't near the hamper the day before, nor had yesterday's pants made it that far yet.

It took a while to get the apartment back in shape -- and the Tumor O' Mystery remains embedded in my couch. Perhaps one day I'll open it like a time capsule and reminisce about the rogue French fry I spilled down a crack in the summer of '06. For now, though, I'm content just to drive to work without learning exactly what by-products comprise a hot dog. Sometimes ignorance IS bliss.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

COLUMN: Rock Band

I'm breaking my own vow this week, Quad Cities. I promised myself long ago that, no matter what, I would waste no more column space talking about the video game Guitar Hero. If you're a regular visitor to my niche of the paper, you'll know that my embarassing obsession with the game has worked its way its way into many of my past missives.

But let's face it -- my journalistic integrity, not to mention my true goal of using my column to woo eligible bachelorettes, would be best served with topics designed for, say, people over the age of 12. Besides, as much as I love playing Guitar Hero, the truth of the matter is that I kinda stink at it. Beating a song on Expert mode requires a brain obviously hard-wired differently than mine. So I gave up on Guitar Hero. Thankfully, Rock Band was there to take its place.

Rock Band is the competition to the Guitar Hero franchise, and it takes nerddom to a new level. In addition to the plastic guitars, Rock Band incorporates plastic drums and a plastic microphone, so you can create your own little fake band right in your living room. And one night, after discovering that I was no better at the Rock Band guitar than I was at Guitar Hero, I picked up the mic.

Here's the thing: I can't sing to save my life. When I try, the voice that somehow erupts from my larnyx is feeble, high-pitched, and goes against the very nature of testosterone. But what the hey -- it was a late night and I had no audience except for my cats, and they're pretty good about keeping secrets. So I gave it a shot. And I did it. Actually, I didn't just do it -- I kicked butt at it.

Thus began my newest obsession. Every night, after you and yours were safely asleep, I would be up and alone in my apartment, quietly warbling into a plastic microphone. Eventually, I had the guts to do it in front of my fellow Rock Band-obsessed friends. And despite tears of hysterical laughter, they gave me props at my ability to somehow score huge points. As of this writing, out of the millions of people playing the game, I am ranked the #132nd greatest vocalist in the world. It was time to go public.

Which is why I spent last Saturday at Rock Island's Gameology in their first ever Rock Band tournament. We needed four people to sign up, and we went in with a blistering powerhouse -- me on vocals, my friend Chris on guitar, Linn on bass -- and on drums? Some kid we met that day who agreed to play with us. I didn't even get his name. Like Spinal Tap, our band goes through drummers like water. We needed a band name to sign up, so we improvised: Angry Bob & the Sucktone.

As we waited our turn, we scoped out the competition. Strangely, every other entrant in the tourney was at least 5-10 years younger than us. I know -- hard to believe, right? But who's to say we're too old to rock? Tell that to Neil Young. Tell that to Ozzy. Heck, I'm pretty sure Keith Richards actually died ten years ago and no one's had the heart to tell him. And being old might have its advantages: half of these kids hadn't heard of bands like Molly Hatchet until they opened their copies of Rock Band. We might have this thing won.

That's when we saw them. Our newly-found arch-nemesis. A band whose name I can't even print in a family paper. But they were there to fake rock better than anyone else. They had outfits. Capes. Leather. They carried their little Rock Band guitars in real beat-up guitar cases. They looked like Whitesnake, if Whitesnake had been a fake band playing fake instruments. We were hosed.

As if that weren't bad enough, fate dealt us blow after blow. In the "random song" round, we were the only band to draw "Teenage Lobotomy" by the Ramones -- a fast song that wrecks your hands. Happily, we were also the only band to remember to pack analgesic ointment -- nothing encapsulates the essence of rock like a tube of Ben-Gay. It all came down to our final song -- and fate crushed us. "The Number of the Beast" by Iron Maiden. One of the hardest songs in the whole game. Note: if your singing already sounds high-pitched and embarassing, NEVER try an Iron Maiden song.

But we gave it our all. My friends clicked away on their plastic guitars. I reached for vocal notes no man should ever attempt. When it was done, we may not have been perfect, but it was enough for the other teams to break out into a round of applause regardless. I think we ended up in 4th place, which wasn't too bad for our embarassed troupe of geriatrics. There's another tourney at the end of the month, and we're already signed up. If you've got the chops to take on Angry Bob & the Sucktone, I encourage you to do the same.

Now if you'll excuse me, fake band practice starts soon.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

COLUMN: Consultant

The sun hurts my eyes as I raise my weary head from my pillow. I sit at the edge of my bed and wait for the fog to clear my sleep-addled brain. There was something I had to do today, but I can't put my finger on it. And why is there this textbook laying on my --

OMIGOD. I HAVE A FINAL TODAY. I OVERSLEPT. I FORGOT TO STUDY. I grab my keys, hop in my car, and zoom to class. I slam open the door and the whole room spins and looks. The professor glares at me disapprovingly. That's when I look down. I FORGOT TO PUT CLOTHES ON!

I know it's one of those stereotypical dreams the experts discuss, but I think I'm the only one who actually dreams it on a routine basis. So what's the I-forgot-to-study-and/or-wear-pants nightmare supposed to represent? Fear of failure? A lack of self-confidence? Extreme insecurity? Too many tacos before bed? Because I'm guilty of ALL those. And if I didn't have self-awareness of my own shortcomings, I might not have made it through this past week.

For the last seven days, we've had a consultant join us here at the paper. A fellow whose job it is to come in, evaluate our performance and our department, and then offer recommendations toward improvement. And my job, apparantly, was to turn completely neurotic about the whole affair.

Not that the guy put us under any undue pressure or anything. In fact, he was kinda chummy. No, I'm just an idiot and react poorly to the prospect of any type of judgement or criticism. He wasn't there to find the weakest link, but still, all it takes is the knowledge that some kind of Big Brother is watching for me to become unhinged.

In a way, it was exciting. This is a guy who's visited hundreds of newspapers around the world, and certainly can bring a thing or two to the table. We can -- and we did -- learn some pretty cool stuff from him. But at the same time, I've felt a strange uneasiness all week. Whether chummy or not, this guy WAS checking all of us out. What if he went into a meeting with top brass and went, "Gee, I dunno about that Shane guy. He kinda creeped me out. Your best track towards improving this paper would be firing THAT weirdo nerd"?

And then there's the surprisingly shallow and indignant part of me. The immature and irrationally proud part of my brain that wants to scream, "How DARE you come in here and try to tell ME how to do MY job, buddy? MY butt's been warming this chair for 13 years, but if you think YOU can do a better job, plop right on down and show me your magick, dude!" THIS is the part of my brain that probably requires professional help.

But in the end, it was a very harmless and productive learning experience -- apart from the mandatory final training session being scheduled at 8:00 a.m. on a Saturday, a time of day not seen by THIS earnest journalist since, oh, the mid-90's or so. But for all the awkwardness of the week, it really wasn't anywhere as bad as my brain had plotted out. In fact, we gained some new ideas that you might be seeing in these pages over the coming months. He offered some criticism, but -- despite this sentence shattering your image of me and bringing the social strata of the Quad Cities to its knees -- I'm not perfect.

This week DID raise an interesting question, though. How exactly DOES one become a professional consultant? I mean, I'm sure our guy came from an extensive background in the newspaper industry, and I'm sure our top brass knows all that, but we underlings were never told this guy's credentials. For all I know, he could be a plumber who one day had his arm halfway up a toilet and went, "Y'know, I've got some swell ideas for the newspaper business."

So maybe THAT'S my true calling. I could be a consultant. Imagine getting paid for walking into a strange place and telling people how to do their jobs. If you found yourself amid a bunch of employees you hate, YOU COULD TELL THEIR BOSS TO FIRE THEM. And before all heck breaks loose, *poof* you're on a plane to the next place who's hired you. All told, that's a pretty sweet gig. The power would be intoxicating. If only I was qualified to consult at anything. Lemme think... Hmmm...

I've got it. The one thing I'm a certified expert at. I hereby offer my consulting services to dance clubs across the globe. My job? To inform inebriated revelers when their dance skills are woefully lacking. Surely I've reached expert status at making fun of drunken morons. Too often a dance floor full of promise gets ruined by someone busting a VERY ill-conceived move. How many potential nightclub hook-ups have been wrecked by some prospective suitor failing to successfully pop, lock, or drop it? It needs not be a horror any longer, America. Just hire me to come in and stand there. At the first sign of a poorly executed breakdance, I step in and just go, "Dude, no. No, dude." And if anyone so much as tries to do the running man, they're banned for life.

Consultants are everywhere. Googling "consultant" brings up 304,000,000 hits. The music you hear on local radio was probably programmed by a consultant in Florida who thinks he knows best what the Quad Cities wants to hear. Your neighborhood was probably designed by a city planning consultant. There might be one showing up to YOUR job tomorrow. But if it goes anything like ours did, don't worry and keep an open mind. It might end up being a good thing. Just remember to wear clothes.


I hate change.

As nifty as progress can tend to be sometimes, there's overwhelming comfort to be found in the familiar. That's why my living room pretty much looks the same as the day I moved in. That's why my closets brim to the brink of structural failure with junk that I simply refuse to throw away. That's why, if I ruled the world, "Frasier" and "Friends" would be forced by law to remain on the air forever. Change is for the birds.

Unless, of course, the change comes with some sort of necessary and/or super awesome technological advancement. My old entertainment center, for instance, had loads o' sentimental charm -- until I got my hi-def widescreen installed, and that's the exact moment it lost its charm.

So change is bad... unless said change happens to be awesome, in which case I'll let it slide. I realize that it's a somewhat childish approach to life. I should be encouraging and accepting of change. But I'm okay with living in a routine if the routine is comfy. That's why each day I drive the same route to and from work. And each day, that route takes me past a big ol' heaping pile of change. I could close my eyes and pretend I don't see it, but driving blind could put the welfare of at least 2-5 freshmen in jeopardy.

I'm talking about my alma mater, Augustana College. Yes, from 1988 to 1992, Augie helped mold me into the person I am today. Were it not for those classes I took, I might not have this column with which to wax poetic on a weekly basis. And were it not for those classes I skipped, I might have the knowledge and fortitude to find something better to do with my life. Yes, I owe it all to those hallowed halls of learning.

Too bad, then, that I can barely recognize the place today. Augustana is the Michael Jackson of academics: the tunes are still pretty wicked, but the face is newer every year. Homecomings get weirder and weirder as we realize just how much the place has changed.

The dorms have internet. Some of them even have air conditioning. In my day, the internet was a new-fangled curiosity only found in the dungeons of the campus computer labs. And as for air conditioning? I remember my roommates and I being threatened by an irate clerk when we paid for $4 of gas in pennies, all for the luxury of driving around in an air-conditioned car for a couple of hours.

And what of Augie's historic Carlsson Hall? Well, drive down 7th Ave. and you can see for yourself. They've gutted the former dormitory and are remodeling the beast into classrooms. In its place, last year Augie opened Swanson Commons, an uber-dorm of modern living that's so nice, I frankly wouldn't mind living there now.

Plus there are Transitional Living Areas where the kids can play My First Apartment, a couple new science buildings, the rec center... it's a different world. Even the college center snack bar -- once home to flimsy tables hosting smoky-aired, marathon card games -- now has booths. BOOTHS, I TELL YOU! These kids have it so good these days.

Which is why, of course, the alumni are trying to stop it. I logged onto Myspace the other day to a frightening message: "SAVE THE AUGUSTANA QUAD!" I clicked to find a letter-writing campaign in its infancy. Augie has plans to erect another new building -- a student center -- and this warning stated that they were going to stick it square in the middle of the school's park-like outdoor quad.

I called one of my fellow dorm-dwellers from back in the day: a kid named Kirby Winn, who now happens to be Augustana's Director of Public Relations. Kirby informed me that yes, Augie IS building a new student center with an optimistic 2010 completion date. But NO, it's not going smack in the middle of the quad. After consulting with the architectural and campus planning firm of Sasaki Associates, they've decided to build into the hillside southwest of Andreen Hall.

Kirby says he envisions the new student center to be a "sixteen-hour-a-day hang-out space," and I'm down with that. Best of all, it will probably mean a new home for WAUG. Did you even know that Augie had a student radio station? Probably not -- unless you live in the dorms, the only way to pick it up is to be within a block of campus, and it probably wouldn't hurt to cover your whole car in tinfoil beforehand. But the little-station-that-could has had a huge impact in regional radio. Ever listen to Captain Kirk on Q106? Jeff James on Star 93.5? How about Scott Steele, morning guy on Cedar Rapids' top-rated KHAK? They all got their start on WAUG -- and for a short, sweet time from 1990-1992, I was their boss. WAUG currently broadcasts out of a studio roughly the size of my bathroom, and a new student center means an upgrade to something at least the size of a bathroom-and-a-half.

So, sorry Myspace. I'm all for causes, but you guys have this one wrong. Yes, I'm sure a tree or two will lay down its life for the sake of progress, but this one's worth it. If it wasn't for change, Augie would still be one building teaching to Swedish immigrants. The students at Augie need a new hang-out. WAUG needs a new home. This is one change you won't hear me complaining about.