This column originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune December 12, 2017 What’s on your agenda today?” my wife asked, clutching her lengthy list of to-do items that, daily, seems to grow exponentially as the Christmas holiday approaches. The fact that she was waving the list directly within my line of vision was a direct hint…
This column originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune Dec. 5, 2017 Christmas decorations, I’ve concluded, are like politicians: At first full of promise, but, if left too long unsupervised, prone to false hopes, hidden flaws and numerous instances of substandard performance. Over the years, I’ve continually wondered how a string of outdoor lights, working perfectly when…
This column originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune November 28, 2017 As the last light of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend began to fade, I found myself in my garage, contemplating a task I had been neglecting for years. I’d completed the required checklist that accompanies my every Thanksgiving: Gorge self on turkey, shake head in…
This article originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune November 21, 2017. Please visit and subscribe to A Comedian Crashes Your Pad on YouTube or Vimeo From any west facing window in my boyhood home, it was impossible not to see it: A sprawling box elder, its branches towering over the other trees, not only in my…
This column originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune November 14, 2017 Once again, it appears one of MY great ideas has been brought to fruition — by somebody who, unlike me, knows how to create an app. Was it nine years ago, maybe 10, that I was aimlessly driving around a congested mall parking lot, thinking how…
This article originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune November 7, 2017 The Twitterverse, indeed the entire online community, was abuzz last week with news that a still unidentified rogue Twitter employee, on his or her last day of employment at the social networking giant, briefly shut down President Donald Trump’s account. For 11 minutes, an eternity for Trump’s 41 million…
This column originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune Oct 31, 2017 The Schwem family has often entertained the idea of hosting a foreign exchange student for a semester or, if the student can tolerate us, an entire year. That could prove difficult given the attitude foreigners have toward our country’s residents right now. “Mama, Papa,…
Recently I decided to refocus on learning a skill I had abandoned in frustration when I was approximately 11. Blowing bubbles. With gum, not soap. I mastered the latter when I was four. Why, you ask, at the age of 55, am I suddenly obsessed with inserting wads of a cavity-inducing substance into my…
Recently I returned to my college alma mater for homecoming weekend, a chance to watch football, rekindle old friendships and, as is my passion, visit with my school’s current crop of students so I have some idea of what our nation’s highest bastions of academia are churning out. (HINT: Lots of tattoos). After my Northwestern…
Four years ago, I became intrigued with, and wrote about, Mars One, a space exploration project that seeks to establish a permanent human settlement on the Red Planet. Anyone can apply to be an astronaut, providing they are OK with never returning to Earth. That’s right — the Mars One journey is a one-way ticket.…