Up until college, I slept like a baby at night. Since then, I haven't been such a good sleeper. Often, I find myself lying in bed for hours, thoughts whirling through my mind. Recapping the day, planning the next day, or lately, trying to solve the mysteries of the universe.
I've come to realize that while I contain an unusual library of useless trivia in my brain, there's more about this world that I don't understand than I do. And not everything is particularly high-brow, either. For instance, it strikes me as disappointing that, at age 37, I have very little comprehension of how electricity works. Maybe I learned it in high school, but it's been erased from my memory.
I just don't understand:
- How electricity works
- Why the Milwaukee flag is unchanged from the '50s
- Why City Hall looks like a coffin inside
- How a curve ball breaks
- Why one-way streets Downtown matter/don't matter
- How to play craps
- Why no one will shop at the Grand Avenue mall
- How to solve one side of a Rubik's cube
- Why Ryan Braun didn't just tell the Brewers what medicine he was taking
- Why the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire matter that much to a national election
- Why the Journal Sentinel thinks a pay wall will work
- How people become truly bilingual
- How to do that loud whistle with two fingers in the mouth
- How to tie a full Windsor knot
- Why no one really knows where the name "Milwaukee" came from
- How it's January already and I haven't started my snowblower
- When the "Laverne and Shirley" reference will go away
- Why Summerfest is exactly 11 days long
- Why some sort of rail system doesn't get built Downtown
- Why I haven't visited any of Milwaukee's 12 sister cities
- Why I haven't seen "Mr. 3000"
Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.
Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.
Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.
