Deadsplinter Up! All Night: Brothers

10/11/22 Loveshaq 21

My brother is coming from the islands today for a short visit.  Hope he doesn’t freeze his ass off with our current weather situation.

He is much older than me & legend has it that I thought he was my dad when I was little since my dad left for Vietnam shortly after I was born.

When I got older I thought he could do no wrong, he taught me about music, taught me about the ocean, took me hiking, bought me beer & weed.  I was probably the only person in my high school reading Carlos Castaneda because of him (maybe Lemmy was too?) What more could you ask for…

Now that we are much older & he has become a grumpy old man, I usually just hear from my sisters asking “What’s Up With Your Brother?”

I almost lost him to kidney cancer & then to Leptospirosis. So, I’m just going to have fun until Brother John is gone…

Have a good night & weekend. I’ll probably be MIA for much of the rest of the week unless he is super jet lagged.

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21 Comments

  1. Hope you have a wonderful visit, Loveshaq. We all (I think) become grumpy, because we are just so very much over all the idiocies.

    To My Brother by Swim Deep

     

    • I find that, to my horror, I’m turning into my mother more and more with each passing day. She lived by the principle, “What a stupid thing to [do/say/believe].” My father, who I started out replicating, found humor in almost anything and was a very sociable and chatty guy and was always more than willing to engage in chats, no matter how unhinged his conversation partner (like me) might become. That’s what I used to be like and how I’ve accumulated this vast mental storehouse of all kinds of trivia. No más.

  3. huh…..this turned up in my recs today

    the duan makes me thinks this one of those turned up for a reason things….what reason…fuck if i know…but i go with the flow

    enjoy your bro time mate

  7. Have fun Shaq brothers. A classic for you

    The Mighty Diamonds – Brother Man

     

    And my favorite  Jamaican/Polish collaboration

    Twinkle Brothers with Trebuni-Tutki  – You’re So Cold

     

  8. Not to be a Debbie Downer and probably TMI but my oldest brother died earlier this year. On Father’s Day, no less. A sudden heart attack, no warning, no symptoms, clean bill of health from his doctor from his physical just a month previous.

    He was 11 years older than me and my father died young (I was 17) so he literally became our father figure and we couldn’t have asked for a better one. A calming presence and a good referee when I went through my belated college-era rebellion stage. Here’s a good story. When I decided to diverge from my college path and was negotiating an academic temporary move over to Germany (like a Junior Year+ Abroad, plenty of people do that, but mine was a little more independently crafted) my mother was against it. I was being heavily subsidized by my very difficult to get into university and she didn’t think I should jeopardize my place. I lashed out at her and said something along the lines of “Because I don’t want to live in this shitty country [it was the Reagan 80s] and the sooner I move off to Germany the quicker I can establish myself.” My mother’s response: “That’s what Hitler said when he left Austria and it didn’t end well.”

    Anyway, I’m just feeling in a chatty mood. My brother was an arch baby boomer and as such would have been fodder for the Vietnam War. He never went to college so he was floating around single and working at 18. Fortunately he kept drawing high numbers in the draft lottery so he never went. He was no hippie and I’m sure he would have gone, no complaints. He was the first person to introduce me to the concept of music you could buy and play whenever you wanted. He belonged to Columbia Record House/8-track division. I can’t believe I still remember this 50+ years later. Here’s the song he played for me:

    David Cassidy. What a tragedy. Like father, like son.

    • Thank you. He was, and an excellent father and grandfather. And coworker and employee. He worked for a small engineering firm and the day of his funeral the company closed its doors and every single employee showed up, most with their spouses. That made for a long day of post-funeral chit chat.

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