Some thoughts on my brother

It’s been two weeks since I lost my brother. And I’m still sad. A little less sad than I was a week ago but sad nonetheless. As I suppose you do when you lose a brother, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I’ve been thinking about our relationship, his life, our family, this confounding universe we live in…and I’ve been thinking about how I wish for him to be remembered. It is difficult, if not impossible, to paint an accurate picture of a person’s life and attempting to do so will inevitably leave distortions that say as much about the person painting the picture as the subject. This is especially true for a person as unique as Scott. But nonetheless I’ve had this nagging desire the past few days to share with everyone my perspective on his life, to help others see what made him so special, and perhaps my perspective combined with others’ can paint a fuller picture of his life.

Because Scott was nine years older, we didn’t have the typical sibling relationship. The fights and rivalries common to brothers didn’t exist for us and at times he seemed as much a parent as a brother. Along with my oldest brother, Kirk, he babysat me and he drove me places. Scott taught me how to swim and he taught me how to ride a bike, and he taught me my first chords on the guitar. (A, E, and D for anyone wondering.) He often offered the emotional support of a parent too. When I was in the 2^nd grade I remember being distraught over our family’s upcoming move from Dayton to Cincinnati and how he tried to cheer me up by convincing me how much I’d like my new school and our new house and how I’d meet so many new friends (even though in retrospect he was probably more heartbroken and anxious about the move than I was.)

As I got older Scott became my barometer for what was cool and what wasn’t. He taught me that Revolver is in fact the best Beatles album and that the Replacements and the Minutemen are much cooler than Bon Jovi and Motley Crue. My adoration for my big brother ended up shaping my sensibilities, instilling in me a preference for the offbeat and weird over the normal. And he was a hell of a basketball player. One of my proudest moments as a little brother was during a pickup game of basketball during my 9^th grade year when the star player on our high school team had to guard Scott because nobody else could stop him that day. In short, I idolized the guy and thought he was the coolest person on the planet.

My brother also suffered from mental illness. This is a fact that gets skirted around in his obituaries and eulogies and family remembrances but it’s a fact you need to understand to understand his life. In his twenties Scott began to change. At first his personality became much more withdrawn and depressive. And he began to abuse drugs and alcohol. At the time my family blamed his substance abuse for his personality change (and some probably still do) but I’m convinced now the drugs and alcohol were less a cause of his problems than a symptom, that he was self-medicating to handle the demons taking over his brain.  

Around the time I headed to college Scott’s personality changed even more drastically. I’ll never forget visiting him one weekend home from school. As I approached his house I heard a loud conversation inside. When he opened the door to greet me I was confused because I didn’t see anyone else in his living room. “Who’s in there?” I asked. “Nobody,” he said. “But who were you just talking to?” The awkward and embarassed look on his face as he ignored my question was all I needed to know and the realization washed over me. He had been talking to himself.

Gradually he developed a strange manner of speaking, higher in pitch than before and inappropriately loud at times. (This voice is hard to describe in words but if you knew Scott you know exactly what I’m talking about.) He began talking to himself even more, obsessing over strange things, wearing odd clothes. Then in the summer of 1994, left alone while the rest of our family was away for the July 4 holiday, Scott suffered what was later described by his doctors as a psychotic break. I won’t go into the details but Scott was hospitalized afterwards and it was at this time he was diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder.

Scott would never be the same person he was before his mental illness took over. Once a fantastic basketball player he now could barely make it up and down the court. Once an accomplished drummer he stopped playing altogether and sold his drumset. Holding a normal conversation with him became difficult. Those of us who knew him well quickly learned his curcuitous ways of talking, realized he often spoke metaphorically rather than literally, and could communicate with him in his beautifully unique way. But for many, especially those just meeting him, making a human connection through conversation became near impossible.

Scott’s mental illness would make the remaining 25 years of his life extremely difficult. Developing close relationships was hard and he spent much of his time alone. Things like paying bills and keeping his appartment clean were difficult as well, and obtaining anything more than a menial job became impossible, despite his holding a college degree. The vicious cycle of alcoholism also became worse in these years, leading to a number of health problems that ultimately killed him.

In some ways I feel like we buried two people last week, the person Scott was in his first 25-30 years and the person he was in the final 25-30. It’s easy to look back on his life and celebrate who he was when he was young and ignore the person he became, but doing so does a disservice to his life. The person he became in the last half of his life was just as lovable, just as fun, and just as good a brother as he ever was. It was just harder to notice it through the veil of his mental illness.

In many ways Scott offered blessings in his later years he never would have been able to offer before. Always a kind soul, Scott became even more sensitive and gentle in his later years, a quality that made him a fantastic uncle to my kids, and the off-the-wall tangents he’d frequently go on would usually contain keen insights, both hilarious and profound. My favorite part of Christmas each year was seeing what presents Scott gave everyone. His gifts were often bizarre, like when he gave me a tub of homemade moisturizing lotion or when he gave my mom a DVD of the movie Drumline, but his gifts were always so thoughtful and reflected his desire to give you something you’d really appreciate. The Scott of his later years was the most unique person I’ve ever known, a true one-of-a-kind, and so much fun to be around.

The unfairness of the hand Scott was dealt compared to the one I was dealt is something I’ve dwelt on frequently over the years and at times it has haunted me. Why did the person who brought me so much happiness and shaped my life in innumerable ways have to live such an unhappy life and face so many hardships? Why did someone with such a good heart have so much trouble navigating the challenges of this cruel world? Why have I, the beneficiary of so many of Scott’s gifts, had such an easier time with life? I suppose these questions will continue to haunt me from time to time and I suppose there are no good answers. But for now I take some comfort in knowing his suffering is over and my memories of him will be a source of joy for as long as I live.

May is the cruelest month.

The end of the school year has always been a universal source of joy for children. The last day of school is one of those rites of childhood, an unparalleled cause for celebration and has been the subject of school yard chants, Alice Cooper songs, and 90s stoner comedies set in the 70s. For me, my childhood was no different. From some time shortly after Easter I would begin counting down the days till school was out. The entire month of May was one big anticipatory celebration of the arrival of summer and freedom from the tyranny of school. School parties, field days, and relaxed dress codes filled the last days of school as the once rigid academic environment of school gave way to a free-for-all, where teachers ran out the clock and let us kids do as we please while they finished their end-of-term grading.

As an adult these joys associated with the end of the school year are nothing but a memory. In fact, for me the entire month of May has evolved from a source of anticipatory excitement into a cause of overwhelming dread. Alice Cooper’s anthem to the beginning of summer doesn’t come close to matching my feelings now; a dark Joni Mitchell ballad would probably be more appropriate, or perhaps a funeral dirge.

Happy Birthday, Michael

Today would have been Michael Jackson’s 60^th birthday. The third and final member of the 80s Pop Trinity to be born in the summer of 1958 (Madonna was born just a couple weeks earlier and Prince in June of that year), Michael remains a commercial and cultural force almost a decade after his tragic 2009 death. His music continues to sell, both to aging fans who fell in love with his music decades ago and to a new generation who missed him the first time around, and of course his personal life remains the subject of morbid fascination.

The details of Michael’s life have been well chronicled and range from the heartbreaking, to the horrifying, to the downright bizarre, and they’ve always served to obscure just how great a musician and performer he was. Indeed, it is practically impossible now to separate Michael’s art from his personal life, but there was a time when you could. Way back in 1983 as the Thriller album dominated the charts, Michael Jackson was on top of the world. It’s hard to go back in time and remember experiencing Michael Jackson before the pedophilia accusations, before the plastic surgeries, before the stories of abuse at the hands of his father, the Berlin baby dangling incident, Neverland, Bubbles, or Lisa Marie. But in 1983 none of these details were known. He was simply the greatest pop star in the world and the biggest cultural phenomenon since the Beatles.

J.R. Smith and the Joy of Rooting for Knuckleheads, Flakes, and Headcases

Last Thursday LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers were seconds away from securing a one-game lead over the mighty Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals. LeBron, appearing in his 8^th straight NBA finals, had placed his team on his back that night, and against improbable odds, overcame a hostile crowd, some questionable officiating, and Golden States’ star-studded lineup by turning in one of the all-time great playoff performances. (He would finish the game with 51 points on 59.4% shooting, with 8 rebounds and 8 assists.) George Hill stood on the free throw line for the Cavs, having just sunk the first of two free throws to tie the game at 107 with just over 4 seconds on the clock.

Unless you’ve spent the last few days locked against your will in the basement of a deranged psychopath, you know what happened next. Hill’s second free throw attempt missed, and Cavs guard J.R. Smith, despite unfavorable rebounding positioning, managed to come up with the ball. It was at this point that J.R. Smith forever secured his ignominious place alongside Chris Webber, Bill Buckner, and Fred Merkle on the list of infamous sports blunders. Instead of calling a timeout or shooting the ball or placing the ball in LeBron’s hands, J.R. dribbled the ball out to the backcourt as if running out the clock. LeBron, clearly as puzzled as everyone else at his teammate’s actions, screamed at him to pass the ball (and in the process gave birth to a slew of Twitter memes), but by the time J.R. had realized what he’d done it was too late. He whipped a pass to a teammate in the corner for a quick shot but time expired. The game was going to overtime and the Cavs had squandered a chance to steal a game on the road against one of the best teams in NBA history, all because J.R. Smith mistakenly thought his team was winning when the game was actually tied. The clearly gassed and demoralized Cavs were no match for the defending champs in overtime, ultimately losing the game by ten.

The Five Best Middle-Aged Albums of All Time

Rock n’ roll is a young person’s game. As much as us middle-aged folk would hate to admit it, most rock artists (and pop and hip hop artists as well) peak in their late 20s. Curiously, musicians seem to share a similar aging pattern with professional athletes. They typically come on the scene in their early 20s, enjoy a five-to-ten-year peak in their late 20s and early 30s, and if they’re lucky, will stick around well past their prime, but never achieving the same greatness they did in their younger years.

Take any musical artist and you can identify a short period of time that represents that artist’s commercial and artistic peak, and almost invariably these peak years take place when the artist is young. None of the Beatles had reached their 30th birthday when they dissolved the band in 1970. The Stones’ four-album stretch from 1968’s Beggar’s Banquet to 1972’s Exile on Main St. is universally acknowledged as their peak, and neither Keith nor Mick had turned 30 by the time that stretch had come to an end. Michael Jackson would never capture the same magic he did with his first three albums, Off the Wall, Thriller, and Bad, and the last of these was released two days after his 29th birthday.

Revisiting Tom Haverford in a post-#MeToo World

My son and I recently started binge-watching Parks and Recreation. We like watching tv together at night once his little sister goes to bed, and after making our way through the entire series of The Office we naturally decided to move on to its sister show.¹

Originally conceived as a spin off of The Office² but eventually premiering as its own show, Parks and Recreation shares the same mockumentary style, cringe-inducing humor, and heart as its predecessor. When it premiered on NBC in 2009, Parks and Recreation received a cool reception from fans and critics, but eventually found its voice by the second season, going on to collect multiple awards and accolades and a devoted following during its seven seasons on the air.

The Karmic Justice of Greta Van Fleet

If you’re in your forties there’s a very good chance you like rock music. And if you like rock music there’s a very good chance somebody has tipped you off to the existence of Greta Van Fleet, a group of Michigan kids in their early 20s and late teens who play a brand of guitar-based hard rock that has seemingly disappeared over the past decades. Actually, to be more specific, they play a brand of rock that hasn’t existed since September 25, 1980, the day John Bonham choked to death on his own vomit causing Led Zeppelin to break up.

You see, Greta Van Fleet sound exactly like Led Zeppelin. From Robert Plant’s banshee wails to John Bonham and John Paul Jones’ thunderous rhythm section, to Jimmy Page’s blues riffs, Greta Van Fleet has all the makings of a really good Zeppelin tribute band. They sound just like them, all the more remarkable considering the members of Greta Van Fleet were born almost 20 years after Zeppelin broke up and have grown up in a world in which hard rock is decidedly passé. A group of young millennials, half of whom are too young to buy beer, playing songs that sound like previously unreleased outtakes from Houses of the Holy is a recipe guaranteed to appeal to aging dads such as myself. After all, if you love Led Zeppelin (and let’s be honest, who my age doesn’t?¹) you should really like Greta Van Fleet too, right?

Some thoughts on the most unfairly maligned song of the past 30 years

If there’s one thing people love in these early decades of the 21^st century it’s a good list. Spend any time on social media and you’re bound to see links to articles purporting to list and rank all manner of things, from the best movies (Number 4 will surprise you!), to defunct chain restaurants (I bet you forgot all about number 7!), to child actors who look completely different now (You won’t believe what number 12 looks like now!). But of all these lists there’s one that repeatedly catches my eye, and that’s the list of the worst songs of all time.

Each list of the worst songs is a little different but they all share similarities. You’re pretty much guaranteed to see “We Built This City,” and “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” and that one dreadful song by 4 Non Blondes on every list. And any list of the worst songs of all time of course wouldn’t be complete without “Ice Ice Baby,” the 1990 hit from rapper Vanilla Ice.

I have seen the future of rock…and it don’t look so good.

Rock is dead. Those words have been uttered so many times over the years to the point that they’re now a cliché, but never in rock’s history is the genre’s death as imminent as it is now. Over the past decade the entire genre of guitar-based rock has practically faded away as a commercially viable art form, taking a backseat to hip hop, electronic music, and pop. From the mid-1950s into the early 21^st century rock reigned supreme in America as the dominant form of pop music, but I’m afraid we’ve seen this reign come to an end.

Initially nobody would have envisioned rock ‘n’ roll lasting this long. During its early heyday, when Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others tapped right into the rebelliousness and libidinous energies of American teens with their new brand of music, most assumed rock would be a passing fad. This seemed especially so in the late 50s when a series of events seemed to spell its death.

Would you like fries with that moral leadership?

Over the past weekend Yeti, purveyors of overpriced coolers and stainless steel insulated cups, became the latest corporate entity to cut ties with the NRA. Since February’s Parkland shooting we’ve seen banks, airlines, sporting goods stores, car rental companies, and even a hearing aid manufacturer, bow to public pressure and wash their hands of the NRA.

These moves have come with a price. Days after Delta announced it would no longer be giving discounts to NRA members, Georgia Lt. Governor Casey Cagle tweeted this threat: