Two Brothers, One Dad (Dead)

The emotional experience of truth is also the emotional experience of youth: It's the satisfaction of connections growing between disparate things, and the excitement of discovering reality, of seeing the world click into place right in front of you. Telling the truth about a person or situation is the easiest thing in the world--if you see what's in front of you. But, seeing what's in front of you is one of the very hardest things to do, and that's why another perspective is always needed. We welcome our longtime friend, and one of the first listeners of this very podcast, onto the show. As Nabokov once wrote: Speak, memory.

This was on one Krazy Bill's very favorite movies, and we have to give it to him: The man had taste. A meditation of how art imitates life imitating art, the film is painfully self-aware, almost masochistic. As far as swan songs go, we're not aware of another movie that's done it better.

Sometimes you need a good cry. For some of us, we might put on Old Yeller or read the last chapter of Charlotte's Web. Our dad, Krazy Bill, put on Blade Runner. "All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die." Join us, you biological machine, for a meditation on your own existence.

Sometimes there's a movie that just does it for you. For Krazy Bill, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd's rock and roll fantasy was that film. Rewatching it for the umpteenth time, we finally understand why this movie loomed so large in our dad's imagination.

If you're a jerk most of your life and then somehow find it in your heart to be nice to two cute kids (spontaneously nicknamed "the cutie-pie brothers" by a number of separate people), where does that leave your balance sheet? And, for the final accounting, who deigns to run the numbers? When working in the underwater world of memory, every addition is still lacking something, and every division leaves a trace. All we can say is that for the two brothers, he was Jim. Just Jim.

Some people suffer quietly, and some, not so quietly. Our grandma complained about everything she did for us. Or so we thought. Only as adults do we see that she didn't even mention 90 percent of what she gave. Love, stability, and the threat of "a good lickin'" kept us in line, and keep her in our hearts.

The two brothers talk about their uncle, a guy who was funny and charming most of the time, moody sometimes, and actively a jerk other times. But our biggest question is why such a talented guy could never accept (actively sabotaged?) the opportunities that came his way.

Approaching middle age is already hard, but imagine if you were starting to slowly, but irreversibly, go blind. The two brothers talk about their late grandfather, who lived in darkness but shone a light on those around him, especially his grandchildren.

Can we resolve the past? Probably not. Resolution implies an ending, which implies a beginning, whereas in reality there are just causes that beget causes and nothing really ends except an individual life. Join us as we close the book on Krazy Bill; what we've learned about him, ourselves, and memory itself.

These podcasts can only hint at the man that was, but we did the best we could. What's more, in the depths of the loneliest parts of the pandemic, these two brothers got to spend more time with each other, and, in a strange way, with their dad. You know he won't live, but then again, who does?

Thanks for joining us.

When does rebellion become self-destruction? And, if you're living with anarchists, what exactly are you rebelling against? We talk to one of KB's favorite people, his daughter-in-law, about what a kind, supportive, and frustrating man he was.