On a happier note. Today is my brother’s birthday! If you wish to know his age, you’ll have to ask him, all I will admit to is being older than him. He is also more fortunate in sharing his birthday with Beat Poet and icon of numerous poseurs, Jack Kerouac; Jazz singer and Milwaukee celebrity Al Jarreau (I know he’ll love that); the Beat Poet and Playwright I always liked in college better, Edward Albee; and finally Liza Minnelli, insert your own joke there.
Hopefully his wife Linda and the kids will have something fun planned for him tonight or later on. I doubt it will be feasible this weekend since the Chicago area will be a mess for St. Patrick’s Day on Saturday. There’s a parade and probably as it is in other cities, it’s an excuse for drinking nasty green beer followed with green vomit and other fluids, or solids.
Since he’s never told me his favorite birthdays, I will write about one I remembered fondly in 1979. We had just moved to our new house in Springfield, IL. We would finally be getting our own bedrooms! No more sharing! I had won the coin flip to have the blue bedroom that belonged to the previous residents’ son. Brian didn’t seem terribly busted up about it. He got the top half of the bunk bed to make a cavern-like set up in the smaller room he took with a nice view of the backyard. Meanwhile, Mom had the foresight to buy him presents while Dad was working his new job, I was only 10 (hence, no money) and everyone was pre-occupied with getting settled after the move from Champaign. She gave me the choice of either saying the AM/FM alarm-clock radio was from me or the Star Wars Action Figure carrying case. Did she have to ask a 10-year-old Star Wars geek? The parents threw in a couple more figures to sweeten the deal for Brian but I won’t frighten you by showing you how well I remembered which ones, actually I can only name one with absolute certainty. Maybe Brian knows. Right now, his son Nick has tons of questions about Star Wars that his nerdy uncle can answer as Brian’s interest waned by the time he went to high school.
If you catch online or know his e-mail, drop him a line and tell him best wishes.