I've already talked about Alan's love for The Lion King. In addition to The Circle of Life, there is one other song that stands out -- The Lion Sleeps Tonight.
Timon and Pumbaa's version notwithstanding, it is actually the Tokens' version that we listened to the most. One day when Mom and Dad lived in DeForest, we were driving somewhere, and Alan played this song over the car stereo on his phone.
We started to sing along, and this became a little tradition of ours. On several road trips afterward, we would come back to this song. It's not the easiest song to sing -- remember Alan's lack of a good falsetto. However, I can sing that high, and even got to the point where I could sing the soprano licks -- mind you, not well, but I can sing them.
When our cousin Edward visited us in the house this summer, he brought his own versions of the song. He apparently listened to them in the lab. On the way to the state fair in Des Moines, he played the Tokens version, the French language version, and even a version of Mbube, the song that it was based on. This sing-along was followed by a day of eating food on a stick (butter on a stick and bacon-wrapped pork ribs on a stick being highlights) and going on carnival rides. I had no idea it would be the last one.
What do you do with "our things" when there is no "us" any more? Alan and I had so many little traditions, inside jokes, topics of interest that the two of us would talk to only each other about. Isabelle told me that when her father died, she felt like there was a part of her that disappeared, the part that only existed with him. It took her a long time to realize that part of her was still there. I hope I find that part of me some day.
I hope that some day soon, TBT is no longer a thing. For now, I'll use it as an excuse to think about the early years.
Like many little kids, Alan had videos he would watch over and over and over again. As I mentioned earlier, he had vague memories of these as an adult, but it left the rest of us with a more lasting impression.
The earliest of these were the Wee Sing videos. The first, Wee Sing Together, featured a birthday girl name Sally, two living stuffed animals, and her little brother and friends. This is how Alan learned his address, and it helped him learn his alphabet. My friend Phil would come over and yell, "Hummmmbearrrrr!", one of the characters' names. The video promised, "the more we sing together, the happier we'll be."
The next video, Wee Sing Train, followed a magic train where the engine, Chug-Along and the caboose, Cubbie, took kids all over a magical land meeting such characters as Sheriff Knickerbocker, who "[felt] so gooood with [his] Bobbity-bop" and a singing vegetable garden.
After the Wee Sing videos, we moved onto Disney movies. The Lion King was a major one, as I mentioned earlier. The only one he liked more was Aladdin. He identified with the character, a scrappy kid in over his head that people called Al.
I identified with the Genie, a comedian (voiced by Robin Williams, whose birthday was July 21, my birthday, and whose suicide would impact Alan years later) with a big personality and a mouth to match. I had always wanted to be a comedian growing up. The Genie would do anything Al asked, just like I would for my Al.
I'll tackle the TV shows later. For now, it's back to the present.
This is the story of the last night I spent with Alan. Actually, let's start with a few days earlier. He wasn't spending much time at the house. He was busy with school and friends, and not having a car made being at the house hard for him. Thursday was a particularly rough day, and there was a flurry of texts and calls with Mom and Dad that I inevitably got sucked into. I asked him to touch base with me, so we went out to eat at China Star together. On the drive, he told me how he felt that he had lost two things in the last year: his independence and his dignity. I encouraged him to stick with it, and acknowledged that things must really have been sucking for him.
On Friday, Isabelle and I were downtown for the Soul Festival, Iowa City's marginally African American cultural event. Al Jarreau was singing, and we were looking at vaguely African crafts in a tent. On the way there, Isabelle had seen a poster for Retta performing the next night in the Union.
Now, let me explain the significance of this. I first saw Retta perform on a promo reel back in 2000 at Lawrence University as part of the Student Organization for University Programming. She was the funniest comedienne of the group, and I made sure we booked her. A decade later, she was a cast member of the TV show, Parks and Recreation. If you have not seen this show, let me try to describe it to you. The first season is horrible. It's a cheap knock-off of The Office with a female Michael Scott with even more obnoxious comedians as the actors. Somehow, magically, this show, still all those things through its run, became one of the funniest half hours on television. If you haven't seen it, I'm going to ruin it for you with this clip, the funniest joke of the whole series, delivered by now superstar Chris Pratt as a throwaway ad lib right at the end.
Alan loved that show. He tried unsuccessfully to get me to start watching it, but I wouldn't. One day a couple months ago, I decided to give it a try while I was writing notes for work at home. I powered through the first season, and started to appreciate how he could love this show so much. We bonded over the stupid jokes, and he was constantly asking if I had seen the one where so-and-so does or says this or that. Retta was extremely underutilized on this show as the office manager, Donna. For several seasons, she just sat there and said a joke or so an episode. Then, finally, seasons later, she became Aziz Ansari's sidekick, and manages at times to totally outshine him. I texted Alan and asked if he would go to the show with me. Things like this were hit or miss with Alan, so I had no idea whether he would go or not. Isabelle even agreed to be his backup if he didn't want to go. He did agree, and I picked him up Saturday night to go see the show. Retta was on fire. She started her act with telling us that she had this song stuck in her head, but did not know the words. The song, below, turned out to be one of Alan's favorites for reminiscing about childhood, and also, I do happen to know the words. As a linguist, I couldn't pass up learning the little bit of Zulu at the beginning.
For your reference, it starts, "Nants ingonyama bagithi baba," which you might translate roughly to "Sir, there is a lion coming." Retta said the words could have been, "Iiii'm an asshole, I'mma punch ya-in the throat," and she wouldn't know any better. This movie held a special place in our lives. We got a VHS copy when Alan was maybe three. That meant that for the next three years, we got to watch it several times a day. Now, for a three year old, that doesn't mean that much, but for a thirteen year old, let's just say I might know the whole movie by heart still.
Her act was filled with jokes, culled from her experiences of late, and from her old standup act from years ago. It was honestly one of the best comedy acts I have ever seen. She ended the act with another musical joke, one that I remembered from my college years.
Aaand of course being a nerd, I also knew the words to this song, the "Laudamus te" from Vivaldi's Gloria.
After the show, Alan needed his film equipment from the house, so I drove him there to get it and dropped him back off downtown. I would only ever see him again briefly the next day as I was on my way out to the Walk to End Alzheimer's, and he was on his way in to start editing film from an apparently crappy morning of shooting. I am so thankful to have had this evening with him.
