One of the shows that Alan and Isabelle and I all enjoyed was Futurama. It had just the right mix of Simpsons style and wit, and Family Guy edge.
When Mom and Dad lived in DeForest, we spent a lot of time in the basement watching episodes of Futurama and Star Trek. We watched weird movies. We discussed the weird little trivia about these shows, like the episode of Enterprise that seems to be ripped off from a Voyager episode. Concerning Futurama, two big things came up: that the theme song was from an old French piece from the early days of electronic music.
The other was that Leela's name was from the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Messiaen. It seems there were a lot of links to weird modern French music. When I looked more into this particular piece of music, I decided that it was one of my life goals to own an ondes Martenot.
This was a time of transition for Alan. He had really face-planted after dropping out of school at Beloit, but after a couple months of moping, he started to pull himself together. He was more goal-oriented than he had been in a long time academically. We only got little tastes of his struggles -- the injuries from jumping a fence impulsively one night, the occasional pulling away from our inquiries. We really had hope that things were going to continue to get better.
Like many little kids, Alan had some stuffed animals when he was little. The first was a tiny sheep, representing his zodiac sign. Then, there was the old teddy bear I played with when I was little. There were Pokémon for the two of us (mine was Snorlax), but his favorite was Kirby.
\Alan loved the Kirby video games. So, one day, he asked Mom to make him a Kirby. She made a little pink stuffed doll out of rice and felt, and Alan carried it around with him everywhere. It didn't take long for it to get dirty -- especially after boating with a friend -- he was prone to carsickness. Mom remade an identical Kirby doll out of washable fabric and plastic beads.
Alan would talk for Kirby in a high pitched voice. Sometimes I would, too.
Many years later, Pete Bartels would show me the Kirby/Drop it Like it's Hot mix.
The first show he watched regularly was Blue's Clues. Nick Jr. had recently started to replay the same episode over again for kids, à la Teletubbies.
Alan never seemed to want to pretend to participate in the mysteries. He just liked watching the show.
As he got a bit older, there were other Nickelodeon shows, like all the classic NickToons. These, I could legitimately sit down with him and watch for my own enjoyment, too.
Mom mentioned Starship Troopers. This straightforward alien invasion Heinlein sci-fi book turned sappy anti-war movie was made into a computer animated cartoon, Roughnecks. It was on in the morning before school, and Alan tried not to miss it. This was one of the few television shows that Mom and Alan watched together regularly.
For me, the show that Alan and I shared most was Pokémon. In watching these shows with him, it let me have a second childhood. My actual childhood was a bit rushed. I had skipped two grades, and being a chubby nerdy Korean kid in Appleton already, I stood out. I had to learn to deal with situations at school where I was picked on relentlessly for being different. Even the well-meaning kids trying to be nice could be forceful and intrusive at times. It took a long time, but I grew a tough skin and learned, after years of not being so good at it, to defend myself. By college, it was clear there were two mes, the mature serious rigid adult, and the kid who still wanted to play. Pokémon was the perfect bridge for a 16 year old college student and his 7 year old brother.
At the end of each episode in the early seasons, they played the Pokérap. I can still sing that damned song to this day.
When a Pokémon movie came out, I immediately bought advance tickets for us. John Fahrenbach was going to go with us, but bailed. I guess I wasn't the only college student watching Pokémon.
Alan gave me an excuse to act young, whether that meant 22 or 5. The kid in me still wants to play with him and wants him back. The adult in me is heartbroken by the pain he must have been in, and wants to still take care of him. Both miss him.
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.
Alan recently told me that he had a theme song. It had been proposed to him by a friend. I present that last today, but I think his theme song probably changed over the years, so here are some candidates that came to mind.
Let It Be
This is the first song he started to sing repeatedly, playing the chords on his guitar.
It wouldn't have been so bad if he could hit the top note. Imagine, "let it be, let it [insert noise vaguely resembling the sound of a dial-up modem connecting]..."
Paul described this song being inspired by a dream of his mother, who had died when he was young, telling him that things would be okay.
After Alan died, Mary Bennett, a good family friend, and Alan's surrogate Iowa mom, hugged me, with sad eyes but a comforting smile, and told me, "there will be answers, not now, but some day." Don't call her mother Mary, though. She doesn't go for that.
I Shall Be Released
As we enter into Alan's Bob Dylan phase, this was the song that he seemed to prefer the most. At the piano or with his guitar, we got to hear this one quite a bit, too. The way Alan sang it, the phrasing was more reminiscent of the the Joe Cocker version than The Band or Dylan himself, though I think it was actually a Dylan version he heard first.
I remember telling Alan that he had the whole teen angst thing going pretty well. He denied it, but then admitted that if you are 1) a teenager and 2) angsty, you might have teen angst. This is also around the time he started smoking. In the beginning, he knew I wouldn't approve, my being a doctor and all. He tried to hide it, but he was so bad at it. I caught him the very first time he tried to smoke a cigarette when I was visiting Mom's Madison condo.
I had gone into the bathroom, and when I came out, he was rushing back in from her porch stinking of smoke. "Dang, I thought you wouldn't notice," he said.
A couple weeks before he died, we were at Walgreen's, and Alan was working on an assignment for a rhetoric class. He had to tell a short personal story. He decided on the story of why he decided to smoke. He had been watching an old war movie with Dad and noticed that the soldiers were always smoking. He asked Dad why, and he said something about having so few of the comforts of home, and that being one thing they could have. Alan thought, "Wow, you can inhale comfort. I want that." Already, in the early years of high school, he had lost that sense of well-being at baseline that he strove to attain for his whole life.
All Along the Watchtower
Near the end of high school, Alan was playing in a band on his electric organ. One of their signature songs was All Along the Watchtower, and just like the other songs, we as a family got very intimate with the same damn chords over and over again. The song had made a resurgence, maybe because of its use in Battlestar Galactica.
Of course, he also like the Hendrix version:
Uncle Steve gave Alan a CD, A Nod to Bob, which had covers of many of Dylan's iconic songs. One that caught both our ears was a version of this song by The Paperboys that has Musical Priest, an Irish reel, in the background. It sounded like we were playing together, but couldn't decide on what to play. Had trouble finding one with good sound quality, sorry.
Take On Me
At some point, Alan's musical taste started veering from the 60s and 70s to the 80s and 90s. There was something about the aesthetic that spoke to him. It was weird to hear the music I grew up around, but never really listened to, become Alan's music of choice.
Of course, there's also this Family Guy bit:
And this:
Can't Take My Eyes Off You
This was officially Alan's theme song. Does it fit? Depending on how you see it, it's either just hauntingly beautiful and sweet, or a little creepy and desperate.
I'm not sure who made the call, one of his Iowa City friends I think. What song meant Alan to you? Is it on this list? It's hard to pin someone down with just one song.
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.
