In a Time of Profound Grief, I Think I've Figured Out Everything There is to Know About Guys' Relationships With One Other
This clip is from a largely forgotten Bill Murray film The Razor's Edge, which is adapted from the W. Somerset Maughm novel about a WWI soldier who deals with the trauma and incomprehensible horrors of war by going on a spiritual journey of enlightenment. As you can tell from that summary, it's not exactly Space Jam. In fact, it was his passion project that the studio only greenlighted because he agreed he'd do it as a package deal along with Ghostbusters 2.
In this scene, he's practicing an old world custom from some cultures where, when someone dies - almost always another man - instead of extolling his virtues and celebrating his best traits, you talk about what you hated most about the guy. Essentially, the eulogy becomes a roast.
Two things are especially poignant about this scene. First, all that stuff Murray says about what a disgusting eater this guy was and how he could never understand gluttony like that, was verbatim what Murray said in the eulogy he delivered at John Belushi's funeral. Second, the character he's saying "will not be missed" is played by his own brother.
This has been in my brain for days now. For the same reason I've been off the blog, despite the fact the Patriots might have just introduced the world to the quarterback of my dreams and a hundred other blogworthy current events. Because life came at my loved ones hard this week:
I just haven't had it in me to post these last few days and appreciate my bosses' indulgence while I sort out my issues.
I won't get into a tribute to Jimbo here. Other than to say if there was ever a person more proud of what began as a little side hustle, emailing a thousand words to Dave Portnoy every two weeks over 20 years ago, I don't know who that would be. But no one comes to a humor/sports/pop culture blog to read a heartfelt expression of brotherly love and admiration. Or the sharing of memories about someone they didn't know. So I'll kick the can of paying homage down the road for the services next week. There's no reason to do the show before the show. Besides, JT would've hated it if I did it here.
No, this post is about the epiphany I've had over the last week or so. Bear with me and I'll try to tie this all together into something semi-comprehensible.
One of my sons talked to me a few days about a girl he knew who hated small talk. Hated it. As in, would not engage in anything she considered to be shallow or inconsequential conversation. That in essence, if you're not speaking to someone's heart about weighty, significant topics, this was a person who had no time for you.
So I quickly switched into Dad Mode and explained a couple of things that he probably already knew, but might have needed to hear as much as I needed to say them.
First, that aversion to small talk is largely (though not exclusively) a Chick Think thing. About how there was a study done by none other than the Surgeon General of these United States that claimed the leading cause of death among men is loneliness. And how it drilled down into how women are better at maintaining friendships through those adult years where babies come along and take up all your time and attention. While a shocking number of men lose touch with their friends, never regain it, and are left with only professional relationships with other gentlemen. And how much of that has to do with the ladies' interest in connecting with one another on a deep, emotional level.
But then I just explained the whole concept with this Brian Regan clip about golfing with a friend he hadn't seen in months, one of my favorite stand up bits of the last 20 years:
Every so often a comic will pay you the ultimate compliment by telling you they like your joke so much they wish they'd thought of it. This is definitely one I wish I'd come up with. Brilliant.
Next, I reminded my boy about the power of small talk and it's importance in our lives. That the Thornton men pride ourselves in it. That his uncles have 7th degree black belts in banter. Masters degrees in chit chat. PhDs in jest. That they're Nobel Laureates in chatter. Summa cum lauder in wittiness. Kennedy Center Honorees in the noble art of jibber jabber. That we'd no sooner surrender our Irish birthright to chew the fat, chinwag or jaw just because we're in the presence of someone who wants to talk about actual feelings than we'd stop interrupting each other every time someone's about to get to the point of their story. He agreed.
This was one of my favorite teachable dad moments in recent memory. Now all the more important after standing alone at the bedside of the undisputed World Heavyweight Champion of Conversation. In silence. No sound in the private room just off the hospital emergency entrance but a sheet being gently pulled over a remarkable human being and his younger brother's uncontrollable tears.
Because when it came to discussing meaningless nonsense, Jim had no equal. It was an artform he practiced every day, until he perfected it.
You kids who've had an iPhone permanently attached to your body since you were in preschool will not believe me when I say this, but there was a time when the house phone would ring, and everyone would be excited about it. The sound of that ring was like a call to adventure. You'd yell "I'll get it!" and try to beat others to answer it. Because who could tell what wonders awaited on the other end of that call? But at some point in the last dozen or so years, the cellphone ring became a nuisance. Someone interupting whatever you were in the middle of instead of just texting. The ultimate personal life example of the work meeting that should've been an email.
Well for the last several years, whenever my phone buzzed and I pulled it out of my pocket, I knew with absolute certainty there was a 5% chance it was Spam, 5% Other, and a 90% chance it would say "Jimbo" across the screen. Typically when I was in the last sentence of a blog I'd been working on for two hours. Or making dinner. Or at the gym. Or in the middle of a TV show. Or doing some other super high-priority thing where I couldn't allow anyone to interfere with my tasks at hand.
And rarely was it ever anything important. He'd be calling to rant about some nonsense he heard on Boston sports radio. Or some current event. An old story about one of our cousins or the other guys who grew up in our neighborhood in Weymouth. A million dollar idea he'd just come up with was a common theme. There were the times he demanded I give him hours of his life back, such as when I recommended 80 for Brady. (How I wish I could right now.)
But the absolute most insane calls were the utterly random topics. He once asked who I think would win a fight between Buddha, Mohamed, and Jesus. Another was (his words, not mine, so don't release the Hate Speech hounds on me) how many midgets it would take to kill an African elephant if all they had was their bare hands. Here's one I've been dining out on in my stand up sets for years. The Red Sox were facing the Tigers in the 2013 playoffs and he called. Again, his words, not mine:
Jim (without even a "Hello"): "You could be Tom Brady, banging Gisele, or Justin Verlander banging Kate Upton. Who would you rather be?"
Me: "Out of those choices, I most want to be Gisele."
Jim (after a long pause): "That is the creepiest thing I've ever heard …"
This was an every day experience. A constant exercise in staying on your toes. A Master Class in being able to riff on any subject, delivered by the single sharpest Comedy Brain I've ever encountered. In fact, our last call came the night before he passed. First he wanted to know how our friends' daughter's wedding that I officiated went. We quickly pivoted to his belief the film version of Friday Night Lights is the best football movie ever made. And ended on why you can't find McHale's Navy anywhere on streaming, and whether it's because the crew of the PT-73 kept an escaped Japanese POW with them as a house boy who did all their cooking and cleaning. I put him on speakerphone so his nephew could join in and appreciate "small talk" brilliance on display. Then we said we'll talk in the morning. That chance never came. And won't come again until we're together again in the next life.
The point of all this - and I did intend to get to a point eventually - is that this is how so many of us communicate. Most guys I know, in fact. The cringey cliche of the insufferable times we live in is to call it our "Love Language." Which I won't type because my brother would appear like Freddie Kruger and remove my hands from my wrists. With good reason.
Earlier I said these calls were never anything important. I mean that. "Important" isn't a strong enough word. They were everything. Vital. Life itself. I'm all for the occasional "Love you, pal" among friends. I'm getting too old not to say it. But if you really want to demonstrate we love each other, care about each other, and are grateful to be in each other's lives forever? Prove it by being hilarious. By coming at me with nonsense, and laughing at my nonsense. All my friends do. And they know as well as I we just lost the best there ever was in that game.
Thanks for reading to the end while I work through this. I'll be back with more of the usual claptrap over the weekend. Until then, take care of your health. And for crying out loud, call your brother.