Ben Folds is my favorite musician. The title song of his recent album, What Matters Most, is about the death of a friend. There's a line that goes:
A true friend is someone who,
when you are with them,
you know what matters most
The song is especially poignant to me now, because my best friend of fifty years, Dennis, died on March 28th of this year. Less than four months ago, and it's still sinking in.
There was never any doubt about what mattered most to me and Dennis. It was movies. Almost everyone likes the movies, but it was more than that to us. We lived, breathed, ate and slept movies.
We didn't care about our futures much, we didn't invest a whole lot of time and energy into mature relationships. We went to the movies. A lot. We watched them on cable. On VHS and later DVD. We went to the drive-in hundreds of times. We obsessively duped movies on VHS blanks for our permanent collections. What a joke that was.
We never took to streaming. Neither of us trusted it. We didn't want Big Brother or Big Sister having control over what mattered most to us. We wanted our collections of DVDs and Blu-rays (those old VHS tapes were long gone years before he died) safe in our homes. We didn't want smart TVs or computers having access to our precious movies.
We saw nearly everything. Even against our better judgement we'd go. If there was a ghost of a chance that we'd enjoy something, we'd go for it. So one evening, way back in 1983, we went to see a movie called Mr. Mom.
Now allow me to go back even further. I think I was around eleven years old. I shared a bedroom with my brother, who was three years older than me. I loved Rick, but like all older brothers he could be cruel. Rick died in 2006. I don't think he had any idea how much the incident I'm about to describe affected me.
We were goofing around, and I was under his bed for some reason. There were a bunch of blankets and quilts on the floor, and Rick shoved them under the bed, trapping me. Then he began to push against them with both his legs.
I panicked and began to scream. Rick didn't stop. He pushed harder. I screamed and screamed, but he persisted. I was terrified and out of my young mind. I think the screams were muffled by the blankets, because our mother never heard them.
Rick eventually relented and pulled the blankets out. I stayed under and continued to scream. I was having a kind of breakdown. I finally calmed down, and I was going to tell on him, but he persuaded me not to. Rick could always talk me into things.
Just another incident of childhood roughhousing? No. I've had terrible nightmares about being trapped under that bed. I'm a claustrophobe, which I'm sure began that day with Rick.
Last night was a bad one. I woke up shaking and terrified. We like to think this stuff goes away, but it never really does. It hides, sometimes for years, waiting for us to drop our guards. Then we get blindsided.
It was early and I knew sleep was futile. I decided to watch a movie.
I looked around. It wasn't the time for horror. I saw a DVD of Mr. Mom, which I bought for twenty cents at a library sale.
Why did I buy it? Neither Dennis nor I particularly liked the movie. Still, it reminds me of a simpler time. A time when anxiety and fear were things to laugh at. When money wasn't a problem because we had so little. Poverty gives you a certain degree of freedom.
I put Mr. Mom in the player around four this morning.
I knew it was written by John Hughes, as was National Lampoon's Vacation. Both were successful, and they gave Hughes the freedom to make the movies he wanted to make. He wanted to chronicle the teenage years of the day. The rest is history.
Mr. Mom is a lot closer to Home Alone than to The Breakfast Club. It's basically a ninety minute sitcom, with mostly lame humor and unconvincing situations. However, it isn't completely bad.
Michael Keaton was obviously a major talent. Like Tom Hanks, Keaton started off as a comic performer, but went on to bigger things. I don't care about Batman, but I liked Beetlejuice. He's still got the touch. Check out The Founder from a few years ago.
There is even a moment or two of genuine emotion, such as when Terry Garr has to leave for a business trip on Halloween, leaving her saddened family behind.
I guess women's lib from the seventies was over. Mr. Mom promoted the re-establishment of traditional American roles. Dad works while Mom stays home with the house and kids. When that balance is altered, chaos ensued.
While Mr. Mom is a painful experience, it was kind of nice to go back. I needed some stupid innocent fun on this dark and painful morning. I didn't laugh once, but I did smile a little bit. It was mostly about Dennis, and our decades of movie love.
As for my brother, he struggled with mental health his whole life. I don't think he was aware of some of the things he did.
The three of us, me, Rick, and Dennis, had a lot of history. We all shared a house for a number of years. There were a lot of laughs, and a lot of stress and resentment. I miss them both.
Written by Mark Sieber
A true friend is someone who,
when you are with them,
you know what matters most
The song is especially poignant to me now, because my best friend of fifty years, Dennis, died on March 28th of this year. Less than four months ago, and it's still sinking in.
There was never any doubt about what mattered most to me and Dennis. It was movies. Almost everyone likes the movies, but it was more than that to us. We lived, breathed, ate and slept movies.
We didn't care about our futures much, we didn't invest a whole lot of time and energy into mature relationships. We went to the movies. A lot. We watched them on cable. On VHS and later DVD. We went to the drive-in hundreds of times. We obsessively duped movies on VHS blanks for our permanent collections. What a joke that was.
We never took to streaming. Neither of us trusted it. We didn't want Big Brother or Big Sister having control over what mattered most to us. We wanted our collections of DVDs and Blu-rays (those old VHS tapes were long gone years before he died) safe in our homes. We didn't want smart TVs or computers having access to our precious movies.
We saw nearly everything. Even against our better judgement we'd go. If there was a ghost of a chance that we'd enjoy something, we'd go for it. So one evening, way back in 1983, we went to see a movie called Mr. Mom.
Now allow me to go back even further. I think I was around eleven years old. I shared a bedroom with my brother, who was three years older than me. I loved Rick, but like all older brothers he could be cruel. Rick died in 2006. I don't think he had any idea how much the incident I'm about to describe affected me.
We were goofing around, and I was under his bed for some reason. There were a bunch of blankets and quilts on the floor, and Rick shoved them under the bed, trapping me. Then he began to push against them with both his legs.
I panicked and began to scream. Rick didn't stop. He pushed harder. I screamed and screamed, but he persisted. I was terrified and out of my young mind. I think the screams were muffled by the blankets, because our mother never heard them.
Rick eventually relented and pulled the blankets out. I stayed under and continued to scream. I was having a kind of breakdown. I finally calmed down, and I was going to tell on him, but he persuaded me not to. Rick could always talk me into things.
Just another incident of childhood roughhousing? No. I've had terrible nightmares about being trapped under that bed. I'm a claustrophobe, which I'm sure began that day with Rick.
Last night was a bad one. I woke up shaking and terrified. We like to think this stuff goes away, but it never really does. It hides, sometimes for years, waiting for us to drop our guards. Then we get blindsided.
It was early and I knew sleep was futile. I decided to watch a movie.
I looked around. It wasn't the time for horror. I saw a DVD of Mr. Mom, which I bought for twenty cents at a library sale.
Why did I buy it? Neither Dennis nor I particularly liked the movie. Still, it reminds me of a simpler time. A time when anxiety and fear were things to laugh at. When money wasn't a problem because we had so little. Poverty gives you a certain degree of freedom.
I put Mr. Mom in the player around four this morning.
I knew it was written by John Hughes, as was National Lampoon's Vacation. Both were successful, and they gave Hughes the freedom to make the movies he wanted to make. He wanted to chronicle the teenage years of the day. The rest is history.
Mr. Mom is a lot closer to Home Alone than to The Breakfast Club. It's basically a ninety minute sitcom, with mostly lame humor and unconvincing situations. However, it isn't completely bad.
Michael Keaton was obviously a major talent. Like Tom Hanks, Keaton started off as a comic performer, but went on to bigger things. I don't care about Batman, but I liked Beetlejuice. He's still got the touch. Check out The Founder from a few years ago.
There is even a moment or two of genuine emotion, such as when Terry Garr has to leave for a business trip on Halloween, leaving her saddened family behind.
I guess women's lib from the seventies was over. Mr. Mom promoted the re-establishment of traditional American roles. Dad works while Mom stays home with the house and kids. When that balance is altered, chaos ensued.
While Mr. Mom is a painful experience, it was kind of nice to go back. I needed some stupid innocent fun on this dark and painful morning. I didn't laugh once, but I did smile a little bit. It was mostly about Dennis, and our decades of movie love.
As for my brother, he struggled with mental health his whole life. I don't think he was aware of some of the things he did.
The three of us, me, Rick, and Dennis, had a lot of history. We all shared a house for a number of years. There were a lot of laughs, and a lot of stress and resentment. I miss them both.
Written by Mark Sieber
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