My brother cracks me up

So every year on July 4 my brother Mike and his wife Connie have this big party at their house down in Lacey, WA (near Olympia). They own a house that sits right on a lake down there (so there’s lots of swimming, canoeing, and other watersports). He’s also a fine musician, playing both sax and clarinet. In fact, he’s so good he plays with both the Johnny Lewis Band and with a group called Blues Attitude.

What makes this extra cool is that the Johnny Lewis Band all come to the party, set up on the lawn, and do two full sets of big band jazz (musicians and free food are natural allies). You get yourself some ribs and an adult beverage of some sort, grab an approved flotation device and then (having applied sunscreen) you park yourself out in the water and allow the music to blow over you in lovely, wonderful waves of joy. What a great country!

Anyway, I RSVP’d Mike for this year’s shindig and he wrote back (having just seen the Manalive trailer a day or two ago):

You know, counting you I just realized we’ve had the following at our 4th of July party at least once:

Killian Johnson
Uncle Dick (at the first party here and who owned his captained own yacht)
Johnny Lewis and his wife (who is very wealthy)
Mark Shea (Innocent Smith)
Ron Zucker (who is a professor of Computer Science)
Mary Ann Williams (One of Connie’s Friends)

This means we have had……..Killian; the Skipper, too; a millionaire and his wife, a movie star, the professor and Mary Ann. I feel my life is complete now thanks to you and your movie.

I grew up with the strong sense that, in my two older brothers, I was surrounded by total awesomeness that I could not hope to attain to. Now you know why.