There's no easy way out

I think it was a week ago today.

My stepmom and I needed to get out of the house, so we took up my brother's invitation to go over to his house. His wife is a pretty good cook, and my brand new niece was there, so it was a no brainer. My youngest brother was there with his fiance too. It was a welcome distraction.

We talked about my dad, the memorial service, who would be speaking at the service, all the stuff we needed to talk about.

Then the conversation changed. I'm not sure who brought it up, but someone put it out there. I'm talking about the wonder that is...the Rocky IV Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. And as soon as it was mentioned, one of us began singing (scatting?) the drum intro to Robert Tepper's masterpiece "There's No Easy Way Out". Suddenly another jumped in with the driving bass hook that carries the listener to the first lyric, "We're not indestructible/Baby baby guess that true..." (you probably know the rest, so I won't write it out here). All while images of angst-ridden Rocky driving his Lambroghini through uptown Philly, remembering his fallen friend/rival Apollo completely threw us back to 1987. Turns out each of us has the R4 soundtrack on a different form of media. Myself, I have it on vinyl. Each of us agreed that not only are there no bad songs on the disc, but each song holds up incredibly well. And we will pass this album on to our children's children.

I should probably mention that it was only the Garcia boys that showed any kind of passion during this part of the conversation. For the most part, our little tangent was met with blank stares from those waiting for a point. We were also the only ones who remembered that "Ya sie byaht! YAH SIE BYAHT!!!" is Russian for "I fight for me. FOR ME!!!"

I've not been particularly close with my brothers. I think all of us want to make it a point for that to change. It was good for me to experience that moment where, for whatever reason, we were all on the same page, excited about the same thing. I look foward to more of those moments.

Sylvester Stallone, bringing brothers together.