11/17/22

My Grandpa Shander and I used to visit alone without my mom and dad in the room, or brother and sister, usually Grandma Shander wasn’t around either. In the other room visiting my mom in the kitchen.

I was a loner and writing music and film stars on Instagram and making films and screenplays for YouTube and my hard drive.

Sending out materials and not getting much back.

Toby Kebbell had an agent or manager in London actually reply. She said if you find a producer or backing we would love to read the screenplay you queried us for.

I never officially found the backers.

I wanted him to play Arc, or ARKMIN in my screenplay I finished in February of 2013, the year after I discovered the writings of the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. A feature film to be my first movie director job for the cinema about the “Phenomenon of Psychedelics” and other drugs. In the early drafts Arc had a cocaine problem and gets help. I ended up changing that as a way to tell young people to not mess around with that stuff. Cocaine is very bad in my opinion.

So back to what I was writing before about my Grandpa Shander….

Oh yeah, it was not an Anti-Drug movie, the way Full Metal Jacket was supposed to be not a Paths of Glory 2 or another Stanley Kubrick anti-war film. He wanted to capture the “phenomenon of war,” not be a repeat of the World War I Kirk Douglas picture.

So “Arc & Cyl In Skunk Zoo” was about Mushrooms, LSD, Weed, and booze, and going out with friends to a regular spot with free live music, not DJ’s or just turntables, but bands who didn’t make any money yet doing it.

My Grandpa told me all sorts of stuff when we visited in my early and middle 30's.

He liked seeing me, and everyone else in the family, did not visit as often as I. My mom and dad were going down to the Heights to visit often.

Once a month or so.

So I recently put on the Irishman, directed by Martin Scorsese and photographed by Rodrigo Prieto, ASC AMC for Netflix.

The woman in the movie that I remembered was I thought “Shandolini” the “mob royalty wife, who was from the same town in Sicily as the Bufalinos, Came over on the Italian Mayflower,”

My great uncle supposedly married an Italian or maybe even a Sicilian mobster before our side of the family told them to go to hell.

We never met Al’s side of the family as children, this falling out happened before my dad went to medical school at Loyola, (not University of Notre Dame like the rest of the family, mostly) married my mother and I was even a thought.

They were angry at us. My Grandma and Grandpa Shander received a sum of money from the will, earned at a Wood Shop Factory they owned in the Heights after my great Grandfather Otto Shander Junior died in the 80's.

No, I think my Grandpa Shander’s (J.R. Otto Shander) brother, my great uncle Al Shander-died in the 80’s and we got an old upright ancient piano. It was dark wood like an off black and not even a dark brown looking thing. I thought it wouldn’t sound good, and I guess my mom said we got it tuned and fixed up. And I played after lessons every two weeks or so on it.

One of my teachers was just down the road from here, two houses off Sunset Drive, no joke.

I played for my Grandpa when he came to visit from the South Side of Chicago and he sat right next to me.

“Steven play something for me,” he said.

I was like ok Grandpa, this one I don’t even have to look at the notes, this one’s called “Greensleeves.”

I put up the book of songs, opened the page and it was like when I was showing off my free throws or my lay-ups in the driveway to the my neighbor’s moms and dads taking out the trash in the 80s.

Hey Mr. Buchanan I can make a three pointer now, watch…

Ok Steve, good job, wow.

Megan home?

No, she’s out at the gym.

Oh gymnastics, ok.

Wonder why they call it that Grandpa?

What’s Green-Sleeves?

All the other songs I had to read the notes, the sheet music in front of me, that one I could do without even having my eyes open.

Like I was an expert at this one song, but all the others were harder and needed attention to the dumb fucking treble and bass fucking clef, this shit…

I was in first grade or second I think, maybe younger.

He was so impressed with my skills as a little boy at the dumb and ugly looking Shander inherited piano.

I don’t remember him saying much, but the look on his face was so great, like he loved me, like he saw me doing something he was proud of.

I wasn’t going on “His List” for that shit.

No I was eating all my food off my plate and not wearing a ball-cap at the table, no elbows on table, no cuss words, I was kicking some first grade ass with that stupid fuckin’ song!

Wonder what is means?

Dad?!

Wow, when I fund out about that context, I was like What the Literal Fuck.

Made me shiver and I had the chills like the Boogey Man was back, and Freddie and Jason, the guy from Pet Cemetery 2 (in the window with that drill-bit in the tv preview) and Pinhead were shitting their pants all the fuck over again.

I hated going to piano lessons, but it was like Sunday school, I had to go, no choice, do it Steve, just do it little Shander boy!

And thank you God I had to go, and thank mom and dad for making me go-you stricter than heck Jesus-Loving-Monkeys. It really was a blessing in my life you guys-holy shit, thank you.

Usually he was grumpy and very strict and kind of mean, like a pissed off drafted NAVY guy who never got off the aircraft carrier, when the Bomb turned them around in the South Pacific in World War II.

Panama Canal?

Ok Grandpa, not all the stories are coming out today, but they should soon.

I miss you man. You had your moments of mean comments, but this shit is insane man. You weren’t kidding when you you showed me with your hand and fingers-the width of the glass at Al Capone’s apartment complex in your neighborhood as a little boy. It was extra thick to prevent bullets from the street sweepers or other dangers to their outfit.

Chicago….

I learned music first on that piano. I do not believe I know the truth about my family secrets for very serious and also very dangerous, reasons and/or details to my safety and literal human body’s lifespan.

The family on the other side wanted the money for starting a business, they didn’t want to go to get an education. The will said on my Great Grandpa Shander’s wishes, that it was money for school only, College or University, maybe even vocational stuff.

I could be hearing a load of bullshit on this one too.

I doubt that.

My Aunts and Uncles all went to fancy colleges or universities with the money from that will.

I found one of these cocksuckers online, Facebook.com, my family name, and he was a MAGA hat wearin’ fool.

So if my relatives on the Uncle Al Shander side are really all that I think they are, boy are they suspect in this fucking story.

Maybe not, who knows?

Mahalo Mother Fucker/ (thank you in Hay-Why, whoever you are…)

I do not fucking love you.

I love my family, my fans, my people on the pen pals service.

Keep your head up you guys, it’s fucking cold as a mother fucker and we all don’t clear the medical for the Frozen Tundra down there on the Ice, The South Pole Ice….

Means you don’t get medically cleared to go there.

The Wilderness Left