Keep the Fire 3: Fair Winds, Even Keel
07.July, 2009
He takes his drinks tall and cool, and likes his women warm and willing.
He dances like a boxer, and boxes like a dancer.
He can’t help you move this weekend…
He’s growing his beard.
He is: The Most Leisurely Man in the World.
This upcoming Saturday is my brother Colin’s 3rd Annual “Keep the Fire” pool party. A nautical themed tribute to 70s era smooth music or “Yacht Rock“. Loggins and Messina, Hall and Oates, The Doobie Brothers, pretty much everybody that Michael Jackson wiped out of our childhood memories.
Once a year he sends our parents away for the weekend and turns their backyard into the smoking deck on the Love Boat. Party props include fake mustaches, captain’s hats, bubble pipes, and white deck shoes. Before each party we have taken a series of ridiculous “promotional photos” of Colin that are later made into various flyers and email invitations. Now in it’s third incarnation, KTF has taken on a life of it’s own. Every year his planning gets more and more absurd, it wouldn’t surprise me if Colin tried to rent a yacht next year. Just a few days ago he called me wondering whether our parent’s sprinkler system could withstand having a small sailboat parked on the lawn… “for effect”.
A big thanks to Pragna, my “exotic hand model”, and to my assistants Wes and Tommy aka “Blaze and Blue“. Wes was secure enough to stand in front of the many on-lookers from the Newport American Legion and repeatedly pour water down another man’s chest, all while Tommy stood behind me holding lenses and ridiculing him.

