{"id":535,"date":"2007-05-04T12:50:34","date_gmt":"2007-05-04T19:50:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/?p=535"},"modified":"2007-05-04T12:50:34","modified_gmt":"2007-05-04T19:50:34","slug":"my-brothers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/04\/my-brothers\/","title":{"rendered":"My Brothers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tidbit of the day: President Dwight D. Einsenhower, Dr. Jonas Salk and Larry David are my brothers.<br \/>\nIf you know me, you may (or may not) be surprised to learn that I was in a fraternity when I was in college.  Before I headed north I never thought that I would be a &#8220;frat guy.&#8221;  However, when everyone I was friends with started to go to all these rush events, I quickly realized that I would have to make new friends (because they all would be away for the semester pledging) or I could be a follower and join them.<br \/>\nSo, to see if it made sense to cave on my convictions, I made the rounds to a bunch of frats and at one of them I found myself sitting on a table in a corner, tired of the inane bullshit and wondering why I ever decided to even think about joining a fraternity.  I wound up talking to a guy in a Dead shirt sitting next to me who was smoking a cigarette (which was illegal since we were inside the University Union) and flicking the ashes onto the carpet.  &#8220;This is so dumb, I hate this shit,&#8221; he said.  &#8220;Me too.  Why are you here?&#8221; I asked.  &#8220;Because I have to be &#8211; I&#8217;m in this frat,&#8221; he responded.  Then we began to talk&#8230;<br \/>\nThat simple exchange opened my eyes and made me realize not every frat guy was a loutish rah-rah frat guy &#8211; some could be considered &#8220;cool&#8221; in my book.  As rush went on, Tau Epsilon Phi (TEP) became the only one I was interested in.  Luckily for me, out of the 5 guys that I was most friendly with, 3 of them liked it as much as I did and we all decided to pledge TEP.  They saw the same stuff I did &#8211; it existed as a duality &#8211; a traditional frat and a non-frat frat at the same time.  Years later, I count joining TEP as one of the better decisions I&#8217;ve made in my life.  I won&#8217;t get into the reasons now but one thing that it&#8217;s given me is a list of some pretty interesting people to call brothers.<br \/>\nHere is a brief rundown of people should be able to respond to a secret handshake I know (if alive that is):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dwight Eisenhower: Former U.S. President and Famous WWII General<\/li>\n<li>Larry David: co-creater of Seinfeld and star of Curb Your Enthusiasm<\/li>\n<li>Dr. Jonas Salk: scientist who discoverer of the polio vaccine.<\/li>\n<li>General Omar Bradley: 5 star general. Former chairman joint chief of staff, WWII hero<\/li>\n<li>William O. Douglas:  United States Supreme Court Justice 1939-1975. One of the longest serving US Supreme Court Justices. Champion of First Amendment Rights and Civil Liberties.<\/li>\n<li>Benny Goodman: Musician<\/li>\n<li>Red Auerbach: 4th winningest coach in NBA history<\/li>\n<li>Adam Sandler: Comedian\/Actor<\/li>\n<li>Samuel Lefrak: Internationally renown architect and builder of sky scrappers in New York.<\/li>\n<li>Mike Nichols: Director of the &#8220;Graduate&#8221; and many other well known movies<\/li>\n<li>George Stephanopoulos: Former advisor to Pres. Clinton<\/li>\n<li>Judge Wapner: Former Judge on People&#8217;s Court<\/li>\n<li>Jerry Springer: Talk Show Host, former mayor of Cincinnati<\/li>\n<li>David Duchovny: Actor<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Okay, Skull and Bones isn&#8217;t not but still, not a bad list&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tidbit of the day: President Dwight D. Einsenhower, Dr. Jonas Salk and Larry David are my brothers. If you know me, you may (or may not) be surprised to learn that I was in a fraternity when I was in college. Before I headed north I never thought that I would be a &#8220;frat guy.&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[248,635],"class_list":["post-535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings","tag-frats","tag-tep"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.keymasterproductions.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}