What's on your shirt?

@BlueMetalChick Good band. Is it 1984 by any chance?

@NankerPhelge No, it's the girl from "Tattoo Tattoo" wearing the white and black gloves and covered in...well, tattoos.

@BlueMetalChick I haven't heard that album. "1984" is my favourite Van Halen album (as you probably guessed).

@BlueMetalChick It's a good design.

@NankerPhelge I got it when I saw their concert in...oh gee I think it was about 2011? I can't remember exactly.

@BlueMetalChick I don't know the date myself. I hadn't heard of that album until you mentioned it, I've got their albums from the 1970s and 80s.

@NankerPhelge I got into them from my father.

@BlueMetalChick It always sound odd to me when people say their fathers like that kind of music. My father hated that kind of music, he liked singers like Frankie Laine and Tennessee Ernie Ford.

@NankerPhelge My father didn't know his father, but his mother was into like doo-wop and stuff like that, real fifties style shit. My dad was a rocker, born in '59 and a drunken maniacal nutcase who used to scale the walls of the Chicago Stadium to see Led Zeppelin play live. He was a skinny ass crazy ass White boy who sold every kind of drug under the sun and terrorized Chicago with his best friend Mark Wilke, who used to burglarize fireworks stands in Missouri at night and steal pillowcases full of quarter sticks and cherry bombs.

@BlueMetalChick My dad was nothing remotely resembling that, but that's probably because he was 30 years older than your dad. He would have been 89 this year (he sadly passed away in 2004). Your dad sounds a bit like my old friend Carl, he was born in '59 and I could imagine him doing something like scaling the walls of the Chicago Stadium to see Led Zeppelin play live (Led Zeppelin are one of his favourite bands, and they are one of mine too).

@NankerPhelge My dad's rubbed off a lot on me, I've lived with him most of my life. He and my sister are everything in the world and more to me. My mother was even crazier than my father, which is part of the reason she's been dead as fuck since 2003. I miss the hell out of her, but she's likely found peace in death, something she couldn't even dream of while alive.

@BlueMetalChick I'm sorry to hear that. :(

@NankerPhelge So am I. But it's shocking that I made it out with my father and sister still alive. I've got my paternal grandma too, MJ, 79 years old and still kicking strong as a fuckin' ox. She looks 50, she's as sharp as a tack, as mobile as someone half her age. Drives all over Chicago still, active as a jackrabbit. I dream of being in that kind of condition at her age.

@BlueMetalChick All my grandparents are gone now, they would all have been well over 100 if they were still here. My maternal grandmother was the longest-living member of our family so far, she died in 2012 aged 104 years and 10 months. My maternal grandfather died in 1984, aged 77. Both my paternal grandparents were born before 1900. My paternal grandmother died in 1979 aged 81, and my paternal grandfather died in 1961 aged 69. My mum is still alive, now 82 and still very active for her age.

@NankerPhelge You know a lot of your family, that's a very good thing. I have a small family but have still barely known any of them.

@BlueMetalChick My dad was from a large family (he was one of 12), but most of his siblings are deceased now. I knew them all pretty well when I was younger. I used to visit them quite a lot, except for my uncle Ronnie who emigrated to Australia.