John Cleese’s address to U.S. Citizens

This originated, I believe, last October. I have no idea where it originally appeared, but it should now appear everywhere. In fact, I’m considering having it tattooed on my forehead. Thanks to Lydia by way of Greg Martin — somehow, even with my amazing and thorough (ly sad) knowledge of the contents of the Interweb, I missed this until it was sent to me in an email today.

In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (excepting Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new prime minister, Tony Blair, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

  • You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘favour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters and the suffix ize will be replaced by the suffix ise. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up vocabulary). Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter ‘u’ and the elimination of -ize. You will relearn your original national anthem, God Save the Queen. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.
  • You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you’re not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you’re not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you’re not grown up enough to handle a gun.
  • Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
  • All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
  • The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline)-roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.
  • You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.
  • The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be refer to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat’s Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.
  • Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as Good guys.
  • Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one’s ears removed with a cheese grater.
  • You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).
  • Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable.
  • You must tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us mad. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776)

Thank you for your co-operation.

Cookie … victim?

More McSweeney’s brilliance:

Me know there something wrong with me, but who in Sesame Street doesn’t suffer from mental disease or psychological disorder? They don’t call the vampire with math fetish monster, and me pretty sure he undead and drinks blood. No one calls Grover monster, despite frequent delusional episodes and obsessive-compulsive tendencies. And the obnoxious red Grover—oh, what his name?—Elmo! Yes, Elmo live all day in imaginary world and no one call him monster. No, they think he cute.

Devil Took the Wheel

If there’s one thing that stands out in my head about the days I spent on the sets of Hide & Creep, it’s the cold. I remember standing in the cemetary just outside of Montevallo, in particular, filming the scenes that feature the first meeting of Chuck, Chris, Michael, and the mysterious government agent F. These scenes, along with others, spotlight Michael naked (having lost his pants in what may or may not have been an alien abduction the night prior) — and we didn’t have any sort of budget on this film. No special effects, no body doubles — that’s really Michael Shelton naked on screen.

Here’s a behind the scenes factoid to keep in mind next time you watch the movie: it was around 20 degrees the day we shot those scenes. I was suffering from the peak of my peripheral neuropathy at the time (a side effect of my CIPD, peripheral neuropathy is the loss of sensation in your extremities – hands, feet, nose, etc.) — walking only with the aid of a cane, since I couldn’t feel when my feet had hit the ground and thus was prone to falling down a lot — and within an hour, I could feel (through two pairs of socks, heavy boots, and nerves that worked as well as George Lucas’ idea of prequels) the pain of the cold.

All this to say: don’t be too hard on Michael.

It's ACTING, bitches!

I had worked with Chance and Chuck before, doing the score for their short film The Seven Year Switch; they, in turn, were kind enough to kick start my filmmaking resume by providing invaluable assistance with the making of my first short, Goodnight Moon. And that’s the way the Birmingham film scene is — lots of people with varying abilities and degrees of experience, pitching in to help out other people of varying abilities and degrees of experience.

The Crewless Productions group — Chance Shirley, his wife Stacey, and Chuck Hartsell — had shot a couple of shorts prior to the undertaking of H&C, and so they knew what was coming; they’re not called Crewless for nothing, and that’s one of the reasons that working with them is so rewarding. Keep in mind that a big-budget film shoot is a unionized affair of specialties: everyone has their job, and their job only. Costumes, set, direction, camera. A small budget independent film, on the other hand, has no such room for titles, and it’s nice to see the director and producer doing the grunt work as much as anyone else.

My credit on H&C is for “Boom Operator” (guy who holds the microphone just out of frame) and “Sound Mixer” (which is misleading, since I didn’t actually do any mixing that I can recall); I also knew in advance that I would have a small role in the film, as Chance had written myself and my (now ex) wife Melissa into the script playing ever-so-slight-deviations of ourselves. Things change, of course; Melissa ended up getting one of the starring roles, and I play the complex bit part of Kenn, a guy who goes to a church for the first time in years to borrow money and curse a lot.

(Yeah, I know. Big stretch. And I still don’t pull it off very convincingly. Though I did get the best death in the entire movie, hands-down — I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t seen it, but I will say that if I had to choose a way to go, this would be on the list.)

Over the course of the months of shooting (mostly weekends only), I also played three different zombies, shot behind-the-scenes footage, handled props, helped recruit extras, cleaned up fake blood, recorded sound effects, cleaned up audio in post, and recorded the soundtrack for the film with the Exhibit(s). And everything I did, Chance did, too, and then some, as did Stacey, and Chuck, and everyone else involved with the film. It’s nice to be a part of creative ventures where no one is a diva, and everyone involved is ready and willing to do any job (no matter how mundane or banal) to get the best end result possible.

I kept asking for retakes.  Can't imagine why.

All the hard work paid off. Hide & Creep debuted to a huge crowd at the opening night of the 2004 Sidewalk Film Festival, and has since gotten DVD distribution (there’s something slightly surreal about pooping in to a Blockbuster in Chicago and seeing your movie on the shelf), made it to tens if not twenties of Netflix queues across the world, and gotten reviews that range from scathing (those people just don’t get it) to painfully flattering (those people got it — it being the cash I and others sent along with the review copies). None of us got rich off of the movie, but that was never the point (at least, not for most of us).

In the end, we helped Chance and Chuck and Stacey make their first feature film — and as a short filmmaker, I’ll be quick to point out that that’s a huge accomplishment, in and of itself. That the film is fun to watch, even after spending as much time as we all did reading and rereading subsequent drafts of the script, getting up at 4:30 AM (after playing gigs until 2 AM the night before) to drive fifty miles to backwoods Alabama locations in sometimes brutal cold, and watching edit after edit of the movie; that’s a miracle.

Not quite on par with coming back from the dead, but hey — at least none of us have a hunger for human flesh.

Not one that’s associated with being undead, at least.

Hide & Creep gets its world cable television premiere Thursday night on the SciFi channel at 7 PM, EST. That’s right — me and Starbuck, just two peas in a pod.

Cold Summer

Seriously, you guys: this version of MAGIC is so freaking addictive. I think there must be a subliminal message in here somewhere. I can’t stop listening to it, over and over and over.

There is a certain amount of playing to the audience when creating, whether it’s writing, painting, filmmaking, or any other medium. Rare is the artist that is capable of baring his soul with absolutely no awareness (even if it’s not conscious) of the fact that other people will have reactions to the work. On the one hand, you have the shock artists, those who are on some level hoping to get a rise out of the audience, to offend or provoke or cause some sort of — let’s say unpleasant reaction, for lack of a better encompassing term.

And on the other hand, you have people like me. I’m wide open about my life, here in print and in person, but there are things that I find myself unwilling to say. There are numerous reasons for this — I have some ideas that are not ready to be unveiled, other ideas that I want to protect until they are either useful to me or not. There are some things about my life that, while I don’t hide, per se, I don’t particularly care for the whole world to know about (context is important in a lot of things). And there are some things that just piss people off.

I’m not sure exactly how I feel about that. On the one hand, I’m no angel in this respect. I’ve read things on other people’s blogs (etc.) that have really angered me or hurt my feelings. Sometimes, the pain recedes fairly quickly when I realize that things that are put out for the public eye are done so with a mission, and that sort of pasive-aggressive behavior makes it a lot easier to wave away.

Other times, though, the emotion behind the hurtful words is honest, and not communicated directly to me for some valid reason or another. Those are the times that it’s hard to just ignore or move past.

Fortunately, I’ve gotten really good at shifting my perspective over the years. I no longer off-handedly dismiss criticisms levelled at me because the speaker is an asshole, or deluded, or a moron. Even those people — who I like to think of, collectively, as the Religious Right — have some reasoning behind their complaints. And I find that taking those things into account has done me a lot of good as a human being; considering those points of view helpes me understand other people a little better, and sometimes can help me understand myself on a deeper basis, as well. Why I do things that I do, or perhaps seeing things that I do or say for the first time, a new awareness.

That said, sadly, most of the rest of the world doesn’t choose to take criticism like this. There’s a tendency to blame everything on anyone but yourself — worst case scenario, you can turn things around on your attacker, making them sexist, or racist, homophobic, bipolar, jilted or jaded.

If I call you an assclown, it’s not because you’re of a different gender or sexual orientation or cultural or ethnic background than I am. It’s because you’re an assclown, and to blame it on any other reason (allowing that I might just be a mean-hearted prick) is really undercutting your chance for self-examination and self-improvement.

But shit happens, and the principle of accountability should force each and every one of us to question what part our actions and words played into every situation we might find ourselves in. If you get dumped, sure, the bitch might just be crazy; then again, you might have precipitated her insanity, or been the trigger for her episode. If your significant other cheats on you, she might be a whore — or maybe you’re a neglectful-bordering-on-emotionally-abusive boyfriend. If you lose your job, yeah, your boss might be a homophobe who was just looking for a reason — but then again, your tendency to prove yourself as the least productive employee of any company is going to keep giving you reason to call your bosses gay bashers if you never stop to think there might be a reason behind your track record.

We all want to be good guys, I think, and even those who would claim otherwise want to be respected, if not liked — good guy is fine, stand-up guy will do in a pinch. But we can’t be. We all have a win-loss record, and at the end, careful examination will probably show a fair balance for each and every one of us. The exceptions, of course, are those who choose to believe that nothing is their fault, and so never change or even attempt to do so — the loss column is going to be a little weightier — and those who choose to examine every situation, accept the fault which is theirs, learn and apply those lessons, and hopefully get a little better next time around.

And so, until the people in the world — even the people in my world — get a little better about accepting accountability, there will be no talk of ex-girlfriends, weekend coke binges that end in dramatic interrogation room scenes straight out of seventies television shows, the number of sexual partners I’ve had in my lifetime, homicidal rampages through suburban apartment complexes, ex-boyfriends, the progress of my training for a career as a Lucha Libre, exotic recipes involving Habanero peppers and human flesh, or where the body of that stripper I was allegedly last seen with might or might not be buried.

Nope. It’s nothing but rave reviews of cover versions of 80’s hits for you fuckers.

Hit Squad

One of the best albums of the 1990s was a (sadly) unknown disc, the debut album from T-Ride. They’re a strange group — I liken them to a perfect melding of Queen and Van Halen with a heavy power groove. It’s the anti-guitar solo guitar hero album, a reimagining of heavy pop rock for the 21st century. Geoff Tyson, the guitarist (who later went on to play with another band deserving of far more recognition than they ever got, Snake River Conspiracy), said in an interview that he always felt the album would have been huge in the late ’80s, in the Def Leppard era, and I’m inclined to agree, except that I think that the music is still more than what most people in the radiovideo world are capable of simple processing.

I was fortunate enough, through small-world circumstances, to meet a girl named Terry in the fall of ’96. She was a crush of mine, Terry — who also, somehow, had just come to Birmingham after spending some time in California, some of which was with one Geoff Tyson. I don’t know what happened to Terry — would love to, now that I think about it — but I do still have the strange proof that this random girl I knew for only a few weeks had spent time with a random guitarist that is still sadly unknown — a demo tape from Geoff’s studio. There’s nothing on the label outside of a handwritten date and Geoff’s initials, but on the cassette (which I transferred to CD as soon as I had the chance, in the summer of ’97) are 20 unreleased tracks, rough and sometimes unproduced, but brilliant.

I think it’s possibly one of my greatest treasures. Imagine finding a one of a kind manuscript by your favorite author, or a demo of a movie that was later discarded by your favorite director — something unique (or might as well be, as for availability) that you just happened to find… It’s things like this (and the sheer number of them) that have happened to me across life that lead me to believe that you either have to accept the existence of synchronicity or fate.


I did a little surfing to find out what Geoff’s up to these days, and found that he’s been working with a new project for about 2 years or so now. Stimulator is — well, they’re interesting. Very 80s new-wave pop with a light sheen of industrial darkness. It’s like, I don’t know — what if Garbage did the soundtrack to Blade Runner? You can check out samples and download the entire debut disc here (seriously, you have to listen, if nothing else, to track eight, their cover of Olivia Newton-John’s MAGIC, originally heard in — anyone? — Xanadu, which also featured the brilliant work of Electric Light Orchestra). I hear rumors that there’s a second Stimulator album on its way soon, too…

I feel like I’m time travelling today. Not in that drank too much and woke up three days in the future way, although not entirely dissimilar, now that I think of it… But damned if MAGIC isn’t the perfect song for this feeling.

Following tradition, in spite of my best efforts

One of the benefits of not calling myself a writer (at least, not in any professional sense of the term) is that I don’t feel funny at all about ignoring the rules. My screenplays don’t take the three act route; half the time, I don’t bother with proper sentence structure, especially in my fictional writing. I’m not being a rebel and trying to break the formal rules; that’s too punk for me to attempt to claim.

I’m just putting down the stories that come to me, in the words that come to me.

But cliches are repeated ad nauseum for a reason, and stereotypes take hold because, while there are exceptions to every expectation, certain experiences are mostly universal.

You can fit any situation into a pigeonhole, if you squeeze hard enough, too.

Driving around Irondale and Crestwood this evening, after emerging from the dramatics of the past month (not just mine, but everyone’s), it struck me that act III is about to begin.

I would say that the lights in the lobby went on and off to signal that, but then they’d take away my driver’s license and put me on anti-seizure meds, which doesn’t sound nearly as much fun as I’d hope it would.

It’s time for a change. Life feels very stagnant, despite the turbulent waters that I place myself in. I can create change, and I will. But I’m hoping that soon change will happen to me, as well.

In the words of my senior year AP English teacher, “Sometimes a whale is just a whale.”

To the guy last night who said he wants my job:

Ah, yes, you see the glories.  But have you thought about the flip side?

Have you considered that you will be on your feet non-stop from 9 PM until 4 AM or so, carrying case after case after case of beer, changing kegs (I don’t know if you’ve ever lifted a keg, but after the third of the night blows out, past and future hernias will start talking to you like only best friends and lovers do), and leaning over inside of coolers until your lower back is bigger than your wallet?

Granted, your wallet is pretty big.

Then there’s the people, constantly screaming out your name, snapping, waving, shouting their drink orders out (incorrectly, last night), and making snide comments just inside your peripheral hearing that you must be ignoring them (which, for the record, is the quick way to guarantee you’ll get ignored).  Sure, there are also plenty of really good people — people that tip you thirty percent on their tabs, which never fall below $100; people that include you in every round of shots they buy; gorgeous women; well-connected guys who make sure you get taken care of outside the bar.

Have you ever had to clean up a bar after a night like Saint Patrick’s Day, New Year’s Eve, or last night?  I’m trying, but there’s really no positive side to throw in next to this one.

Breaking up fights, maybe?  Of course, that’s a positive for a lot of people, especially in my bar.

I’m not complaining, mind you.  Even after working 40-50 hours at my day job, and another 10-20 on freelance work, band gigs, and whatnot, I wouldn’t trade my 20-25 hours on the weekends at Bailey’s for anything.  The money, of course, is phenomenal, even on a bad day.  The women are beautiful, the guys are good-humored. The best thing of all is the family that I work with — these guys are truly the best staff I’ve ever worked with, and we all form this secondary rag-tag post-nuclear family unit.  We’re all allowed to be who we are, which means that Marielle can flirt, Jason can tell the customers that that’s the wrong fucking way to get a drink, and Garth can moon the crowd.

I didn’t say we were for everyone.  But I can guarantee that we’re not boring.

Tyler last night made a crack about hating this place and wishing we could go back to Ruby Tuesdays (where we both used to work, many moons ago).  And I laughed, but cringed on the inside — who could ever work for a corporate hash factory after being cut loose in a place like this?

You know what?  You probably do want my job, actually, though I’m betting that the back pain I’ve got right now and will carry into work with me tonight never occured to you.   But even if you take that, the occasional stress-filled night ,the drama, the garbage and broken bottles and angry customers and the random full-moon fighting into account, and still decide you want my job:

Well, you can pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

Who Cares?

This is me taking the high road.

This is me being the bigger person.

At 5 AM this morning, these are the thoughts that are running through my head.  After spending the day catching up on much needed sleep, destressing after the events of the past days and weeks and months, finally ending up at the bar and feeling very much at home, one small email kicked my brain back into high gear.  So I crawled into bed at 2 AM, read a few chapters of the current book (Chuck Palahniuk’s Survivor, which I’m hoping will be like Choke and sucker-punch me with greatness and inspiration in the last fifteen pages), and turned out the light by 2:30, an astonishingly early goodnight for me.

Or so I thought, because it was around 3 AM when I realized that I was not asleep, nor would I be anytime soon.

This is me being accepting.

This is me watching the universe unfold as it should.

This is me not really knowing what to say in reply.

Because, honestly, the more I think about everything that has transpired in the course of the past week or ten days, I’m just ready to put all this behind me.  There’s a certain fog of absolute insanity that coats all of this in its fine, ashy mist, and feeling that approach just makes me weary.

There are three sides to every story, you know: yours, mine, and the truth.  As I read that email last night, I was reminded again of what sorts of distance can separate the three.

People believe what they want to believe; sadly, people are often encouraged to believe distortions and illusions by those around them, for whatever reasons. Rarely do people stop and try to see how the same story appears from a different point of view, much less objectively.  And I won’t claim that I am capable of seeing things with absolute clarity; far from it, in fact. But I try.

This is me trying to sort things out.

This is me separating the wheat from the chaff.

I can see the things in the email that are undeniable; there are things that I am accused of that are, unfortunately, true.  At least to enough of an extent that bringing them up — even as pointedly as said accusations were made, under the guise of getting things of the chest — is valid and warranted.  Although, again, some people really need to work on presentation.

Interestingly, though, some of these accusations are immediately followed with statements that smack of such amazing delusion or lack of self-awareness that it’s a little frightening. And I can’t help but wonder, even now, nearly twelve hours later, if that’s an astounding lack of self-perception, or if it’s something that has to be said in order to preserve the good guy status quo?

This is me airing my dirty laundry in public.

This is me finding my own sense of closure.

There are people who will read this and think that it’s filled with my classic vague tone, and go on to read other, more interesting and less self-involved things on the web.  There are a few people who will read this and know exactly what I’m talking about, and this will probably piss them off a little.

This is me not really giving a shit.

There are a lot of people that can figure out (without a whole lot of energy) what this is about.  Birmingham is a small, small, getting smaller everyday sort of place, and the blogging community is even smaller. This is the reason that I’m not naming names (though, as noted by Sarah Silverman among many others, if you fall into the life of a comedian, you’re probably gonna end up being turned into a joke; ditto writers).

Yeah, I could have said a lot of this in the email response that I typed — a four or five sentence email that took an agonizing twenty minutes to write (in comparison, this little bit of detritus went from brain to screen in about fifteen, not counting typo correction time).  But like I said, I had decided that this chapter is closed and finished as of the moment that I hit send on that email. Things are what they are, and the only thing that an angry email, no matter how valid, would accomplish is making me feel better through making someone else feel small.

And, I figure, why do that?  It changes nothing, and besides: I should have known better from minute one.

This is me hopefully learning a lesson, finally.

This is me looking forward.

This is a period.

Ballsalicious!

The new best word ever:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMWxaF4zlqk]

In other news, I’m still waiting to hear a valid argument to support the utterly insane amount of money that a supposed majority wants to spent to either build a fence between us and Mexico or send a $100 check to every American, owner or not.

Other than, “It’s an election year, and what better way to get re-elected than buy votes?”

Though honestly, the first politician to outright admit that that’s the best reason he could come up with for supporting the bill, and that was good enough for him — that guy gets my vote, for being honest, if nothing else.

Virginia Moon

I am, for the most part, a terrible person to be related to.

My siblings can back this up, more than my parents would. I’m sure part of that is that unconditional love that people have for their spawn, but there’s also a really simple explanation: my parents live in town, about ten minutes drive from me, and my brother and sisters live at scattered points across the country.

I’m actually terrible at long distance relationships of any kind. Jonas is the only person I’ve ever successfully stayed in touch with for any length of time, and we go through pregnancy-length periods without talking over the years. I’m just lucky that he’s gay and can’t resist my handsome features and promises that one day, if he’s persistant, I’ll think about “experimenting.”

Kidding, as far as you know.

I feel bad, though, about the way things turned out. Not so much with Mandy, or with James, though I’d certainly love it if we were all closer, or if I could afford to go visit them both more often. With Kate, though, it’s another story.

I don’t blame myself, or her, for the distance between us. I’m fifteen years older than her, and had moved out of the house by the time she turned two, so there was immdiate space between us on two levels right there. And from then on, it never really got any better; I’m terrible with kids between the ages of post-cute-baby and old enough to drive, which put her in my peripheral zone throughout most of her life. It was only really in the past few years that we’ve gotten close at all — and now that we’re at a point where we can start to relate, she’s across the country (hopefully, for her sake, never to return — I keep reminding her it’s easier to leave home if you do it young and stay gone) at art school.

There was — and probably remains — some resentment on her part about the distance between us. I know (it’s not hard to see) that she and James and she and Mandy are much closer. More like what I imagine that siblings normally are, even cross-country. And the funny, slightly ironic thing there is that she and I are a lot alike — moreso, I think, at the core, than any of the rest of us four. Mandy and I are closer in age and have more history, and James and I have more in common, I think, but deep down, underneath it all, Kate and I are the matching bookends on the shelf full of kids.

I worry about her, for precisely this reason. James and Mandy have always, in almost all areas, learned their lessons more quickly than me (James’ history with women is almost identical to mine, so he loses some points there — dude, if you’re reading this, Rawlins is the one you don’t want to let get away, I think!). And I haven’t seen Kate be as stubborn as me in her approach to not succeeding the first go-round, but I sense a kindred obstinance. A stupidity in our refusal to accept what’s possible and not, if you will.

She’s a good kid, though. All three of my siblings are, in fact. I suspect at this point, we’ve probably called the same city home for the last time, the four of us, some time ago. And I’m terrible at showing it, at keeping up, at letting them know I’m alive and asking how they are, but I still think about them a lot.