It does seem odd that I’m marketing software, although I’m not exactly marketing software, I’m an Account Manager for a company that makes admissions software for colleges, but you know, whatever, in any case the real question is what I’m doing in Cincinnati. For a long time I used to come back here almost every year around this tine, Passover you know, but not for a while, I think the last time I was here I went to opening day with my brother, and before that I went to opening day with my dad, and the umpire dropped dead in the third inning so we went home but we came back the next day. It was sad. Opening day is the first day of the baseball season, I suppose not everybody knows that, the Reds always have the first game of the season and that was Monday, the first day I was here, opening day for the Reds. Nobody lives here that I know any more, except my dad and Jimmy Eichmann, that’s all I can think of, but the trees are still the same, even though the temperature is the same as in Berkeley, high of 62 low of 48, the trees know where they are and as I was driving down the street past the white brick houses—never brick in California, you know—it was the look and smell of spring here, it was like driving to Grandma’s house. Even though Cincinnati is a grotesquely middle-aged city, I’m somehow too old to be here; when I make a joke about Bob Braun or Kash Amburgy, I might as well be talking about Fred Allen or Edgar Bergen. The women who do the same job I do here are in their twenties and are like the girls with whom I went to school, with their straight blonde hair and flat Midwestern vowels, business majors from the University of Dayton, except of course they are the daughters of my classmates from Wyoming High School. And last night I dreamed about Paul Trupin, my high school friend who died at 33, but every time I see him I remember that he’s not really dead, that was misreported, everyone thinks that but no, he’s back in Cincinnati, but just passing through. Usually I’m trying to see him but can’t, but this time he wanted to stay with me while he’s here, which of course there are some friends to whom one never says no. So it’s good to see my dad and to see Paul, and as for the rest, you know, some things don’t change, vis-à-vis Moronicity, and to think I could be a podgy rock star with bad hair and make-up. Tracy, maybe it’s just the picture, but you look about one hundred and fifty seven times better than Robert Smith.