Alphaville’s “Forever Young” album is 40 years old this fall.

I don’t remember hearing the iconic title song until fall 1989, when I was a freshman at Bowling Green State University and it grabbed my guts and heartand squished them to a wrenching pulp while still filling me with wonder and hope and possibility every time Marian Gold’s voice reached up for that final yearning verse about adventures missed and songs forgotten.

My roommate had the Alphaville Singles Collection from 1988, I put the original “Forever Young” on a mixtape so I could listen to it back home after the school year, and then at some point I bought the full album on cassette. I honestly can’t remember if it was before or after I spent July of 1990 in Germany, which made “Summer in Berlin” hit much differently. (Also, yes, it’s a different feel, but I do also love the Special Extended Mix from the Singles Collection, with its energy and danceability, and I’m listening to that version right now and it is a delight I haven’t listened to in too, too long.)

When I went back to BGSU as a sophomore that fall, I had a bit of a rough start to the year: Two of my closest friends weren’t there any more, I had a lousy randomly-assigned roommate, and I often felt alone. One mopey afternoon I walked four miles round-trip to the K-Mart on the south end of town and spent a good chunk of my saved money on a boom box with a CD player and lugged it back to my dorm along with two CDs – “Forever Young” and “Pink Floyd: The Wall.” (Yeah, mood. I know. Funny postscript – I mentioned this purchase to my parents and they said they’d been planning on getting me a CD player for Christmas, so I took the boom box back a couple days later. I feel like I bummed a ride from someone that trip.)

Anyway, I love the whole “Forever Young” album, but the title track remains one of my all-time favorite songs. I kept listening to it through college, through a terrible relationship, through a move to Florida while in said relationship, and then, a little bit after that unfortunate episode had come to its end, I met this girl Jenn and played it for her, and we kissed for the first time, and then a couple years later we got married and stayed that way. (I mean, that alone would be an excellent reason for this to be my favorite song, right?)

Why do I love this song so much? I mean, it’s ’80s synthpop. It’s melancholic and dreamy and its swells run deep and it’s everything I’ve always loved about a particular style and sound of music. But also, while “Forever Young” has never changed, I have.

I was 18 when I first fell in love with this song. I’m 53 now. That’s 35 years of listening to “Forever Young” on countless warm-night drives with the windows down, and close nights with rain on the windows, and mornings on the way to work at Walt Disney World, and after second-shift jobs when most of the world was silent. I listened on visits home from college, when Hartville, Ohio’s roads seemed suddenly small and narrow but still mapped in my DNA; and out between the vast cornfields of Northwest Ohio; during dark times in Florida when I was far away from everyone who knew me best; and on the interstates when Jenn & Kelsey slept during overnight road trips; and driving home from visits to Kelsey when she was in college.

I listen and sing (badly) because even when I was a teenager, I recognized the beautiful impossibility of the song’s chorus. I listen because while I’m singing “Forever Young” I think how I really do hope to actually get to be old. I sing it thinking of people who did in fact, die young – and the perception of that has changed, too. I think of my friend Tobi, who died when she was four years younger than my daughter is now; and my dad, who died seven younger than I am now; and my grandfather, who died several years younger than my mom is now.

“Forever Young” still strikes resonant chords, and it never hits the same as the years pass – but the me of this moment loves it just as much as the me of all those other moments, and at this point, I’m pretty sure the me of the moments to come will still be listening to it and feeling the echoes of all of us who sang along the way.

When I was a kid, I had a subscription to an astronomy magazine called “Odyssey,” and I loved it: Articles about NASA; pictures of other planets, moons, nebulae; do-it-yourself science experiments; monthly guides on stargazing with cool charts introducing me to the constellations. (True story: “Odyssey” was the home of my first published work of fiction – a couple paragraphs entered as part of a contest to create legends based on the features of the moon. No, I will not be sharing it.) This is where I learned to spot Orion – and it’s been my favorite constellation ever since.

I know, it’s an easy pick: Neat name, jeweled sword with a naked-eye nebula, brightest in the cold clear Ohio winters. Orion’s always been my sky calendar and reminder of the constant motion of the stars and time. When I used to do a lot of pre-dawn running, the first sign that summer was ending were those mornings I’d get up and catch Orion just over the horizon. How huge it seems when it’s low in the sky, and how unfailingly wondrous to view M-42 through binoculars or a telescope.

Three of the best star names are in Orion, too: Betelgeuse, Rigel, and Bellatrix.

Anyway, I’m 53 years old now, and here’s my first tattoo:

It was hot and sunny, and there was a scrabbling in the downspout.

I’m sure over the years, more than one small creature has met its unfortunate fate in any one of the gutters on our house and garage, washed down into the buried sewer pipes. But this one I heard.

Okay, then. Let’s see what we have: I go over to the downspout at the front corner of the garage and give it a couple firm taps.

::rustlerustleskrrrriiik: (A small struggling noise and then the sound of toenails on metal.)

I can’t tell exactly where it is in the pipe, but it’s easy enough to separate the vertical downspout from the s-shaped connector at the bottom which feeds into the sealed pipe below. I figure if it’s in the former, whatever critter is in there will welcome a safe drop into the leafy hostas, and if it’s in the latter, it’ll be a brief scramble upward to daylight and freedom.

The downspout is now open to the plants. There is no sound.

The only visible curve inside the s-pipe is bare, and there’s no noise coming from there, either.

I triple-tap on the vertical pipe again.

:skribbleskritchrattleskreeeee: Still in there, eh? Look down, goofball: That’s freedom and cool shady territory for hiding and fleeing to safety.

Nothing.

Ugh, fine. I get the ladder and a long, thin wooden stake from the garage, and climb up to look down.

Whatever’s in the darkness, it’s far enough down that I can’t see it – but I know it’s there because I don’t see the opening at the bottom of the downspout. Here we go.

With one hand, I steady myself against the roof, and with the other, I gently lower the stake into the downspout, thinking I’ll just loose the critter’s grip and it’ll drop softly into those waiting plants, and we’ll both go about our day.

I am utterly unprepared for the thing which turns out to be a chipmunk to use the stake as a ladder and freaking launch itself out out the pipe with such velocity that it’s just a rocketing brown blur and then for half a heartbeat it’s frozen against a heat-wavering summer blue sky at the peak of a steep parabola, above the gutter and the ladder and the roof line and me and all this is happening as I am yelping in surprise and clutching the roof to keep from tipping backward.

Motion resumes as the chipmunk soundlessly drops, then softly breaks the low canopy of the hostas. There is a muffled thump and receding tiny footfalls toward the patch of mint at the garage’s back corner.

My heart begins to slow again, and I hope the chipmunk’s does, too.

I first heard Depeche Mode around 1986-87, close on the heels of secretly embracing the Pet Shop Boys and New Order. The girl I was dating at the time introduced me to songs from Some Great Reward – Blasphemous Rumours, People Are People, Master and Servant – and I enjoyed them well enough.

My freshman year of college at Bowling Green, though? Depeche Mode was a core part of the fall 1989-spring 1990 soundtrack in our bloodstream, me and my newest, closest friends hanging out long hours, cold days, dizzy nights in close quarters, heading to Alternative Nights at Uptown, playing rummy, sitting on the edge of bunks or desks eating cafeteria sandwiches – good lord, what did we do with all that free time and can I have some of it back please? Yeah: Lots of Depeche Mode and The Cure and Cocteau Twins and Alphaville – and holy fuck, was it a big deal when Violator came out that March, most of the way through the year when there was what seemed then like a lot of emotionally churned water under our bridges.

A few years later, I moved to Florida, where I met Jenn. She was also an alternative music kid, and made me a mixtape including James and Voice of the Beehive and Blake Babies, and sometimes we’d go dancing at Visage, an alt-club where Jenn once memorably threw her black-booted feet around at a particularly elevated level when an unknown young woman was apparently dancing too close to me.

Jenn & I got married, moved to Ohio, raised a wonderful human, and I kind of stopped paying attention to Depeche Mode very much for awhile, except for the nostalgia trips from time to time and then their presence in many of my synthpop streaming music collections when those became a thing.

Over the past few years, Jenn and I started really making an effort to see musicians whose work we enjoy, particularly those we’ve missed out on over the years – bands like Duran Duran, The Cure, and They Might Be Giants. And then last year Andy Fletcher died, and this year Memento Mori came out, and Jenn and I nabbed Depeche Mode tickets for Cleveland as soon as we could.

Depeche Mode live was everything I wanted: Incredible stage energy, vocals that still deliver a punch to the heart, a wide-ranging set that mixed what I think are the best parts of Memento Mori with 15 songs from their 1981 (Speak & Spell) to 1993 (Songs of Faith and Devotion) catalog.

Best surprise?  Martin Gore’s acoustic “Strangelove.” (Pictured above.) It’s my favorite Depeche Mode song, and they’re rotating it in and out of the set, so I didn’t want to get my hopes up. But when I heard the familiar keyboard intro plinking gorgeously from the synthesizer – I don’t know how else to describe it when you program an electronic keyboard to sound like a traditional piano – well, things got a little dusty in my locality of the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse for those three minutes. Second best? “Black Celebration.” Again, one that isn’t being performed at every show, but which nestles darkly and cozily against my insides.

There’s also something incredibly Depeche Mode about seeing this band at this moment in time, decades into a career spent creating music known for its appeal to a joyfully melancholy twilit crowd of goths and new wavers and synthpulsers and weird kids. I’m not saying that sad music created in your twenties isn’t valid and true and real – I’m just saying that stuff hits different coming from a couple sixty-year old guys who have (like all of us of A Certain Age) seen some shit in the past 40+ years. It seems likely this is a final go-round for them – and if it’s not, that’s totally OK, too – but if it is, then wow, guys: Thanks for a hell of a goodbye.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jaws is pretty much a perfect movie. It’s also fairly well known that its production was a legendary hassle.

Because I love Jaws, I was really intrigued awhile back when I heard about The Shark Is Broken coming to Broadway. The gist: Robert Shaw kept a journal during his time playing the role of Quint, and his son Ian has adapted the material into a play about Shaw, Roy Scheider, and Richard Dreyfuss dealing with each other during the long hours between takes. Ian also plays his dad onstage.

Jenn didn’t have an interest in seeing the play, so I took Friday off work, drove over to New York, visited our daughter, saw the show, and drove back after breakfast on Saturday. I love visiting the city, even for something like just 22 hours.

The Shark Is Broken was entertaining and funny and moving, and it really should be seen by fans of the movie, so I hope it has done well enough that it’s produced around the country. Of course, seeing Ian in his dad’s role was special, and the actors playing Scheider (Colin Donnell) and Dreyfuss (Alex Brightman) are also both super talented and accomplished.

Kelsey and I got to hang out and talk and try a new doughnut shop and visit her local coffee spot, and buy bagels for me to bring home – and these are my favorite parts of any visit.

I was a high school freshman the first time I visited New York City. Over a couple days, we saw a Broadway show, wandered around Chinatown for a couple hours, went up the Empire State Building and World Trade Center, and took a boat ride out past the Statue of Liberty, which was undergoing renovations and not open for visitors.

When we were walking around the area of the Twin Towers, I snapped a photo of a strange sculpture that I liked. It was stark black and white and from a certain angle, there was a bright mural on a nearby building that contrasted with it in a way that struck me as cool.

Last year, I took my mom on her first trip to New York City to visit my daughter Kelsey. Mom wanted to see the September 11 Memorial, among other things, and while we were there, I thought I’d see if I could find the spot where that sculpture had stood. Knowing that there were several large-scale pieces of art that were lost in the 2001 attacks, I asked one of the nearby guides if he knew what I was talking about, and where it had once stood.

He had no idea, but was intrigued enough to track down a docent. I gave him all the details I could, but he also had no memory of such a sculpture. Knowing that I had a picture of it back home, I took his card and said I’d email him an image, because he really seemed interested in finding out more about the piece.

I caught up with mom and Kelsey, and we headed down toward The Battery for our scheduled ferry ride to LIberty Island, with a quick detour to walk past the school Kelsey was attending at the time. As we passed Zuccotti Park, I happened to look down a narrow street and catch an unmistakable glimpse of…

…that sculpture. That sculpture. I recognize it immediately even though it’s a couple football fields’ distance away, and have a good laugh while I tell mom and Kelsey, “Hey, that thing I was just bugging those guys about? It’s down that way.”

About eight months later, Jenn and I were in the neighborhood again for Kelsey’s graduation, and I made time to go visit the sculpture up close. It’s Jean Dubuffet’s “Group of Four Trees,” and it’s been in that spot for about half a century now.

And here’s the shot I took of the sculpture back in what I believe was the spring of 1985:

Forty years ago,I pulled together this Dungeons & Dragons-inspired costume all by my 12-year-old self:

No parental assistance required: Sweat pants and a sweatshirt that looks like I removed the collar for that deep-V look that’s all the rage among dragon-slayers; cape from an old…bedspread, maybe? I can remember the material was heavy, but also kind of clingy and stretchy; tunic-vest-thing that I cut and stitched together myself out of some burlap-type cloth mom had around; and a belt that I probably wore every other day of the year, too.

The sword? A yardstick covered in aluminum foil, of course. And if it’s not completely clear, yes, my helmet is a white knit cap covered in foil as well.

If I remember correctly, my fellow D&D player wannabe Mike S. wore a pretty slick elf ranger costume he and his mom had made.

More than once, I think, Mike and I took advantage of the trick-or-treat scheduling differences between the village of Hartville itself – where he lived – and Lake Township: One place usually scheduled it on Halloween proper, while the other set it on the closest preceding weekend night, or something like that, making it possible for us to hit both of our neighborhoods. I seem to think we also really liked going out in the early hours of trick-or-treat, dropping off our candy haul at home, and then going back out after dark to roam the neighborhood and try to scare the kids we knew.

Other bits and pieces nicely caught up in this photo: The Halloween decorations – store-bought and handmade alike – that my mom put out every year; the long-gone brick fireplace and wood paneling of our family room; the wooden set of coasters in their little boxy holder up there on the mantle (these go back practically to the beginning of my memory).

For all the dorkiness captured in this picture – of me, that is; nothing against our family decor – I remain oddly proud of this costume, since I made the whole thing myself.

Forty years ago this month, my parents took me and my brothers and my friend Mike to see Return of the Jedi on opening night. This is an edited version of the chapter “What You Take With You,” from my book Collect All 21! I think it’s important to note that I wrote this years before Disney bought Lucasfilm and created the sequels, and sharing those on screen with my wife and daughter was way up there with watching Episode VI as a 12-year old. Enjoy.

My movie-going experiences peaked when I was twelve years old.

Notice I’m not saying that when my mom and dad and brothers and my friend Mike and I went to Return of the Jedi on opening night that I saw the best movie ever. (Although if you’d asked me right after, I’d have probably said it was.)

I’m just saying that as an overall movie-going experience, seeing Jedi on May 25, 1983 makes an awfully damn convincing case for my top spot. (This is scored using a complicated formula of three years of anticipation plus best friend coming along plus pre-movie meal and line-waiting in the mall plus insanely excited crowd multiplied by being a pre-teen Star Wars nutcase.)

First of all, you’ve got to remember the build-up: Three interminably long years before, we’d all staggered out of theaters having been slapped with the most insane cliffhanger ever — Han Solo frozen in carbonite and Luke wondering if Darth Vader’s his dad.

I don’t remember what movie I went to see at the Gold Circle Cinemas the night I first saw the Return of the Jedi trailer. Heck, I can’t even honestly remember if I saw the fabled original Revenge of the Jedi version. I do remember telling all my friends about it (we were almost all still Star Wars fans on some level, though I feel confident in saying nobody had it as bad as I did), and specifically talking about a shot of Chewbacca picking up a stormtrooper and throwing him backwards into another trooper, which seemed to me the very definition of “awesome.”

So now it’s late May 1983, and Jedi is set to open.

On a freaking Wednesday night.

Arggh! That’s a school night, George! What are you thinking?! I can’t go to see a movie on a school night! You’re killing me!

Did I ask my parents a few days beforehand? I honestly don’t know. If I did, they hadn’t given me a concrete answer, because otherwise I’d remember bragging at school about going.

I got home from school around 3:30, and the pestering began. “Can we, Mom? Dad? Please? Can Mike come along if we go? CanweCanweCanwe?”

And they said YES! Mom, Dad, my little brothers Nick and Adam and I piled into our Ford conversion van, drove up to Hartville and picked up Mike and then headed down to Mellet Mall in Canton.

I seem to think we got to the mall around 5 o’clock for something like an 8 o’clock showing.

Pulling into the parking lot, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Mellett Mall’s Twin Cinemas’ only entrance was from inside the shopping center, so the giant movie marquee outside hung on a big plain brown brick wall. No flashing lights, no mass of fans gathering in front of the theater. Just Return of the Jedi in big plastic, all-capital letters. Remembering what it was like to see that sign still tightens my chest a little bit.

When we went inside it was quickly clear this was not an ordinary night at the movies. A line, two and three people wide, led from the theater’s entrance out past the novelty T-shirt shop next door, past Casual Corner and the Little Professor Bookstore and on down the concourse toward Montgomery Ward. I’d never seen a line like this outside of Cedar Point or Disney World.

And there was an energy to it. Not the kind like we saw in the prequel era, when people came out in costumes and you’d see fully-armored Stormtroopers and robed Jedi and maybe a Boba Fett or four, but just an anticipatory thrill, everybody talking and excited and ready to find out how this whole thing was going to end up.

So, here we were. Hyper. Frantic. Psyched.

And facing a three-hour wait until showtime.

No advance ticket sales here, this was good old-fashioned get in line, tickets go on sale maybe an hour, tops, before a showing, wait your turn and have a friend hold your spot if you have to pee.

Mom, Dad, Nick, Adam, Mike and I parked ourselves at the end. (People piled in behind us pretty steadily, so we weren’t at the end long.) Mike and I ran up to the front of the line to look at the movie posters and the accompanying photos in their lit-up glass frame, pointing and wondering and yammering about how cool this was and how great it was to be there.

We ate dinner in two shifts: Clutching some money from Mom and Dad, we ran down to the hot dog shop — it might have been called Carousel — and the Orange Julius next door. (That was, I’m pretty sure, all the food choices Mellett Mall had to offer. Food courts wouldn’t reach Canton for another few years.) It felt neat, being 12 years old and kind of on our own. Sure, my family was right down the mall, but these were pre-cell phone days, and there was a sort of freedom in the air as we ordered our own food, found a place to sit, talking and joking while we ate.

Then we held the spot in line when Mom and Dad took my little brothers for dinner.

It’s funny how much of the next few hours I don’t remember from that May evening in 1983.

I don’t remember the line eventually creeping forward, or the moment our tickets came spitting up through the little slot in the counter, or finding our seats, or the lights going down, or the previews.

I don’t remember the tense anticipation brought on by the 20th Century Fox fanfare or the chills on the back of my neck at the blast of sound when the Star Wars logo slammed onto the screen.

What I really remember is a feeling.

I’ve never seen a movie in an atmosphere like that again. Packed houses on opening nights with hardcore fans, sure, but never again like this one.

We were there.

All of us were there in the Tatooine desert, screaming and whooping when Artoo launched Luke’s lightsaber through the hot, wavering air. We were in the cramped, firelit hut when Yoda confirmed Vader’s secret. Yes, we even joined the Ewoks’ battle cries, feeling the ground shake under the thundering fall of an Imperial Scout Walker.

I was so excited to go to school the next day, because this time, it was me who’d gotten to go see the next Star Wars movie first, and I couldn’t wait to talk about it and see if anyone else had been to opening night. Funny thing is, nobody had. Not only that, nobody seemed as caught up in the whole thing, at least, not the way they’d been a couple years before about Empire. Guess that’s what three years, especially those between third and sixth grade, will do.

Somewhere in the years after Jedi, it became cool to sell the movie short, mostly because of the Ewoks, but also because of the whole Luke/Leia-brother/sister coincidence, and the flip dialogue, and the re-hashing of the Death Star battle. And even though a lot of us first-generation fans recognize those things, I’d bet very few of us felt that way right after seeing it. Weakest of the original trilogy? No doubt — but I don’t remember a single person coming out of that theater disappointed.

Because what I remember most vividly about that night is the moment of triumph when Vader is turned at the last, swooping the Emperor up in those armored arms as John Williams’ score assaulted our ears. A wave of awestruck adrenaline rushed through the theater, and the audience actually stood in unison and cheered, caught up in the climax.

I’ve never seen that happen at any other movie screening.

That’s my favorite movie scene ever. Even three decades and a thousand watches later, it still manages to spark whatever cells hold the faintly-vibrating echoes of that night. For the shortest of blinks, things around me go dark, and I taste hot dogs and Orange Julius and popcorn and Coke and then my throat and guts do a Jell-O shiver and Mom and Dad and Nick and Adam and Mike are there beside me and we’re in a crowd that’s wide-eyed and applauding and grinning in the movie screen’s flicker.

It always passes more quickly than I hope, but as long as those seconds still happen, somewhere I still get to be twelve.