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.

I don’t have a solid origin story for my TMBG fandom.

I remember seeing “Don’t Let’s Start” on MTV (probably on 120 Minutes?) and liking it, then mis-naming it as “Dont’ Let’s Talk About It” to someone and feeling stupid later.

I remember a conversation with a guy I recognized from just being around the dorm my sophomore year – he used to wear big wide ’70s ties – and we were chatting in a communal lounge area. Maybe They Might Be Giants were on the TV or something? Anyway, they came up and somehow that led to him giving me a photocopied sheet with several dozen images of the band in their cartoon forms from the “Hotel Detective” video.

And then at some point that year I was introduced to Flood and just fell in love with it. I played them regularly on WBGU, and bought Apollo 18 as soon as it came out. Loved that one, too.

When I lived in Orlando, they came to town and I thought about going, but didn’t.

When I moved back to Ohio, they came to Cleveland and I thought about going, but didn’t.

They actually played a concert at Gen Con one year, but I didn’t want to give up my gaming time.

So when they announced a 30^th anniversary of Flood tour and pledged to play the entire thing, I bought tickets the hour they went on sale and was lucky enough to nab a pair. (TMBG has a fondness for the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland, and I don’t know when the last time was they played anyplace larger here – the Beachland is marvelous, but it’s standing-room only General Admission and it’s a 500-person venue, so tickets went fast. They added a second night and that one sold out in a blink, too.) Anyway, that was in 2019, and the thrice-postponed show was just this month, and it was a ton of fun.

Jenn & I went up early so we could eat dinner at the attached Beachland Tavern, and we headed into the larger venue itself just about a half-hour before showtime, and still found ourselves up close to the stage.

No opening act, free “T-H-E-Y” paper crowns, and two sets of just about an hour each, with a couple encore tunes to close out the night. John & John & the band sure seemed like they were having fun, and it was contagious. (Which reminds me: They’re requesting – but not requiring – audiences to be masked during their shows this tour, and they’re making sure to repeatedly thank everyone who does so. I’d guess that maybe 2/3 of the Beachland audience was masked, and most of the unmasked members were further back from the stage. I don’t recall seeing too many naked faces in front of us. In a place like the Beachland, I really wish everyone had complied, though.)

As advertised, the entirety of “Flood” was scattered throughout the setlist, with a couple asterisks: A pre-recorded version of “They Might Be Giants” served as the night’s introduction just before the actual band took the stage; same with “Hearing Aid” for the second set. And they performed “Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love” backwards at the end of the first set while recording it on video, which was then reversed and played back in the second set.

There were several songs I wasn’t familiar with, but the non-Flood numbers I recognized included “Ana Ng” – which Jenn and I both absolutely love – “The Guitar,” and “Hey Mr. DJ I Thought You Said We Had A Deal.”

So much fun, so much excellent energy and smiles and bouncing and singing along. Just a great night in Cleveland.

I grew up attending Methodist churches, which in Ohio pretty much guaranteed that at some point, I was going to wind up in Lakeside.

It’s possible I visited the place once before I knew what it was: My great-uncle Paul was a Methodist minister who retired to Marblehead with my aunt Dorothy when I was pretty young, and I remember visiting them one summer. We went to Kelley’s Island and the long-gone Mystery Hill/Preshistoric Forest roadside attraction, and they lived just a block outside the Lakeside gates, so it seems very likely that we went over there for ice cream or church or mini golf or just to visit the playground.

When I was in sixth grade, I joined our church youth group, which spent a week at Lakeside every summer, always renting the same cottage. It was a three-story place with a narrow, steep spiral staircase and what felt like dozens of small bedrooms – some of which provided the only access to the others – and a couple bathrooms. On the second floor were a small kitchen and an open dining area and living room, with a door that opened onto a wrap-around balcony.

We shared meals, of course, and had a couple daily group activities – as well as half-day trips to East Harbor and Put-in-Bay – but I also remember having an abundance of free time to just run around Lakeside, which was quite a rush of independence, especially in those early teenage years. Shuffleboard was free, miniature golf was cheap, and there was an arcade and snack bar down by the dock, where we could hang out and swim. I always liked walking on the big rocks on the shoreline. Summers in Lakeside, you can watch the sun rise and set over the lake from the water’s edge.

In eighth grade, I started attending another weeklong Methodist summer camp called Reach Out, which was open to kids from all over the state. My first year, 1985, Reach Out was held at three or four locations. Starting in 1986, they just combined all the camps into one at Lakeside.

So here’s the thing: I grew up going to that Methodist church just about every Sunday. Met one of my oldest and closest friends in the world there, and have many good memories of overnights and winter retreats and Lakeside. He didn’t go to Reach Out, but for me, the point was always to just enjoy a week in Lakeside and meet people who didn’t know me from “real life” – that is, the school year. People who didn’t know what an awkward kid I really was, trying so hard not to be the insecure nerd that I was in middle school back home, and whose shadow still felt like it was clinging to me when I got into high school.

After my third year at Reach Out (1987), I was nominated to be on the Planning Committee for the next summer’s camp, and was shocked when I was voted one of the seven “PCs.” This is a thing for the popular cool kids, and I do not belong here, I remember thinking. I’m not even sure I really buy into the church stuff (Narrator: He didn’t.) even though I sing and talk and fake it because that’s supposed to be why we’re here. But I’m a PC and that feels kind of good, so let’s see what happens.

What happened was that over the next year I spent one solid weekend a month – Friday night to Sunday lunch – in the company of six other kids and a few adults, planning Reach Out ’88. One of those kids was my friend Keith.

And this summer, Keith and I returned to Lakeside with our wives and two other excellent close friends and spent a weekend in a house smack in the middle of the old Reach Out neighborhood.

Although it’s possible I’m wrong, I’m pretty sure hadn’t been to Lakeside in probably 30 years: I think the last time I was there was my freshman year of college, when my friend Jen and I drove over from Bowling Green just for something to do on a fall Saturday.

What struck me driving in this time on a late summer Friday after work was how narrow the streets felt, and how oddly closed-in the trees made the neighborhood feel. And then we were in more familiar territory, passing some of the old cabins and Wo-Ho-Mis (a dorm-style building where girls stayed at Reach Out), and the gathering halls and Hoover Auditorium.

We spent the last daylight walking down to the dock and back as a group, and Keith and I ran into one of our former Reach Out leaders down by the lake .(The weekend included a few hours of reunion plans, so although there were only a handful of folks there from “our” era of the camp, we did catch up with a few here and there.) After a late dinner at the house, Keith and our friend Paul and I walked Lakeside well after midnight, locating the distant building where we were assigned one year; finding the empty spaces where the cabins from our PC year had once stood; passing the auditorium where we’d goofed on stage and held the traditional “last night of Reach Out” dance.

Saturday I got up early anyway and went down to buy doughnuts at The Patio – one of the very few places on Earth where I will enthusiastically consume cake donuts, which I generally don’t care for. You go and buy them still warm, and you can’t go wrong with the basic cinnamon-sugar dusting. I took a dozen back to the house.

We spent the late morning kayaking the area around the dock, and then re-enacting a photo I have from the summer 1988 day when Keith and the other PCs and I were thrown into the lake.

After some reunion stuff and then a nap (for some of us), we hung out in the cottage and made camp crafts, and then ordered a pizza. Keith and I walked to Marblehead to see if my great aunt and uncle’s house was still there – it is – and then it was just an evening of games and talking and having a fantastic time with friends while the sounds of A Girl Named Tom drifted in from the concert across the street.

Sunday morning Keith and I met a few Reach Out folks for doughnuts, and then we walked to the rocks on the shore where I used to hang out. There’s one in particular that I remembered, so I sat there for a few minutes.

We finished up our morning with am impromptu grand tour of Lakeside by golf cart, provided by one of our close Reach Out friends and her daughter, and then gathered up our stuff to head back home.

It was strange and wonderful being back there and remembering a lot of things that are way back in my past – but what was really great was enjoying the present with some truly excellent people.

Neither Jenn nor I had been to Toronto before that weekend we went up for the Pet Shop Boys / New Order Unity Tour, and we had such a nice time that I thought I’d separate this bit of travel writing from the memory-entangled concert experience.

Earlier this year, we visited the American side of Niagara Falls while we were in Buffalo for a dragon boat race. (Jenn’s a paddler. I’m team support.) Once we crossed into Canada, I was unprepared for the sheer sprawl of the Golden Horseshoe – I knew the names of these places like Mississauga and Hamilton for work-related reasons, but realizing they’re each huge on their own while also being part of Greater Toronto just kind of floored me.

Anyway, having never been there, we booked a hotel that was beyond Toronto’s center based on price and availability – there was a lot going on in town that weekend, it turns out – so when we reached North York around dinnertime and realized we’d be staying in one of the city’s largest and most well-established Asian population centers, we were excited. Findiing good food nearby would not be a problem. (Option paralysis, on the other hand…)

We found a dinner spot about a kilometer from our hotel, set out on foot…and stopped maybe a third of the way there because we found a place offering hand-pulled noodles. Then we learned of a dessert spot a couple blocks up, set out…and stopped two minutes later at the Upper East Food Club, a place with several little eateries all sharing the same indoor & outdoor seating spaces. (The last picture? Not from Friday night’s dessert. It’s Jenn’s bao from the next day’s lunch.)

Saturday morning I explored the area a bit more. First discovery: Our hotel was attached to a small shopping gallery with an escalator directly to the subway station below. Perfect. Second discovery: Our hotel was also attached to a magnificent branch of the public library.

I also found a few nifty parks close by, as well as a dessert place called the Cheese Garden (Why hel-LO there!) where I got a double fromage cheesecake sundae. It was a small piece of their double fromage cheesecake – a thin layer of cheese spongecake, a layer of regular baked cheesecake, and a layer of frozen mascarpone cream cheese on top – served with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream. I ate this while waiting for Upper East Food Club to open so I could get lunch for Jenn.

The public transportation was an excellent alternative to driving into the city center and trying to park anywhere near the concert venue: In addition to our show, Swedish rock band Ghost was playing the neighboring concert hall; the Toronto Blue Jays were in town; and the Toronto International Film Festival was going on. This all made for some fun people-watching on the late-night trains.

Sunday we checked out after breakfast and drove to Niagara Falls, where we spent a few hours on the Canada side with friends from Ohio who’d never been there. Here are some views from our Toronto hotel and the Canadian side of the falls.