oh. my. god. What is wrong with you? Black jellybeans are the ONLY good flavour of jelly beans!!! Or jujubes or even DOTS for that matter — but at least the DOTS people will let you buy a whole box of Black Crows so you don’t have to fish them out from jelly genpop.. Lemonheads clearly rule the tiny sours category As for the rest, well I can see you are clearly insane on the matter of candy. I’ll give you Runts, though. I mean wtf, right?

This is a lovely piece. All that Jazz is a movie I’ve watched many times and feel great affection for. I remember watching that Oscar show (I was also 10 that year) but mostly because of the kid from Kramer vs. Kramer and Miss Piggy. And now I really have to apologize for making my comment all about me but here it is. My dad was also a successful working writer (in television, in the 60s in Canada and in the 70s and 80s in the US.) His name was M. Charles Cohen and he wrote, among other things, two episodes of the miniseries Roots. I think your essay is the first thing I’ve ever read that captures the surreality of that part of my childhood — the weirdness of having a sense of place, vicarious as it was, in the ghost world of Hollywood. I had a hard time with my father’s death in 1997 (also from smoking related cancer) and am still cautious when I revisit my memories of the times he took me with him when he was working in LA, in NY, and on one memorable occasion, in Minneapolis, MN) and of the times he was up for various awards, including the Emmy, but your essay made it feel good to remember.  So thank you, to both you and your dad, for writing things that touched my heart.