This is a shot of Crown Royal. Crown Royal was my stepfather Marty Stoneman’s spiritous liquor of choice.

It’s a hair after 9 PM. It might be ill-advised for me to be out so late on a “school night” (I report to work at the airport at 6:30 AM tomorrow), but the NBA Playoffs are on, the Utah Jazz just came from behind to take a 2-1 lead against the Memphis Grizzlies, and I’m enjoying the last of my tater tots at my favorite dive bar, tbe Hideaway Lounge, toasting Marty’s memory, and doing research on a bar-specific double acrostic I intend to do, “Deep Dive.” And I have no current romantic entanglements nor familial obligations, and am enjoying a shallow walliow in melancholy, the way my late, great friend Karen Wilkinson did when she played Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” I miss Karen with all my heart. I miss Marty too. And I miss the collaboration of Roy Thomas and Barry Smith on CONAN THE BARBARIAN. I am especially thinking of when Conan delivered to the wizard Zukala the body of Zukala’s daughter. Zukala cried with his one good eye. Just before he rode away on his horse, Conan told Zukala something like, “I’ll drink a toast, to the living and the dead, when I come to the next tavern I meet. Farewell.” That’s the important thing I’m doing right now. Here’s to you, my present and absent Friends.