I tracked it backwards to see her again. She looked like she was posing, but pretending not to. An actress. Maybe a hooker. Maybe all hookers were actresses, because they kind of had to be. I went forwards, watched her disappear, and then, a few frames later, saw her again, at the top of the screen, just as perfect and tan and naked and awkward as she’d been before. I ran a finger down her flat stomach.

If you follow all the above steps correctly, you are guaranteed, or your money back, that you will see Phantasm II, as not even the director intended, and your concept of reality will be transformed, and you will be both glad and horrified, and you will realize that reality is a flying silver ball ready to lodge itself into your head and turn your mind to mush.

I am ten seconds in to Episode 1 and it appears Sam Wilson (aka Falcon) is getting ready for a funeral. No one puts on a suit and dress shirt in Marvelworld unless there is a funeral. He is also doing the sad gazey face thing. Oh, it’s Captain America’s shield! Aw, the shield has its own bag. Do you think the bag is comic book canon? I bet at least twelve (12) videos on YouTube can provide me guidance on this question, and I guarantee you that, due to my MDD (Marvel Disarrangement Disorder), I will eventually watch all of them. But I digress.

Of the 613 mitzvot, or commandments of the Jewish religion, number 207 is this: “You must love the convert.” Astrid Weissman, like me, for all her earnest, eager, excessive energy, formally converted and entered the tribe of Judaism, and her commitment should be lauded, not derided. Long live the passionate Jew-by-choice. May she never feel guilty for buying oversized Judaica or awkward for her limited mastery of Yiddish. Wherever we will go, she will go. Our people will be her people and our God her God. Amen.

The sweet scent of peach lemonade and vodka seeps from my pores as the temperature rises near the bar at the back of the Starland Ballroom. Oversized flannels hang off the bodies of girls wearing ripped skinny jeans, and a crowd of t-shirts with different tour dates printed on their backs moves in waves – to a standing spot, to the bar, and back again. I hold my plastic cup close to my chest, careful to sip the vodka slowly; I need to be able to stand to see the stage. An advertisement for IHOP flashes across the projector screen, and the crowd roars, a symphony of chants honoring buttermilk pancakes. I clap, too, imagining a side of crispy bacon, a cheese omelette, and hot coffee running down my freshly sore throat when the concert is over.

Back in 2007, when the seventh and final Harry Potter book came out, there was nothing but grief and regret once “the truth” about Snape was revealed. The character had already acquired an icon status that few in the series had managed to, when in 2011 the last film came out and - greatly due the late Alan Rickman’s breath-taking performance- there was yet another wave of sympathy for Snape as those who had not read the book realised Snape was with the good guys all along.