so we moved to la. my father gets a job at the palm restaurant. my uncle junior works there who was a jehovah’s witness, believe it or not. he went from catholic to jehovah. so basically, my grandmother wanted us all to switch from catholic to jehovah, you know? meanwhile, we’re from harlem; my father’s doing coke, you know; my mother thinks she’s anne margaret; she’s teasing her hair with a bottle of vodka, you know; so dysfunctional, cross-addicted family, still cooking pasta on sundays…um, and uh, and the meatballs, they-they wind up being burnt, like you know? it just got so dysfunctional. it got pretty bad.











