You’re still pretty sick. Yeah. My name is Gene, and I too am an alcoholic. Hi, Gene. And always when I identify myself as an alcoholic, I base that identification on my interpretation of the definition of the word alcoholic, as it’s defined in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, a book written by alcoholics for alcoholics. And in that book, they said this: “We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking.” And that’s all they said. They didn’t make any reference to how much we drank, what we drank, where we drank, or what happened as a result of our drinking. They didn’t say in order to be an alcoholic, you gotta live on Skid Row, drink wine, spend weekends in drunk tanks, marry the same woman four or five times and- Those things can and do happen to people who don’t drink, you know. Uh, it’s certainly nice to be invited back here to Utah again.

Uh, I’ve been here a number of times, and I’m a little, uh, confused as to what to lie about tonight because, uh- I don’t want to get.. So I’d certainly be remiss if I didn’t thank the committee for asking me here. I have nothing to complain about. Well, two things. I was in the pool this afternoon, and I could get my hands on that little brat that was there with his mother. And he says, “Hey, Ma, look, there’s Shamu.” And the only bad thing about the hotel is the towels are too thick. I can’t get them in my suitcase. You know? People often wonder where Calistoga, California, is. For a while, I used to wonder where it was too , too. Calistoga’s in Northern California. I live 80 miles north of San Francisco in what is commonly known in California as the Wine Country, the world-famous Napa Valley. You know, a very enchanting place. If any of you had ever seen a, a TV program called Falcon Crest, that’s where I live.

And that’s kind of a community, little 4,000 people, you know, and not a big deal or nothing like that. But we have the same problems that they have in cities of four million people. And, uh, we have AA groups there, 31 little groups in our little town, and, and that’s pretty good for a town of that size. Uh, I’m not from California originally. I’m born and raised in the Lower East Side of New York City, and usually that’s what I blame my ignorance on because it will be aware to you shortly that I don’t have any education at all. And, uh, that’s really not– I used to be ashamed to tell people that, you know. But I’m not really ashamed of it anymore because what the hell, you know? And, uh, in, in every educational institution, in the classes, as you went through school, you know, there was always three groups of students. Uh, they put the– they just took up the collection. I put in a five for you. They have three kinds of students in the classes, you know.