Cecil Baldwin

But that only takes five to eight hours.

And Esteban has a cute truck-themed one from a couple years ago when he was obsessed with trucks.

He's kind of outgrown it, but that's the one he has for now.

Ever since he got into studying witchcraft, he has really enjoyed conjuring fire onto the shamash and then floating it one by one to each of the other candles.

Sometimes he catches a curtain or two on fire, but that's what an extinguisher is for.

Anyway, given that it is Hanukkah, I thought we all might enjoy me telling the story of Hanukkah.

Sure, we all know it, but what is more comforting to a human being than a story they already know?

So, Hanukkah goes all the way back to the year 1981.

named Ruth Kander, moved to a town called Los Angeles.

She moved there because she had vague ideas of being in show business, even though her ideas of what that entailed were vaguer still.

Only the image of herself, smiling in a light so bright, it drowned out every disappointing thing she had ever done up to this point in her unremarkable life.

She got an apartment that's rent she could barely cover, and a job at a local florist whose owner hired her out of pity.

But that was fine.

Her talents lay elsewhere.

She was sure.

Again, the image of herself smiling in that bright light.

The specifics were unimportant.

Only herself, her smile, and the light.

The reason she chose that apartment, although the building could be charitably described as rustic, and the neighbors were simultaneously unfriendly and yet seemed to have enough friends for multiple loud parties a week, and the pool still listed as an amenity in the ad was empty and cracked and

clearly had been so for years, the reason she chose that apartment anyway is that it had a view, however partial and distant, of the Hollywood sign.