Sunday Edition: Who is Kevin McCallister? (Part 3 of 3)

By Tim Ballingall

Harry and Marv

We sympathize with Kevin in the first film because two criminals break in while he’s actually left home alone. He’s defending himself and his home.

In the second, he voluntarily intervenes as Harry and Marv are burglarizing Duncan’s Toy Chest. He throws a brick through the storefront window to both sound the alarm, alerting the police, and to get their attention.

He runs to his uncle’s house where he has set up a number of sadistic traps with which he hopes to torture Harry and Marv.

To state this point again, in the first film, Kevin is defending himself from the burglars; in the second film, he effectively lures the burglars to the house, putting himself on the offensive, thereby losing the audience’s sympathy.

Skeptics might question what the astronomical improbability is that Kevin and Harry and Marv might at the same time converge in NYC, passing in a crosswalk and again outside of a toy store. True. It is highly unlikely. But what if that’s the point?

With few notable exceptions, Kevin is the only person with whom Harry and Marv interact. Marv repeated snatches apparel from ice skaters without anyone noticing. When Kevin does the Macaulay Culkin scream outside Duncan’s Toy Chest, some people stop and glance, but that’s it. When Kevin is running through the streets, clearly evading these two criminal types, no one helps him. One might say facetiously, “Come on. It’s New York.” But that’s just doesn’t satisfy.

The claim of this over-analyzer is such that Harry and Marv exist only in Kevin’s imagination.

However, in the Home Alone universe, Harry and Marv are still actually real people. Marv lives a full and satisfying life as a batting coach for the Chicago Cubs. Perhaps Mr. McCallister, when he’s not booze cruising, took the family to a hometown baseball game. After all, the family lives in Chicago.

Harry, the real Harry, is a mob enforcer at a Las Vegas casino. The fourteen-person McCallister family lives in a mansion. It seems reasonable to imagine them taking a family vacation (one where Kevin actually went) to Las Vegas, and, with his superficial charm, Kevin managed to sneak into a casino.

Now the next question: How can Harry and Marv withstand impossible amounts of blunt force trauma without a broken bone, bruise, or bloodshed? The very first trap, the throwing of bricks—boom, dead. But, no. Even after falling four stories onto concrete, they are still lucid and visibly unharmed. Why?

Kevin only wants to inflict pain, not kill. And since Harry and Marv are figments of his imagination, at least, Harry and Marv, the burglars, they don’t die unless Kevin wants them to. Which he doesn’t.

Why does Kevin only want to inflict pain? Why is he so good at setting sadistic traps? We’ve clearly established that Kevin is a psychopath, but what psychopath does he grow up to be?

To find out, we must investigate the pasts of the real Harry and Marv. Prior to the Home Alone films, Marv did not do much, but Harry was involved in the conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy.

Stepping beyond the fourth wall: In Oliver Stone’s JFK, Joe Peschi played David Ferrie, a private investigator who wore a wig and fake eyebrows because of a skin disorder. In Ruby, a film telling the same story from Jack Ruby’s perspective, David Ferrie was played by none other than Tobin Bell.

Yes! It all adds up—the psychopathic tendencies, the Talkboy, the traps. Undeniable proof that Kevin McCallister is not only a psychopath but the psychopath who grows up to become Jigsaw of the Saw films!

Sunday Edition: Who is Kevin McCallister? (Part 2 of 3)

By Tim Ballingall

Abnormal Intelligence and Alienation

The following is a conversation between Kevin and the creepy Irish pigeon lady:

Pigeon Lady
… the man I loved fell out of love with me. That broke
my heart. And whenever the chance to be loved came
along again, I ran away from it. I stopped trusting people.

Kevin
No offense, but that seems like sort of a dumb thing to do.

Pigeon Lady
I was afraid of getting my heart broken again. You see,
sometimes you can trust a person. And then when things
are down, they forget about you.

Kevin
Maybe they’re just too busy. Maybe they don’t forget about
you, but they forget to remember you. I don’t think people
mean to forget. I think it just happens. My grandfather says,
if my head wasn’t screwed on, I’d leave it on the school bus.

Pigeon Lady
I’m just afraid if I do trust someone again I’ll get my heart
broken again.

Kevin
I understand that. I used to have this really nice pair of
rollerblades, and I was afraid if I wore them, I’d wreck them.
So I kept them in a box. And do you know what happened?
I outgrew them. I never wore ‘em once outside. I just wore
them in my room a couple times.

Pigeon Lady
A person’s heart and a person’s feelings are very different
than skates.

Kevin
Well, they’re kinda the same thing. If you aren’t gonna
use your heart, then what’s the difference if it gets broken?
If you just keep it to yourself, maybe it’ll be like my
rollerblades. When you do decide to try it, it won’t be any good. You should take a chance. Got nothing to lose.”

Pigeon Lady
[Indiscernible Irish dribble]

Kevin
I think so. Your heart might still be broken, but it isn’t gone.
If it was gone, you wouldn’t be this nice.

Let’s unpack this dialogue one nonsensical line at a time. Pigeon Lady admits to keeping people at arm’s length because of her being emotionally hurt in the past. How this led to her being homeless escapes me.

Kevin then begins philosophizing like the John Hughes mouthpiece that he is. “Forgetting to remember”—this metacognitive paradox has been wrung dry by every hackneyed lyricist from the frontman of Mudvayne to Carrie Underwood.

Kevin analogizes Pigeon Lady’s heart to a pair of unused rollerblades. Pigeon Lady contests the analogy, deeming it an oversimplified comparison. But Kevin defends the analogy successfully. The first thing to take away from this conversation is that thinking in analogy on this level is highly unusual for someone Kevin’s age.

The second is that Kevin gravitates toward and befriends people on the fringe—scary, dirty, mysterious people that mirror his own sense of alienation.

Solitude

Kevin doesn’t interact with a single kid his own age throughout the film. Psychologist Dr. Hare would say Kevin experiences difficulty making and keeping friends. In addition to his interactions being with all grownups, Kevin spends a lot of time alone.

The third scene at The Plaza depicts Kevin going to the indoor swimming pool. The other pool-goers, all adults, watch him stroll nonchalantly into the room, kick off his flip-flops, and lay his towel on the ground before doing a cannonball. One can easily imagine how awkward the scene would feel without Bobby Helms’ cheery Christmas classic, “Jingle Bell Rock” playing in the background.

Kevin also frequently talks to himself, not in clipped, stream-of-consciousness phrases, but in whole sentences—“My family’s in Florida and I’m in New York”; “This is great”; “Wow. A huge bed just for me”; “This is the greatest accident of my life.” While this is a trait more typically found in sociopaths, psychologists acknowledge overlap in classifications.

One might suggest that Kevin is from a big family, that he enjoys being alone as an escape from the craziness of his home life. But again, the intimidation of New York City and the solitude a kid would feel, all alone, or otherwise surrounded by grownups whom he is duping and must therefore always be on-guard around, would paralyze a ten-year old, regardless of his home life.

The entire second act of the film follows Kevin’s comfortable existence in this situation. How is that normal?

Social Deviance

Kevin’s private life is largely of interest. Though any kid left alone would do things s/he is not allowed to do when a parent is around, Kevin’s unsupervised acting out is specific and goes beyond the norm. A ten-year old by himself in a hotel room might watch Skinamax. Kevin watches film noir.

Dark, violent, vulgar, sexual—film noir spanned the 1950s, inspired by German Expressionism, often comprising crime fiction plots; its influence can be seen in neo-noir films such as Se7en, Fargo, Memento, Training Day, and Sin City. That Kevin rents The Ventilator, Fly Bait, Muttville Massacre, and Angels With Even Filthier Souls—all metafilms—is curious and disturbing. Why the fascination with film noir?—with dark films about social deviants?

Because he himself is a social deviant. He knowingly commits credit fraud. He mouths the words “Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal, and a happy new year” after having tricked the slapstick hotel staff and escaped arrest, grinning with self-content. This clearly reveals his emulation of film gangster behavior. …

Stay tuned for the third and final installment where we discover the truth behind Harry and Marv and answer the question, Who is Kevin McCallister?

More Films on Films on Demand

By Tim Ballingall

92 titles have been added to the Films on Demand database at the Rohrbach Library. Additions appear in the following collections: Humanities & Social Sciences, Business & Economics, Science & Mathematics, and Health & Medicine.

Just some of the new entries included are

Birth of the Earth
Diet: A Look at Processed Food, Nutrition, and Obesity in the 20th Century
Roy Lichtenstein: Reflections
Gwathmey Siegel: In Search of Clarity
A Conversation with Eleanor Roosevelt—From NBC’s Wisdom Series
Haywire: Children Living with Schizophrenia
The Sexting Crisis Video Clip Collection
Here’s Looking at You: Identity, Personality, and the Human Face
Beauty: Survival of the Prettiest
Riders for Health: Zambia
Trial by Television
Indian Warriors: The Untold Story of the Civil War
Speaking of Art: John Szarkowski on Ansel Adams
Triage: Dr. James Orbinski’s Humanitarian Dilemma

To view the full list of entries, go to Films on Demand and click “Recently Added Videos.”

Hezbollah

By Tim Ballingall

1982 Arab-Israeli War

In June 1982, Shlomo Argov, the Israeli Ambassador to the UK, was shot in the head on a London street. He survived, though the event would be likened to the assassination of Prince Franz Ferdinand.

The attempted assassination was orchestrated by the Abu Nidal Organization, a terrorist nationalist group in Lebanon. Abu Nidal was formerly a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, or PLO, but after 1974, when its leader, Yasser Arafat suggested a diplomatic two-state, Arab-Israeli compromise, Nidal and other right-wingers broke from the PLO.

Three days after the attempted assassination, the Israel Defense Force invaded Lebanon. Retaliation was quickly exceeded when Ariel Sharon, Israel’s Minister of Defense, ordered troops into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

In a three-day period, between 800 and 1,500 Palestinian citizens were massacred. The Kahan Commission, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International called for investigation.

The war would drag on for another eighteen years.

A Youth Movement

Hezbollah Flag

On February 16, 1982, just months before the IDF invasion, Shiek Ibrahim al-Amin published the Hezbollah manifesto, declaring the organization’s chief objective as the expulsion of the American, French, and Israeli presence in Lebanon.

Hezbollah, or Hizb Allah (“Party of God”), is a Lebanese Shia Muslim militant/political group backed by Iran and Syria. This group’s ideology has been strongly influenced by Ayatollah Khomeini, the former Supreme Leader of Iran. The original cadres of Hezbollah were trained by Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

The United States officially deems Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Britain and other European countries call for a slight distinction between the political center and the violent extremity. Political leaders like Hassan Nasrallah, the current Secretary General who assumed power following the assassination of Abbas al-Musawi on Feb. 16, 1992, though they do not directly participate, do indirectly support terrorism.

Adam Shatz of the New York Times says Hezbollah is much more than a guerrilla-warfare resistance movement:

“It is now a virtual state-within-a-state, with an army of several thousand men, an extensive social service network, a popular satellite television station called al-Manar (“the Beacon of Light”), and an annual budget in excess of $100 million.”

Hezbollah troops in Beirut, Jan. 2011.

And yet, Hezbollah organized the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut which killed 241 servicemen, the 1985 hijacking of a TWA flight, and, allegedly, numerous kidnappings and assassinations of American citizens.

34 Days

The 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon began as a dispute over hostage exchange. Hezbollah had captured two Israeli soldiers to exchange for Hezbollah prisoners in Israeli jails. The fighting lasted through July and into August. The war proved devastating but with mixed-results as stated in the Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice:

“Besides the infrastructure destruction, Israel’s bombing killed an estimated 1,500 civilians, including women and children, with about 70 Hezbollah fighters killed. In return, Hezbollah killed approximately 43 Israeli civilians and 114 Iraeli soldiers. Almost a million Lebanese civilians were displaced, while about half a million Israeli citizens were displaced. Lebanon suffered an estimated $3 billion in damages, with Israel at an estimated $1 billion.”

For more information on Hezbollah, check out the Gale Virtual Reference Library, EBSCOhost, JSTOR, Oxford Islamic Studies Online, CQ Global Researcher, Films On Demand, and the Card Catalog.

61 Synonyms for Beautiful

admirable, adorable, alluring, angelic, appealing, beauteous, bewitching, captivating, charming, classy, comely, cute, dazzling, delicate, delightful, divine, elegant, enthralling, enticing, excellent, exquisite, fair, fascinating, fetching, fine, foxy, good-looking, gorgeous, graceful, grand, handsome, ideal, inviting, lovely, magnetic, magnificent, marvelous, mesmeric, nice, pleasing, pretty, pulchritudinous, radiant, ravishing, refined, resplendent, shapely, slightly, splendid statuesque, stunning, sublime, superb, symmetrical, taking, tantalizing, teasing, tempting, well-formed, winning, wonderful.

Sunday Edition: Who is Kevin McCallister? (Part 1 of 3)

By Tim Ballingall

This past December break, I was watching Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and I started noticing a cryptic subtext which leads me to believe that Kevin McCallister is a psychopath. (I’m qualified to make such a diagnosis because I’ve watched, like, 20 episodes of Criminal Minds.)

Glibness and Superficial Charm

With the help of his Talkboy, Kevin easily books a hotel room, having presumed exactly what he’ll need to say to the female operator and to pause while she says, “You will need a major credit card.”

He also causes the tight-lipped desk clerk at The Plaza to doubt herself when she asks if he himself has a reservation. Kevin eloquently blasts her with an elaborate explanation:

Mam, my feet are hardly touching the ground. I’m barely able to look over this counter. How can I make a reservation for a hotel room? Think about it: a kid going into a hotel, making a reservation. I don’t think so. … I’m travelling with my dad. He’s on business. He’s at a meeting. I hate meetings. Plus, I’m not allowed to go in. I can only sit in the lobby, and that’s boring. So my dad dropped me off here. He gave me his credit card and said whoever was checking people in to let me into the hotel room so I don’t get into mischief. And Mam, sometimes I do get into mischief. We all do!

This glib monologue illustrates that Kevin is both aware of how the adult world works—being away on business, attending meetings, checking into hotels—and how adults expect children to speak.

At first, Kevin speaks very formally using unchildlike language; his feet “hardly” touch the ground. Then as if he catches himself he begins using short, SVO sentences typical of a child: “I’m travelling with my dad. He’s on business. He’s at a meeting. I hate meetings.” I went to the park. I saw a doggy. He was brown. He had spots.

Although kids often pick up grown-up-sounding words or phrases like “hardly” or “You’ve been most helpful”, with the mountain of evidence to come, proving this over-analyzer’s proposal, one must call into question this sudden change in speech pattern.

Kevin reveals his knowledge of grownupisms when he writes Mr. Duncan of Duncan’s Toy Chest: “Do you have insurance?” He writes that he’ll send money if Mr. Duncan does not. We must deduce from this that Kevin understands that Mr. Duncan will need to put in a claim for the property damage to his storefront window.

Most normal ten-year-olds do not understand the concept of insurance. That Kevin does is alarming.

Another instance of alarm is when Kevin tells a hotel staffer who is scooping him a decadent sundae, “Two scoops? Make it three. I’m not driving.”

Kevin knows about drunk driving. How does a ten-year-old know about drunk driving? Maybe he learned about it from his parents. How else would they keep leaving him behind every year?

Lying and Manipulation

Kevin’s elaborate explanation to the desk clerk is also a lie. Typical of psychopaths, Kevin lies to the desk clerk, the snooty concierge, the bumbling bellhop, and even sweet, old Mr. Duncan. When confronted, Kevin frequently changes his story.

When he visits Duncan’s Toy Chest, a Home Alone FAO Schwarz, Mr. Duncan asks if he is shopping alone. Though Kevin does not technically lie here, he evades the question with another glib remark: “In New York? Sir, I’m afraid of my own shadow.” Mr. Duncan responds, “Oh, I was just checking,” to which Kevin, in his unchildlike voice, says, “That’s very responsible of you.”

According to Dr. Robert D. Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), glibness/superficial charm and a propensity for lying are common traits among psychopaths. The compounding of these traits also makes Kevin manipulative.

The desk clerk, the concierge, the bellhop, Mr. Duncan—these adults, these pawns, when they confront Kevin, are made to doubt themselves. And one cannot be manipulative without possessing a grandiose sense of self and a lack of empathy for others.

Kevin, with his father’s cash and Visa, relishes being pampered by room service and revered as his father’s proxy. The scene in which Kevin is being scooped ice cream resembles that of a lavish parlor in the Palace of Versailles. The tone the concierge adopts when he sees Kevin enter the lobby is that of a royal servant.

“Is my transportation here?” Kevin asks, transportation being a white limousine accompanied by a steaming cheese pizza, at his boyish request.

Clearly, Kevin is living out a problem-child-in-a-large-family fantasy. But it’s more than that. Kevin adjusts too quickly to the situation, and he is able to sustain the masquerade with abnormal ease. …

Stay tuned for the second installment to be published next week.

In the meantime, read up on Psychopathy with EBSCOhost or search Chris Columbus, the director of Home Alone and Home Alone 2, on Films On Demand.  Or check out in the card catalog Martin Kantor’s The Psychopathy of Everyday Life: how antisocial personality disorder affects all of us among many other fascinating titles.

“Library of the Early Mind” Documentary

Children’s Literature Documentary Comes to KU

Free screening and panel discussion
Friday, March 18, 2011
5:00-8:30 p.m.
Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
Alumni Auditorium in the McFarland Student Union Building

Seating is limited. Please reserve a seat at:
http://www.kutztown.edu/library/events/lotem.htm
or call 610-683-4300

This documentary explores the art and impact of children’s literature and features nearly 40 authors, including Lois Lowry, Jerry Pinkney, Mo Willems, Lemony Snicket, and many more! Don’t miss it! To watch a trailer, click here.

The panel discussion will take place immediately following the film. As of March 3rd, the film’s director and co-producer, Edward J. Delaney, will be joining the panel instead of co-producer Steven Withrow. He will discuss children’s literature with Newbery Honor author Susan Campbell Bartoletti, award-winning author & illustrator Matt Phelan, and bookseller Heather Hebert of Children’s Book World .

This free event kicks off the Sara Mack Memorial Lecture Series and is sponsored by Kutztown University’s Rohrbach Library & the Department of Library Science and Instructional Technology.

If you are interested in contributing towards future events in this series, you can contact the Kutztown University Foundation at 610-683-1394 or give to the Sara Mack Memorial Fund at www.Give2KU.org.

To view the event poster, click here. For a toner-friendly version for printing, click here.

Anthracite, PA

By Tim Ballingall

The year is 1808, the place, Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Judge Jesse Fell has just burned a rock of anthracite coal on an iron L-shaped grate in his living room fireplace. This not only proves hard coal useful for home heating and cooking. It will fuel the engines of industry well into the twentieth century.

At first, little came about of this discovery. Coal fields in Northeastern, Pa, amid the Appalachian Mountains and Susquehanna River, were difficult to reach, and coal was expensive to transport to places like Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City.

From 1825, with the opening of the Schuylkill Canal, to 1846, with the completion of the Lehigh and Susquehanna River Railroad, hard coal depended largely on canal systems. With the advent of the railroad, following the years of the American Civil War, the coal industry boomed.

Flash back 300 million years. Pennsylvania is a steaming flat bed of swamps, trees, and ferns. Decaying organic material dies and sinks to the bottom of these swamps, becoming a dense substance known as peat. Over hundreds of millions of years, under a bajillion tons of pressure while tectonic plates shift and the landscape transforms, peat is compressed into coal.

The formation of the Appalachian Mountains accelerated this process, making the coal harder and purer. Anthracite contains a carbon content between 86 and 98% with few volatile hydrocarbons; it burns almost without flame and gives off tremendous heat. Ninety-five percent of the Western Hemisphere’s supply of anthracite comes from a 500-mile radius in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

When anthracite was first discovered in the Wyoming Valley of Northeastern Pa, in 1762, it was estimated that below, in the coalfields of Carbon, Schuylkill, Luzerne, and Lackawanna County, lay 16 billion tons of coal. These troves of “black diamonds” beckoned miners.

Miners near Hazleton, Pa, circa 1900

Laborers from all over flocked to the Coal Region. According to Luzernecounty.org, “fifteen million immigrants from Europe entered the United State from 1870 to 1915 to get jobs. As many as one hundred thousand ended up in the coal fields of Luzerne County.” Immigrants left behind Ireland, Wales, Scotland, England, Germany, Italy, and Poland in exchange for Pittston, Wilkes-Barre, Plymouth, Hazleton, and Kingston.

Mining was highly dangerous and low-paying. In April of 1869, 110 miners at Steuben Coal Company’s Avondale Colliery asphyxiated when the breaker caught fire and collapsed down into the shaft. The next year, state legislature passed the Mine Ventilation Law. And yet, over the next thirty years, 10,000 miners would die in mining accidents.

Mine owners built Victorian estates while lowly miners dwelled in overcrowded fast-and-cheap “patch towns.” Economic tensions came to a head in the Great Strike of 1902. The 140,000-member United Mine Workers called for better safety regulations and higher wages. The strike lasted nine months before President Theodore Roosevelt intervened.

Anthracite production peaked in 1917 at 99.7 million tons.  Employment peaked three years earlier with 181,000 working miners. During the twenties, the energy market started focusing away from anthracite toward oil, gas, and electricity. Anthracite production sank—like everything else—during the Great Depression but revived itself somewhat during the Second World War.

Deep mining ended after the 1959 Knox Coal Company’s River Slope Mine disaster. State law prohibited mine roofs within 35 feet of a riverbed. The roof of the River Slope Mine was 19 inches below the Susquehanna River. On January 22, the roof caved. Twelve men died and deep mining ceased throughout the entire region.

Much to the interest of Silent Hill gamers is the underground mine fire at Centralia, Pa. In 1962, trash was being burned in a strip-mine pit just outside of town. A coal vein on the surface caught fire. Days later, it was discovered that the fire had spread underground. The fire remained under the surface until the 1980s when adverse health effects started being reported. Over the next several years, inhabitants relocated and Centralia became a ghost town.

If you’re driving on Route 61, it’s possible to drive right through to Mount Carmel. What used to be the town center is now a seemingly random intersection in the middle of nowhere. Less than a handful of houses still stand. There’s a municipality building and a Russian Orthodox Church at the top of a hill.

If you go during winter, the snow-covered field only reveals the ghost town when you stop the car and really look. Faint, used-to-be roads appear in a grid formation. You trek up Hammie Hill, where toxic fumes billow from the ground and surrounding rocks have a reddish mold on them. You smell the sulfuric stench. You remember facts and theories you read about on Roadside America blogs and Wikipedia. It’s hard to believe there’s a fire an acre and a half below your feet.

Looking out over what used to be a town, devastated by environmental precautions not taken, and appreciating the irony of the tuft of wind turbines out on Locust Ridge, you hope what happened here won’t happen in the western part of the state, the Marcellus Shale region.

Research for this post came from links already provided and ExplorePAHistory.com.  If Geology interests you, check out EBSCOhost in the Library’s Articles and Databases. If PA History is your thing, there are lots of great articles on Project Muse and JSTOR. Centralia photographs were taken by Eric Stevens.

Announcing Sunday Edition

By Tim Ballingall

Over the next three weeks, The More You Know will be posting weekly installments of a quasi academic essay on the cryptic subtext of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

Whether you’re looking to ease yourself into the grueling Sunday homework session or just want something to read with your morning cup-a-joe, feel free to stop by your favorite blog in the whole wide world for a new take on this Macaulay Culkin classic.

See you there, ya filthy animals!

“You Begin” by Margaret Atwood

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.