I felt, as many did, that I lost a friend when Roger Ebert died yesterday.  I remember watching his show growing up, enjoying the sparring between Gene Siskel and Roger.  How many of us made our movie viewing decisions based on their thumbs?

I also read Roger’s blog pretty regularly.  And I was sad when he said just the other day that he was going to take a “leave of presence” while he fought back cancer once again.  He wrote about a lot of things, not always movies.  In fact not a whole lot about movies.  He was always interesting, sometimes poignant, sometimes funny.  He wrote as if we were all his friends.  I hope we were.

I like to think that perhaps he and Gene are catching up now, perhaps working on a new project together.  And if heaven is perfect and different for everyone, then I’m sure there’s a movie theater there.   I hope they get to see all the first run movies together — and before any of us.

I’ll miss him as will many of you.  But weren’t we lucky to have known him at all.