Posted on 6.27.13: “I didn’t crash Gandolfini’s funeral like some giggling monkey, and I didn’t take the subway up there this morning with the intention of crashing. I crashed it solemnly like some devoted choirboy or Sopranos family soldier. I just grimmed up and shuffled up the cathedral steps and…well, go ahead and laugh but I honestly believe that I got past security because some angel from heaven who lived in my area of New Jersey when he or she was mortal happened to look down from heaven at that moment and said ‘whoa, wait up…he’s okay…fuck it, let him through.’

“Inside the main cathedral door were three women dressed in black with clipboards and lists, checking names. I just slowly but stealthily sidestepped them and slowly made my way to the bag-checking guy who was standing at a desk, and then to the metal-detector guy. The latter wanded me and seemed a tiny bit alarmed when he got a “beep!” from two tins of Altoids I had in my left jacket pocket. “I’m gonna have to see what that is, sir,” he said. “Sure thing, man,” I answered, and pulled out the bigger of the two Altoid tins. He wanded me again….beep! “That’s another tin of Altoids,” I told him.

“Anyway we got through the Altoids when suddenly a security lockdown order was given and I had to take two steps back and wait until New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and his security detail walked through the main door and into the seating area. Christie doesn’t look as massively fat as he did around the time of Hurricane Sandy — he’s had gastro-intestinal surgery.

“I was finally allowed to go into the cathedral, but then I ran into three more women dressed in black. One of them asked what section I was assigned to and I just said “section C” but she probably thought I meant “section 3,” which was where the lower-class serf invitees were being seated. She asked my name and I said ‘Jeffrey Wells’ and then I mentioned that I had contacted Gandolfini’s management company, Sanders Armstrong Caserta, which was true. For whatever reason she let me through and I was home. I couldn’t fucking believe it. I wanted so much to be a part of this thing and here I was. It was gracious fate, a favoring breeze, something.”