There are a lot of really amazing human beings I’d like to pay my respects to. I’ve had the chance to go to Westminster Abbey, so I’ve been able to light a candle for Sir Isaac Newton and Queen Elizabeth. I enjoyed Shakespeare’s morbid sense of humor when visiting him at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-Upon-Avon. I’ve stood in Winchester Cathedral at the ridiculously but appropriately understated resting place of Jane Austen. But there are ever so many more I’d like to visit, just to say “thanks for being alive.”

Abélard and Héloïse, fated lovers whose passion was exceeded only by their brilliance. Cimetière Pére Lachaise, Paris.

Ludwig van Beethoven, musical deity. Zentralfriedhof, Vienna. (I can hit Franz Schubert while I’m there, but also need to see his original tomb across town in Währinger Friedhof.)

Nell Gwynne, one sassy whore. St Martin-in-the-Fields, London.

Benjamin Franklin, Renaissance man. Christ Church Burial Ground, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (It’s a shame he didn’t stick with the epitaph he penned for himself in his youth. His gravestone should read “The Body of B. Franklin Printer; Like the Cover of an old Book, Its Contents torn out, And stript of its Lettering and Gilding, Lies here, Food for Worms. But the Work shall not be wholly lost: For it will, as he believ’d, appear once more, In a new & more perfect Edition, Corrected and Amended By the Author. He was born on January 17, 1706. Died April 17, 1790.”)

Marie Curie, the patron saint of crazy brilliant women. Panthéon, Paris.

Douglas Adams, comic philosopher. Highgate Cemetery, London.

Virginia Woolf, tortured genius. Monk’s House, Rodmell, Sussex, England, under one of a pair of elm trees.

Florence Nightingale, angel. St. Margaret’s Church, East Wellow, England.

Robert Burns, hottie. Dumfries, Scotland.

Sandro Botticelli, Best Painter in the History of the Universe. Ognissanti, Florence. (May as well breeze by Amerigo Vespucci, as long as I’m there.)

Martin Luther King, Jr., somebody who got it right. King Center, Atlanta, Georgia.

Eleanor of Aquitane, Empress of the Universe. Fontevraud Abbey, Chinon, Anjou, France. With a polite nod to Richard Cour de Leon and Henry II.

Qin Shi Huang, narcissist and megalomaniac. Xi’an, Shaanxi, China.

Bob Marley, prophet. Nine Mile, Jamaica.

Johnny Cash, Deity. Hendersonville Memory Gardens, Hendersonville, Tennessee.

I’ll never be able to visit Albert Einstein, Tejumin, Empress Theodora, or Theodor Geisel. But I suppose memory is the best monument there is.

Thanks, guys.