Criminal Minds

Something has gone horribly wrong with this show. Mandy Patinkin is gone this season, and that presents problems, but that's not the big deal. It's details, friends. Details. This show's integrity rests on the details. It's about a group of FBI agents that are major crimes/serial killer profilers. They do their work by anticipating and noticing the little things.

Here are two incidents from recent weeks which indict, I would guess, writing and post-production respectively.

1) An exchange between a parent and a child who is writing at the kitchen table:
PARENT: What are you working on?
CHILD: Multiplication.
PARENT (Startled and impressed): Multiplication!?!
CHILD: Yeah; it's for extra credit. The rest of the class is still on long division.

Think about it, chums. You can't do long division without multiplication. Am I wrong? If so, correct me, elementary teachers of the world.

2) A woman is having a conversation on a land-line telephone. She is speaking to a friend when she hears a busy signal. We learn later in that show that the conversation was interrupted because the line was cut. Apparently, a phone connected to nothing magically generates a busy signal. I understand that if you just have a line go dead, it doesn't tell the story. It just sounds like the other party stops talking. But I'm not sure that the fix to the problem is to use a factually inaccurate stand-in for silence.

This used to be a smart show, but it has rapidly moved off of my must-see list. Smart shows? Friday Night Lights and Numbers.

Quite a Weekend / Quite a Day

This weekend has been quite draining, both physically and emotionally. It was homecoming at CMU, my charming alma mater, and Saturday (with the parade and the game) was enveloped by a constant downpour. But, the team won (its first win of the season and I'm guessing the first homecoming win for a while). And, because of the new fake-turf field, they didn't get mud on their uniforms despite the torrents. The day concluded with time spent staying up too late with old friends and good conversation.

Then came today, which was full of solemnity and joy and wonder and wonderfulness and pain and exuberance and excellence.

Today was the day of the memorial service for RPD, the choral director at CMU. It was an amazing service, held on campus at Linn Memorial UMC where his choirs had sung for the 26 years he taught and directed. It was a unique situation -- when a lawyer dies, people get up and say "he was a nice guy, and he did good lawyering." When a preacher dies, people get up and say "he was a nice guy, and he touched a lot of lives." But when a choral director dies, people get up and say "he was a nice guy," then everyone in the room stands up and illustrates how the decedent changed them by joining their voices -- if not perfectly, then at least joyfully. The choirs that sang, that had been led by RPD until the second week of this semester, sounded beautiful (even singing music he had written), but so did the congregation singing wonderful hymns including "Come O Thou Traveller Unknown." That's one of my favorites and if you want to know why, I'll tell you sometime. Several people gave remembrances, but the message was given by Linn's pastor, and former RPD student, Icky. He was also one of my very best friends at CMU and we shared the burden of bad nicknames. The service ended with a beautiful reading of a Robert Burns poem, and the congregation following a bagpiper out of the sanctuary to a reception across campus.

While there, I had a nice conversation with husband of CMU's president who pointed out that this gathering was really a symbol of what RPD had worked very hard to achieve. "We don't have a lot of CEOs," he said, "but we have a whole lot of people who go out and change the lives of others." Very true. (And very humbling for me to realize that I go out and change the lives of others by garnishing their wages.)

At the reception, the Beta Mu chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, as well as all the Sinfonia alumni present (maybe as many as 50) sang an elegiac hymn in RPD's honor, and everyone sang the alma mater to which he'd written the music. Afterwards, the Sinfonians moved under the clock tower central to the campus and sang for a long time. I don't think I've ever seen that many men singing there before. It was amazing.

Homecoming notwithstanding, that was the real reunion for me. Because of Mom's place in the college, I always ran with the music folks (and that's also how Tracy and I fell in together). And folks from all ages came back to celebrate a life well-lived, and to do so by using some of the skills he had given us.

After coming home, I called my Mom to make sure she was doing okay, and I think she really was. I also had good KC friends drop by for just the briefest moment, but it was good to see them.

The weekend has been full, and now I am off to rest.

Umm . . . the dog ate my bookmarks?

I've recently started singing with a local community choir. It's volunteer, but of a very high quality. There are a lot of people whom I've started to know by their first name, quickly to discover they are more frequently addressed as Dr. such-and-such. That seems to happen with some degree of frequency in this college town. And that one.

Anyhow, we had our first performance last Saturday. It was the day after I learned that my college choral director had passed away after a long and storied career shaping young voices (and corraling some of our young wills). It was not an easy concert.

But, despite the mortal overtones, it was fun. The last time I performed with a (formal, evening-wear, non-church) choir, I was a cocky but not-particularly-confident 22-year-old with a great tenor voice. It's interesting to me how different I am now. My voice is weathered (n.b. - Tracy's is seasoned) but I have tons more confidence. I guess I fear audiences even less than I did then, and maybe I'm a lot less worried about what my peers are thinking and what I might be doing wrong. Apparently experience trumps talent for me in this context.

The concert itself (and its contents, wonderful, are perhaps matters for another post) made me realize how much I miss performing. I want to be on stage and I have lots of ideas (and generous opportunities from friends) on how to do this, but I need to pick one and commit.

This post was to be a subset of a larger one, but chasing that wild goose may keep me from posting this, so I stop here.