Hope you're not too disappointed, Ray McCoy

The latest 24-hour news crisis, the Buckhead crane standoff, is over.

Carl Edward Roland, a bankrupt former software salesman and homicide suspect, climbed a construction crane in the toney Atlanta neighborhood a couple of days ago, to mixed reviews from area residents, tourists, shoppers, diners, and professionals. Seems he caused quite a bit of gridlock in Buckhead. Having been to Buckhead, I wonder how they could tell the difference from normal, but that's beside the point. For the better part of two days, earthbound heads strained skyward as they pondered his fate.

His alleged crime, strangling his ex-girlfriend and dumping her body in a pond behind her apartment building, is, to be kind, heinous. I'm not defending or excusing Mr. Roland in any way.

But equally disturbing to me is a quotation in a Los Angeles Times story this morning that The Birmingham News picked up off the wire. Writers Ellen Barry and Jenny Jarvie quote Ray McCoy, a mortgage banker:

I want to see the jump. If he's going to jump, he should jump. He's just wasting everybody's time and money.

Sigh. One life destroyed. Another in the balance. And the effects on Mr. McCoy?

Inconvenience.

Which prompts me to consider:

Do heinous actions like Mr. Roland's prompt attitudes like Mr. McCoy's, or is it the other way around?

In either case, we all lose.

Just one of the symptoms...

I looked at the date of my last post and was shocked that it was almost two weeks old.

That's one of the symptoms.

I know people who can fill notebooks with their angst, depression, and struggles. They face things head on and pour out their trials onto paper with reckless abandon.

[We interrupt this entry to bring you the latest edition of Chris's ClicheFest: "face things head on," "pour out," and that old stand-by, "reckless abandon." We now resume the regularly scheduled entry.]

I can't do that. My muse leaves town whenever there is a sniff of depression in the air. She's been gone almost two weeks now.

I sat down with a blank piece of paper at the bookstore coffee shop the other night, but she didn't show. I guess all the final-exam crammers and their tutors scared her off. The two paragraphs I coaxed from my rollerball were of the most inane drivel ever penned. I was ashamed of the wasted ink, and had I known of the location of the seedling sired from the tree that gave it's all for the leaf of college-rule, I would have apologized on bended knee. It was that bad.

Today is bright and sunny and there is a gentle breeze blowing after a heavy storm yesterday afternoon. I think I'll go to the golf tournament and tonight's baseball game and see if my muse follows.

For all our sakes.

Know thy audience

Last night,the Alabama Symphony Orchestra gave a free Mother's Day concert at one of our upscale, outdoor shopping meccas.

Of course, we were there. It was free. And there were fireworks. Did I mention there were free fireworks?

We dragged our bag chairs through a sea of humanity to a relatively open spot stage right. The weather was much improved over the past two weekends. A cool breeze wafted Macaroni Grill garlic to mix with the aroma of tailgaters seated around us. There were people of all ages in the sea of chairs; old people with their older mothers, babies with their young mothers, middle-aged couples with their older children, and of course the pre-teen demographic.

Who were thrilled to be there, let me tell you. One in particular, seated in front of me to my left, stared a hole in the pavement, head in hands, waiting for the fun to end. He listened to his iPod until the batteries went dead, then he took pictures of his hand with his mother's camera phone before launching into a riveting round of Tetris. He was amusing to watch, and I was going to point him out to Lovett, my pre-teen, but Lovett was doing the same thing off to my right. Well, sans iPod and camera phone.

The concert was great. They played a tribute to Ethel Merman, some Edward Elgar, a couple of Latin-flavored compositions of Leroy Anderson, an extended medley from Camelot, and a medley of tunes from movie musicals.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the program immensely. An older man wearing a flannel shirt and a white-haired crewcut ask his daughter (I presume) to dance during one of the Leroy Anderson waltzes, to the delight of the crowd on our side of the parking lot. Several young girls, our Dora included, pirouetted between the chairs during some of the Merman numbers.

The pre-teens were, in a word, underwhelmed, let me tell you. Until the conductor related a story of taking his two young sons shopping for Mother's Day gifts. The punch line of the story was that they couldn't decide which Star Wars action figure to buy her. As the audience laughed, I read between the lines and correctly guessed what was coming next.

In that spirit, we'd like to present for you the Theme from Star Wars by John Williams, said the conductor.

That got their attention. They cheered, they applauded, they participated in the experience. Even before the fireworks.

Bravo, maestro!