A "LinkedIn Thing" and an End to the Suspense

Curious thing happened a couple days ago--as usual, when I logged on to LinkedIn I was confronted with a short list of "People You May Know."

Normally, I recognize most of the people that LinkedIn proffers, though my desire to click on the "Invite" button varies. This time, however, one of the names was an Assistant Production Manager (at the time) with whom I'd worked some years ago on the four MCA/Universal productions of William Shatner's "TekWar" telefilms.

The two things I've always remembered about Deb Patz was (1) that she is one of the flat-out nicest people I had ever worked with, and (2) that she is one of the most professional, most flat-out competent Production Managers with whom I have ever worked.

Talk about a narrative--try combining "nicest" and "most competent" in a business context without crashing your hard drive.

On top of that, she's a competitive sailor and has written an important industry book, FILM PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT 101. (Learn more about it at www.debpatz.com.)

I immediately invited Deb to link up and tonight she did. Then, in a quick, brief email exchange we began to catch up about the years we've not been in touch. Communication has been restored.

We're both at that point where we measure the passage of time by comparing our children's ages, but still it feels good. We're back in touch--no small thing in this hurry-up world.

And now, an end to the suspense.

My son's team did indeed win the finals of this year's Mock Trial competition put on by the Constitutional Rights Foundation (CRF) and, out of a field of more than 40 area middle schools, has been named the County Champion.

The finals were tense, with the large courtroom in the Los Angeles Superior Court building overflowing, but the defense team came through in the end. After the trial was over (and the judge had pronounced the fictional suspect "not guilty"), the nail biting began as we had to wait nearly an hour before we were readmitted to the room, desperate to hear which team had won the last round of competition.

But first, about an hour of awards presentations--at least my son's teacher/mentor was honored with the Teacher of the Year commendation--before the CRF spokesman announced the middle school and high school countywide champions.

As you might expect, when my son's school was named the middle school champ, we all went crazy.

After a frenzied moment of howls and hugs, though, I noticed that the kids on his team were as dignified in victory as they'd been through the whole series of court cases--they each made a point of approaching the defeated team's members and offering their hands in congratulation.

Nice.