Rebecca, I don't recall seeing you anywhere after dinner.
I recently provoked a jaw-drop out of one of my cowokers just by saying "what the hell." She stared at me and said, "Rebecca, that's the closest I've ever come to hearing you curse." So apparently the people I work with don't know me at all. One of them thought I was a Mormon, and now another one thinks I never curse. Ha, they couldn't be further from the truth.
And now, some photos from the cemetery that Athena and I visited in Little Rock. It was a huge cemetery, with lots of crypts and statues, a fountain, a cottage (probably no one lived there and it was just used for storage, but it was definitely a little house in the middle of the cemetery). We spent all afternoon there and still didn't see it all. You all know how much I love cemeteries, and I took lots of pictures. Unfortunately, none of them do justice to the place!
Near where we entered the cemetery. Can you tell how big all the graves were? And check out that angel statue.
The gates surrounding the cemetery were just covered in the most beautiful roses.
Look, I actually got the flowers in focus and the background blurry!
I don't know what kind of flowers these are, but the grave behind them reads, "IDA, Aged 19 months. BETTIE, Aged 1 day."
These flowers bordered the fountain. I wish I knew what kind they were, but I'm not Grandma. Their tube shape is so cool.
More experimenting with making the background blurry while keeping the subject in focus. It's not easy, but I think I'm getting the hang of it.
The fountain! It was so big and beautiful, and very well-kept.
A little cherub statue. You can't tell here how tiny it really was. I know he doesn't have pan pipes, but he kinda reminds me of Peter Pan when he was a baby in Kensington Gardens.
Another cherub statue.
This one is playing a harp.
A statue of a little lamb over a baby's grave. The grave is so old that the lamb's face has been worn away.
This man was a very prominent doctor. (His grave read, "The Good Doctor.") But his name was Craven, an old English word meaning coward. It was also my great-grandfather's name.
There were lots of dead babies.
I love interesting inscriptions on graves. This one was on a preacher's grave. It reads, "Blessed with a special gift was he, / Drank deep where others sipped, / And wild things wrote their lives for him / In endless manuscript."
This family plot was full of tiny little wildflowers. I loved it.
This young woman died at age 16. The inscription at the bottom of her grave reads, "THIS IS NOT HERE." Make of it what you will.
A recent grave that had a lot of momentos left at it.
A bad storm blew through Little Rock the week before we were there. This huge tree had been split clean in two, and so had a column that was part of a nearby tomb. But amazingly...
...this nearby statue of Jesus escaped destruction! When I pointed this out to Athena, she said, "Of course it did!" As I was taking this photo, I said, "He was a good Jewish boy," and she looked at me like I was nuts. Maybe she thought Jesus was a Mormon.
After walking around the cemetery for a while, we found this huge red mulberry tree! I immediately began picking off berries and eating them. Yum! At first Athena told me they would make me sick, but soon she was eating them too.
Athena reading a grave. She was good cemetery company. I was worried she would find it boring, but she seemed to enjoy it.
She would be so mad at me for posting this. She always thinks she looks bad in pictures. As if, Athena!
For some reason, I found it necessary to take a picture of my shoes. Athena was all too quick to agree with me when I said I thought these shoes make my feet look big. At least she's honest.
And that's the end of my photos from Little Rock. We left the next day, and just before we left, we saw Central High School. It was the biggest, most beautiful school. I read Warriors Don't Cry, the memoir of one of the Little Rock Nine, back when I was in middle school, and it really stuck with me. And Mom could remember seeing the school on coverage on the integration crisis on the news.
This was not a good week, for various different reasons. But here's hoping that next week will be better. I wasn't crazy about this week's new NCIS episode (as much as it pains me to say that), so I never did get around to posting my notes on it. Anyway, here they are now:
Notes on episode 8x23 Swan Song
Featuring EJ, Cade, and Levin, all last seen in Dead Reflection; Mike Franks, last seen in The Spider and the Fly; and Trent Kort, Dead Reckoning. Yes, this show is getting crowded!
Writer: Jesse Stern (One Last Score).
+/- The opening scene in the thunderstorm was too melodramatic for me, although it was interesting to see Gibbs actually having emotions. He's usually so tough and stoic. (Remember his non-reaction when Director Shepherd was killed?) Even though we saw Mike, it was pretty obvious to me that he was already dead. What else but Mike's death could effect Gibbs like that?
+/- The Three Musketeers bantering in the bullpen was a cute scene, but this episode does lose points for putting Ziva in yet another frumpy outfit for the first half! Stop it, wardrobe department!
+ "You're not just gonna let that go, are you?" Of course he isn't. He's Gibbs! When EJ said that the victim was an NCIS agent, I got the worst feeling that it would be Mike. It's bad enough that he dies in this episode, but can you imagine how it would rip up Gibbs and his team to arrive at a crime scene and find Mike's decomposing body? Thank goodness it wasn't him!
+/- Ugh, I was not a fan of Gibbs and Mike's conversation in the car at the crime scene. Gibbs came off as petty and jealous (calling EJ "Vance's new golden girl") and Mike as sexist (calling EJ a "chippie"). Gibbs has really had some jerky moments during this arc. I did like Mike telling Gibbs that Tony was taking a page out of his book. Gibbs has been married and divorced multiple times, and hooked up with Director Shepherd, Hollis Mann, and Mallison Hartless, so where does he get off disapproving of Tony and EJ?
- "The port-to-port killer is back in town." Most of Tony and EJ's conversation at the crime scene made me roll my eyes, but especially this line. He never left town, EJ! The writers just shifted focus away from him so they could show us Tony's origin story in Baltimore last week.
+ The conversation between Gibbs and Ducky over Mike's body in autopsy was so well-done, even though switching back-and-forth between the present and flashbacks got a little confusing. You know Gibbs would only let himself get emotional like that in front of Ducky, and for Gibbs, that was a very emotional scene.
+ P2P has been using Stark's clearance to access the Navy Yard! (Why was EJ's reaction so duh when Levin suggested this?) This is why Gibbs's glasses were missing in Baltimore last week.
+/- I loved the Three Musketeers running down EJ's report to Gibbs, especially Tony's hand quotations for "archaic, old-school techniques" and the detail that the mystery eyeball belonged to... a bald man! It did seem a bit odd, though, that apparently no one noticed Gibbs having these conversations with Mike's ghost/spirit in the middle of the bullpen. Who did they think he was talking to?
+/- I loved Gibbs and Tony (and Mike's spirit) finding the now one-eyed Trent Kort, but I hated the suggestion that the CIA arranged for Ray to date Ziva as a means of getting information on NCIS. Ugh! The "Ziva's boyfriend is evil/a spy" card has already been played, writers! Please don't use it again! Please?
- "Why does Director Vance have a new girl leading the charge, instead of you?" Ugh. First Mike, and now Kort trying to get Gibbs riled up over EJ. You're supposed to be tracking a serial killer here, people! Don't you have anything more important to talk about?
- Kort mentioning the file that he gave Gibbs with information on Vance (way back in Broken Bird). Are the writers ever actually going to address this, or are they just going to drop hints forever that Vance isn't who he appears to be?
+ Gibbs telling EJ "good work." Wow, maybe now he's finally going to stop acting like a jerk and start working together to catch P2P?
+ Vance suggesting that they test if the eyeball is actually Kort's by stuffing it back in his socket to see if it fits. Wow, Vance, you actually made me lol. Might be the first time that's happened.
- Mike giving Gibbs the insurance policy on Decker -- something else that the writers will probably never explain properly.
+ The team greeting Mike when he arrived in the bullpen was so cute: McGee waved at him, Tony shook his hand (the one missing a thumb), Ziva blew him a kiss, and of course, Abby hugged him. Awww! I watched this bit over and over.
- Vance calling Mike an "NCIS legend" made me roll my eyes. Really, Vance?
+ Finally! We get information, motivation, and a name behind P2P. Somehow, this scene wasn't as thrilling as I'd hoped.
+/- I loved the scene between Gibbs and Mike in his basement... right up until Mike's line about naked women, which is when I rolled my eyes and thought, "Well, geez, Mike, way to suck the poignancy out of that conversation."
- Ugh, how utterly cheesy was Mike's death scene? He deserved so much better! Not only was the setting melodramatic (a dark and stormy night, on the street outside Gibbs's house) but the camera angles on Cobb staring down Mike and on Gibbs cradling Mike's dead body were just awful! Mike was always one of my favorite characters, and I don't think this was a fitting farewell for him at all. The only thing that I felt was really touching was how Cobb timed the gunshots to the thunderclaps, so Gibbs didn't hear the fight and come running to Mike's aid until it was too late. He might never say so, but I suspect he'll always feel guilty.
+ Ducky confirming that the swan song idea is in fact a myth.
- Can we talk about Ziva's reaction to Mike's death? I mean, what the hell was up with that? I think Ziva has always been the most stoic character after Gibbs and even though the writers have made her more emotional over the years, it still felt really out-of-character that she would fall apart over Mike's death like this. (Remember her non-reaction when Director Shephard was killed back in Judgment Day?) And did you notice Tony's reaction? From his expression, he didn't know what the hell to make of it, either.
+ Utter love for the team's group hug in the elevator, though. Awww x 100.
- The scenes between Gibbs and Ducky in autopsy and Gibbs and Vance in his office -- that's where this episode kinda lost me. Their take on Cobb's actions and motivations felt very hashed together, like the writers came up with it at the last minute. Ugh. I don't like where this is going.
- As soon as we found out that Cobb was going after EJ and her team, I figured Levin would get the axe. Black Guy Dies First is unfortunately a well-established cliche, and this show falls in line with cliches in some ways. And sure enough, he did. The next question is, will anyone else die, too?
FF: I wrote two tags to this episode in Rerun and Hiding Place.