Guest columnist Jeff Middents here. (It’s great to be back! Thanks to Suzanne Spencer Rendahl for asking me to fill in; she should be back next month.)

As you may recall from past columns, I have been teaching literature and film studies at American University (AU) in Washington, D.C. In my introductory classes I often talk about musicals and students always say, “Well, those movies aren’t realistic. People just randomly start singing and dancing for no reason whatsoever, in the middle of whatever else they are doing. Who does that?” And I always reply, “Well, when I was a ’shmen I lived across the hall with someone named Brandon Adams—and he really would do exactly that.” I think they thought I fabricated that whole story.

Last year AU students got the opportunity to check my story for themselves when Professor Adams joined the musical theater faculty for a one-year gig. If anybody had told me that we would be on the same campus together 25 years later, I would have laughed at them—but there we were! Brandon was quite the sensation and, while we didn’t get to fulfill our dream of teaching a course arguing back and forth between film and stage musicals (no, really, we proposed this), it was wonderful to have him around. While he has moved back to New York for the long term, he is back in D.C. temporarily working as associate music director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of The Secret Garden, playing through December 31. I’m so excited to have him back!

With Brandon around, I thought I would put a call out to other ’93 Glee Club members to see what they were up to. Annie Edgerton is still touring with Kinky Boots, right now in Japan (where she plans to see Chris Keyser when they go through Kyoto). She’s also started a traveling food blog, hittingthespots.blogspot.com. Only days ago we learned that Pete McHugh’s client, Daniel Yuen (a.k.a. Glenn), met an untimely death on The Walking Dead; Pete now wonders, “Is it irresponsible parenting if my 9-year-old Max is dressed up as Suicide Squad’s Joker?” (Answer: No. I think.) I’ve seen over Facebook that Anne Katherine Smith sent her daughter, Iva, off to Wheelock College this fall. (Are we really old enough to have college freshmen as children? Yes, we are—and proud of it!) Erik Ochsner conducted Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra in early December in a bilingual concert called The Music of Star Wars. In January he will conduct the SONOS Chamber Orchestra in the Opera America New Works Showcase. And as for Craig Sakowitz? I’m offering this one verbatim: “Craig has been assiduously guarding his Dartmouth green microfiber couch and protecting it and its companion La-Z-Boy chair from both he and she devils. Craig moonlights as the president of the Dartmouth Outing Club of northern California and lives with his adoring wife, Sharon Karlsberg ’96, and his two incredibly suave sons in one of the minor cedar shingle mansions of San Francisco. Craig’s white Cadillac would provide a strong indication of his status as retired, stay-at-home dad. Annie somehow failed to mention getting a ride in said white Cadillac after a particularly stirring performance of Kinky Boots.” (Annie confirms this. And Craig sent a picture of the Cadillac as proof.) There you have it, folks: if it’s in the alumni magazine, it must be true.

—Suzanne Spencer Rendahl, 224 Route 120, Plainfield, NH 03781; suzandj@comcast.net