The Irony's Killing Us: Paranormal Activity, NFDA, and Evolution Without Apology

We saw Paranormal Activity at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier Friday night. The North American premiere, featured in the New York Times. A theater that built its reputation interpreting 400-year-old plays now supplements its programming with movie-inspired horror. Not replacing Shakespeare. Not apologizing for Shakespeare. Just adding what their actual audience wants to see.

That’s exactly what funeral service needs to build. Excellence that honors tradition while creating infrastructure for families who’ve evolved past Will’s expectations.

I hadn’t been back to Chicago since 1999.  Five days for the NFDA convention, staying at the Loews, taking Ubers to McCormick Place each morning. The city transformed completely, but not by destroying what was. By building something new on existing foundations.

Back then, I ate at The Pump Room, where they turned away anyone without a jacket, waiters emptied ashtrays between courses, and swept crumbs off the tablecloth with silver tools after each plate. Booth One was reserved for Sinatra and Garland, with a rotary phone right on the table. That world is gone. The Pump Room closed in 2017. Nobody smokes indoors anymore. Nobody’s sweeping crumbs with ceremonial precision. Nobody’s holding booths for dead celebrities. But Chicago didn’t mourn the loss of white tablecloth formality. It built something better: restaurants where excellence doesn’t require a dress code, where quality matters more than ceremony.

The most surprising yet welcomed change? Dogs everywhere. In 1999, you’d rarely see someone walking a dog downtown. Now, from the Loews to Navy Pier, every third person has a leashed companion. The city adapted naturally. Shops put out water bowls. Signs welcome pets. Nobody fought the trend. They just acknowledged reality. Same lesson for funeral service: families want different things now. Build for what they actually want, not what tradition suggests they should want.

The cleanliness shocked me. Chicago in 1999 had that big city grime you just accepted. Now the streets gleam. The green spaces are actually green, not brown patches decorated with abandoned newspapers. Millennium Park didn’t exist when I last visited. Now it anchors downtown with public art, gardens, and gathering spaces that people actually use. Infrastructure maintained, not just built. Too many funeral homes did the opposite: built beautiful facilities in the 1970s and never updated anything but the carpet...if that. We need to design facilities that stay current, not become time capsules.

Near the Loews, we grabbed breakfast at Lou Mitchell’s. They still give Milk Duds to kids while you wait, same as 1999. Some traditions are worth keeping. But they also now take credit cards and offer online ordering. They kept their soul while updating their systems. The Pump Room, where I ate in 1999? It refused to drop the jacket requirement and rigid formality until it was too late. Evolution isn’t optional.

Even Al’s Beef, that temple of tradition, now takes online orders for delivery, ships nationwide with Goldbelly, and touts a Beef Bucks mobile loyalty program. The same sandwich, made the same way since forever, delivered through infrastructure that didn’t exist when I last visited.

In 1999, although cremation wasn’t nearly as prevalent as it is today, families took their loved ones’ ashes home in an urn. A container to hold remains. That was it. Now families are dividing ashes among twelve relatives, pressing them into vinyl records, incorporating them into coral reefs, launching them into space. Eterneva creates diamonds from cremated remains. Celestis is planning missions to send ashes to Mars. (Yes, actually to Mars; not metaphorically.) The need to memorialize hasn’t changed. The expression has transformed completely.

Our Uber driver from the convention center on our first day, who spends her non-driving time as a background actor in Chicago TV shows, told us her mother’s ashes were scattered at five different locations that mattered to her. “She never wanted to be stuck in one place when she was alive,” she said. “Why would death change that?” That’s the insight traditional funeral service keeps missing. Families aren’t rejecting memorialization. They’re rejecting constraints.

Should we be offering wine or cocktails during evening arrangement conferences? If we’re meeting families in their homes, at times that work for them, in settings they choose, why maintain artificial boundaries around hospitality? The question isn’t whether it’s appropriate. The question is whether it serves families better.

Walking down State Street, Jamie and I stopped at Garrett Popcorn. The line stretched down the block, but it moved fast. They’ve perfected operational efficiency without losing what makes them special. The popcorn still gets made the same way, but the ordering, payment, and pickup systems evolved completely. There are kiosks in the airports and virtual snack tracking. That’s the model we need: preserve what matters (dignity, compassion, care) while revolutionizing delivery systems.

The convention itself revealed the gap between industry thinking and family reality. Vendors showed elaborate caskets to funeral directors whose families choose cremation 70% of the time. Sessions focused on “bringing families back to tradition” instead of serving families where they’ve actually gone. Meanwhile, three miles away at Navy Pier, the Shakespeare Theater was proving that evolution doesn’t require choosing sides. You can stage Hamlet and horror. You can honor tradition while building for today.

Fellow mortician and former colleague, Tracy, recently told me his son completed his apprenticeship and passed the NBE but refuses to wear suits. “He meets families in khakis and a polo. They love him. My grandfather is absolutely dizzy from spinning in his grave, but families are different now, I guess.” That generational honesty matters. Grandpa built for his time. The grandson is building for his. Neither is wrong. Times change.

Chicago proved something crucial: infrastructure evolution isn’t about abandoning identity. The city still works hard, values authenticity, and takes pride in building things that last. They just stopped insisting everyone experience it through formal protocols. Evolution doesn’t mean erasure. It means expansion.

Every Uber driver taught me something. One driver, forty years in Chicago, said the biggest change was transparency. “Everything’s online now. Menus, prices, reviews, hours. You know what you’re getting before you get there. No surprises.” That’s exactly what families expect from funeral service now. No hidden fees. No “we’ll discuss price when you come in.” No mystery about what they’re buying.

Funeral service needs to build infrastructure for families who schedule everything through their phones, expect video options for distant relatives, want memorial products that actually reflect personality, and assume transparency is standard. We need centralized cremation facilities that serve entire metros efficiently. Training programs that prepare professionals for families who’ve already researched everything online. Service delivery that happens where families actually gather, not in funeral home chapels built for a different era.

Most funeral homes are still operating like it’s 1999. They’re The Pump Room insisting on jackets while everyone else is dining in comfortable clothes. They’re fighting changes that already happened instead of building infrastructure for what’s next.

The Shakespeare Theater didn’t apologize for staging Paranormal Activity. They didn’t add a disclaimer about maintaining classical standards. They just produced excellent theater that their actual audience wanted to see. That confidence in evolution, that willingness to build for reality instead of tradition, that’s what funeral service needs.

Twenty-six years from now, someone will return to Chicago and marvel at changes I can’t imagine. By then, Celestis will probably be running regular memorial flights to Pluto, robot delivery will seem quaint, and the Shakespeare Theater will be staging something we can’t even conceive of today. The grandson in khakis will be the new grandfather wondering what his own grandchildren are thinking.

The question is whether funeral service will evolve deliberately, with thoughtful infrastructure designed for real families, or whether it will become irrelevant, swept crumbs and all.

The profession needs to choose to build. Not because we disrespect tradition, but because we respect families enough to serve them as they actually are. The Shakespeare Theater still stages the classics. They just stage other things too. That’s the model. Keep what matters. Build what’s needed. No apology required.

The convention ended yesterday, but the real work starts now. Building infrastructure for families who live in 2025, not 1999. One system, one service, one family at a time.

No jacket required.