Happy Memorial Day! Now, Go See Star Trek!!

I can't believe it's been a month since my last blog. It's been a quiet month, here at Lake Wobegone... wait... wrong blog.

Today is the American Memorial Day holiday, the "official" start of summer, some will tell you, calendars and solstices be damned. It is intended as a day to commemorate those who died defending this country, although in my experience relatively few people actually do this. Most Americans show their gratitude for their freedom by grilling hamburgers and hot dogs and uncovering their pools. Growing up in my family, it was the day that my grandparents took us to virtually every cemetery in the area to clean, trim and beflower the headstones of family and friends, regardless of their military record.

My brother and I picked up this tradition a few years ago and continued it this year. Friday afternoon we started with a stop at Pat Catan's for supplies, then made our way to Mount Peace to offer our respect to the graves of our mother and grandmother. Grandma got violet roses with trim:

...while Mom got red roses:

After that, we drove out to Greenlawn Cemetery on the Barberton/Akron border to adorn the headstone of the man we grew up calling Grandpa:

Then, on a whim, we went to Chestnut Hill Memorial Park in Cuyahoga Falls to visit the marker of our biological maternal grandfather. We didn't take flowers, but after much searching (and some assistance from the nice lady in the office) we found his headstone, trimmed the grass around it and gave it a good wash. On Saturday, I took flowers to the graves of my friends Mark Willsey and Sean Cannon.

On to more cheery topics. In the month since last I blogged, I caught two movies: X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Star Trek. Wolverine was okay, on par with the second X-Men movie, imho. I still think Watchmen was a far superior product.

However, Star Trek was phenomenal! J.J. Abrams reinvented the franchise with spectacular results. He definitely paid homage to the original, while keeping the movie action-based (as with his Mission Impossible updates) and giving some nice, unexpected twists to the story. He used the original Spock, Leonard Nimoy, superbly, giving him far more than a cameo, but incorporating him fully. He has a hot new cast, with the genius casting of Simon Pegg as Montgomery Scott.

There have been many, many positive reviews of this movie, so I won't try to echo them. Go see the movie. I have -- four times. And when you go, keep your eyes peeled for:
* The reference to the TV show Enterprise
* Tribbles
* The Vulcan IDIC
* R2-D2 (I kid you not.)


Live Long and Prosper.