SPOILER ALERT! "Star Trek: Into Darkness" Review

Spock (left) and Kirk (right) detain super-human Khan (center) on the Enterprise briefly.

   What can I say? They butchered a classic. For those of us old enough to remember and cherish Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, this one, at least in parts, was a disgrace. When the original dying Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Kirk (William Shatner) sat on the floor with their hands touching either side of the containment glass, we were devastated. We had seen the friendship of Spock and Kirk develop and blossom during nearly 20 years of television and the first Star Trek movie.  With the new Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Kirk (Chris Pine), the scene was nearly replicated but with the roles reversed: Kirk sat dying in the radiation room while Spock lamented on the outside. It did NOT work! The original death scene is one of the most poignant and famous in the Star Trek franchise ("The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one"), and this time it felt so misplaced I literally couldn't watch it. Quinto and Pine are so new to us (their characters hated each other early in the last movie), we did not have time to respect or love their friendship like we did with Nimoy and Shatner. Hearing Quinto scream the infamous "KKKKKHHHHHAAAAAAAANNNNNNN!" in anguish was borderline humorous. It just did not work. 

   With that said, Benedict Cumberbatch makes a damn good villain! He lacks the smokin' hot charisma displayed by ever-smooth Ricardo Montalban, the original Khan Noonien Singh. 

The Original Khan (Ricardo Montalban)

Montalban's Khan had no trouble throwing a pretty woman to the ground ("The Space Seed," the original Star Trek television series), but the icy new Cumberbatch Khan also hits the woman and then stomps on her leg with the apparent intent to break it. Then our new Khan crushes Admiral Marcus' head between his palms while Marcus' daughter (the little lady who just got stomped on) shrieks in terror.  (WOW - I bet Lt. McGivers from the original series would NOT have gone to play house on Ceti Alpha V with this creep!)

The New Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch)

   So is this new Star Trek movie worth seeing? Yes, of course it is. The special effects are amazing; going to warp has never been more exciting. Seeing Uhura (Zoe Saldana) carefully walk towards and speak Klingon to a gang of well-armored and highly agitated Klingon warriors was a welcomed first for her traditionally-chairfast character. (The new Klingons are scary as hell, by the way! This was the first time I've seen one with pale blue eyes.) I also enjoyed one of the early scenes with Spock in the volcano as lava erupts and sprays around him. A very nice homage to the traditional meaning of the word Vulcan (Roman god of fire.) There is also a new starship introduced here - a much larger, 3 times faster, black military ship that nearly destroys the Enterprise. Now we know what Into Darkness means - the Starfleet mission to explore space and new civilizations is now turning into a darker, sadder, military delegation. The scene in Admiral Marcus' office of a line-up of models showing the progression of flight from the Wright Brothers' airplane all the way through the (hypothetical) Enterprise spaceships was a really nice touch. Kudos, guys! 

   Leonard Nimoy makes a very brief but well appreciated appearance in this movie as well. I will always be happy to see our original Spock spouting words of wisdom in these "rebooted" versions. 

   And it's good to know we'll be seeing more of Khan in the future. They kept him alive, in a cryogenic tube. That was probably a mistake. 

   Oh! My Father would have been pleased to see that J.J. Abrams left out his camera lens-flare signature this time. Or at least I didn't notice it. Guys, please work on some original story lines before you tap into old Star Trek gold. We want to be fans of the reboot, but you can't steal the crown jewels without earning them first. 

   UPDATE: 6-14-2013   I saw the movie again, and it is LOADED with Abrams' lens-flaring!! I really didn't notice it the first time. (Must not be that bad of a movie if I was that engrossed in it... :)

Patient Number 5,896

My family and I had to let go of someone we loved last week. Taking him off life support was somewhat like putting your favorite cat or dog to sleep, except much worse.

This was my father.

 At the funeral, my cousin Wendell told me that it will be the hardest thing I'll ever have to do. I believe him for two reasons: 1) He's older than me, and 2) He's a minister. I do not think this was his first removing-someone-from-life-support experience.
  There are a few things I wish I could change about the events that occurred during my father's 17-day hospital stay. Having him walk away from his ordeal would of course be at the top of my list. Number Two would be having him sent back to the Huntsville Hospital Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU) instead of the Huntsville Hospital Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU.) The nurses Dad had in MICU were phenomenal. He commented on how sharp they were. These people were really taking care of him, and I could tell how much he appreciated it. He talked about them using their first names. He spoke of them as though they were his new friends. He gradually showed enough improvement that he was put in a regular hospital room (out of intensive care) for a while. I don't really know what happened next. I don't think the medical staff could give a good explanation, either. Dad looked to me like he was on the mend. He had asked me to go buy him an iPad and some pens and notepads. He wanted to write stuff down. He had plans. He was alert and witty because he was fully oxygenated. But then he started crashing again, and he was put in SICU because there weren't any beds open with his old friends in MICU. He needed oxygen, he needed vasoconstrictors to keep his blood pressure up, he had a blood clot in his leg, he was retaining fluid, he was having seizures...

Jesus. CHRIST. I couldn't sleep that night. And I didn't really want to. I was scared he would be gone when I woke up. I flew back to Huntsville. By the time I was allowed in to see him again, I found my Dad tied to a bed in SICU, looking all bruised and discolored, swollen and puffy, mildly sedated and on a ventilator.

The next saddest thing I've ever seen in my life was my Mom walking into her house with baggies full of Dad's spare clothes, his glasses, his new iPad that he never used, his little TV radio that he had to have on his bedside tray.

I keep getting angry when I think about some of the medical personnel in SICU. Do you know how I found out they had given up on my Dad? I could tell by the way they talking in front of him. They weren't talking to him, they were talking about him as though he wasn't there. But he was there. He was awake. I knew he could hear them. He couldn't say anything back because he had a ventilator tube down his throat and his hands were tied to the bed rails. Dad's new day nurse and kidney doctor were displaying the same level of psycho-social competence as someone who decides to dump his girlfriend by changing his Facebook status to "single."

I was in that room, cheering for my Dad every time I was allowed to see him. I was bragging about the baby steps of progress I thought he was making, and those inglorious bastards had already determined that patient number 5,896 was doomed but did not take the time to tell his family.

 I feel like an asshole, friends. I lied to my Daddy while he was on his deathbed.
     

Can't Wait! Star Trek: Into Darkness

All we need now is the same advertising stunt done over the Golden Gate Bridge. That is where Starfleet Academy will be located, after all.  :)

Movie release date: May 17, 2013

That's CANADA, not CANCUN

   What do you do when you hear your cousin is getting married down in sunny Cancun? You buy tickets, of course, especially since your very favorite cousin is planning to go and you've never been to Cancun. (At least I haven't.) My family said they were using the cheapcarribean.com site to plan their trip, so that's what I used, too. I'm always a little nervous about using a new travel site, but I was pleased to see that you could break your trip package down into two payments. AND, you could also buy insurance in case you get sick or become unable to travel for some reason. So I put down the first payment of $600 or so, and I bought the insurance. I called my cousins to tell them the good news. And that's when they told me that the wedding had been called off. 
   Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!

   I called cheapcarribean immediately to see if I could get a refund. I told them the wedding had been canceled, and they said "the insurance doesn't cover that." If I had been sick, I would have to get an actual doctor's note for them. Things started getting fuzzy here. I began to lose my temper, I'm afraid. I was promised a credit voucher for $596.25, after they knocked off a fee of $50.  I was told I had to use the voucher within one year of the date it was issued, and I couldn't use it on a cruise. The employee I spoke to said he was "pretty sure" I could use the travel voucher for airline flights within the continental U.S., but it would have to be with the same airline I had originally booked with. Well, okay, I could probably work with this. I printed out my voucher and taped it to my bedroom wall.
   Months later, I decided to plan a trip with my favorite cousin Beth. (No weddings this time.) It took several weeks for us to finally decide on Vancouver, Canada as our destination. Neither of us had been before, and we both had heard great things about the city. We decided to fly into Seattle and then drive across the border. 
   I spoke to four different cheapcarribean representatives before I got this to work for me. At first they couldn't understand why I had a "cheapcaribbean" credit voucher since I had canceled my trip within 24-hours of booking it; I should've had an American Airlines voucher. All of the flight prices they were giving me for Seattle for my needed time frame were more than $1000. Holy crap! I've never flown in the U.S. for more than $600. I went straight to the American Airlines website myself and found acceptable tickets for right under $600. I called cheapcarribbean back and told them to book it for me. The rep informed that I could only use a certain percentage of my voucher for an airline flight. "I haven't heard this before," I snapped at her. She was the fourth or fifth person I had talked to, and that really was news to me. She put me on hold and then came back. "Nevermind," she said, and she booked my flight with another $15 charge on it.
    Hopefully I was done with cheapcarribean. I'm not sure I'll be so quick to go to a destination wedding again, or do business with a company that has the word "cheap" in their name.
   It came time to fly to Seattle, and, I missed my flight out of Little Rock. After packing up, watering plants, feeding cats, doing laundry, all the little things you need to do before you leave your house for a while, (and we had to stop and get gas on the way to the airport), I arrived at the check-in terminal approximately 26 minutes before departure. I was not allowed on the airplane. "If you didn't have a bag to check, we'd let you on," said the very young and very new American Airlines representative. It was Saturday evening and the place was dead. This was the last flight out of Little Rock for the night. The next flight was at 6:15 am the next morning, and it was booked. My cousin was already in Seattle waiting for me. "Why don't you let me go and send my bag later?" I asked. "TSA won't let us do that anymore," he said. I was starting to lose my temper again. This airport was tiny. No one was in line to go through security. I should've been able to zip right through. The boy called his supervisor so I could talk to him. His supervisor said he would talk to me when he got done upstairs. *After* the plane leaves. I was furious. Once upon I time I would fly somewhere every week for my job. Airlines usually work hard to make sure you don't miss a flight. I have gotten to a gate 15 minutes before departure and still made the flight. Now they have new rules. I was told the computer "locks you out" 30 minutes before a flight. 
   I was assigned standby tickets and told to come back the next morning to see if I could get on the 6:15 am flight in case someone didn't show up. I had hope that this would work, since 5:15 is a ridiculous time for anyone to be up and functional, so I figured someone would miss their flight. And that's exactly what happened. I spent the night at the airport. On the cold, hard floor, with construction going on through the whole night. I didn't sleep, actually. I lay there, on a spot of red carpet, huddled with my fleece jacket around my head. There were padded benches downstairs, but there is also a singing Coke machine right next to them. Jeez! The bright overhead lights were on the whole night. It was horrible. 
   Around 5:00 am, I went to the American Airlines terminal to check in my luggage. The same supervisor was there from the night before. He did not make eye contact with me. I paid $25 to check my one bag. I went upstairs to my gate and waited. There was a large group of scuba divers who were going on a trip together. Two other men from their group tried to check in less than 30 minutes before take-off. They were cut off, just like I was. "They're going to miss some dives," I heard their dive instructor say. He spoke to several different airport employees to try and get them on. He was not successful. And THAT'S how I got a seat on a full plane to Seattle. One man's ruined vacation is another woman's seat to salvation.
   It was not a direct flight - I had a short layover in Dallas. I had to do the standby thing again, and thankfully someone missed their time window or else I would've had another fun evening at an airport. 
   I landed in Seattle, and my sweet cousin Beth picked me up. We ate dinner at a nearby restaurant then headed for the border.  We stopped at a Cabela's on the way out of town. There are no Cabela's where I live, so it was fun to see all of the stuffed animals on display. They had huge fish tanks with bass, crappie, and sturgeon (see photo below.) 

A living fossil - the Sturgeon

  
To be continued.....

Favorite Quote #9

          "The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few,           or the one."                                                   -Spock and Kirk, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

"I Saw a Bigfoot!"

The Spillway at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma

   Late one night in the early 90's, bored teenagers Jason Collins and Andy Holdsclaw drove to a state park just north of Wilburton, Oklahoma. These boys had no idea what they were about to see. 
   Collins remembers pulling his 1986 Pontiac TransAm up near the spillway to take a look around. "We got out (of the car) at the same time," said Collins. "We walked over to the ledge near the spillway and Andy yelled, 'LOOK!' I looked down and saw a hairy, taller-than-human thing sitting in the middle of the creek next to the spillway.
   "It looked up at us as if it was startled and it started to run," said Collins. It ran upright, very quickly, over slippery, uneven rocks. "When have you ever seen a bear run on its hind legs over slippery rocks without falling?" asked Collins. It also looked more human than bear "because of the shoulders," explained Collins.
   The boys ran back to the car and tried to think logically about what they just saw. Since they were in a campground area, they thought maybe someone was camping nearby and decided to take a dip in the creek. "We went everywhere that we could think of inside the park and couldn't find a single camper. So we left for home," said Collins.
   At the time, Collins did not tell anyone about the incident. "My friend Andy was so scared when he told his mom." She called the rangers' office and asked if there had been any reports of a Bigfoot. The officer she spoke to said it might have been an escaped convict from the McAlester prison. "He said he would check into it and within a few hours he called her back and said there were no reports of anyone escaping," said Collins. 
   In preparation for this interview (January 2013), Collins called Robbers Cave Park Ranger William Hahn who has worked at the park for more than a year. Hahn said that no one has ever reported seeing a Bigfoot inside the park. He did not think it would have been an escaped prisoner, either. Hahn worked at the McAlester prison for nearly 10 years and said 90 percent of escaped prisoners "usually go home, not to a state park to hide." He also mentioned a rumor that a bear lives near the spillway, although he has never seen it. 
    "I cannot be more serious about what I am about to say, and to this day if you asked me, 'Did you see a Bigfoot?' - I would say 'Yes,'" said Collins. 

The creature was seen near these rocks at the bottom of the spillway, located a few miles north of Wilburton, Oklahoma.

  ------------------------------------------------------
      Blogger's Note:  I took an astronomy class with Jason Collins in 2012 when he originally told me this story. He was the first person I have ever met who believes he may have seen a sasquatch. I begged him to do this interview.  -J.L.
    

My Father's Trip to Israel

The City of Jerusalem

   When I was in high school, my Father traveled to Israel. His trip was not any sort of personal spiritual pilgrimage, though. He was a radio officer in the U.S. Merchant Marines, and he was simply on a cargo ship making a routine stop to drop off some grain. 
   I remember how impressed he was with the people and things he saw in Israel. I took note of this because my Father is not easily impressed by much of anything. Among his trinkets that he always brought back to Tennessee from his long voyages, he also came home with a handful of little silver crucifixes that he had dipped in the Jordan River. He gave one to each of us and to some of our neighbors, too.
   I asked him to share his personal log with me. Here are the highlights from his trip, starting on New Years' Day in 1992:

 

01-01-92 Wednesday

   Jim and I earned our pay today. We had to send the

ships payroll report to headquarters. What a pain. 4

pages of numbers. Also learned how to send telephone

telegrams (TEXTEL). We are about 1/3 of the way to

Israel.

   Supposed to get there late on the 14th. Ship feels

like a ship today,lots of pitch and roll. Not bad,

just different.

01-02-92 Thursday

   Sea fairly rough today. Ship rolls constantly. 

Tiresome, but tolerable.

   Stood normal watch, sent 5 telegrams. Clock 

advanced another hour. Now 4 hrs ahead of Tennessee.

01-03-92 Friday

   Smack in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Ship 

still flopping around like a fish out of water; 

really wears on you. Passed a sail boat this

afternoon. First thing except clouds and water I've

seen in three or four days. Weather still nice. Water

still pretty, but mean. Washed clothes.

01-04-92 Saturday

 
   Still rolling. Stood normal watch, sent 4

telegrams. Finally got about 2 hours sleep, extremely

weird dream.

01-05-92 Sunday

   Normal watch. Rolling seems a little less severe 

today. Maybe just getting used to it. Supposed to hit

rougher weather in another day or so when we get near

the coast of Africa. About 10 more days to Haifa.

   Clock up another hour, now 5 hrs ahead of

Tennessee.

01-06-92 Monday

   Normal watch, sent 5 telegrams. Still rolling 

along. Cloudy and beginning to rain a little this

evening. Pretty good case of homesickness today.

01-07-92 Tuesday

   Normal watch. Sea a little smoother today. Called

home after last watch.

   Worked on radio log program. Clock up again, now

6 hrs ahead of Tennessee.

01-08-92 Wednesday

   Normal watch. Weather foggy, can't see much of

anything. Supposed to reach the Strait of Gibraltar

tomorrow at midnight. Washed clothes again, must 

bring more socks next time.

01-09-92 Thursday

   Normal watch. Passed through Strait of Gibraltar

around 9:00pm this evening. Lots of lights on both

sides. Hope we pass in the daytime on the way back. 

We are now in the Mediterranean Sea. Weather has 

improved,smooth sailing for now.

01-10-92 Friday

   Normal watch. Advanced clock again, now 7 hrs

ahead of Tennessee. Weather is a little cool, but

nice. We are sailing about 6 miles off the African

coast. Passed the city of Algers around 11:pm. Should

arrive in Haifa around noon on Wednesday the 15th.

01-11-92 Saturday

   Normal watch except for the overtime pay, because 

its Saturday. Weather is still good. Thought I was 

dead when I woke this morning. Dreamed I started 

shaking and couldn't stop. It got worse and worse 

until I knew I would explode. Then I woke and

realized it was the vibrations from the engine.

Probably had something to do with the 4 english

muffins with grape jelly I ate at 3:00 am.

01-12-92 Sunday

   Passed the Island of Sicily around supper time 

today. It looks just like Santa Barbara, only much

larger. Thousands of stucco houses and churches with

red tile roofs. Real pretty from the sea. Heard my 

first real SOS during my late watch this evening. It 

supposedly came from a ship off the coast of Malta, 

here in the Mediterranean. We weren't close enough to

respond, but I listened on all the emergency channels

for 2 hours just in case. Don't know what finally

happened, there was a lot of conversation on the

radio, but none of it in English. (Heard the first 

call in Morse code.)

01-13-92 Monday

   Normal watch. 700 miles from Haifa at noon today.

Should arrive before noon Wednesday. Clock up again, 

now 8 hrs ahead of Tennessee. Weather is brisk, but 

still nice.

01-14-92 Tuesday

   Busy watch today, sent lots of messages.

01-15-92 Wednesday

   Up at 3:00 am this morning in order to send

special arrival message to Haifa Radio. Had to send

it CW (my first morse telegram). Managed to send it

without too many mistakes. Arrived at Haifa at 11:30

am. Tied up to warf around 6:30 pm. Raining off and

on. Will wait until tomorrow to go ashore.

   Exactly 4 weeks since leaving home. Seems like 4 

months.
   
01-16-92 Thursday

   Went ashore with Jim this morning. Walked around

Haifa for about 3 hrs. Place is old and crowded.

Hundreds of little hole-in-the-wall shops.

   Found post office and mailed letter. Hope it gets

home, no one there spoke English. Surprisingly,

hardly anyone speaks English, and practically all

the signs are in Hebrew. After supper, walked about

5 miles looking for a phone. Finally found one and

called home.(Naturally found it about 1/4 mile from

the ship on the way back). Captain says we will be

here until at least next Wednesday. May be able to

take a tour or two around Israel.

01-17-92 Friday

   Interesting day. Went on a tour of Northern

Israel with Jim and 4 other folks from the ship.

We went to Nazareth first and saw the family homes

of Mary and Joseph. Then we went to Cana where

Jesus performed his first miracle. I stood in the

same place where he changed the water into wine.

   Then we went to the Sea of Galilee and ate lunch

where he did his second miracle of feeding 5 thousand

people with 2 fish. Then we went to the place at the

River Jorden where he was baptized. We also visited a

local diamond factory. Northern Israel reminds you a

little of Tennessee. It has lots of hills. The ground

is even rockier. Everywhere you look, there are piles

of rock. All the houses seem to be made of concrete.

There are new houses being built all over the place.

 
01-18-92 Saturday

   Do-nothing day. Today is the Jewish Sabbath,

nobody does anything. I was a good little Jewish boy,

I didn't do a damn thing. Caught up on sleep.

01-19-92 Sunday

   Fascinating day. Went on another tour. This time

just me and two others.

   First we drove south down the West Bank of the

Jordan River valley. We saw Armageddon and Jerico.

As we continued south along the Jordanian border,

we saw lots of Israeli Army patrols. We drove on

into Bethlehem where we visited the Church of the

Nativity, which is built around the manger where

Christ was born. We saw the place where he was born

and the manger. Had lunch about 1/2 block from the

church.

   Then we drove on into Jerusalem. It has to be the

most incredible city I've ever seen. It's built on

the tops of several hills. (Mount Zion is the

highest I think.) Everything is made of brown rock.

Thousands of buildings, walls and churches all

interconnected. Every square inch of space is

occupied up and down steep hills for several miles

in all directions. It's really impossible to describe

and no photograph could do it justice.

   We stopped at most of the churches built around

the 14 stations of the cross. We saw where Jesus

was crucified (I put my hand in the hole of the

rock that held up the cross he was crucified on.)

We went to his tomb and Mary's tomb. We visited

the garden where Judas betrayed him. We saw the

rock he cried blood on and the one he ascended to

heaven from. We saw so much I can't remember it all.

My friend Scotty Jones took pictures, and will give

me copies. Maybe they will help me remember more

details of this incredible place.

   We left Jerusalem around dark and drove through

Tel Aviv on the way back to Haifa. Our guide's name

was Sami. [Blogger's Note: Dad mentioned later in his

log that Sami was a professional tour guide and a

former Israeli Army officer who weighed about 250

pounds and spoke 5 or 6 languages. Dad said Sami had

never been out of Israel.] He spoke English pretty

well and explained most of the history behind

everything we saw. A very long and very good day.