My credentials for making that analysis as a fanboy are pretty solid.  My Star Trek geekness predates my other geeknesses.  Proof: http://www.tomcroom.com/archives/6949

So here are three five a lot of immediately obvious things wrong with the movie.  (I’m sure there are more, but I’m tired and writing this fairly quickly.)

1. Why the fuck was the Enterprise parked under water?  Seriously.  No explanation was given and even the chief engineer (seemingly the only sane person in the movie) pointed out how stupid that was.

2. How do alternate timelines turn Latin men into British Caucasians?

3. This movie takes place six months after the first movie.  Thus the level of emotional relationship between Kirk and Spock that took over seventeen years in the previous movies for an epic death scene is recreated in an alternate timeline is less than two years?

4. Kirk’s only true love is his ship – not Carol Marcus, so why the fuck is she going on the five year mission?

5. Speaking of which, Carol Marcus was never in Starfleet!

Boobs

6. If they hadn’t started the five year mission yet, how the fuck did they meet Harry Mudd and discover Tribbles?

7. How does the Klingon Empire, a space faring race with a culture of WARFARE, not notice a fucking STAR SHIP sitting in orbit around their HOMEWORLD?  Seriously.  I’m pretty sure our current technology of things like, you know, TELESCOPES and communication satellites would catch on to something like that pretty damn quick.  You’d think a warmongering military race would be watching their six on their own home planet IN THE FUTURE.

8. Along that same thought, how does NONE OF STARFLEET NOTICE THE ENTERPRISE FALLING TO EARTH?  We know there are other star ships hanging around.  We’ve seen them… in the beginning of the same damn movie.  Not a single one thought, “oh, shit!  Let’s go try and start beaming people off” or “intercept that with a couple of tractor beams” or even “SHOOT IT DOWN BEFORE IT CRASHES AND KILLS A CITY OR SOMETHING!”  Nothing.  Not a peep.

Not Boobs.

9. Communicators can reach from a star ship to a bar in San Francisco?  REALLY?

WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED:

A. John Harrison should have been JOHN HARRISON – another super human from the SS Botany Bay.  The closing scene where we see them all in cryo tubes?  The camera should have passed one with a Latin guy with long hair… Khan.  John Harrison should have been his own character.

B. Time should have been spent developing relationships through character interactions in the plot; not assuming their existence and rocking off the dime of classic motion picture death scenes.

C. Carol Marcus should have had a topless scene.  Would never happen, I know, buy I would have been okay with it.

For once, Joey Snackpants’ anger towards these movies may be justified.  (For once.)

So sorry Nina, but Iron Man 3 was a better flick so far this summer.

</rant>

For those of you that didn’t know: yes, I’m half Polish.  Now, I’ll sit here for a moment while you think to yourself “oh, THAT explains it” or some other related anecdotal joke about the intelligence of folks from Poland.  Go ahead.  It’s fine.  I’m used to it.

[pause for effect.]

ANYWAY – I took this photo of my grandparents, my mother, and my aunts:

Yes, I’m related to these folks. (2003)

Today, we gathered in South Florida for the purpose of surprising my (widowed) Grandmother by getting together her surviving daughters, her grandchildren, and her great grandchildren.  It’s quite an impressive brood for two immigrants that escaped Europe back in the fifties.

We met up at my cousin Craig’s house in Pompano Beach and got to see some older, but familiar, faces.  Here is my grandmother and her surviving daughters (my aunt Mary passed a few years back.)

Yes, I’m still related to these folks. (2013)

Yes, my aunt Wanda was THRILLED to learn we were taking the photo right after she decided to jump in the pool.

The other amazing photo we took while I was there was that of the grandchildren.  There’s a LOT of us.  My grandparents had five daughters and those five blessed/cursed the world with nine children.  An interesting genetics note, here, is the fact that my grandfather had five (FIVE!) daughters, but never a son.  All of the first born children of these women (myself included) were ALL MALE.  Interesting, aye?

Anyway, here’s the photo of all of us at the same place at the same time.  It might be a sign of the Polish Apocalypse.

But we had fun.

It was fun, exhausting, and a reminder of how out of shape I was.