Assorted thoughts on...

Family Vacation

I still haven't gotten around to writing up a blog post with the highlights and stories from my family trip a week and a half ago, but for the time being, you'll be able to see my pictures at the following links:

Yosemite Valley
Mariposa Grove, Kings Canyon
Sequoia National Park, Crystal Caverns
Getty Center
The Grove, Hollywood, Santa Monica

Incidentally, I also began uploading old photos from events earlier this year and "best-of" photos from previous years at Yahoo! Photos. Going back through my old files, I'm realizing that I took more pics than I thought, and I suspect I may spring for smugmug sooner rather than later, if just for the ability to more cleanly organize albums.

Brother's Appreciation

The Everglow sisters did a marvelous job kicking off Memorial Day weekend with Brother's Appreciation, which I know they spent a lot of time preparing for. Check out the goings-on in George's photos and Shally's photos. Thanks for a splendid evening!

Nutritional needs

Back in my younger days, I could wake up and play 5 hours of basketball at the gym without any breakfast or barely even water. Nowadays, I know I'm getting older when I can tell my energy level on Sundays depends on whether I had a substantial lunch on Sunday before ball. This past Sunday, I made sure to eat a bowl of cereal after church, and proceeded to have one of my better days of the year. Even though my outside shot wasn't falling, I felt active on defense, sharp with my passes, and had one game where I scored 7/9 buckets for my team. Yay for Quaker oatmeal!

Mutants galore!

Some thoughts resulting from my Memorial Day viewing of "X-Men 3: The Last Stand" (mouse over as spoilers are contained herein):

- Non-spoiler one-sentence review: If I could turn off the X-Men comic story fan side of my brain, I could enjoy the movie as a brainless summer action flick. But the X-Men fan in me was annoyed/disappointed by some of the creative choices.
- They. Killed. XAVIER? and CYCLOPS? and JEAN GREY? They're arguably the most important characters in the X-Men mythology! Maybe everyone thinks Cyclops is boring, but his relationship to Jean is one of the more important plot points used over and over again in the comic books.
- I can understand how, from a movie standpoint, they wanted to center the story around the most popular character (Wolverine). But twisting the story to shine the spotlight on him having Jean as his "true love" and his transformation into a team leader... not very accurate.
- The Danger Room scene was kind of cool. Wolverine struck the right notes here ("That was my last cigar!") and they even incorporated the Fastball Special (Colossus tossing Wolvie at the Sentinel).
- Kelsey Grammer as Beast was an excellent casting choice. The makeup artists made him look physically convincing, and the professorial tone and manner were pretty much just as I'd imagine Dr. Hank McCoy to be.
- Too many mutants in this movie. I caught lots of glimpses of folks who could be actual comic characters, but most seemed to be movie-only.
- One love triangle in a movie is about as much as I can take. Having two just annoys me.
- The technology used to make Xavier and Magneto look 20 years younger is pretty darn cool. If it becomes easier and cheaper to implement, I could see it rejuvenating the careers of actors by broadening the types of roles they could play - no longer would they have to play their age.

- Real-life X-Man: I came across this story about a baby born in China with three fully formed arms (even though both of the left ones aren't usable). They'll probably perform surgery to remove the third arm once he gets older. I wonder, in what ways would having a third arm be useful? World-champion swimmer? Would having a third arm disqualify him from swim meets?

If you had mutant powers, what would you want? My default answer is usually "flying", followed by "teleportation".

- Seeing Triple-Arm Baby reminded me of another genetic anomaly I read about a few months ago, where an English couple (both mother and father being half black and half white) had fraternal twins where one was black with brown eyes, and the other white with blue eyes. Something like a 1 million to one chance of that happening. Check out this link for more details.