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Yesterday was Henry’s Kung Fu tournament! There are oh, six or eight branches of his school and the tournament includes everyone, so there are always hundreds of competitors. Henry was in the 13-and-up division this year. He did great and I could tell he was trying his very best. He’s improved so much over the last year or so, it’s amazing. No medals this year, but he was in a close competition for third place in sparring, and had to spar with his good friend for the medal. The friend won but was super-gracious about it, very sweet and encouraging. We were there from 9:30 in the morning tilI after 3, and then Henry went home with his dad for the weekend. I’m very proud of that boy!

Forgot good camera, so here’s a crappy iPhone shot. Henry’s there, somewhere. Go to the flickr page for a hint.

After I got home Dan and I ate tons of Mexican food and then lay around in a coma for a while, and then we went up to the movie theater to see if we could get in to the 5:15 showing of Star Trek. To our surprise there was plenty of parking and we were able to walk right in to a nearly empty theater and get our favorite seats! So that’s the time to see a wildly popular movie, I guess.

That theater has changed hands again and is now a Reading Theater, whatever that means. The commercials seemed better than average and less annoying than usual. They no longer play those stupid trivia questions, thank goodness. There was a pleasant enough car commercial where the car drove around in paint and made a big modern painting, there was a nice ad with a drummer kid to tell us that LG was helping put music back into schools, and there was one of those nice Honda Insight commercials where the people and cars keep appearing from behind each other.

The preview for the movie with Jack Black and Michael Cera made me laugh!

Ok, on to STAR TREK! I don’t want to give any spoilers here so I won’t say much, but I loved it and so did Dan. In my opinion The Original Series, as they call it, is the real Star Trek, and everything else that came after, Next Gen, Voyager, etc., is just… something else that’s kinda Star Trekky. I know most people will disagree, but there you go. Star Trek means Kirk and Spock and the gang, and unlikely coincidences and fistfights and crazy aliens with a grudge and adventure, without a lot of soul-searching or tedious alien mysticism. Yeah, Klingons, I’m talking to you.

Anyway, the new movie really felt like Star Trek, like a big bold exciting brand-new genuine Star Trek episode. The casting was great. Chris Pine made a believable Kirk. He didn’t imitate Shatner’s, um, Shatnerness, but there were just a few lines here and there which he delivered with the faintest Shatneresquitude that made me smile. Zachary Quinto was a wonderful Spock. I really found myself thinking of him as Spock, not “young Spock” or “new Spock” or whatever. Karl Urban as McCoy was very strong, and everyone else was just fine. Simon Pegg was a darling Scotty.

Sets, music, costuming — all great and deliciously Star Trekky. The Enterprise uniforms even seemed slightly ill-fitting. :)

It’s not perfect — there were some odd moments, and a definite “WTF?” when two crew members do something inexplicable on the transporter pad… but oh well, I can live with that.

Trying not to give anything away, here, but because someone fiddles with the past, some big things happen that are, hmm, things we know didn’t happen. Dan and I were both expecting them to fix the things by the end of the film, but they didn’t, and Dan pointed out that the filmmakers have very cleverly created a new version of reality in which they can, we hope, make more movies without having to worry about conflicting with Star Trek history and what “really happened” because the future has now been irrevocably altered. If you see what I mean. Time travel makes my head asplode.

All in all, an extremely enjoyable movie that I might even want to (*gasp*) go see AGAIN!