42 and The Blue

I’m continuing to process the horrific events at the end of the Boston Marathon.  I am so proud of the response both in Boston and from around the country.  The general consensus is that they’ve messed with the wrong city – I kind of like that reaction.  Even the Evil Empire stepped up in a very classy way (something hard to admit but while they are a hated enemy on the ball field they’re always a classy organization – there I said it and it wasn’t even painful). 

Yankee Stadium Last Night - So Cool!

I’m forcing myself to return to more ordinary aspects of life because the real message that needs to be sent (along with a couple hollow point bullets) is that our lives go on and more important than the deranged acts of a coward.

My wife and I went to see the movie “42” last night for date night.  I was a little leery going in because the story has been told a number of times and I was worried they wouldn’t do it justice.  I was really pleased with the movie.  Harrison Ford was a little over the top as Branch Rickey but the African-American actors were uniformly outstanding.  It was inspiring to see the depths of racism this country was imprisoned by during the period and to realize how far we’ve come.  We still have a ways to go but the quiet dignity Jackie Robinson confronted the immense hurdles he faced is an object lesson for all of us. 

His life has to stand for something and this film eloquently brings that lesson to a whole new generation which is a very good thing indeed.  I liked the reaction of my wife as well who grew up in another culture.  I liked seeing the light go on in her head as she watched the Red Sox game with everyone wearing Robinson’s number 42 last night. 

I also finished my latest John Ringo “Kildar” book, A Deeper Blue, which had the Kildar recovering from the emotional loss of his true love in the battles of the preceding book.  He’s called out of his depression to wreak havoc, along with the Keldara, against Islamic extremists trying to hit Florida with VX gas.  Ringo does the set piece battles so well, especially the individual combat, that I wonder why he’s gotten away from it in some of his most recent  efforts.  This was a great read and I’ve already launched into the next, and regrettably last, in this series.

Speaking of series, I only have a couple of episodes left in my journey through the blu ray collection of the entire Original Star Trek series (still my favorite TV show of all time).  I realized a long held obsession to see the one episode I had never seen.  While in college in the 1970s I wrote a long paper on the series (yeah – I’m a total geek from way back) and during the research noted that there was one episode, titled Requiem for Methuselah, that I never saw. It was a story of the crew of the Enterprise running into Leonardo Davinci and Alexander the Great who turn out to be the same immortal guy now living on his own private planet. 

The Last Unseen Show

That obsession was finally sated and while the show was as uniformly bad as most of the third season I reveled in the overdone drama.  It also had a guest star in James Daley, who I was convinced was Robert Forster.  I was trying to figure out how Forster had done work back in the 1960s as a middle aged character right up to the point the credits rolled and it was Daly – really weird.      

Speaking of weird my wife insisted she be allowed to choose Buddy the Wonder Pooch’s next collar.  I nervously saw her considering a pink one and prepared to launch a preemptory attack when she settled on a less obtrusive one that still was a little too “froo froo” for me.  She claims (rightfully) that I have no fashion sense but this was a bitter pill to swallow.  I can only hope Buddy finds a way to destroy it – he’s good at that sort of thing.

Buddy Commiserating With Me About the New Collar