A Klingon and a whole family of supers

I have many geeky passions, but my favorites are Star Trek and Superman.

At work, I have a Klingon-warrior action figure alongside a Man of Steel statue. On my home-office walls, I have one framed Time cover of James Tiberius Kirk and Jean-luc Picard, and another depicting Superman in commemoration of the the character’s 50th anniversary.

Yep, these are my nerd essentials.

So I was delighted to recently discover that my neighbors include a Klingon warrior and a whole friggin’ family of supers.

The Klingon? That’s Lana Rosario, who lives two blocks to the southwest and is married to a former Pioneer Press coworker, Steve Aggergaard.

Lana is in the cast of “A Klingon Christmas Carol,” a “Star Trek”-flavored retelling of the classic Charles Dickens story, at the Phoenix Theater in Minneapolis’ Uptown. My wife and I caught the show, which is mostly in the Klingon language, and we loved it.

Lana, as MarlI’, the dead business partner of lead character SQuja’, is magnificent. She also plays other characters in the play.

Lana told me she’s always been a “Star Trek” fan but only recently warmed to the warlike Klingon race. She likes them because “they are very up front about everything, don’t have hidden agendas, live life out loud, and if you piss them off they will smack you.”

She said she’s had a blast playing a Klingon even though the guttural tongue is a strain on the vocal cords, and attaching the aliens’ signature ridged foreheads with liquid latex is an ordeal that “makes our skin break out badly … We all have appointments to get facials when the show is over.”

Here’s the whole “Klingon Christmas Carol” cast on Friday night (Lana is in front and on the left):

The supers? That would be the Gonzalez family one block to the east. Don and Colleen are friends of ours, and their older boys hang out with my son.

The Gonzalez clan, I found out this week, are also superheroes! Well, not really, but they’re dressed that way in one of their family Christmas cards.

Colleen got the idea for the superhero card when stumbling on a couple of Superman-style costumes at a thrift store, and she filled out the family’s superwardrobe via online purchases.

Her sister Gretchen Hansen, a crack photographer and graphic designer, then posed the family and executed the clever design you see at the top of this post.

They family looks amazing in the card. Don’s ensemble echoes that of the classic 1950s Superman played by George Reeves. However, since Don is a fellow Puerto Rican, I guess that makes him supermán instead of Superman.

This is, by the way, not the first time I’ve seen Don and Colleen in costume.

Here are some of Colleen’s other Christmas-card ideas (scroll downward). Isn’t she awesome?

Update: Here’s Colleen’s 2014 Christmas card!