Memory

In a city with a grim history of high-profile car wrecks, even veteran police and firefighters seemed stunned by the death toll on Jamboree Road. They called the Memorial Day wreck in Newport Beach the single worst solo-car crash in memory. They groped, and failed, to come up with a worse one. The violent collision, just down the road from Fashion Island and the Newport Beach police station, killed five teenagers from neighboring Irvine, scattering debris and bodies across the pavement.

For Allan Taylor, whose grandfather served in World War II and whose father saw action in Vietnam, Memorial Day has one overriding meaning. "It's about paying homage to those who have served," said Taylor, who sailed aboard the New Jersey off the coast of Beirut in 1983. "For me, a third-generation military man, it's mandatory. " Taylor, 47, of Oxnard, was among thousands who lined Sherman Way in Canoga Park for a parade with the theme "Saluting the Price of Freedom. " Under sunny skies across the Southland, trumpets blared, drums boomed and batons twirled as patriots from far and wide commemorated the nation's fallen servicemen and servicewomen at parades and cemeteries.

President Obama hailed the nation's fallen service members in a Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, in which he noted that the war in Afghanistan was winding down but not over. "Fewer Americans are making the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan, and that's progress for which we are profoundly grateful," Obama said Monday. "And this time next year, we will mark the final Memorial Day of our war in Afghanistan. "But even as we turn the page on a decade of conflict, even as we look forward, let us never forget, as we gather here today, that our nation is still at war. " As of Friday , 2,093 U.S. troops had died in more than a decade of war in Afghanistan, according to Pentagon figures.

My son, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Donald J. Hogan, was killed in Helmand province in August 2009. In the days and weeks that followed, my wife, Carla, and I spent a lot of time with the 100 or so Marines who served with him. We asked them what they needed most, and the answer was unexpected. Infantry members spend all their time on their feet. They have no laundry facilities, so they wash their socks in irrigation canals and air-dry them. But the sand and grit make them unusable again within a couple of days.

With a nod to the Greatest Spectacle in Racing, Sunday's Indianapolis 500, Times staff writer Kevin Baxter offers a speedy look at Major League Baseball. (Statistics through Friday's game. Last week's rankings in parentheses): RUNNING IN CLEAN AIR 1. ST. LOUIS Spinning its wheels: Loss of Garcia leaves MLB's best staff down five pitchers (1) 2. TEXAS Closing quickly: Bullpen has blown only one of 17 save opportunities (2) 3. CINCINNATI Chapman's fastball is slowing down to a career-low 97.3 mph (5)

BALTIMORE - As long as there are 8-year-olds, there will be baseball. Bud Selig has produced revenue-sharing and value-escalation. He deserves much credit. The mothers of this country have produced a never-ending supply of baseball customers. They deserve more. Once upon a time - Sunday, actually - a grandfather accompanied his 8-year-old grandson to a major league baseball game. His granddaughter was there too, but she had a friend with her. If you are a 10-year-old girl, you cannot be seen in public at a baseball game with your grandpa and little brother without a friend along.

For a sense of the random oddities that dot Daft Punk's strange, funky, cosmic new album, "Random Access Memories," consider a partial discography of the musicians employed by the two Frenchmen in service of its creation. The duo, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, are best known for their use of robot helmets to mask their physical identities but employed prominent men whose résumé includes work for, among others, Michael Jackson, Jim Henson and Miles Davis. Not a list you'd expect from a pair of Parisian human robots whose sophisticated, tech-savvy onstage performances atop a digital pyramid still sparks twinkles in the eyes of anyone lucky enough to witness it firsthand or whose three previous albums featured hard, fast, strong electronic rhythms crafted mostly on machines and to be consumed by a generation devoted to house and techno.

Summer is coming. The long Memorial Day weekend is just two weeks away and, of course, average gasoline prices in California are back up above $4 a gallon. On Friday, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline in California was $4.062, up 7.6 cents since last week, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report. You can round up the usual suspects: Refineries say their supplies are tight. PHOTOS: Top 10 cars with lowest sticker price per mpg In fact, some analysts, such as Patrick DeHaan of GasBuddy.com, said that "tight gasoline supply exists especially along the West Coast.

GRAND CANYON, Ariz. -- Eric York was obsessed with the big cats -- their health, temperaments and survival rates amid the park's annual tourist invasion. For years, he wandered the area's crags, gullies and woods, tracking and tagging the region's last remaining mountain lions as a biologist for the Grand Canyon National Park. In 2007, tragedy struck. At age 37, the Massachusetts native was killed doing the job he loved, but not in the way people might guess. He wasn't mauled by a lion, but fell victim to a case of pneumonic plague he contracted doing a necropsy on a dead female cat. Because the park lacked a forensic lab, York did his postmortem for the mountain lion research program in the garage of his home in the village of about 2,000 park employees.

Don't be fooled by its deceptively simple title or the hesitant, unassuming way it begins. Writer-director Sarah Polley's "Stories We Tell" ends up an invigorating powerhouse of a personal documentary, adventurous and absolutely fascinating. Unexpectedly moving in unanticipated ways, this unusual film is a look at the complexities of one specific family's story as well as a broad examination of the interlocking nature of truth, secrecy and memory, not to mention the endless intricacies of human relationships.