Pajiba

I forget, did someone ever link to these great videos of Avery Brooks and Jonathan Frakes?

Here's one from Scott Kurtz of PvP (with Kris Straub of Starslip Crisis, Chainsawsuit, and others) singing with Avery Brooks at the piano.

And here's one of Jonathan Frakes from the same evening.

Of course, the evening can best be described by the always eloquent Jerry Holkins (Tycho), who described it thusly:

"I returned to the Westgate Bar, a place I have tried to describe before, where a woman was playing Those Were The Days. She was playing it on the piano, but in my memory the woman and the piano constitute one entity. To give you an idea of this song's character, let me include a verse here.

Those were the days, my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we'd choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way

When I said that I had returned to the bar, let me be absolutely clear: I was returning from the restroom. This tune, at that moment, seemed to give the act a kind of epic cast.

A man near the door threw his arm wide at the crescendo, granting me entrance with a grand sweep. It was Lieutenant Commander Riker. Sitting to his immediate right sat Avery Brooks, who played Captain Sisko, nodding me in. After this, linear time was completely obliterated.

My consciousness bobbed like a bottle in black water, so that the rest of the evening exists only as discrete moments. In the first memory, Jonathan Frakes is singing a duet with the woman behind the piano. In the next coherent droplet, I am in another part of the room. Avery Brooks is now behind the piano, finding chords in it that I have never heard, and when he asks what he should sing next the woman pauses, and then says "Summertime."

I thought, "Oh shit," but I must have thought it with my mouth, because I said it aloud. He doesn't need the whole song, though. He only needs one line of it:

There is nothing can harm you.

He takes this line and turns it into a kind of meditation. Trying to absorb every band of data this man is putting out is sheer agony. My mouth just hangs open, all parched basset, and I cover the hole with my palm to hide my uvula. He is cracking open the universe, he is destroying me. I don't know how you can hear music like this and live."

I really wish I could hang out with Mike and Jerry at the Penny Arcade offices some day. Just to see their genius in person.

I'm not so sure about Ms. Torres singing talent, but she was definitely one of the best actresses to do sci-fi.

Dragonforce is definitely repetitive, but unlike Metallica's tortured ambiances, they manage to instill their songs with so much fun it's impossible to resist. It's like they're telling you "We love playing this music SO much!".

I always thought Zoe was the hottest one of the crew, and now I'm just that more lost in love. They should have had her sing at Wash's funeral. I would have been bawling buckets, though.

Power Metal... oh, the pain in my ears. Why did I hit the play button?

That Dragonforce guitar wank crap bores me to tears.

Randy Rhoads would eat these guys for lunch.

"They're the Final Destination of Metal."

That's it. That's the analogy I was looking for.

Nicely done.

I'm imagining she's singing to Wash. Just tell me where to turn in my Man Card.

Cara, although I'll have to disagree with Angry Gorilla being the best part (Kate Couric FTW!), I do love that the entire time Hannity is talking, The Angry Gorilla is making monkey sounds in the back ground. There's a joke in there somewhere :-)