On the Star Trek tip

If you use this link and visit James Lileks's most recent "Diner" podcast entitled "He's not Ike Clanton" you can be treated to William Shatner BRUTALIZE Elton John's "Rocket Man." (You don't have to have an iPod or subscribe or anything. Plug in your headphones (if you're working), click on the "listen" link and search (if you can) to somewhere around the 9 minute mark. Just hilariously awful. I really hope he was high on marijuana when he recorded that abomination.

About the 14 minute mark, you get the Star Trek theme (of course) but did you know there are lyrics? You can hear them at this point.

In other ST songs, please enjoy (for almost 5 minutes!!!) this awesome machinima video from Jean-Luc Picard that just happens to have a great techno beat!

(If you liked that, you can get more Star Trek insanity here.)

But, what is machinima, you ask? Well, you can read more about this computer-driven, "amateur" film making style with this Slate article.

In other news . . .

1. There have been surprisingly good reviews of Lord of the Rings: The Musical. Well, some of the reviews have been good.

Hey! Stop that laughing! (Oh, alright . . . I laughed the first time I heard about it too. And while no one (not even the shows writers, choreographers, or whatevers) would compare it to Tolkien's original monstrosity of 1100 pages, or to Peter Jackson's 12 hour of filmic mammothness . . . the stagecraft, effects, and general production is going well in its initial Canadian run. (I actually thought "How far away is Toronto?")

2. In other ring-related items, I discovered that my wife went all day without wearing her wedding ring. For SHAME Lynda! For shame!

3. This link is all for the honor and glory of Sarah Bunting. She is one of the minds behind Television Without Pity but is also the proprietor of Tomato Nation.

Every year she runs a pledge drive on her site to benefit New York school children. This year, she challenged the donors to go above and beyond to raise $30,000. If that amount of money was raised, she promised to shave her head bald. They did and she did.

The story of the shaving is better than the pictures that are up so far.

Way to go Sars! You don't know me at all but I am proud of you and all those that pledged.

3. Finally (in this post at least, since I've got three other posts on other topics in the works right now), here is this week's installment of The Authority Speaks, my old (and badly written) sports column.