Patrick Stewart, aka Captain Picard, has just given us yet another reason to love him:
I grew up in a home darkened by domestic violence – which I wrote about two years ago. My father was an angry and unhappy man who was not able to control his emotions, or his hands. I witnessed violence against my mother and felt powerless to stop it. When Refuge, the national domestic violence charity, asked me to become a patron, I accepted without hesitation. I accepted for my mother. As a child, there was little I could do to help her. But now I can give support and encouragement to women who live in the same sort of fear that she did.
Hand to God, there’s a Star Trek moment for every reason and every season:
You know, there are some words I’ve known since I was a schoolboy: “With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.” Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie* as wisdom and warning. The first time any man’s freedom is trodden on we’re all damaged. – The Drumhead
*a character in the Next Gen universe
h/t Fashion It So (the OMG SO AWESOME tumblr dedicated to the OMG WHAT WERE THEY THINKING fashion of Star Trek: The Next Generation)
(Takei is currently working on a new stage musical,Allegiance, about the experience of a Japanese-American family in a World War II internment camp — an experience he and his own family had to endure. He is of course best known for playing Sulu in the original Star Trek, but in recent years has gained new prominence as something of an elder-comic statesman of gay rights activism. He’s awesome, is what I’m saying).
Available for purchase at ThinkGeek.com -- though, in my case, it really should be in the plural.
I’ve recently discovered an odd little thing about me:
I’m less a geek, than I am a geek of geek culture.
It’s true that I’ve hit a few of the geek high points all on my own: I’m a life-long fan of the original three Star Wars films, and have nothing but disdain for the latter three; I’ve been watching Trek since the original series was first in re-runs (even I was a little too young when it first hit the airwaves); I’ve been known to watch all three LOTR films on consecutive evenings (extended cuts!); and I recently become a bona-fide Browncoat (aka: stupid-big fan of Firefly). I even have genuine Dr. Horrible cred, having watched it online almost immediately upon its release. Moreover, I’m a certified egg-head, and do things like read history because I want to and get deeply into the minutiae of history that particularly grabs me. So yeah. On some levels, I really am a geek.
But on a lot of other levels, I’m a complete dilettante. I don’t game (online or with poly dice) and never have (unless you count that one game of Angry Birds & a few visits to the arcade in the 80s); I don’t watch Dr. Who; I still haven’t read the Hitchhiker’s Guide. I intend to remedy that last sooner rather than later — especially now that even the boy is quoting lines at me — but I have no interest in either of the former. I don’t have any idea who’s Marvel and who’s DC, I didn’t much enjoy the actual source material for the LOTR films (though I did finally force myself to finish reading them), and I have no intention of ever reading any George RR Martin (I already know too many unsavory spoilers – why walk into that?)
The entire series is streaming on Netflix. A couple weeks ago, I decided to watch it. I made it half-way through one episode and decided to start watching Doctor Who instead.
Brent Spiner, aka Data, does a freakishly (freakishly!) good job of sounding exactly and precisely like Patrick Mothereffing Stewart, aka Captain Jean-Luc Picard.
Oh, I am so happy! It’s moments like this that make me glad I launched latched onto this blog like a deer tick on a beeyootiful Angry Black Deer (ahem, sorry about that. I need a copy editor!), going boldly where no Emily L. Hauser had ever gone before.
Crucial update! After posting the above, I tweeted about it & then checked out Brent Spiner’s Twitter feed (@BrentSpiner), wherein I found the following:
If I could get as many people to watch #FreshHell as have watched my Patrick impression, I’d get a sponsor in no time. http://bit.ly/o2xYjS
So! Feeling somewhat chagrined, and out of a real sense of gratitude to Mr. Spiner for all he gave me and so many others during those many years of Next Gen (not to mention being a creative person who is forever trying to push herself onto an apparently unwilling public and thus can sort of kind of understand…), I thought: What’s this then? So I checked it out.
And it’s dang funny! The episodes are short, they’re weird (where have you ever heard the words “I’m pushing away a mouse arsonist” before?), and they are ding-dang funny.
So: Watch Brent Spiner in Fresh Hell! All episodes embedded after the jump….
Patrick Stewart, aka Captain Picard, has just given us yet another reason to love him:
