Today... is... International Talk Like William Shatner Day

So declareth Maurice LaMarche - the voice talent behind such animated greats as 'The Brain' from Pinky and the Brain and the self-proclaimed "third most prominent imitator of William Shatner" - and who are we to argue? The mighty Shat turns 78 today, and LaMarche urges us all to celebrate this great man's birthday by adopting some of his highly idiosyncratic verbal mannerisms.

He even offers some handy tips on how to do it right:



You'll never say the word 'sabotage' in the same way again.

Happy birthday, Mr Shatner.

Johansson, Illinois

My significantly better half Clare (Bless 'er) bought me Scarlett Johansson's new album of Tom Waits' covers this week, Anywhere I Lay My Head. Now, I'm a bit of a unrepentantly obsessive Tom Waits fan (you noticed?), so when I first heard about this project I was more than a wee bit sniffy. Over the years, I've heard many, many, many cover versions of songs by the Great Voice of Gravel. A few have been sublime (Springsteen's Jersey Girl and T. Bone Burnett's Time spring to mind), most have been all right-ish to goddamn mediocre (The Ramones I Don't Wanna Grow Up and The Eagles' Ol' 55) and then there's Rod Stewart's take on Tom Traubert's Blues. It's at the bottom of the pile by a nautical mile and the less said about it the better.

If that wasn't enough, I also have an innate problem with Hollywood A-Listers who want to sing songs. This is a generational thing, I know: for my parents, it was de rigeur for the Hollywood elite to have the innate capacity to act, sing, dance and possibly shit through hoops at twenty paces. I, however, have always been hampered with post-Method school expectations: actors should act, rock stars should rock and never the 'twain should meet. Unless it's Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth, or possibly William Shatner's Rocket Man.

The prospect of a contemporary Bright Young Thing - talented though she may be - tackling the oeuvre of my all-time favourite recording artist bar-none did not fill my heart with giddy anticipation. "What next?" I wondered aloud, and possibly a bit too aloudly. "Keira Knightly releasing an album of Captain Beefheart covers? Jessica Alba Singing the Best of Billy Bragg? Gwyneth Paltrow doing Coldplay?"

Well, I needn't have worried. Ms Johansson's album is an absolutely marvellous thing of beauty that radically reinterprets and almost reinvents songs that have been hard-wired into my frontal lobes. Produced by the mighty TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek - and featuring guest vocals from none other than Mr David Bowie of Brixton, London - it's one of the best dedicated covers albums I've heard since, oh, Jeffrey Lewis's 12 Crass Songs and has been on heavy rotation on my tinny but temperamental car stereo for most of this week.

Like all good covers albums it reinvents and sometime reinvigorates the source material. The wistful, heartbreaking Small Change track I Wish I Was In New Orleans is turned into a musical box accompanied lullaby, whilst Bone Machine's swaggering singalong I Don't Wanna Grow Up is transformed into the bastard offspring of New Order and the Pet Shop Boys. It shouldn't work and I shouldn't like it, but it does and I do.

Clare's favourite is the title track (as she said literally moments ago: "Listened to it, picked my favourite, stuck with it"), but I'm torn between I Wish I Was In New Orleans and I Don't Wanna Grow Up.

Says it all, really.

Canadian Ham on the Dashboard

[Originally published in my MySpace blog 22/08/2007]

You know how it is: you're having a grim and vicious day at the office – the workload's piling up, the mood's turning ugly and there's no end in sight - and somewhere between that afternoon's 18th and 19th nervous breakdown it hits you. It's that sudden flash of inspiration - that Eureka moment, that entrepreneurial epiphany – that bold and original and outrageous idea that could make you rich beyond your wildest dreams and offer you an instant escape from the rat-race.

Here's mine for today.

This afternoon, my ample-foreheaded workpal Dan was showing off his new gizmo, a satellite navigation system, or 'SatNav' for short. Now, I haven't got a SatNav myself and don't plan on acquiring one anytime soon. Maybe it's a combination of Catholic guilt, manic technophobia and hardcore sentimentality, but I just can't bring myself to trust any gadget that's designed to make life easier for me. For instance, years ago I could instantly remember dozens of phone numbers. Friends, family and local fast food delivery services all had their contact details stored away in a special compartment in my brain. Ever since I got a mobile phone, however, that region of my cerebellum has shrivelled-up and died. I now struggle to remember my own phone number, let alone anyone else's. Maybe there was a warning in the small print of the Vodafone contract. I don't know. I can't remember.

If that's what a mobile phone can do to me, I shudder to think of the horrible ways a SatNav could scramble what's left of my synapses. I might end up struggling to find my toothbrush unaided.But I digress. This afternoon - as I heard the female annunciator voice of Dan's SatNav give him clear and simple instructions on how to get to the nearest coffee machine whilst avoiding speed cameras and major roadworks - it struck me that there was something missing, something lacking. Her voice was cold, stern and metallic, the tempo brisk, efficient and flat. It was like listening to the HAL's dour nanny, KITT's insufferable sister and The Bride of Hawking all rolled into one. There was no sense of drama, no sense of bathos, no sense of passion. It was like she really didn't care.

And that's when the idea struck me like a basketball shoe across the eyes.

What if I could combine the functional convenience of the SatNav with an iconic, universally adored star of stage and screen who is the very personification of drama, of bathos, of passion? What if those instructions were delivered with a fierce intensity and subject to random feats of tempo modulation? In short, what if I invented a SatNav that sounded like William Shatner?

So, without any further ado, I'd like to present: 'The SHATNAV'.

By combining high-tech, state-of-the-art navigational technology with the mad voice of Captain Kirk, you'll know you're listening to a machine that'll DOUBLE-DAMN WELL make sure you get to exactly where you want to go. As your directions are delivered in that unique, staccato rhythm - Where. Every. Word. Seems to form... an urgent sentence - you can sit back, roll down the window, put your foot on the gas and "Boldly go… LEFT… at the next junction."

With the SHATNAV, even the most mundane school-run or shopping trip can become a pulse-pounding human adventure - a trek, if you will. "Easy as she goes, Mister Sulu" purrs the SHATNAV seductively as you approach those pesky speed cameras. "Space... the final parking space" it growls helpfully in that seemingly gridlocked Somerfield carpark. You'll laugh with joy and blush with embarrassment as the SHATNAV earnestly guides you and playfully chides you with other specially-adapted classic Captain Kirk-isms including "Like a… poor marksman… you just KEEP missing the EXIT!", "You Klingon bastard, there's roadworks ahead!" and "KHAAAAAAAAN!!".

SHATNAV – only $599.95 incl p&p
[TJ Hooker module sold separately]

Needless to say, I currently have no plans on giving up the day job.

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