busker

Cap'n Kirk - Rocket Man

I sort of missed out on the whole William Shatner laff-in with his renderings of belovèd hits and standards.

I only recently heard his Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky" and had rather assumed that there was a certain amount of camping up on purpose.

Now comes blogger Jon Dennis' ace posting of WS's homage to the Elton John classic and I defy anyone to listen to it without bursting into loud guffaws.

Caveat: Not to be listened to in proximity to sharp objects or containers of liquid.

This is dangerously funny stuff of a calibre that, were the brilliant Peter Sellers alive today (himself no slouch at the Beatles spoofs), I can see him putting out versions of himself doing Shatner doing the Beatles.

• * Can the word "high" ever have been delivered with such toke-exhaling joy? For those who were there - i.e. missed it - Shatner's enunciation recalls that whole lost decade of the Sixties
• Wisely including reference to "missing" his wife, Shatner then loads the word "lonely" with such triumphant relief that the world's henpecked will know exactly what he's talking about.
• "Not the man they think I am", eh? So it's to hell with those Swiss clinics, this is one dude who's *earned* his gravity-free sex op. I like it - and does he *really* pronounce it *socket* man on the repeat? That is sooo clever ...
• I think I've rumbled Shatner's style of delivery. He uses silence like we used to format text: <font size ="-1"> or <pregnant pause="+3">.

I confess, I ended laughing out loud at the sheer genius of the man to wring emotion not just from each word but from each *syllable*, nay from the very inhalations and dead air between.