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Sunshine Challenge #3
Jul. 9th, 2020 09:46 am
Today's prompt, to nobody's surprise, is Yellow.
The album was—well, still is—called "Ol' Yellow Eyes Is Back". The discerning will note that this is a riff on "Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back", which was made by Frank Sinatra. It contains such American standards as Time After Time, More than you know, and When I fall In Love. The best performance may well be on Toot Toot Tootsie, not a song that ranks particularly high in my personal preferences but it works here, and my favourite of the lot is not from the same era but is by Randy Newman, a song called Marie here on YouTube, which I had never heard previously and I don't think I've ever heard anywhere else but on this album. Which is odd, and sad, because it is a lovely song. I'd like to hear Instant Classic do it.
I wore my "Ol' Yellow Eyes Is Back" T-shirt in Cardiff, 1996, at the very first Star Trek Convention I ever attended, and it won me a new friend, who recognised it and came up to tell me she owned the very same one. We got chatting about our mutual Data-love, and spent much of the weekend together. Ah, yes, that was the famous weekend when we got together with two other women on the Saturday night and spent the evening talking about the Best Bits of the show. When you watch that episode where Picard is being tortured by the Cardassian, and he's naked, and he stands up and—don't you kinda lean sideways to see round the monitor? Yes? No?
The silliest song on the album is It's A Sin (To Tell A Lie), which features Patrick Stewart's grave and splendid voice, and LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn and Jonathan Frakes singing backup. How well they can sing is unclear, but I like to imagine them having to do take after take because they kept cracking up.
Yes. My Yellow is all about Lt Cdr Data, my first official Adored One in my first fandom. He of the white/gold skin, mustard uniform, and yellow eyes.
By happy chance, I spotted just this week that 'Brothers' was being shown on SyFy, and watched it (even though I have the complete series on DVD now, still shrink-wrapped...). I am very fond of that episode. Three portions of Brent Spiner, and not the slightest difficulty telling the difference between Data and Lore. Mind you, the best bit of Dr Soong is not in 'Brothers', it's in that episode which is mostly about Klingons (so, meh) but features Data's dream, and a comparatively youthful Dr Soong whose eyes are wide and blue and beautiful. Brent Spiner was the epitome of my preferred type, back then.
I learned, years later, when my son was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, that Data was a character people with AS often identified with. I can definitely see that. My son (and husband, a bit, and bro-in-law and FIL, none actually diagnosed but the latter two almost certainly autistic to some extent - it's plainly a family trait) have that same innocence and that same sense of justice which I found so appealing in Data. And, of course, the difficulty in understanding 'normal' humans, and that sense that they're standing at right angles to other people, without quite knowing why. It makes for an interesting point of view.
Anyway, I loved Data for several years, and he was my focus whenever I wrote ST:TNG fanfic. I even produced a zine (D-Tales)—the cover is encapsulated in the icon to this post. The fics are on AO3, but more logically arrayed here, if anyone is interested. From missing scenes to filling in background to parody to unseen episodes to sex, even including my first slash, but set in chronological order according to the show, rather than by date of writing.
Ol' Yellow Eyes had to wear yellow contacts, of course.
