A Lovely Scotty Tribute
From Hank Stuever at the WaPo.
The real tribute to James “Scotty” Doohan, 39 light-years after he first saved the USS Enterprise’s heinie (and did it many times over), is that it’s now almost impossible to have a boyfriend or husband who can’t do a somewhat reasonable impression of Doohan’s famously stressed-out burr: “We’ve got nuh powrrrr, Cap’n!” Or “She cannuh take much moor.”
Men say these things when copy machines are jammed. They say it about an overstuffed Diaper Genie, or a ’91 Honda with an expired inspection sticker. The world is full of chief engineers, and oh, the things they could do, if they only had a wee more dilithium and a little more time. Ask your man right now to do some chore: He’ll do it, but maybe not without some Scottytalk…
How true can you get? I loved it.
July 21, 2005 8:19 pm 
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Or, as I’ve said on occasion, “I cannuh change the laws of physics, capt’n! I’ve got to hav thairty minutes!”
I think you should also dig Lileks today:
It’s impossible to understate Doohan’s appeal – if you sneak into a NASA control room during a mission and ask the controllers how many chose their profession because of Scotty, half the hands in the room would go up. No one wanted to go into space because of that whiny little red-head kid on Lost in Space. It takes something indefinable to be a Kirk, it takes med school to be a McCoy, it takes green blood to be Spock, but Scotty – aye. Any man could be Scotty, if he applied himself. And he’d be among manly things, too.
In a hundred years from now, no one will remember Brad Pitt. But they’ll have a picture of Scotty taped up in the break room off the moon shuttle.
Oh Diptera, how right you are. I can’t remember the last time I heard a Brad Pitt imitation. In all honesty, I never have.
Come to think of it…what exactly would that be?
NB – that last line was also Lileks’, I messed up the italics tag when I pasted. So, how right he is.
As regards Brad, I actually think he’s a decent enough actor. He did Seven Years in Tibet, 12 Monkeys, and Fight Club, and was great in all of them – but now I guess he feels like he’s earned the right to slouch through remakes like Ocean’s 11 and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. The problem is that he doesn’t really have any signature characters under his belt. A Pitt impression would require a bleach job, brooding, pouty lips, and six-pack abs, but no actual performance.
Nightfly, probably the most unusual and amusing character he played, I think, was the completely unintelligible Irish gypsy in Snatch. But that was SO off-the-wall it wouldn’t be a “Brad Pitt impression” but rather an impression of the character.