Leonard Nimoy Passes Away

I was very saddened to hear of the passing of Leonard Nimoy today.

Famously he wrote a book called "I am not Spock" (which I have) but for me he always will be Spock.

Star Trek (the original series) was one of my 2 favourite TV shows of all time. And Spock was my favourite TV character of all time.

I mentioned Spock once before in this blog, in relation to "ASCII Art".

By coincidence I watched an episode of the TV show during the week. I watched the second pilot ("Where No Man Has Gone Before"). I did not watch it because it is one of my favourite episodes (it is not) but because the DVD has a text commentary by Mike and Denise Okuda and I was interested to see what information was included in it.

I also started watching the first movie ("The Motion Picture") during the week. I know other people didn't but I really liked that movie. I guess I was so glad at the time to see my beloved characters coming back to life.

And, of course, the second movie has the fabulous scenes relation to Spock's death. All so very well done. Spock famously says to Kirk: "I have been, and always shall be, your friend".

As well as being a great actor, he was apparently a very nice man.

He has been, and always shall be, my hero.

Here is his last tweet, which finishes with the acronym for "Live Long and Prosper":

Irish Bands

I mentioned recently that U2 are better than ever.

And I mentioned previously that Westside are a brilliant Irish band.

And I mentioned that I love The Script.

Well now I have a few more bands to add to the roll of honour. All of the links below are to performances on "The Late Late Show".

The first is The Coronas. Here is a link to them performing "Just Like That".

And here are Kodaline performing "High Hopes" live and acoustic:

And I couldn't finish this post without a link to Hozier performing "Take me to Church"live and acoustic.

An amazing  time for Irish music indeed.

The Gleesons in "The Walworth Farce"

I went to see Brendan, Domhnall and Brian Gleeson (along with Leona Allen) in "The Walworth Farce" last week.

The play was weird but excellent and the three boys were just brilliant.

It was amazing to see a father and his two sons playing a father and his two sons. And when those three people were Gleesons...!

And the play was beautifully structured, with all three of them getting their moments to shine.

It was a chance too good to be missed. Who knows if anything like that will happen again.

Here is a picture of the three boys obviously have a good time in rehearsals: