Vicente called Sunday night with a weird voice on, and quietly said: "I have information that may change your life plans." Well, my life plans are in disarray right now, anyway, so I had no idea what terrible/scary news he was about to deliver. I gulped, and steadied myself for the worst...

"There is a rock band made of robots playing tomorrow night."

Oh! Phew!

"Last year the tour was centered about workout music, but this year it's all about Star Trek TNG."

Oh!? Whoo!

Apparently this band consists of one mad scientist-type guy, and 5-10 of his robot friends. They call themselves Captured By Robots (www.capturedbyrobots.com). So we went to the show Monday night. The stage looked like an attic...there were all sorts of undeterminable figures on stage covered in old sheets. The screen to the side of the stage was playing an early episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. You know, the ones where Riker is all clean shaven and sexually aggressive, and Wesley Crusher is uncomfortably awkward? (Oh. Wesley never quite grew out of that, whereas Riker did grow a beard.)

Then the frontman appeared in a red Star Trek uniform, chains, and some sort of bondage mask and introduced himself as "Jean Luc Prick-hard." The sheets had been removed to expose the robots underneath, who had all been slightly modified to fit the theme:

• DRMBOT = Deanna Troi


• GTRBOT = Riker


• AUTOMATOM = Data


• TAWHNN = Worf


• SOTAWHNN = Geordi Laforge


• Headless Hornsmen = Indeterminate Star Trek lackeys

Being a band of robots, I expected electronic music. Which I guess makes me somewhat racially prejudiced against robots...so dear robots, I am sorry I prejudged you and did not expect that you were capable of rocking so hard. Because the first song that they played could only be described as pure, unadulterated thrash metal. I really wish I had written down all the song names, but the two I remember clearly were:

"Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" - So far in this entry, I have managed to elegantly skirt around the fact that I know Star Trek TNG extremely well and used to watch the show every single weeknight from ages 14-18. "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" was a particularly hilarious episode, and a really good random phrase to know. It's about this race of aliens who is only able to communicate in metaphors, and....never mind.

"Don't Shake the Baby" - In another episode, Deanna Troi managed to somehow inexplicably impregnate herself by touching a light or something, and she has this weird child that ages at about 35 times the normal human rate. So in mid-set, Deanna Troi-bot immaculately conceived and gave birth to a little baby in a Star Trek uniform....and Jean Luc Prick-hard immediately christened the baby with this song. The chorus went like this: "DON'T SHAKE THE BABY - DON'T SHAKE THE BABY - DON'T SHAKE THE BABY - OR THE BABY WILL BE SHAKEN!!!" And then he'd shake the baby.

This whole show was really weird and great. It was pretty surreal because it was partially like seeing a combination of the following: the animatronic band at Chucky Cheese, GWAR, a Star Trek blooper real where they cuss a lot, and Tony Clifton. The main guy is obviously retardedly talented, because I think he conceptualized the whole thing AND built the robots. I was extremely impressed and afraid of him, so definitely an awesome show.

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