Q) A Star Trek band... what were you THINKING!? Is there actually a market for that?

A) Hmmmmmmm. We've all been in bands since we were 16 and we tried to "Make it" in about half of them. Strange how the band we started pretty much just to entertain ourselves is by far the most popular. We even played a convention last month where William Shatner was the guest of honor. William Fucking Shatner! We got to hang out with him and everything. We've even gotten laid by cute nerdy cyber geek-girls in rubber fetish clothes because of this band! Is there a market? Who fucking cares!

Q) You've issued different versions of "Yeah, Brother", a hard, fast rockin' version on _Suck My Spock_, and a kinder, gentler unplugged version on _Red Alert_. My question: I guess you really like that song a lot, huh? I guess it has extra-special significance or something, huh?

A) No, we just ran of of lyrics that week.

Q) "Trekkie Girl" is a irresistibly danceable non-Gay love song - and I don't expect that bothers anybody - but "Suds Me Up Sulu" is a totally Gay love song. I mean, TOTALLY. It's more Gay than that bouncing on the bed scene in Lord Of The Rings, Return Of The King. Do homophobes get in your face about "Suds Me Up, Sulu", ever? Have you ever had a white-faced, fist-clenchin', teeth-grittin' homophobe accost you and growl, "That's not funny, you shit-eating cocksucker", and if they did, please tell me that you kicked their ass?

A) The gay community does not have a monopoly on bathing. Shared hygiene between two adult males does not immediately represent homosexual activity. Why, for years the Greeks bathed (uh, bad example, never mind). We've never beat any homophobes, made out with a few, but never beat them. Homophobes can suck my dick. Pass the soap.

Q) Tell us all how you really feel about Trill.

A) Trill. What are Trill? According to the Star trek encyclopedia, Trill are a joined species combined of a human host and a small vermiform symbiont that lives in an internal abdominal pocket of the host body. According to Webster's dictionary a Trill is a rapid vibration of the tongue or uvula.

Anyway, you know that fine brunette on DS9 with the spots running down her head to god only hopes to know where? She's a TRILL. So basically, these fine women, and old men, are simply hosts to this worm like creature commonly referred to as a SYMBIOTE, AKA Parasite. This is very similar to the same phenomenon that causes you to take your Dog to the vet once a year. However when you get one of these worms in you, rather than diarrhea and bloating, you end up getting this SUPER COOL entity who has all the memories of all the former hosts as well as a melting pot of their personalities that always seems to end up being some person you'd be happy to spend all your free time with.

Now I've thought a lot about this phenomenon and there's just no way it would ever go down like that. I have some personal experience with this. I hang out with my grandfather a lot and all he ever does is babble about some event from the thrilling days of yesteryear that my 3rd period history teacher with the sweat stains on all his shirts would have fled from. Now imagine taking that same wizened individual and giving him several hundred years of experiences. I mean I can hardly stand when my buddy tells me what he did last week let alone what some science officer used to do 400 years ago. So you wonder, what would a real trill sound like... In my day we didn't have Starfleet we had....no wait, we did have Starfleet but there was only one ship and it, wait hold on, we had a whole fleet of ships and we beamed down to planets and fucked with the natives, no that's right, they fixed that.....Oh Yeah...we battled klingons and super powered god like beings until we...my klingon friends...live long and....drank tranya....no wait I hate tranya....

Yeah you get the point, multiply that by several life times and you got mass suicides on your hands. So basically the host gets the personality and memories of the Slug the first time the slug is slid up in him. So what happens if the slug has never been inside anyone before? A virgin so to speak. How great is it for the host to get a first timer. What are the advantages of suddenly being a master in the art of sitting at the bottom of a dank slimy hole hoping no one is going to come by and trod upon you? And while were on the subject, how in the hell did this little tradition of slug stuffing get started in the first place?

"Hey Don what you got there?"
"It's a really big slug Steve, check it out"
"Wow, will you look at the size of that thing? Gross! What ya gonna do with it?"
"Hmmm, well, I think I'll slice a hole in my stomach and keep it in that internal abdominal pocket that I could never figure out what to do with."
"Hey, that's a great idea! I think I'll try it too!"

Weird.

O.K. So let's say it works out well for the Trill as a whole. And eventually the slugs start assimilating some life experiences that could be deemed useful and starts imparting said experiences to it's later hosts. Now I see some serious problems possibly arising here if we assume and I think we have to that each personality heavily influences the next down the line. I mean look at the issues and bad habits we pick up in just one lifetime. Now multiply that by 2, 5 even 10 lifetimes? No good can possibly come of it.

I think the thing that bugs me most about Star trek races is that they leave us with so many more questions.

Is having a trill in you kind of like owning a really smart pet? Could that queasiness in you stomach be caused by the fact that you haven't emptied its litter box in a month?

Do Trill eroticize leeches just as thousands of pale black clothes wearing Goths have eroticized vampires?

Are their trill wannabes on planet trill? A bunch of sad guys, downing mescal bottles in an effort to drown their sorrows and become more like their conjoined brethren?

When you're in the cafeteria and you say to a Trill, "Hey lets go get some grub." are they offended or do they just say they've already got one. And when you take a trill out to dinner will it go into convulsions if you forget to tell it that you put salt on the food. And speaking of eating how exactly does the excretion process work. When one of your buddies tells you your full of shit are they correct in more ways than one?

I wonder what Sigmund Freud would think of Trill? The fact that both the male and the female members of the race all petition to have a large fleshy phallic object placed in their abdominal cavities could not bode well for their collective Super Ego's.

How equal is the relationship? Do trill have to help around the house and clean up after themselves? I'd be pissed that out of the 2 of us I was the guy who always got stuck doing the dishes. If I had an alien slug-beast living inside of me, I'd make it pay rent.

I would think it would be hard to grow up being a trill. Always getting made fun of by the other aliens who actually look alien. Or at least have some sort of forehead ridge rather than a Rorschach blotch ink pattern on the sides of their heads. What do I see? I see the fact that the make up department is getting off easy!

Ok so what's the bottom line? You know, of all the "change the forehead call it an alien" beings on star trek I have to admit that I find the Trill intellectually to be one the coolest. That is if you can suspend your disbelief long enough to forget about all the problem having multiple personalities would cause them. Visually however they do leave something to be desired. Not that I have a problem looking at Terry Farrel or Nicole deBoer here. They are both beautiful women to be sure. It's just the whole spot thing. Not that I have anything against spots mind you. I often wonder if Worf ever had Jadzea bark like a dog for him. It's just that it's not very creative. As for the worm... at first I wasn't too sure. After all, the only other worm they had on the show before that was Wesley.

Q) You mention beer in several songs. I assume you like beer. I always thought Captain Kirk would be a beer man, but did you see the way he sipped his beer in Star Trek 4? Like it tasted like piss to him, but he was just being polite. He prefers Saurian brandy. Have you ever tried getting drunk on brandy? ~Guck~ Your thoughts?

A) We've gotten plenty hammered on Brandy. We've gotten hammered on Vermouth. We've gotten hammered on pretty much everything. At one gig we played, the only hard liqueur they had at the bar was 8 year old Peach Schnapps. The crowd kept buying us shots of it and by the end of the gig we were pretty much falling down drunk. For months after that, no matter what bar we played at, the crowd bought us shots of Peach Schnapps. If the Bar didn't carry it they smuggled it in. have you ever had a Peach Schnapps hangover? It feels like your head is giving birth to a Klingon. Ouch.

Q) Your band is extremely good - very professional-sounding - and I mean that as a compliment. I know some Klingons who agree, and they want to hire the band for a bloodwine-tasting party. What do people have to do if they want to book you, and would you accept payment in BBQ'd Tarq?

A) Tell em to send us an E-Mail, we'll play anywhere. There's only one payment we'll accept however and we do it to honor the fact that there is effectivly no money in the Federation. What do we accept you ask? Blow jobs!