As a follow-up to the viral success of his poetic reading of Sarah Palin’s resignation speech on “The Tonight Show,” William Shatner granted an interview with Time and proceeded to blow the roof off the internet yet again. Things I learned today: Shatner suckles from Conan O’Brien’s belly button, collaborated with Ben Folds on a spoken-word version of “Common People,” and made housing from a kidney stone. The highlights:
So what is your relationship with Conan like when the cameras are off?
It’s great, he folds me into his arms and I come up to his belly button. So I suckle on his belly button and he holds me close. [Laughs.] That can lead to any kind of relationship, right?Have you seen the latest Star Trek film?
I haven’t. Abrams sent me a message through the Web — what was it, Twittered me? No. YouTubed me? No, what has he done? E-mailed me. He e-mailed me saying he heard that I hadn’t seen the movie and he’d set up a private screening, and I declined the private screening and told him I’d buy him dinner.Is it true that you once sold a kidney stone for $25,000 and donated the money to Habitat for Humanity?
$75,000. There’s somebody living in a house from my kidney stone. A lovely, large family somewhere in northern Louisiana.So what body part is next?
Well, it depends on the price, I guess. I can spare very little, mind you. I might try liposuction and spread that around.
Dammit that man is awesome. I hope you’re appreciating him now while he’s still alive, because he’s 78 now. And he doesn’t exactly look like the kind of guy who gets great gas mileage, if you know what I’m sayin’. So let’s appreciate him now before the Celebpocalypse claims him next.
We’re here for the gang bang?
This hardly seems like news, but for whatever reason Hustler’s series of pornographic classic TV spoofs is making headlines, perhaps due to the popularity of “This Ain’t Star Trek XXX.” (Strange… I somehow missed the first 29 installments.) Variety says:
Other programs immortalized under the “This Ain’t …” and “Not the…” umbrellas (as in “Not the Cosbys”) include “Happy Days,” “The Partridge Family,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Munsters” and “The Brady Bunch.”
Hustler’s infatuation with TV also encompasses current reality programs, such as “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.” And there are more sitcom sendups on the horizon, among them the semi-sacrilegious “Everybody Loves Lucy,” which will be available, naturally, in both black-and-white and color.
Porn producers have had fun for years playing off popular movie and TV titles. The twist now is going the extra mile to invest projects with better production values that actually have scripts and genuinely resemble the source material.
Whoa whoa whoa. They’re making porn with actual scripts now? Well la dee dah, your highness. “Oh, I only mahstahbate to pornography with a script; I need to be emotionally involved with the characters. And don’t you find verisimilitude with the source material arousing?” I didn’t realize I was hanging out with jerkoff royalty. Everybody bow to Prince Harry Palms.
William Shatner was the second guest on “The Tonight Show” last night (he was originally supposed to be the first, but Kobe Bryant was a last-second booking, bumping Christopher Mintz-Plasse from the show), and the original Captain Kirk showed up bloated, red-faced, and shall we say — ahem — “out of sorts.”
About five minutes into the interview (clip below), Shatner tries to make the Vulcan salute and fails miserably (he had to tie his fingers together with fishing line to do it on the original Star Trek), and Conan rightfully mocks him. That leads to Shatner giving Conan the finger, and Conan ends up on top of his desk, and… well, can I just say for the 300,000th time how wonderful it is that Jay Leno no longer hosts “The Tonight Show”? Because I never want to stop being thankful for that.
For the last couple of months, I’ve been as fascinated by these “Star Trek: The Next Generation” re-cuts/edits as Best Week Ever’s been. And now, thanks to J.J. Abrams, Star Trek is relevant this week. Check it out, it’s an UHURA NAKED SEX SCENE!!! Nah, just kidding — it’s a Riker clone getting intimate with LeVar Burton’s Geordi. I’ll warn you: it’s weird, and it’s kinda creepy, but the final act makes it worth it. You broke Picard’s heart, you monsters!
Here it is, the moment you haven’t particularly waited for: Chris Pine, who stars as James T. Kirk in the new Star Trek movie, introducing himself to the original Captain Kirk, William Shatner.
Somehow, I was expecting a little more from this moment. Like, I dunno. This could be the opening scene in Shatnerquake — as soon as Pine shakes Shatner’s hand, the fabric of space and time rips open and Shatner-Kirk kills Pine with a phaser while the real Shatner looks on. “No one. Can? Be me but. Me!” yells Shatner-Kirk.
But no. They just shook hands and Shatner introduced Pine to Mrs. Shatner. Real life is lame.
Milo Ventimiglia (the 30-year-old guy from “Heroes” who dated teenage Hayden Panettiere) will produce and star in a new Web series called “Ultradome” that may be the geekiest geek to ever geek. The show will take two beloved characters from fanboy lore and then use special effects to determine, for example, if Gandalf could really take on a Sith lord. GLAYVIN!
“My whole life has been spent engaged with friends in intellectual debate … like whether Captain Kirk is tougher than Spock or if Middle Earth is a more difficult place to live than Tatooine,” Ventimiglia said. “With ‘Ultradome,’ we can bring these debates to the public and settle them in the most logical way possible: through armed combat.”
[...] In each three- to five-minute episode, two characters engage in a heated geek-culture debate — “Who’s tougher, Harrison Ford as Han Solo, or Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones?” — then are transported to a stadium where the duo engage in single combat using all the weaponry, skills and pop culture touchstones from their respective hero’s creative arsenal. [The Live Feed]
Ah hell. I can’t keep saying bad things about nerds; they invented the Internet, after all. And this sounds like it could be kind of entertaining. Besides, it’s got Milo Ventimiglia. You can’t go wrong with a guy whose last name is a Starbucks drink.
