With He Who Shall Not Be Named’s malign influence fading, I’m seeing more wholesome content on my Twitter timeline:
I don’t want to oversell William Shatner’s performance of Rocket Man, but it may be the greatest thing that ever fucking happened.
— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) January 28, 2021
Nature is healing!
Speaking of Shatner, at the University of Florida in the late 1980s, there used to be a T.J. Hooker Viewing Society.
The hair!
Also speaking of Shatner, I read a story once that alleged that the young actor who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek TNG approached Shatner (who was doing a flashback cameo or something) for an autograph and was rudely rebuffed. The kid told a castmate — maybe even Jean Luc himself — who said something like, “Oh, did no one tell you Bill is an asshole? Bill’s an asshole! Sorry about that,” and then went to the producer or whomever to make Shatner give the kid an autograph. No idea if it’s true, but I want it to be so!
Open thread.
Baud
He seems like he would be an asshole, but he’s hilarious.
MisterForkbeard
I wouldn’t be super surprised by this. Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher) is an enormously good dude who had a really awful childhood, and he’s said in the past that he loves Shatner’s work and so on but has intimated he and Shatner had some issues.
Wil wrote about his first meeting with Shatner, and he ‘performed’ it here with a musical accompaniment. It is about 25 minutes long and totally hilarious: https://youtu.be/gR2723q2qV8
Suzanne
The kid who played Wesley Crusher is the most excellent Wil Wheaton. Super-liberal, funny as hell. To be followed on Twitter.
Super Dave
In COVID lockdown, my wife and I have been rewatching Boston Legal. We’re both fans of Shatner and Spader. The interplay between them, especially in the ending scenes with scotch and cigars on the balcony, is magical.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Nice to see a fellow Colina Intermediate School(Go Cougars!) alum pictured on this here blog.
WaterGirl
@Super Dave: I miss Boston Legal. Together they are really something! Where are you watching it?
Baud
@Suzanne:
I feel bad that I could never stand Wesley Crusher, because the actor does seem like a solid guy.
Immanentize
Shatner’s whole psychedelic album is cooked!
Mr. Tambourine Man…?
westyny
The Shat is a legend larger than the man.
Immanentize
@Suzanne: My BiL, son and I got retweeted by Wil Wheaton when we photographed ourselves playing Stone Age.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud: you can catch him on “The Big Bang Theory” which, if you look hard enough, you can occasionally find on TV in reruns
Roger Moore
@Baud:
I think a lot of people are unfairly down on Wil Wheaton because they don’t like Wesley Crusher. He didn’t write the stupid scripts; he just acted the role he was given.
trollhattan
A friend once had a ridealong with somebody driving Shatner to the airport after some appearance in town. Says he wasn’t an asshole but did spend the entire trip talking about Shatner.
Sounds about right.
Super Dave
@WaterGirl: Prime has it presented by IMDb, free with commercials. The ads are mildly annoying, but the show is so damned good it’s worth it.
Denny Crane!
I also got Homicide, Life on the Streets for Christmas. It’s dvd only, from Shout Factory. Andre Braugher is fantastic, and the show is a reminder of how cutting edge it was at the time. Can’t believe it hasn’t been picked up by a streamer somewhere.
Immanentize
@Baud: agreed. The Crusher kid was a jerk. Mostly. But he did have a sweet relationship with a young Ashley Judd.
Wag
@Baud:
But not nearly as hilarious as his buddy Leonard
Mart
I always really dug Shatner’s rendition of Pulps “Common People” man: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7ztwb
HumboldtBlue
I just finished watching that Shatner clip.
Elsewhere, I’m encouraged by the stance the Dem leadership is taking in addressing the goddamn insurrection inflicted on our country on Jan. 6.
I found this analysis from CNBC on GameStop-gate interesting.
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
Agreed. Wesley Crusher seemed like a character jammed into the cast because marketing said to. What do you do with that? (The hardest character of all to play must be “likeable know-it-all kid.” 98% doomed to fail.)
geg6
Shatner is a howl. Did anyone happen to catch the show he did with Henry Winkler, George Foreman and Terry Bradshaw, Better Late Than Never? They all travel the world and US together, having adventures and eating and drinking. Funniest and most entertaining reality show ever. Shatner is the funniest of all, with Bradshaw a close second. If you can find it anywhere, watch it and be entertained.
CatFacts
If you like Wil Wheaton and have never seen Stand By Me, it’s a great movie. On Hulu and Amazon Prime.
Benw
Any love for Mr. Spock singing about Bilbo Baggins?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3fZhJN4Tdc
ETA: damn you Wag!
trollhattan
@Super Dave:
“Homicide, Life on the Street” is among the best network dramas made and criminally (heh) underappreciated as the wellspring from which we got “The Wire.”
Pembleton in the box.
TH
@westyny: yes, a legend. No, definitely NOT an asshole. Thoughtful, generous and curious. Among other qualities.
clay
That anecdote might be true in its broad sense, but some of the particulars can’t be true. To wit: Shatner didn’t appear on the TNG tv show, and only interacted with that cast for the movie Star Trek Generations. But Wil Wheaton wasn’t in any of the movies: his character had left the show a few years previous.
Immanentize
This thread reminded me of the original ST Yangs versus Kohms episode in which Kirk reads the constitution….
Ee plebnista!
I’m def playing this for my con law class tomorrow….
HumboldtBlue
@trollhattan:
I read a thread on David Simon’s Twitter feed in which he vehemently denies that claim, I wish I could find it because it contained another show and more detail, but I am positive he denied a direct link between the two.
Spanky
@Wag: Yes, it’s a Youtube comment on Nimoy’s “song”, but …
Geoduck
@trollhattan: I think it was more because Gene Roddenberry said so; the man’s middle name was Wesley.
And all of Shatner’s album Has Been is worth listening to, and not in a “so bad it’s good” kind of way.
patrick II
@Immanentize:
Ashley was on in 1991. Thirty years later I still remember her — she is such a pretty lady.
geg6
@Super Dave:
He and Spader were awesome in Boston Legal. I loved that show.
Just Some Fuckhead
I’m hearing the hedge funds have reloaded their short positions and used The Invisible Hand to pressure the trading apps to stop trading GME. Gotta steal that money back.
LuciaMia
Yeah, I think its pretty well-established that Shatner is an asshole. Even remember hearing rumors of same during the days of the original Trek.
Geminid
I heard Christopher Plummer being interviewed about his acting career. He talked about a Broadway Shakespeare production in the late 1950s. Plummer starred, and his understudy was William Shatner.
raven
@geg6: She was wonderful in “Ruby in Paradise”
geg6
@CatFacts:
Great movie. Rob Reiner directed, based on a Stephen King story, “The Body.” Lots of what were then up and coming actors
Just Some Fuckhead
@geg6: I enjoyed it initially but eventually got tired of two of them constantly arguing.
(Not actually a) Dr. Thoth Evans
@clay:
The version I heard years ago at a DunDraCon (or Pacificon or something) from someone who supposedly worked on ST, was that Wheaton had sneaked onto the set of one of the ST Movies, with some borrowed ID saying he was some kind of gopher, and Shatner saw him and said something like “man, the gophers are getting younger and younger,” which upset Wheaton. And when Shatner apologized to Wheaton, Wheaton felt he was insincere.
But this is my decades old all-too-fallible memory of a story I heard from someone who may or may not have heard it at first hand from Shatner or Wheaton.
Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)
Isn’t Shatner a right-wing asshole who still whines about “SJWs” on twitter? Or did he stop that?
catclub
Make it so.
Immanentize
@patrick II: She was/is. But in the two? Episodes she was in, she did that dumb head tilt thing so popular with young women….
LuciaMia
The original premise was that the crew had family members on board including their children. Course after the pilot episode you never saw another kid beyond Crusher.
Eunicecycle
@Steve in the ATL: and Shatner was on an episode of BBT where he played himself playing (I think) Dungeons and Dragons with Wil.
geg6
@Eunicecycle:
And Kareem Abdul-Jabar!
trollhattan
@HumboldtBlue:
I’d love to hear the logic thread concluding that a Baltimore detective drama based on a book by David Simon has no connection to a later Baltimore detective drama by David Simon. :-)
Promise not to mention “The Corner.”
Eunicecycle
@geg6: and Magic Mike!
ETA: I think there was a selfie that cut off Kareem’s head.
trollhattan
@Johnny Gentle (famous crooner):
Let me present “Shatner Does Palin.“
pacem appellant
@clay: Did you know Wheaton has a non-speaking cameo in “Star Trek: Nemesis” in the wedding scene at the beginning of the movie? I think it’s the only movie his character appeared in.
Matt McIrvin
@HumboldtBlue: Over on Twitter, AOC is going medieval on Ted Cruz in a manner that must have everyone with a pearl to clutch clutching it for dear life. It’s a thing to see.
catclub
The way RobinHood is paid is by selling retail order flow info to … hedge funds and others. The result is that they don’t charge their retail ‘customers’ for stock trading.
The other result is that their bosses are … the hedge funds that actually pay the rent. I think RobinHood stopping trading in GME – … but just for a bit, was stupid. But they can if they want to. I bet it is already listed in their terms of service.
SFBayAreaGal
Loved Shatner and Spader in Boston Legal. Talk about two scene chewers.
Many years ago my sisters and I went to question and answer session with just Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner talking to each other. They both were funny and nice. At one point Shatner was nervous and Nimoy said something to him and that helped calm Shatner down.
Shatner did appear in the final season of the Big Bang Series.
MisterForkbeard
@WaterGirl: I had such a hard time watching Boston Legal for the first time when I tried it a few months ago. Good, but some of it was really cringey and they tried to tackle “current issues” in a way that satisfied most viewers. So you end up with really weird defenses of intelligent design in schools, and so on.
rp
@LuciaMia: There were a number of episodes with kids. In one, Picard is trapped in an elevator with a few kids because of some accident.
patroclus
Actually, Wil was in the TNG movies in the sense that he acted in and filmed scenes. But all of them were ultimately cut/edited out and so he never was actually “in” the movies.
Immanentize
@catclub: But if they stopped trades that then cost their clients huge bucks, they will be sued up the ying-yang.
MisterForkbeard
@pacem appellant: Evidently they shot a lot of additional footage for him that they didn’t end up using. It partially explained what he’d been up to since his character left the ship, why he was wearing a lieutenant’s dress uniform, and so on. Cut for time.
pacem appellant
@LuciaMia: Not true! Children appear on ST:TNG all the time. Captain Picard even gets stuck in an elevator with three children in the fan-favorite S5:ep5 “Disaster”, for example. Worf’s son appears frequently in later seasons as well.
JustRuss
My brother was an acquaintance of Wheaton’s back in the day, they were both into renaissance fairs. The same brother introduced me to Nimoy’s Bilbo Baggins, which nearly caused me to pee myself from laughter.
pacem appellant
@MisterForkbeard: You an FOD?
Catherine D.
@Geminid: According to my father, Plummer leans asshole. Dad was assigned to FDNY theater inspections during the run of The Lark (1956?) Plummer was out and out rude, and Julie Christie was “weird” – my guess is method acting prep ?. But Boris Karloff was kind and invited Dad into the dressing room for coffee.
zzyzx
I asked this on twitter and didn’t get an answer so I’m curious:
Can anyone think of a real life issue with just outlawing online trading and forcing people to go back to trading floors? Those weren’t perfect but they weren’t prone to these moments where companies get screwed over based on scripts that just look for patterns in stock prices and try to manipulate them.
germy
I saw Shatner’s autobiography in a library once. I picked it up and skimmed some pages.
In his memoir he discusses his tinnitus. He was feeling suicidal, running around his house trying to run away from the ringing. He sought out a support group, and when he called the number he was told the group leader had committed suicide
There’s an episode of Star Trek where there’s a loud explosion. He said he and Nimoy were both deafened by the noise.
geg6
@Eunicecycle:
Yes! Did you know that he’s (Joe Manganiello, that is) a local Pittsburgh guy and is here quite a lot with his wife, Sofia Vergara? They are huge Pittsburgh sports fans and Pittsburghers love them.
MisterForkbeard
@LuciaMia: The kids showed up a lot after the pilot episode. There are a number of episodes about it, though some are just weird. Like the one with “Captain Picard Day”.
Most people I know who saw TNG when they were young really liked Wesley Crusher – or at least, my friends and I all did, as did my brother. Wil himself says that the writers (in particulary 1 or 2 of them) had NO IDEA how to write a smart kid without making him sound like an asshole, and they often had Wesley do the stupidest things that in hindsight were absolutely going to make him hated by veteran Star Trek fans.
Wil wrote a book on the first half season of TNG where he goes over the episodes and talks about his personal experiences with each of them and some rumors he’d heard about each. It’s actually really fascinating and pretty funny.
JoyceH
@trollhattan:
Wesley was Gene Roddenberry’s Mary Sue. The negative reaction to the character really wounded and baffled him.
clay
@pacem appellant: It’s been a long time since I saw Nemesis, so if knew that, I’d forgotten it! Shame he wasn’t in it more.
MisterForkbeard
@pacem appellant: Nope! But point me at it. I hear it’s good.
Miss Bianca
He may be an asshole, but as Baud noted, Shatner is hilarious, and he’s also a noted horseman who as recently as 2017 (when he published and edited the anthology Spirit of the Horse), he was still riding at age 86!
Apparently I wrote a favorable review of the collection on Goodreads, which I had forgotten all about till recently. I went back and re-read it and will still approvingly quote something that he wrote in his introduction, which he titled, “The Zen of Risk”:
(my emphasis)
Poe Larity
Meh, Wheaton is now older than Patrick Stewart was when STNG started. Also a Berniebro.
Shatner is the greatest method actor because he’s been playing the anti-Canadian for 60 years. ‘Sorry’ is not in his vocabulary.
germy
@JoyceH:
I read somewhere that Roddenberry wrote lyrics for the Star Trek theme, and took half a songwriting credit. This pissed off the composer, and he never returned for the next season.
geg6
@Matt McIrvin:
I don’t Twitter, please share.
clay
@MisterForkbeard: I’ve been showing TNG to my daughters, aged 11 and 12, and they’ve really taken to Wesley! It surprised me, actually, but it shows that ol’ Gene still knew what he was doing. Sometimes.
tom
@trollhattan: I loved that! I rewatch it every so often when I need a good laugh.
SFBayAreaGal
I follow Wil Wheaton on Facebook and Instagram. He is honest about how abusive his childhood was, being an alcoholic (which he says was his own fault) and also his depression. He also talks about the love and support he has gotten from his wife, his children and his friends.
Miss Bianca
@MisterForkbeard: I used to love that show and then I tried watching it again just lately and yeah…just cringed. Parts of it have aged really, really badly. Including, sadly (sadly for me, anyway), the “boys will be boys” kind of banter between Shatner and Spader. Their characters *now* just struck me as examples of toxic white male privilege run amok, however amusingly it’s presented.
Steeplejack (phone)
“Wil Wheaton.”
Matt McIrvin
@geg6:
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1354848253729234944
then:
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1354879766843830272
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Not get into Shatner apologetics but the word is The Shat is in a bit of perpetual freak out over the Trekie fandom. That being said his Price Line commercials are comedy classics.
MisterForkbeard
@Poe Larity: Wheaton likes Bernie a lot, but he’s also been really huge on Biden too. For example, he’s been posting things about how it’s really nice to have a president who loves his wife and cares about Americans, etc. Not a word about “corporatism” and so on.
He’s Left, but not performative Left. Which I think makes all the difference. At the moment, he’s more just really pissed at Republicans.
Noncarborundum
Wil Wheaton did the audiobook of Randall Munrie’s <i>What If</i> and it’s excellent. On the other hand I find him rather grating on The Ready Room.
MisterForkbeard
@Miss Bianca: Right. Shatner and Spader are really talented and the show makes very clear that Shatner’s character goes way too far and it’s super damaging. They also show Spader as a pretty damaged individual who does a lot of dumb shit. But they also downplay the huge issues involved, the sexual harassment, hiring women because they’re well endowed, cheating on your girlfriend, etc.
I think there’s a line in there about how Spader’s character is “a good man, but trying hard not to be” and I think that’s sort of true. He acts like a giant asshole because he doesn’t want to be seen as a good dude, but… <shrug>
Anyway, it’s hard to watch now. Just very jarring.
Steeplejack (phone)
@geg6:
Addressed to Ted Cruz:
MisterForkbeard
@Steeplejack (phone): “Say Cool Whip”
Dronesclubreject
I actually saw Will Wheaton at a ComicCon (don’t you judge me!), and he validated the story about Shatner, as I recall, at least the part about being rebuffed.
geg6
@Matt McIrvin:
Thanks. She really does know how to use social media like a dagger, doesn’t she?
And once again, after reading that thread, I am reminded why I don’t Twitter. For some reason, it makes my head ache. Every. Damn. Time.
Steeplejack (phone)
@MisterForkbeard:
Same pronunciation for my Kia, the K-Whip.
Ken
Maybe it’s just me but “T. J. Hooker” sounds like a porn name.
Never occurred to me in the 80s, so clearly I’ve become more degenerate over the past three+ decades.
BruceFromOhio
@Steeplejack (phone): I can’t tell if that is frost on the blood, or blood on the frost. And that’s after Cruz agreed with her that RobinHood was wrong to halt buys on GME.
Steeplejack (phone)
@nycsouthpaw has an excellent, detailed Twitter thread rebutting the NYT’s list of objections to Biden’s executive orders.
Miss Bianca
@MisterForkbeard: Yeah, it’s hard in the post-Me Too era for me to see any redeeming facets in Boston Legal. Which is too bad, because it’s got such a great cast, particularly Shatner and Spader (altho’ I have to do a shout-out to Candice Bergen as well), and they do a fabulous job of forcing me to actually care about characters that are such awful people. But life is short, and there’s a ton of good TV out there. If I want a view of toxic white male work culture that’s viewed just a tiny bit more skeptically, there’s always Mad Men. (which I am also currently re-watching.)
citizen dave
@Super Dave: “I also got Homicide, Life on the Streets for Christmas. It’s dvd only, from Shout Factory. ” I envy you. I was an original viewer of this series–so great. Strangely I have yet to watch The Wire–realize I need to, though.
catclub
Only if you think the entire financial system working is not a real-life issue.
Can anyone think of a real life issue with just outlawing cell phones and going back to land lines? I am not a crank.
Brachiator
This is wholesome content?
I am kinda neutral about stuff like this. Yeah, it might be nice if actors do autographs, but if they don’t and are even rude about it, life goes on. The only thing they really owe anyone is a good performance. And yeah, I’ve read that Shatner could be a pain even to other cast mates. Not good.
PPCLI
@Matt McIrvin: Those are fantastic remarks.
The second, about “anger” is especially on point. It’s a standard tactic of gaslighting abusers to change the topic from the terrible thing the abuser did to the fact that the victim is angry about it. It’s a cheap effort to cast blame back on the victim.
It has to be said over and over again to the Republicans, especially the worst offenders like Cruz and Hawley: Yes, there is anger. The anger is there because you have done things that demand anger. If you acknowledge what you’ve done, and express genuine remorse, then healing and unity can begin, but not before.
Betty Cracker
@Steeplejack (phone) & @geg6: She kept right on dragging that shit-stain too:
“Clout-chasing” — LOL!
Suzanne
SuzMom got Fauci Ouchie #1! Dose #2 is scheduled for 4 weeks from today, same (day and) time, same place.
My husband’s best friend lost his mom to COVID earlier this week.
Woodrow/asim
@germy: Both Roddenberry and Shatner were known to be Not Great, both during the original series run, and after.
The story about the theme song is true, and goes along with such other wonderful moments as Gene creating the IDIC concept to sell crap to fans. Yep, Lucas didn’t invent that idea, sadly.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@citizen dave:
I watched ‘Homicide’ first run and it’s a long-running issue as to why it’s never been picked up streaming.
Fantastic show on a gazillion levels. It’s also soooooo Ballmer. We have tons of friends, native Baltimorons, and every one of them loved the show because it so accurately caught the nuances of the city.
In Season 3, Meldrick talks about something and in passing references something about “fishing for rats”. It wasn’t until a couple of years back that we saw a documentary at the True/False festival in which, you guessed it, one film was about rats and profiled two guys fishing for rats at night in Ballmer.
rikyrah
@Super Dave:
Pembleton was the best Black male character created for tv.
I will fight anyone who says otherwise.
misterpuff
@Immanentize: Someone needs to put The Blonde Yang Shaman versus the 1/6 shaman pretender in a tweet with the tag “One of these guys worships The Constitution”.
Martin
I had a roommate in college that had a genuine love and appreciation for bad music. Shatner got regular play in our room, much to my dismay. Captain and Tennille, there was so much.
It was from that experience that led me, back in the usenet/pre-web days to dig up this astoundingly wonderful video and spread interest in it, which couldn’t really happen until Youtube arrived.
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah:
I loved that show. There was one episode set at a motel, and it was so amazing I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Martin
And Wil Wheaton is a national treasure. I will fight you on that. The Westly character was terrible, but Wil is part of the generation and effort that made it cool to be a nerd, and he deserves legit props for that.
Super Dave
@trollhattan: I see what you did there. And I love it! Totally agree with you. There was nothing like it on tv back then. I think a lot of later shows learned from it.
Jinchi
Ironically, he did let kids onto his bridge a couple of times and it always ended in disaster.
Matt McIrvin
@PPCLI: I keep thinking: they think we’re soft.
Partly because Democrats shellshocked by Reaganism and 9/11 did keep rolling over and putting up with stuff for a while there, and they think that’s still going to be how it works.
But partly just because of dumb macho stereotypes. The Republicans are the strong, heavily-armed Daddy Party so they can just do any old crap to us and get away with it. And they’re downright offended when they don’t, when anyone even squawks back.
AOC is not soft. And actually a lot of the establishment figures aren’t feeling particularly soft. Biden talks about unity but he’ll sign that flurry of executive orders and fire people and get downright catty when he needs to.
NotMax
@Martin
To further puncture what passes for my reputation, I bought that album at the time. As well as the one which preceded it. Still own them.
An easy listening sample from the earlier one.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
Loved this show. Agree with you about Pembleton.
I once ran into actor Kyle Secor (Detective Tim Bayliss) at some science event and got to tell him how much I enjoyed the show.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
Upthread I honor Pembleton in the box but the episode that haunts me is his responding to the subway push victim. Spends the entire hour talking with the guy, both knowing he will soon be dead.
Gutted just now, thinking of it.
...now I try to be amused
@Roger Moore:
Hardcore Whovians say that Colin Baker, who played the Sixth and most hated Doctor, got a raw deal. Baker got better scripts in later Doctor Who audio programs.
cain
Wil Wheaton! Yeah, he’s a pretty cool dude.. used to come to one of our tech conferences all the time. He’s a nice man, and I had an opportunity to chat with him on occasion. I tried to avoid the star trek stuff because I’m sure he gets sick of talking about it.
Miss Bianca
@Martin: OMG
Speechless
Except to say, don’t know which moves had me cracking up harder: the coy shoulder shrugs or the clothes getting tossed into the air to represent the battle with Smaug.
To think, it took Peter Jackson 3 movies and countless hours to tell a story that Leonard Nimoy manages to condense into 2 1/2 minutes complete with go-go girls with Spock ears. ALL BOW DOWN.
villiageidiocy
@rikyrah: Years ago I saw an outdoor concert in the DC area, which Braugher emceed, and he gave a shout out to Baltimore. It was sweet! He was obviously fond of the city and was the best thing in Homicide, by far.
I loved that show. My ONLY complaint about Homicide was that only the local actors with small parts nailed the Baltimore accent, but most actors don’t bother with such regionalisms. Check out Diner made by Baltimore native, Barry Levinson – if anything they sound more like Philly than B-more. Richard Dreyfuss did a nice job in Tin Men (also Levinson), though.
cain
@MisterForkbeard:
lol – makes sense it would be in Portland. Guy used to come here all the time :D
zhena gogolia
@Brachiator:
I loved the one where his girlfriend liked to make love in a coffin.
zhena gogolia
@trollhattan:
Vincent D’Onofrio
dmsilev
@Suzanne: My dad got jab#1 a couple of days ago; Mom has an appointment for next week.
Progress. But, as you say, it comes too late for for some.
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: Sounds like they didn’t offer it to you as a caretaker or whatever they are calling it. Disappointing! But great that your mom got her shot.
Brachiator
@clay:
Totally cool that your kids like Wesley, but even as a teen I loved original Star Trek because it largely avoided kids, cute robots and pets as main characters.
But also, I didn’t think Wesley related stories were very compelling, with a couple of exceptions.
...now I try to be amused
The best thing I ever read about Shatner was on the late Fametracker site, archived here.
Basically, Shatner is OK with being laughed at all the way to the bank.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: I remember that episode, but I didn’t remember which show. That scene stays with you forever.
trollhattan
@…now I try to be amused:
Speaking of Whoville, just finished “Victoria” which stars Clara, sidekick to Matt Smith’s Doctor #11. Loved this tidbit re. why Jenna Coleman was selected for the Who part: “Moffat chose her for the role because she worked the best alongside Smith and could talk faster than he could.”
IMO she does a great job as Victoria and importantly, manages to pull off the newly crowned 18 YO queen w/o having me ponder how somebody born in 1986 does so. She and Anna Kendrick have the gift.
Ken
Do you mean a disaster for the Enterprise, or that the episode was a disaster? Because “And the Children Shall Lead” qualifies on both fronts.
Eunicecycle
@geg6: I forgot that he was married to Sofia! I think I knew he was from Pittsburgh but wouldn’t have pulled that from my reptilian brain without you mentioning it. I think I’ve seen him wearing either a Steelers or Penguins jersey.
trollhattan
@zhena gogolia:
Holy cow, I forgot that detail. Same thing goes for his “Full Metal Jacket” role.
geg6
@…now I try to be amused:
Ha! Perfect!
burnspbesq
Unfortunately, the rumors of Liverpool’s impending demise appear to be exaggerated.
geg6
@Eunicecycle:
He grew up in the same town as Mark Cuban and Conor Lamb, Mt. Lebanon, just outside of the city.
Starboard Tack
@Wag:
Nimoy made a half dozen or so albums in the late 60’s, early 70’s. They were mostly meant to be serious music, and mostly mediocre. They only got released because Nimoy was on television. The campy tunes like Bilbo Baggins were the best of them. My siblings and I used to give each other a wretched copy of The Touch of Leonard Nimoy as a joke gift at Christmas.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Shatner is 2 months away from his 90th birthday and he’s still going full speed.
He did an action movie last year, he has a romantic comedy coming out for spring, and various guest shots on tee vee shows.
God loves Canadians
Villago Delenda Est
Roddenberry himself told Wil that “Bill’s an asshole”. The rest of the story: Shatner found out what the deal was and apologized to Wil.
Zinsky
@Immanentize: Haha! Shatner’s rendering of “Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds” is stomach-churning. I got that feeling where you get a little puke in the back of your mouth and it burns, when I first heard it.
ljdramone
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: proud Baltimoron here. Yeah, in 1994 the Yellow Rose Saloon (on East Fayette St) held their second annual Rat Fishing contest and attracted nationwide attention and a PETA protest. Baltimore Sun article here, video including local TV (WMAR, channel 2) coverage of the PETA protest here.
Brachiator
@zhena gogolia:
I have family who own a mortuary. This episode had me snorting.
Another Scott
@JoyceH: OMG!
Danger! Danger! TVTropes link. Timesink Alert!!
The name “Mary Sue” comes from the 1974 Star Trek fanfic A Trekkie’s Tale.
I’d heard the term before and didn’t know the origin, but having it come up in a Trek thread… [chef’skiss.gif]
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Tony Jay
@…now I try to be amused:
I’ve read that Baker wanted to play his Doctor as a dangerous presence in a black leather jacket but the PTB wanted a pompous zany fruitcake in day-glo finery.
Also, regarding the current Doctor, I’ve been rewatching with my boy and have to say the last four episodes of Series 12 finally clicked as ‘proper’ Doctor Who. Surely a coincidence that Chibnall didn’t write most of them. This all makes the New Year special shitshow even more of a disappointment.
geg6
@Tony Jay:
I come from good English stock and enjoy much of British entertainment, but I’ll never understand Dr. Who love. Wish I could. So many others love it.
Martin
@zzyzx: Oh fuck yeah they were. It was just being done by a different class of investor.
Look, people have this all backward. The problem isn’t Reddit or Robinhood here. The problem was the hedge funds. They shorted 140% of Gamestop’s stock. They sold 40% of an asset that didn’t exist (literally, I have a bridge to sell you), and normally they’re allowed to get away with that, but a group of Redditors banded together to generate hedge fund market momentum to punish the hedge funds for doing that.
That is a good thing! That is good for retail investors. It’s good for long investors. Maybe not in the narrow case of Gamestop investors, but now that this has happened, large investors are going to have to think long and hard if they want to take these unlimited downside risks again. What Reddit did was a form of regulatory action.
Don’t feel bad for hedge funds. You need to be an institutional investor [caveat: I’m an institutional investor] to even invest in hedge funds, and the reason you do so is that they are just doing what Reddit is doing – pooling money from different people to make high-risk bets. They just don’t do it out in the open. A hedge fund is just a legally protected, and wealth gated version of that Reddit board. The billions that they lost only hurt people with at least a million in investments. Grandma’s retirement fund isn’t being hurt here – only rich people are, and they aren’t being hurt so much as being taken down a notch by having a market abuse they profited from used against them.
I’ve made good money in the market. I’ve watched hedge funds manipulate stocks in the open with no penalty. It’s so widespread that I used it as part of my investment strategy – watching how a given stock is being manipulated and then leaning into it. Thats what happened back on the old trading floors. My specific focus was on gamma squeezes – like a short squeeze but manipulating stock prices to cause large interest in call and put options to barely miss their strike price. It happened. Every. Single. Quarter. The art was figuring out at what price it would occur.
The problem that I see is that the SEC has not adapted to a democratized investing world, and they really, really need to. I think it’s wrong that Robinhood is blocking their investors from buying Gamestop. That’s just handing the hedge funds a get out of jail free card that they don’t deserve. Again, anyone could go on Reddit and see the plan. It was always out in the open. The shorts deserve to be bankrupted here. They were more than happy to do it to the traditional investors that didn’t have the opportunity or market weight to do what they could do.
This amuses me to no end. I hope it continues. It’ll make a more stable market for everyone in the long run.
Tony Jay
@burnspbesq:
Playing with pace, movement and invention for the first time this year. Given it’s our first dip in form for about three years I’ll forgive the boys for letting the Manc Bloc steal a march.
Always nice to see Mourinho unhappy on the sidelines. Sign of a job well done.
louc
@LuciaMia: There were lots of kids featured in episodes and all of the kid episodes are among the worst of the TNG era. There was a worse kid than Wesley featured on the show: Alexander, Worf’s kid. Ugh.
PS The only half-way decent one was about the human kid raised by an alien culture that resembles Sparta. The crew suspects child abuse and wants to take the kid back. And the gaming one with Ashley Judd.
Martin
@NotMax: I feel like I know you so much better now. I’ll note my roommate was one of the nicest people I ever met.
Zinsky
Here is the Shat doing battle with his first producer….Rather violent oaf.
Martin
@Miss Bianca: You can see why I worked so hard in the early 90s to make sure that bit of art wasn’t lost. It’s glorious.
I have also been a big advocate for Star Wars Holiday Special. Did you know that Bea Arthur, Harvey Korman, and Art Carney play canonical Star Wars characters? That should never be allowed to be forgotten.
bluefoot
I love Wil Wheaton’s voice work. I’ve listened to several audiobooks (mostly SF) voiced by him, and he’s great. Every character is distinctive – different cadence, different pitch. Really well done. One of the many things I like about his voice work is that he doesn’t do that high-pitched, fake-girl voice a lot of male voice people do when voicing female characters. It’s one of my pet peeves.
Homicide is/was one of my all-time favorite television shows. I wish it were available on streaming somewhere.
Tangentially – Shatner and cop shows somehow leads to to ask: Does anyone remember the show “Cop Rock”?
NotMax
As folks are harping on Star Trek…
;)
Tony Jay
@geg6:
I was never that much of a Whovian in my youth, despite being a sci-fi geek from infancy, but I love the reboot series. It’s done with such enthusiasm and is utterly, shamelessly proud of its own ridiculous premise.
Genius show-off in a cranky box travels all of time and space with pet humans to take his/her mind off 2000+ years of loss and pain. We all know the Doctor will win in the end, the entertainment comes in the how.
And at its best it can be both tearjerking and very funny, and has a very relevant message. Never be cruel, never be cowardly, and wear kick-ass jackets. 8-)
satby
tl:dr, because I wanted to mention this. A friend was planning to do a fundraiser for her org at the Farmer’s Market this Saturday on/for her birthday. I’ve mentioned what a right-wing zoo it can be; well the guy in the office was wearing his Tr*** 2020 hat and being a jerk to Meghan, so she cancelled it. I was going to go in to show support, because sometimes it goes well and sometimes the haters are out in force. Her group’s name is TREES (Transgender Education for Small Town and Rural America), focus is on reaching out, community education, and suicide prevention for LGBTQ youth in those areas. Since that went bust, I just thought I’d share her group here if anyone felt like throwing them a bit of support. She only had a $500 goal for that day.
Steve in the ATL
@Martin:
Yeah, zero chance of that happening!
evodevo
@Miss Bianca:
Yes, according to my husband’s cousin, who was involved with selling Shatner a horse here in KY …she found him arrogant and egotistical…I don’t remember the particulars, just her impression from dealing with him. His horse farm here is down in Woodford Co., and she has been in the Saddlebred horse circles down there forever..
Tony Jay
@rikyrah:
I’m not arguing with you. I caught Homicide eons ago during its run on British TV and he stood way out there as the kind of character that we just didn’t ever see.
The withering contempt for those who failed to meet his standards for…. everything. Loved it.
Mike in NC
I was assigned to a Navy Reserve unit in Baltimore from 1990-1994 and really grew fond of that city.
trollhattan
@Steve in the ATL:
When I learned John Paulson pocketed almost $4 billion–like, his personal income for that year alone–in 2007 basically shorting real estate while our economy cratered I decided hedge funds need to go into the cosmic woodchipper. A banker acquaintance tried convincing me they had to “work just as hard for their money as anybody and besides, they’re earning money for their investors” and I asked, “Would you show me how I can invest in Paulson Fund?” That ended that.
zhena gogolia
@geg6:
Me too. I had a thing for Tom Baker so I tried, I really tried.
zhena gogolia
@Martin:
Oh, God, I have a vague atavistic memory of that.
zhena gogolia
@bluefoot:
Yes, we have been over this ground at some point. I really liked it. I’m there for Peter Onorati every time.
Oxford Comma
@Suzanne: He left twitter, see http://wilwheaton.net/
satby
And now that I’ve caught up, I will say that my late father, a homicide cop in a big city, used to say that Homicide was the most realistic cop show ever made (to that point anyway).
OGLiberal
@Mart: Better than the original, and the original was good. Most of the album that song is on is very good. Ben Folds did a great job producing it.
Just Chuck
@Miss Bianca: You want a show that’s aged badly, try watching TNG again. In some way the original series has aged better, because at least it’s good camp.
rikyrah
@Matt McIrvin:
They are completely MISreading the room.
They completely don’t grasp how we feel about the previous 4 years.
Let alone having their lives threatened by a mob, and the GOP muthaphuckas are trying to gaslight them into believing that their lives weren’t in danger on 1/6.
Phuck outta here.
Just Chuck
@Tony Jay: The way I think of Doctor Who is that he’s Peter Pan In Space. To enjoy it, you just have to suspend your disbelief and believe in
fairiesDaleks.And yes, the show can be gut-wrenching or tear-jerking. I chalk it up to Moffat. Don’t blink.
slightly_peeved
@geg6:
He’s a massive, massive D&D nerd – even more so than Wil. His house has a basement where he runs games for his group – which includes Tom Morello, the showrunners of Game of Thrones, Vince Vaughn and WWE superstar The Big Show. He also has some role in official content, and his characters show up in at least one of the recent D&D computer games.
Tony Jay
@Just Chuck:
The only episodes we’ve missed on the rewatch are the Weeping Angel ones. My boy is 8 and reacts to them the same way I did to vampire movies at the same age – big NO!
Sign of a great horror concept.
Miss Bianca
@Martin: The Star Wars Holiday Special…I’m not sure there’s enough booze in the world to cushion that one for me. Although I am willing to give it a shot! (or two, or three, or several). ; )
J R in WV
@Catherine D.:
I have rarely met anyone in major “ShowBiz” being from rural West Virginia… but I have followed various flavors of “Cons” held all around the world, read Lovecraft when I was a little boy in Jr. HIgh, etc…
I have always heard that Boris Karloff was kind and uplifting towards everyone he ever worked with.
Whether method acting coaching, Shakespeare, whatever, Boris had done it, and done it well… and was happy to tell you how he did it in a way that might help you to do it tomorrow.
Sort of the antithesis of his type cast as a monster — he could be a great monster, like your brother coming towards you and your very young and beautiful wife, smiling warmly, with a giant french chef’s knife, and a funny exression?! Or he could be a warm and comforting father figure……
Miss Bianca
@Just Chuck: Oh, Lord, I was afraid of that…I loved TNG back in the day and it’s been on my rewatch list for some time now.
Amir Khalid
@Tony Jay:
It’s a relief. I had been thinking of switching my allegiance to Melchester Rovers.
Tony Jay
@Amir Khalid:
Ha! As if.
Though if they’ve got any centre-backs up for a loan spell…….
J R in WV
@catclub:
I think cell phones should be outlawed until everyone can get a new cell phone and it will work everywhere, especially at their home!
Actually, I don’t care if people have cell phones even though I can’t use one at home… BUT I have a big problem with federal agencies making rules that assume EVERYONE has a cell phone that works at home 24/7/365. I do not, many of my neighbors do not.
Social Security attempted to implement a two stage security method that would require everyone using Social Security to have a cell phone connection at home in order to contact Social Security. I complained to both Social Security and my congress critters and Senators, and that requirement went away ASAP.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Me three (and I did not have a thing for Baker). The attraction of the Whoverse has forever eluded me.
Diff’rent strokes and all that.
Inspectrix
@Mart: that version of Common People gets a lot of play at our house.
But wow, Rocket Man. The timing, the side-eye, the singing to himself, and just when you get complacent he emerges with the delightful third Shatner with the shoulder shimmy. I need to watch it again now.
Tehanu
@Miss Bianca:
My kids are re-watching TNG and they say it’s much better than they remembered from the first time, back in the ’90s. In fact I’m thinking about doing it too.