“You! You there!” he shouted to a boy on the street. “What day is this?”
The boy gave a puzzled look. “It’s Shatmas, sir.”
“Good! I haven’t missed it. Here, lad. There’s a big, juicy turkey of a Shatner movie in the bargain bin at Walmart. Buy it and deliver it to my house.”
There are those who, with apologies to pretenders like Alexander Graham Bell and the not-as-great Gretzky, call Bill Shatner the greatest of all Canadians. That’s nonsense. Why restrict his importance to a single frozen land with fewer than 40 million inhabitants? He is simply the greatest HUMAN, possibly excepting the anonymous inventor of the wheel, and of course Bobby Troup.
Today is his 93rd birthday, or as I call it, New Year’s Day. Different people reckon the start of the new year with different methods, and have varying ways to calculate how many there have been. At the end of September in our calendar, the Jewish community will welcome the year 5785. The Chinese just celebrated the beginning of 4721. In a site dedicated to crap, we have no choice but to count the birth of William Shatner as the beginning of time (or at least any time worth living in), so today is the beginning of the year 93 A.S. (Anno Shatner).
Referencing the great day to the common calendar, the day known to most of the world as March 22, 1931 was the greatest day in history, for it marked the birth of the promised one … the golden child … the chosen one. Know him. Embrace him. For as surely as crapped is the past tense of crap, Shat is the past tense of shit.
Like most of his followers, I celebrate by getting into costume and re-enacting one of his many career highlights. I normally choose this all-time classic:
During the pandemic I could not re-create that fight, since the scene requires two actors, which was inappropriate in the era of Coronavirus and social distancing, so that year I chose to re-enact the fight scene from White Comanche, since Shatner plays both parts.
This year: The Scoopy Players, my community theater company, will present a stage version of Incubus, Shat’s offbeat 1966 movie performed entirely in Esperanto.
I did not make that film up. The entire movie is below.
Other tidbits:
1. Shat once recorded a Christmas album. He sang such classics as Feliz Navidad and Rudolph.
2. There are some great comments on the Shatmas page from 2022.
From the proprietor of a site that worships crap, stay crappy, Bill. You have already lived long and prospered, so just keep up the … er … good work.
William Shatner is famous for Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, and T.J. Hooker, but he also gave a tremendous performance as the villain in the only Roger Corman film that lost money. Shatner played a racist rabble-rouser who goes to a small Southern town to incite violence in The Intruder (1962). Roger Corman, who is a legend as the producer and director of low-budget films, produced and directed The Intruder. Corman talked about the film in a DVD special feature. He was proud of the film, but it was not a commercial success. In fact, he said it was the only film he had ever made that lost money.
As for Scoopy’s ranking of Bobby Troup ahead of Shatner, it is a close call. I really liked him on Emergency when I was a kid, but I absolutely LOVED Star Trek. But in my opinion, Bobby Troup’s greatest accomplishment was not his acting or his music, it was his daughter Ronne. I had such a crush on her during the last two seasons of My Three Sons.
As for Shatner’s infamous fight with the Gorn, Strange New Worlds has actually made the Gorn truly frightening. I’m looking forward to Season 3 to find out which characters survive the Gorn occupation.
Pretty spry for 93…
All snark aside, Bill must be the youngest 93-year-old man ever.
And as for Shatner’s singing, let’s just say that you have not even begun to live until you have heard his recording of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (1967):
Knowing my devotion to the Great One, my kids a few years ago bought me a re-issue of the album in which Lucy in the Sky appears – it is a classic.
It’s like he knew he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but if he threw in enough ACTING!! he could pull it off because he was The Shat.
One entire album, The Transformed Man, consists entirely of his frenetic scenery-chewing. Lucy in the Sky may be the best example, but the other tracks are equally bizarre.
Check out Mr. Tambourine Man, for example. (If you get bored, skip to the end. You don’t want to miss his Full “Khan!!!”)
Wow that’s shitty! That’s what a hippie friend of mine would call “straight from the cosmic colon”.
I love the way that the chorus singers seem increasingly desperate to keep the whole ‘musical’ enterprise going as the song goes on. The same is true of the Mr. Tambourine Man cover. I don’t know how this album ever got released (I guess it was an attempt to to make some quick cash from his stardom), but I am very grateful that it was released.
Shatner played at the Stratford Festival in Ontario for a number of years prior to his Star Trek era, in Shakespearean roles.
Let’s give the great man some respect.
My parents took me to Stratford every year, and I continued the tradition two more years after I got married. I am not old enough to have seen Shatner. The big star in our first trips was John “Baltar” Colicos, whom I saw as King Lear and Timon of Athens in the 1963-64 era.
To honor its past successes, the theater had a picture gallery of some of the previous performers, an all-star team of the top stage actors from Canada and elsewhere, like Christopher Plummer, Alan Bates, Alec Guinness, Paul Scofield, Maggie Smith and Peter Ustinov, to name a few. Because he was one of the home-grown Canadian stars, like Plummer, Lorne Greene and Colicos, Shatner’s pic was up there, even though he had mostly played supporting roles. He had earned his stripes, however, by stealing the show one year when he went on unexpectedly, for just a single performance – with no rehearsal, as Plummer’s understudy in Henry V. (His star was born on June 18, 1956, thanks to Plummer’s kidney stones.)
The picture of Shatner meant nothing to me when I first saw it in 1963. I didn’t really know who he was then, and the picture didn’t really resemble the guy who occasionally guest-starred on network TV shows. Just a few years later, everyone in the civilized world knew that he was James T. Fucking Kirk.
William Shatner was in one of the lesser seen Columbo’s from season six
called Fade In To Murder (Columbo was one of four parts of a recurring series of crime mystery shows, from season one to five, Columbo aired regularly once a month, for season six there were just three irregularly airing episodes.)
Anyway, Shatner played a television crime detective somewhat like Poirot in the episode who commits a murder and Shatner’s character’s background is more or less the same as Shatner.
It’s a strange episode with Walter Koenig playing a detective and Shatner totally hamming it up.
I think Shat was also in at least one of those shows from the Columbo revival in the late 80s or early 90s.
Season 10, Episode 8 (1994). Character is Fielding Chase.
I have seen that picture gallery at Stratford, including of course the picture of Shatner. I was born in 1963, so I was much too young to have ever seen him there, but it was nice to know that he had played the Festival. I likely will not be heading to Stratford this year, but will be going with my wife to the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake (very nice little town). We hope to make it back to Stratford next year.
Wow, it really snuck up on me this year, but if I work fast I can still get my cards out on time. But at least it snowed last night, just under the wire for a White Shatmas.
Now I want to see a full-length A Shatmas Carol, with the ghost of Nimoy hovering around going “In life I was your partner”. Then maybe Bones and Scotty as Past and Present; Picard obviously Ghost of Shatmas Yet to Come. And the ghosts wouldn’t just appear, they’d beam aboard.
OK, really should run along and leave some Shatmas cookies in the box for our mailman.
{Non-shatty sidebar: I’ve been reading the Slow Horses books and at one point Lamb, the Gary Oldman character on TV, uses the word ‘snuck’. Someone corrects him, saying the correct English word is ‘sneaked.’ He comes back with ‘Do I look like I give a feaked?’}
In recent years we have had snow for Shatmas and Giant Pink Japanese Penis Day (and green grass for Christmas). That seems kind of depressing to me. As much as families treasure the memories of White Shatmases past, I would rather see the daffodils for those two most sacred holidays.
Those party poopers on Mythbusters tried to prove that you couldn’t create gunpowder by mixing together randomly-fortuitous mineral deposits; but although their negative results seemed convincing, they failed to take the Shatner Factor (the Shactor?) into account. I once tried to concoct something from stuff out of my backyard, but all I could manage was a handful of unscented bath salts. I guess I’m no seat-of-my-pants chemist. I’m certainly no Bill Shatner.
One of my favorite Shatner moments was just a few years ago when he had a chance to see Earth from orbit via a commercial Blue Origin flight. I encourage everyone to search it out. The vid when they landed & the interviews he did following his real-life trip to space were extremely personal and honestly a little intimate. He’s an extremely humble, genuine guy 🌏
He should have stuck to the Gennies:
“Serling was said to smoke three to four packs of cigarettes a day.[41] On
May 3, 1975, he had a minor heart attack and was hospitalized. He spent two weeks at Tompkins County Community Hospital before being released.[4]:217 A second heart attack two weeks later forced doctors to agree that open-heart surgery, though considered risky at the time, was required.[4]:218[42] The ten-hour-long procedure was performed on June 26, but Serling had a third heart attack on the operating table and died two days later at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York.[43] He was 50 years old” (Wiki)
He was almost never seen without a cigarette.
To honor the great man I’m going to pull out Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, a creation of that great Genesee pitchman Rod Serling.
Not to mention Chesterfields
Twilight Zone was brilliant TV.
Shatner’s new documentary show The UnXplained is very good.
I’ve been good all year, I sure hope Shatner Claus brings me that TJ Hooker boxed set.