You Can't Touch The Shat

Today's entry is about evolution. Career evolution, to be exact. If you're like me, and you're hitting that mid-life what-the-hell-do-I-do-now point, perhaps you're wondering if what you do for a living is what you want to continue doing for a living in the future. Maybe you're tired of it. Maybe you spend your days fantasizing about traveling the world like a drifter, living off the land, bedding peasant women in Nepal, and cataloguing your travel experiences in mmmmm say, a blog of some sort. Or perhaps you're simply pining for your old supermarket job when the work was mindless but you had no responsibility and could leave at 5 p.m.

If the above description fits you, then keep reading, for the dogged evolution of the career of William Shatner, a/k/a "The Shat," is a case study in perseverence, forging ahead in life, and finding new avenues of bliss in the same profession, even as you progress into middle age and beyond.

We first got to know The Shat in Star Trek. He was the handsome Captain of the Starship Enterprise, and he traveled places where no man had gone before. That virile young face. Those yellow spandex-clad pecs. That commanding voice. The Shat wrestled giant lizards, slept with aliens, and finagled his way out of more than one intergalactic corner. He was. Captain. James. T. Kirk. And he ran a tight ship. He also got his share of alien tail, no small feat when you're only human and women prefer Klingons.

Then there was a depressing lull in The Shat's career, as he walked in the wilderness, desperate for work, but unable to escape the paralysis that is the Hollywood typecast. No one would hire him because they still had Kirk on the brain. How do you top Kirk? You can't. So after doing virtually nothing for nearly a decade, in 1979, The Shat returned to what brung him to The Big Dance, and did the first Star Trek movie, which was followed by several more. My favorite:The Wrath of Khan. F'n loved it. Mr. Roarke was really really good in that one, too.

In the 1980s, The Shat fell from the mountainous high of Captain Kirk to the disturbing trough of T.J. Hooker. After warp speeding around the universe in a spaceship for two decades (in the movies and on ST reruns), The Shat looked positively pedestrian -- downright silly -- in a cop's uniform. His straight, wavy hair suddenly became curly, and he looked more than a little gay cavorting around with the skeevy Adrian Zmed.



Yuck. And what was with the name? T.J. Hooker? Why not just call it B.J. Ho-bag? Stupid. The show's only redeeming value was the precocious Heather Locklear (not shown here), who only got sexier with age.

More recently, we've seen The Shat in comical Priceline.com videos and Boston Legal, where he plays the smarmy, self-absorbed, ego-maniacal, but good-hearted Denny Crane. In what can only be viewed as a masterful career resurrection exceeded only by that of John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, The Shat won an Emmy and then a Golden Globe in 2005 for his work on that show and its precursor, The Practice. Well done, good sir, well done.

But what I love most about The Shat is that he has a fantastic, self-spoofing sense of humor. He constantly pokes fun at himself, and I think it's a huge reason for his renewed success. I could cite to many examples, including some very funny SNL appearances and clever Priceline.com commercials, but that wouldn't do the man justice. You see, he's the most funny when it looks like he's trying to be serious.

Like in this video duet of Common People with Joe Jackson:



Shit, that song is actually pretty good! WTF? I would never have put those two together, but maybe they're on to something.

The Shat speak-singing Rocketman, mmmmm not so much.



Oh man, that is too fucking funny.

To close out this homage, here are some little known facts about the Shat that may interest you:

The Shat is Canadian -- born and raised in Montreal.

The Shat was trained as a classical Shakespearean actor. He performed at the Shakespearean Stratford Festival of Canada in Stratford, Ontario. This may explain his unique, and much-imitated, intonation during particularly dramatic scenes on Star Trek.

The Shat participated in the first interracial kiss in a U.S. television drama series between fictional characters, with Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), in the 1968 Star Trek episode "Plato's Stepchildren". That's 1968, when the racial shit was really hitting the fan in this country. Eat that, Ellen.

The Shat and the late James Doohan, who played Scottie on Star Trek, did not get along for years, but mended their relationship shortly before Doohan died of Alzheimer's in 2005.

In 2004, the Shat became a "Celebrity Photographer" for Playboy's Cyber Club. Lucky bastard.

And last, but not least, The Shat can act a little bizarre at times. In 2006, he sold his kidney stone for$75,000 to GoldenPalace.com. In an appearance on The View afterwards, he said $75,000, with an additional $20,000 raised from the cast and crew of Boston Legal, paid for the building of a house by Habitat for Humanity. Alrighty then.

All I can say is, The Shat is the Man, and don't nobody mess with The Shat.