We’ve all done it—made fun of that great walking ego known as William Shatner. Robert Schnakenberg did so in his brilliant book, Encyclopedia Shatnerica: An A to Z Guide to the Man and His Universe, which I recapitulated here.* Now Scott Brown of New York magazine does a brief but knowing take on Bill’s act, currently available live in the Big Apple:
“After a half-century of absence — he’s been busy doing other things, he’d like you to know — William Shatner is back on Broadway. He has acquired life experience, sweet and bitter. Much of it sweet, judging by his waistline. (At a near-spherical 80 years young, he still bounces around the stage like a Pilates ball.) He’s accumulated a hundred wisdom tales, a thousand sage apothegms, and an Aeron chair: “My co-chair for the night,” cracks the once and future Captain Kirk, in the first of many Borscht Belt asides. His one-man show is Shatner’s World: We Just Live in It, and it’s more or less everything you’d expect it to be, only more so.”
More from Scott here. If you don’t get the horse semen jokes, check out my review, referenced above. And if you just don’t give a damn, check out Bill’s famous/infamous butt-sucking rap on Rocket Man, below.
*Special bonus feature: Heart-stopping shot of Angie Dickenson’s left nipple!
