Hair I Am

(Awe man, I'm totally about to date myself with this particular blog and I'm sure that more than half my readers won't know who the hell I'm talking about here....lol.)



William Alan Shatner born March 22, 1931. Actor, writer and would be singer as well as a cultural icon for many generations.

In no particular order of importance, 15 Reasons Why I Love William Shatner:

15. Obviously, he's the Priceline Negotiator...how can you not love that!



14. He has appeared on Futurama, which one of my favorite tv shows of all time.



13. Whether you know it or not, he may have been the monster that haunted your dreams because the Michael Myers mask was actually a William Shatner mask that the special effect guy beat up and painted white to distort the appearance. So not only does the man go down in history a icon unto himself, he goes down as a horror icon inadvertently as well.



12. He's a total good sport and took The Roast done about him very, very well.



11. His talk show, William Shatner's Raw Nerve, is in my opinion, one of the best I've ever seen. He does good interviews and makes his guests relaxed enough to share things you may have not known about them.



10. He was the first grown man I ever saw with his shirt off when I was a little girl watching Star Trek reruns. I know by today's standards of male attractiveness he would probably be considered not so hot, but back in the day he was the ideal man.




Come on...you can't tell me that he wasn't attractive...



I joke that it was highly likely that Shatner pushed every chance he could get to take his shirt off on original Star Trek, but it is far more likely that Gene Roddenberry was responsible for orchestrating that maneuver because Mr. Roddenberry was a shameless promoter and would have pushed anything that would have kept the viewer count high for the show, including exploiting some beefcake.

09. He is a musical terrorist. Responsible for some of the worse music, (if you can call it that), and some of the most interesting musical collaborations in history, the best part is that he can totally laugh at himself for it while at the same time taking it serious.

The Transformed Man, a masterpiece of sheer audio torture! If you don't start laughing your ass off about 1 minute into this album, then something is very wrong with you.



Your brain will literally want to escape your head upon listening to this:



Then there is this unforgettable performance:



But then on the flipside you have this:



A collaboration with Ben Folds, it features a song with Henry Rollins:



As well as this interesting cover of Common People by Pulp:



And here's one more:



08. William Shatner is the voice of Ozzie the possum in the animated movie, Over The Hedge. It is one of the few movies that will put me in an good mood if I am totally depressed.



07. I love original Star Trek! For all of it's campiness and crappy paper mache sets, it's still enduringly entertaining to watch and that is mostly because of the screen chemistry on the show between the actors. Hey, a lot of them may have grown to hate each other later and then make peace even later, but you cannot deny that Star Trek was a work of genius with brilliant casting.



As much as I love the new movie, there will always be only these two guys as the ultimate Spock and Captain Kirk.



And my god, you'd better be a good actor to be able to act through something this ridiculous as this below!




06. He was part of the first romantic interracial kiss ever shown on television. Technically it wasn't the first interracial kiss because that one was between Nancy Sinatra and Sammy David Jr., but that kiss was more of a friendly kiss. The Star Trek kiss was technically intended to be romantic, even if the characters were being, "forced", to kiss, so technically it was the first romantic interracial kiss ever seen on television.



05. He starred in arguably one of the best original Twilight Zone episode ever broadcast, Terror At 20,000 Feet.




Interestingly enough, many years later John Lithgow reprised this particular episode in Twilight Zone The Movie, and then later William Shatner had a reoccurring role as, "Big Giant Head", on 3rd Rock From The Sun, which starred John Lithgow.

04. How could you not appreciate a man that is willing to look like this on film for all eternity? Here he is on Boston Legal:

William Shatner with James Spader.



03. I think that Star Trek may be responsible for some of my...ehem...deviant private social leanings because of all the episodes of Captain Kirk getting...ehem....captured like this that I watched as a kid:



...and this....




And then let's not forget this little phallic gem from episode 7 where he's suppose to clobber the guy in the foreground with this thing as a weapon:



You combine all that with Wonder Woman tying everybody up, Tex Avery cartoons of damsels in distress and it explains a lot of my...ehem...interests.

02. I admire him as a someone that has survived the horrible tragedy of losing a loved one to alcohol and accidental drowning.




His third wife, Nerine Shatner, died in 1999 from falling drunk into their backyard swimming pool and drowning to death. Shatner came home to find his wife and tried to revive her but it was too late. He had strived through their marriage to get her every kind of help he could for the alcoholism, but she just seemed to be on a one way course to destruction. Since her death he has been a strong advocate for supporting people through alcohol addictions and rehab and set up a foundation not long after his wife's death.

01. He's a respected writer, which is something a lot of people who are aware of him casually may not know.

His Tek series of books are considered good:



Good enough to get turned into graphic novels:



And a television show that was on awhile back called Tek War.