Get your geek on.
One year ago today we lost one hell of a guy. William Shatner gets a lot of shit about his ego, and most of it is well deserved, but this is a surprisingly touching, unusually frank account of Shatner’s own failings, and how Leonard Nimoy stepped in and became one of the few real friends Shatner ever had. Just reading this makes me proud to be a Star Trek fan.
Sometimes I am ponderously slow to catch on to things. It just now occurred to me that the casting director of Men In Black, a movie about shadowy men who protect themselves with forgettability and anonymity, hired lead actors with the names Smith and Jones. Clever.
Of all the cheerleaders I saw on Super Bowl Sunday, this was by far my favorite.
When I was in London I saw The Phantom Of The Opera in the Royal Albert Hall. I once stood fifteen feet away from Keith Richards while he and The Rolling Stones played one of the most amazing concerts I have ever seen. But for pure audiovisual enjoyment, there may be no show greater than watching John H. Lewis sit through a game in which he has bet on the losing team. His anger focuses his sarcasm to a laser sharpness so intense it threatens to become a mockery singularity. It is distilled, refined, crystalline entertainment.
After endless medical studies conducted over decades by the world’s leading neuroscientists, it seems pretty certain that playing any sport where large men hit you repeatedly about the face and head for years and years is not good for you.