Category: Television

All This Science I Don’t Understand: William Shatner

William ShatnerI enjoy William Shatner’s half-hour talk show on the Biography Channel, Raw Nerve. The show features an intimate conversation with various guests, and I like that Shatner asks each guest to bring an object from home that has some special meaning. William Shatner is not a trained inteviewer, but he is William Shatner and he brings his Shatnerness to each show. Although he interviews a wide variety of guests, a few shows have featured Star Trek alum, and one show revealed Walter Koenig, who played Chekhov on the original series, to be quite thoughtful about his career. It was also interesting to see Shatner struggle with how he has treated other cast members disrespectfully in the past.

William Shatner, who turned 80 last Tuesday, has a personality that has aged well. He makes a good career of mocking his image as a younger man who was full of himself. One of the best things one can do in maturity is to laugh at one’s younger self.

Time Magazine recently did a fun feature of The Top 10 Unforgettable William Shatner Moments, only a few of which involve any scenes from Star Trek. One of my favorite moments is from the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards, where William Shatner’s performs Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” What is better than one William Shatner? Three William Shatners! The video starts off amazing and just gets better, so make sure you hang around for the second and third William Shatners to appear. Unfortunately, there is no evil Shatner with a goatee but there is a lot of cigarette smoking.

While his performance of “Rocket Man” above is great because it is funny, Shatner’s cover of Pulp’s “Common People” with Joe Jackson is just a great version of of a great song. I have it on my iPod by choice.

“It was fun.” — James T. Kirk, in Star Trek: Generations.

  • What Tarantino’s “Star Trek” Might Look Like
  • The Strange Coincidence With the Ending of “Wrath of Khan”
  • 7 Things About “Star Trek: Into Darkness” (Short Review)
  • “First” Interracial Kiss on TV
  • Two Spocks and an Audi
  • Rocket Man, Burning Out His Fuse Up Here Alone

    • (Some Related Chimesfreedom Posts)

    Jeopardy: Humans vs. Machine Continues

    Johnny Cash – The Legend Of John Henry’s Hammer The Legend of John Henry’s Hammer – Johnny Cash (At Folsom Prison) (press play button)

    After last night, the computer is tied for the lead with one of the humans. For the next two nights Jeopardy will feature the ongoing battle between an IBM computer named Watson and two of its all-time champions: Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. After the first stage of the three-part competition, Watson is tied with Rutter for the lead. Because last night’s show featured stories about Watson and IBM, they did not finish the first match, and tonight is Double Jeopardy. Tune in to see how it comes out.

    toy Wall-E

    IBM has been working on Watson for three years. The competition was taped in January, but we will not know the results until the shows are broadcast. Someone has already written a book about the battle: Stephen Baker’s book Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything.

    It is interesting how complex the machine must be to take on humans in Jeopardy. It is not like a program on your computer that already has the answers to play a pre-written game such as Jeopardy or other trivia game. Watson is really “thinking” about phrases it has never heard, processing the meaning of the words, and answering them in the form of a question without access to the Internet. The machine takes up a large room.

    But will humans still claim dominance over the machine? Above is Johnny Cash’s version of the song about John Henry, performed live at Folsom Prison. For the warm-up Jeopardy match broadcast last month, Chimesfreedom wrote more about the epic human versus machine battle covered in songs about John Henry. In case you missed it, check out the post here.

  • I’ll Die With a Buzzer in My Hand!
  • Computer Wins Jeopardy: Are We Entering Westworld?
  • Is Kris Kristofferson’s Greatest Song “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down”?
  • Clarence Ashley: “The Cuckoo” & “Little Sadie”
  • Rosanne Cash Takes a Stand With “Crawl Into the Promised Land”
  • Johnny Cash’s Journey and “The Gift”

    • (Related Posts)

    Super Bowl Commercial: The Darth Vader Kid

    The ad for the Volkswagen Passat featuring a little Darth Vader was my favorite Super Bowl commercial this year.

    The little Darth Vader is played by six-year-old Max Page, a young actor with a congenital heart defect and a pacemaker. He has never seen any of the Star Wars movies, but maybe he pulled it off so well because he looks a little like Mark Hamill.

    I also liked the Eminem commercial for Chrysler. Good for Detroit.

    What was your favorite Super Bowl commercial? Leave a comment.

  • Dogs, Star Wars, and the Bark Side
  • Patton Oswalt’s Star Wars VII
  • Do You Remember the 1990s? Microsoft Does.
  • Will Clint Eastwood Tell Democrats to Get Off His Lawn at Tonight’s Republican Convention?
  • “The Star Wars That I Used to Know” Parody
  • Ferris Bueller Returns . . . In a Commercial

    • (Related Posts)

    Black History Month: Dr. Cornel West on Late Late Show

    For the start of Black History Month, Craig Ferguson welcomed philosopher Dr. Cornel West on The Late Late Show. I happened to have the show on, and as it progressed, I wondered, “Am I really seeing this intelligent conversation on a late night talk show?”

    Besides musical guest George Clinton, the only guest on the show was Dr. West. Ferguson began by noting that just for that night, the show would proceed without some of its sillier elements, like his usual robot sidekick, Geoff Peterson (who is actually more of a commentary on late night sidekicks). Ferguson and Dr. West discussed various topics including race, music, Huckleberry Finn, slavery, and U.S. citizenship. It was an intelligent conversation about important issues with a little humor thrown in for good measure. And I probably learned more from it than any of the arguments and debates featured on most cable news channels. Linda Holmes at NPR also wrote about this “extraordinary conversation.”

    A clip from the interview with Dr. West on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson is here:

    Did you see the show? What did you think? Leave a comment.

  • Amythyst Kiah: “Wary + Strange” (Short Review)
  • Lonnie Johnson: “Another Night to Cry”
  • Barbara Dane’s Cool Musical Legacy: “Wild Woman,” “Gasser,” “Hard-Hitter”
  • Hierarchies of Hate and Healing? Thoughts on “Wind River” from Charlottesville
  • Skip James: “Hard Times Killing Floor Blues”
  • Troubled Waters Plays “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”

    • (Related Posts)

    The Last Family Member from Ozzie & Harriett Passes

    David Nelson, of the TV series Ozzie and Harriett, passed away yesterday at the age of 74. The Ozzie and Harriett show ran on ABC from 1952 to 1966, and it had started as a radio show in 1944, although the radio children were played by other actors for the first four years.

    For those of us who only have seen the show in syndication, it may seem old-fashioned. We see it like the TV series in the movie Pleasantville, a world waiting to be changed by our modern views, liberations, and freedoms. Yes, the show was the product of its time, but it was not such a bad thing to show family love in the relatively new medium of TV. And the show was a landmark TV series, setting the stage for family comedies ranging from The Cosby Show to Modern Family.

    Although he is less famous than his late brother Rick Nelson — who had a successful rock and roll career and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — David Nelson was well-regarded on the show and went on to be in other TV roles and to own his own production company. Most importantly, David and Ricky were the ones who convinced their parents to do the TV show. So without their childhood nagging, TV viewers would have been much poorer. It is a good lesson that sometimes we should listen to the kids. Rest in peace, David.