On Wednesday, The Tonight Show had a segment featuring William Shatner dramatically reading what were supposedly tweets from Levi Johnston. Conan assured us that the tweets were “real” and that “we didn’t make them up.” The result was hilarious. (The Washington Post has a web series called Twits, which involves dramatic readings of celebrity tweets that you might want to check out if you think this is funny.) The only problem is that Shatner was reading from a non-verified Twitter account that Levi has nothing to do with. The tweets were so damn funny because someone was mocking Levi with a fake account.

Levi isn’t too pleased with this, and says through his lawyer that the Twitter account is definitely not his. It doesn’t sound like they’re going to take action against the Tonight Show, though, and they say their first step is trying to get Twitter to shut down the account, LeviJohnston05.

Rex Butler — Levi’s lawyer — tells TMZ the Alaskan is demanding a retraction from NBC. What really pisses Butler off … before Shatner’s dramatic reading of Levi’s putative Twitter page, Conan said: “All real … we did not make these up.”

Butler says the Twitter page is NOT Levi’s and that, “We are in the process of dealing with Twitter first. I think they have an obligation once something like this happens to make some kind of corrective measure.”

Among the Tweets that were read poetry-style by Shatner … “Anybody know where I can get some good weed” and “Whats the deal with the taxi drivers not speaking English, is there a law against it?”

So far, not a tweet from NBC.

[From TMZ]

At least they’re not suing the Tonight Show or anything and they don’t sound all bent out of shape about it. Levi’s lawyer also made a statement to E! Online in which he said “I’ve sent an email to Twitter because they need to step up and take care of business. Then we’ll deal with The Tonight Show. First thing’s first.” They’re probably just looking for a correction and apology.

Meanwhile Johnston will be honored at a awards ceremony next week put on by the website Fleshbot (NSFW!). He’s going to be given the award for “Crossover Star.” Fleshbot editor Lux Alptraum told E! “it’s quite a transition to go from being the future son-in-law of the Republican vice presidential nominee to someone who is modeling in a nudie magazine that’s marketed toward gay men.” We definitely could not have said it better ourselves.

Johnston is shown on 6/10/09 below. Credit: GARRY SUN/bauergriffinonline.com

Paris with a sequin jacket over her head leaving a club in London on 10/24/08. Credit: WENN

When humans travel in space, it isn’t really treated like a diplomatic mission, as we aren’t communicating with other beings. As far as we know. Which is obviously how Paris Hilton was chosen for space flight.

Paris Hilton is scheduled for the native voyage of the Virgin Galactic sub-orbital spaceflight. Flight tests for are now underway and it is thought that the first voyage will happen within the next 18 months. Given how popular she is on earth, Paris has supposedly realized that there is a chance she might get left behind.

She said: “I’m very scared to do it. What if I don’t come back? With the whole light years thing, what if I come back 10,000 years later, and everyone I know is dead? I’ll be like, ‘Great. Now I have to start all over.’”

An estimated 157 people have signed up to take the flight, paying a deposit of US$200,000 for their seat.

New Zealand Herald

Paris has obviously been researching for this trip into space, by watching endless re-runs of Star Trek and Red Dwarf. Does she realize that she’s not actually the first person to go to space?

Since I am insanely jealous of Paris going up into space (I have always wanted to do this, unfortunately the ticket is more than my mortgage) so I’m generously offering to take her ticket. Paris and 157 others paida $200,000 deposit to secure their seat on the flight.

Also said to be joining Paris on the first flight of the commercial Virgin Galactic airlines are Madonna, Tom Hanks, William Shatner and Sigourney Weaver. Paris should have watched more sci-fi television as research – doesn’t she know that Sigourney is the best alien fighter in the world, and that Captain Kirk always gets the girl?

Note by Celebitchy: This is probably a fake quote which originated in one of the parody sites, but of course it got picked up because you could imagine Paris saying this.

I’m not sure if William Shatner is actually crazy, or it is a persona he’s created to play upon his on screen roles, but this particular rant on YouTube adds fuel to the ‘time for some psychological help’ fire.

William, who wasn’t invited to fellow Trekkie George Takei’s wedding and was left out of a role in the latest film (due to his character’s death) decides to rant on George Takei, telling an interviewer that he doesn’t understand why George had to tell the media all about not inviting him to his wedding, and that he wasn’t fun to work with due to ego issues.

“There’s such a sickness there, it’s so painfully obvious that there’s a psychosis there, I don’t know what his original thing about me was, I have no idea, I didn’t read his book that was printed many years ago…

“I didn’t know him very well on the series, he’d come in for a day or two, as evidenced by the role he played…

“He was obviously hiding his sexuality…

“There must be something else inside George that is festering, and it makes him so unhappy that he takes it out on me, in effect a total stranger.

“Why would he go out of his way to denigrate me?

“It’s sad, I feel nothing but pity for him.”

[Transcribed from interview with William Shatner, shown above]

Will, he’s basically said nothing about you, and called the feud ‘media hype’. As you point out yourself, you barely knew each other, so why would he invite you to his wedding?

As to George’s comments on William Shatner’s on-set Star Trek antics, those comments have been echoed by other co-stars, so I’m beginning to think that he might have been something of an ass.

The new Star Trek film, directed by J.J Abrams of Armageddon fame, is coming out in May 2009 and is a prequel to the earlier films. My resident Trekkie says that odd numbered films ‘suck’ and even ones are good, but this film is the eleventh Star Trek film so we could be in to break the ‘curse’. I’m not sure what is going to end the curse within my own house, however.

J.J. Abrams says the new film promotes unity.

“I think a movie that shows people of various races working together and surviving hundreds of years from now is not a bad message to put out right now,” he says. “In a world where a movie as incredibly produced as ‘The Dark Knight’ is raking in gazillions of dollars, ‘Star Trek’ stands in stark contrast. It was important to me that optimism be cool again.”

Associated Press

Abrams also says ‘my favorite thing is turning on YouTube and seeing William Shatner talk to me,’ commenting on Will’s YouTube rants.

Check out some pictures of the young Spock and company. The new Star Trek movie directed by JJ Abrams is due for release in the US in May of next year.

William Shatner and his wife Elizabeth are shown below at the “5th Annual Runway For Life Benefitting St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital” on 10/11/08. Credit: Albert L. Ortega / PR Photos

William Shatner and his current wife, Elizabeth, on 4/14/07, thanks to WENN
The day after MSat covered the new book planned by William Shatner’s brother in law, an article came out in the print edition of the New Zealand Herald where William talks about that day and the allegations that he didn’t attempt to rescue his wife. His former brother-in-law claims that William did not attempt to rescue his wife Nerine from a pool where she had drowned, because of his $25,000 toupee.

While William doesn’t directly address the claims, he talks a lot about the day his wife died, and what his life was like with her.

On her death and the aftermath:
‘Can you imagine what it was like?’ he asks, his face twisted in anguish. “After the OJ Simpson debacle, I suppose I should have known what was going to happen. The media was asking, ‘Did Shatner kill his wife?’”

“I remember diving into the pool,” he says. “I had enough breath for one deep dive. One of her arms was floating above her and I grabbed her by that arm and lifted her, pulling her towards the shallow end. I laid her by the pool. Her skin was blue. I remember every second. For someone to suspect I killed her? I gave my life to my wife because I loved her. I devoted myself to her until the day she died. And believe me, alcoholism had Nerine by the throat.”

“Sometimes I berate her for not having stopped drinking. Sometimes I tell her it’s okay, that I am thinking about her, that she is alive in my mind. But you never get over it.”

Nerine almost killed his daughter:
“She (Nerine) had picked her up from a spa in Palm Springs and, apparently, as she drove home, she would stop at gas stations, go into the ladies’ room and down a small bottle of whatever she was drinking. She was exiting the freeway and for no reason slammed on the brakes. If there had been a car behind her it would have slammed into her at freeway speed. What kind of insanity is that? To drive drunk with a young person in the car.”

On their wedding day and marriage:
“Our wedding day was beautiful. Nerine was sober and we went to bed that night ecstatic. I woke up the next morning at eight and she was drunk. Later, I found she had hidden bottles of vodka all over the house.”

“Nerine would ask, after a drunken, rowing evening ‘What’s wrong Bill? Why are you crying?’ She would have forgotten the whole episode.”

Shatner also makes a point of addressing a couple of rumors that have followed him for years:
“I wasn’t wearing a corset (while filming Star Trek). I had fallen off a horse and broken some ribs. I had to be strapped up and some kind soul told the tabloids I’d got so beefy that I needed a corset to get into Kirk’s costume.”

“And no, it isn’t a toupee” he says, tugging his hair.

New Zealand Herald print edition 14 June 2008

Whatever happened on the day of Nerine’s death, it is obvious that she was quite a handful – too much for one person – and that it was a horrible accident. Police later found that Nerine had valium and a blood alcohol reading of 0.28, as well as a broken neck from the pool impact. Thanks to KitKat for the link.

Some commenters have noted that everyone should learn what to do in an emergency, and courses are available to teach you first aid through your local branch of the Red Cross.

William Shatner with his current wife, Elizabeth Anderson Martin, at the Primetime Emmy Awards on 9/16/07
William Shatner’s new memoir, “Up Til Now,” gives some details about the accidental drowning death of his late wife, Nerine. However, a family member of Nerine’s is now issuing a tell-all book of his own about the Star Trek icon, saying that he was not a caring husband and was more concerned about himself than her- right up until the day she died.

According to The Globe, Boston Legal star William Shatner will not be happy to learn that his deceased wife Nerine’s brother is writing a tell-all book about his sister’s mysterious death in 1999, and he’s calling Shatner a liar. William Shatner’s wife Nerine was an alcoholic who was in and out of rehab, and her AA sponsor had warned Bill never to leave her alone. Shatner left her with a housekeeper one day and returned to find her on the bottom of their pool. He called 911 instead of diving in to pull her out. The brother claims that Shatner didn’t jump in the pool because he was wearing a new $25,000 toupee and didn’t want to ruin it! The former brother.-in-law insists “The normal reaction is to pull the person out of the pool and start CPR.” He’s got a point there.

[From Janet Charlton's Hollywood]

While numerous stories about the size of his ego have been circulating for decades, I think I’m going to have to side with Shartner on this one. It seems way out of line for this brother to be slamming his former brother-in-law over what was ruled an accident by police. I also don’t think it was Shatner’s responsibility to make sure that a grown woman was never left alone. If she was really in that bad of shape, she should have been in an in-patient rehab facility, not a mansion with a pool. It sounds to me like this brother is trying to make a buck off Shatner’s name while people still remember his wife’s death. Shatner has since remarried.

William Shatner wants us to know he’s not all ego. He’s just finished writing his autobiography, and was recently offended at being left out of the latest Star Trek movie, despite his character being dead. He knows that when he dies, it isn’t going to mean much.

“I’m not going to be remembered any more than anyone else. Maybe on the day there will be a little more fuss than, say, some guy in Poughkeepsie (New York). Fame and remembrance are so fleeting. None of us is remembered.

“Some of the great names I grew up with, five years after they were dead, no one remembered them.

“No matter what age you are, you are liable to die. But the older you get, the odds go up that it’s going to be very soon. It’s not going to be very long. But I’m having such a good time with the world that I live in, I don’t want to go anywhere.”

Contact Music

I actually think that William’s death will be quite a big deal. My husband is a Star Trek fan (wisely not revealed to me until after we married), and he was introduced to it by his father, and now they watch it together with my kids. Star Trek seems to be one of those shows that is going to survive across generations and genders. Who doesn’t like a bit of intergalactic travel and watching Captain Kirk mate with non-humans?

In case you think that William’s legacy is limited to Star Trek and Boston Legal, don’t forget his music career – my personal favorite being his rendition of Blur’s Pulp’s ‘Common People’, complete with lyric sheet in front of him, karaoke style. By the end of this rendition he’s positively purple in the face.

William Shatner and his wife, Elizabeth Anderson Martin, are shown at the Annual Alzheimer’s Benefit ‘A Night At Sardi’s’ on 3/5/08 thanks to WENN.

77 year-old former Star Trek star William Shatner has an autobiography out called Up Till Now that the publisher promises is “touching and very funny.” Among the anecdotes Shatner provides in his book is the fact that a lot of female Star Trek fans wanted to sleep with Captain Kirk, not him. He also hinted that those kind of situations didn’t do much for him in the performance department:

[William Shatner] insists he couldn’t enjoy flings with the series’ most devoted followers because he was so turned off by their bizarre bedroom behaviour.

In his new autobiography, Up Till Now, Shatner explains how women would pretend they were being “beamed up” by the Starship Enterprise commander, shrieking: “So, this is what it’s like to
be in bed with Captain Kirk!”

He writes: “You can’t imagine how much of a downer that is in every sense of the word.”

[From Contact Music via Fark]

Captain Kirk on the Star Trek TV series was hot. He was always wearing that tight yellow uniform shirt and seducing the 60s minx female aliens. I could see asking him to pretend he was Kirk in bed. You want to get with the guy with the piercing eyes who saves the day, not the actor who does bad cover versions of hit songs.

Among Shatner’s other relevations in his autobiography is the fact that the actress who played Lt Uhura, Nichelle Nichols, told him she hated him. Their interracial kiss on Star Trek in 1968 was a big deal at the time. Nichols jokingly told Shatner during his Comedy Central roast “Let’s make TV history again… and you can kiss my black ass!”

In a January, 2008 interview with Details Magazine, Shatner said that after Star Trek ended in the early 70s he was going through an expensive divorce and had to live out of his pickup truck. He also talked about the painful loss of his third wife, Nerine Kidd, who drowned in 1999.

Shatner has played lawyer Denny Crane on ABC show Boston Legal since 2004. He told Details that it was a “stupid oversight” that JJ Abrams didn’t give him a cameo in the latest film version of Star Trek although Leonard Nimoy has a part. His future plans include ideas for a talk show and animated films. He has been married to his fourth wife, Elizabeth Anderson Martin, since 2001.

William Shatner and his wife Elizabeth are shown below at the “Star Trek: The Tour” Press Conference and Preview on 1/17/08, thanks to PRPhotos. You can learn more about “Star Trek: The Tour” on their website.

William Shatner isn’t happy that he isn’t going to be featured in the next Star Trek Movie, even going so far as to question whether the movie could be a success without him.

“It wasn’t really hurt as much as it was a case of, ‘How can you not put one of the founding figures into a movie which is resurrection? I was there at the birth and I wanted to be there at the rebirth. I would love to have been, but I don’t think I can take it personally it’s when they’re telling the story, and they couldn’t include the character, well that’s too bad and doesn’t make good business sense. I’ve become even more popular than I was playing Captain Kirk. Am good Box Office and I get publicity like this, we’re talking about the movie, which is publicity for the movie. I could have done a good job for them but they’re going in a different direction and it will be a wonderful film.”

TrakWeb

It turns out there’s a reason that William wasn’t included in the film, when even Leonard Nemoy will be featured as an older Spock. Movie co-writer Roberto Orci says the reappearance of Captain Kirk is unlikely.

“There are two things,” Orci said in an interview in November. “One, from our point of view, we are still hoping to find a way. Secondly, one of the difficulties that was brought up and discussed with Shatner when we all met him and pitched him ideas is that Trek fans are sticklers for their canon. [And,] unfortunately, Shatner’s Capt. Kirk was killed in Star Trek VII [1994's Generations].”

SCI FI Wire

Actually, I can’t believe that this philistine is allowed to write this movie. Doesn’t he know that while Captain Kirk was killed in 1994′s Star Trek Generations movie, he was found alive and sucked 150 years into the future? If you can make that storyline is believable, surely you can manage to bring Kirk back again.

My suggestion – as someone who has never, ever watched any Star Trek – is that a Captain Kirk lookalike should be found in the future again, this time practising law with a Boston firm. He leaps into his filing cabinet and comes out dressed as Captain Kirk, and turns out to be his illegitimate child fathered during the mysterious time that he was missing in action. Then, William Shatner still gets to be in the movie, put in a plug for his television role, and the integrity of the Star Trek franchise is maintained. Sort of.

Note by Celebitchy: I have watched some Star Trek in my day thanks to my brother Mike. Captain Kirk was kind of a blow hard but he was also pretty hot I have to admit. He’s an old guy now, but he could make an appearance as some kind of descendant of Kirk if it takes place 150 years into the future. Vulcans can do this thing where they implant their essence into someone else, and a quick glance at Wikipedia reminds me that Spock died in The Wrath of Khan but was able to cheat death by implanting his soul into McCoy, after which his body was revived and his essence removed from McCoy and implanted back into to. If Captain Kirk is dead and it’s 150 years in the future it’s not likely he’s going to make an appearance in the new film. Vulcans have a life expectancy of 250 years so it’s possible that Spock is still around.