Shatner Rules

Mrs. Francis. Primal Shatner had hunted well.
    The next day, Thanksgiving, Mrs. Francis informed me that the meat was no good. Spoiled. After I left the day before, she dutifully went to the public library and researched the proper method for preparing wild boar for consumption. Who knew the library even had a “Wild Boar Preparation and Consumption” section? She stayed up all night, taking the temperature of the flesh every two hours, bleeding it out, and to no avail. The only thing to be thankful for was that we all didn’t perish from trichinosis.
    I brought twenty steaks to the celebration the next day, and they were delicious. I had a wonderful time with my surrogate family.
    But I couldn’t help thinking about the implications of so much meat being consumed. The boar was dead, now a cow was dead. Perhaps hunting wasn’t something I was entirely comfortable with? Perhaps Primal Shatner wasn’t a fellow I wanted to be.
    So in the 1970s, like many people, I hitched a ride to vegetarian enlightenment. I became a strict herbivore. I swore off the meat stuff. In fact, I even became a bit of an anti-meat zealot.
    Vegetarian Times
magazine? I was on the cover in 1983.
    Bill celebrates vegetarianism, albeit briefly, in 1983.(
Courtesy of
Vegetarian Times)
    My interview with the magazine promoted a documentary I hosted and narrated called
The Vegetarian World
, which also featured Pulitzer Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer and actress Betty Buckley. In it, I espoused the virtues of such (then) exotic items as falafel and eggplant Parmesan, and solemnly declared, “Most major cities now feature several vegetarian restaurants.”
    And like everything I’ve ever done—you can watch it on YouTube.
    I could not bring the pig or the cow back, but I was going to make sure that they did not die in vain. With each Thanksgiving going forward, I would give thanks—for my enlightened sense of compassion toward all living things.
RULE: A Great Steak Trumps Good Intentions
    Yes, well, I fell off the vegetarian wagon not long after I made the documentary.
    Perhaps Primal Shatner will always be a part of Shatner. I no longer kill pigs for Thanksgiving, but after Elizabeth destroyed my turkey deep fryer, she bought me a very elaborate smoker and grill. I am now quite legendary around the Shatner household as an accomplished “pig butt smoker.” I’ve been called worse.
    Now my Thanksgivings are spent surrounded by loved ones, no longer alone, and thankful for a life well lived. But every year I raise a quiet toast of thanks to that mighty beast on San Clemente Island. He was a tough customer.
    Not as tough as Lee Van Cleef, though. That guy still spooks me.

CHAPTER 10
RULE: If Anyone Asks You to Star in a Movie Shot Entirely in Esperanto, Say “Kiam Kaj Kiel Multa?”
    T hat means “When, and how much?”
    Yes. I starred in a feature film shot entirely in Esperanto in 1965. It was called
Incubus,
and a rather enterprising man named Leslie Stevens directed it. And by “enterprising,” I mean he was a little
freneza
.
    That’s Esperantan for “crazy.”
    Esperanto was a language invented in the late 1880s by Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof, a man who spoke Russian, Yiddish, Polish, French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and English, and had probably been called “smarty-pants” in each tongue. Not content with knowing every language under the sun, he invented Esperanto as a universal language to be spoken by all the world’s peoples, believing that a common vocabulary would bring all the citizens of Earth together.
    Well, Leslie Stevens wanted to bring all the Esperanto-speaking citizens of the world together to see a horror film shot entirely in the language, and asked me to star in it. And what’s the most important of all the Shatner Rules? Even in Esperanto?
    Diri jes!
    Stevens created the 1960s science fiction anthology TV series
The Outer Limits.
And since it was a 1960s science fiction anthology series, I acted in it. I starred in an episode called “Cold Hands, Warm Heart,” in which I played an astronaut who returned from Venus with a malady that made him cold all the time. (Nowadays, that malady is traditionally called “Being a Senior Citizen.”)

    FUN FACTNER: In the 1964
Outer Limits
episode “Cold Hands, Warm Heart,” William Shatner’s character was involved in a mission called Project Vulcan. Isn’t that weird? It totally foreshadowed his work in . . . a 1964
Man from U.N.C.L.E.
episode called “The