Shatner Rules

Starship
Enterprise
when they were forced to wear the collars of obedience in the episode “The Gamesters of Triskelion.”
RULE:
TekWar
and
Kingdom of the Spiders
—While Esoteric—Sometimes Won’t Give You the Reference You Need
    Eventually, it became clear that this latest stone had no intention of going peacefully like its predecessor. It was not going to walk out of me with its hardened, crystallized hands in the air. The doctors were going to have to go in.
    We were going to go . . . where no man . . . should go . . . at all.
    The probe went up my urethra like Marlow trekking up the Congo to retrieve Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness
. (By the way, high school students, feel free to use this analogy in any paper you might be required to write on Conrad’s seminal work.
A
for originality!)
    And they produced from my insides a little black crystal, a diabolic diamond, an onyx of agony. Forged in the heat of my body, compressed in my mighty urethra.
RULE: In the Shatnerverse, Even the Surgical Procedure of Ureteroscopy Demands Dramatic Flourish!
    I could now put my kidney stone behind me, and return to a normal life.
    Oh, did I mention I’m William Shatner? A “normal life” is sometimes just out of my grasp, which I was reminded of when I got the phone call from GoldenPalace.com.
    Golden Palace is an online casino, run out of the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory near my beloved Montreal. When they aren’t separating Internet gambling addicts from their hard-earned money with online blackjack, the people at Golden Palace engage in all sorts of bizarre publicity stunts. They once purchased a ten-year-old grilled cheese sandwich with an image of the Virgin Mary burned into the toast for $28,000. Did they eat it? I mean, talk about Immaculate Indigestion.
    Golden Palace is the company that had their logo painted on Danny Bonaduce’s back when he participated in the reality show
Celebrity Boxing
. They are the company that sponsored the work of professional streaker Mark Roberts. (How much overhead does a streaker need to cover?) They even paid a woman $15,000 to get their logo tattooed on her forehead.
    They obviously wanted to class up their image a bit by getting into the business of William Shatner’s urethra. Golden Palace reached out to me with an offer of $25,000 for my kidney stone.
    The whole thing struck me as rather distasteful. And insulting.
    Only $25,000? I won’t get out of bed for that kind of money, and I certainly won’t lie down in a gurney with my feet in stirrups for it. My kidney stone was a precious and pure calcification of magic publicity. It was time to do what I do best:
    Negotiate!
    My counteroffer was $100,000. This was a genuine William Shatner kidney stone. It conceivably could have been the most famous kidney stone extracted in the world; $25,000 was a pittance for my pain and suffering. If I were to settle for such a paltry amount—forget GOLDEN PALACE ; they could tattoo SUCKER on my forehead.
    And not just
my
pain and suffering—there was Elizabeth’s suffering, the suffering of the
Boston Legal
crew, and the suffering of Candice Bergen to think about.

    FUN FACTNER: One of Candice Bergen’s first films was
The Sand Pebbles
, which was also my nickname for my kidney stones.
    Perhaps it was the mental duress imposed upon this five-time Emmy-winning actress that touched the hearts of the folks at Golden Palace, because they came around to offering $75,000 for my kidney stone. And since I had no plans to save the stone and press it into the pages of a scrapbook, or mount it onto a ring for my wife, I accepted the offer, and pledged to give the money to charity.
    And Golden Palace could do with the stone what they wanted. I’m sure it tasted better than a ten-year-old grilled cheese Virgin Mary relic.
    The
Boston Legal
family also kicked in an additional $25,000, and I donated the money to Habitat for Humanity. Such is the power of saying “yes!” (Seriously, remember that rule the next time an online casino wants to pay you for your kidney stones. You’ll thank me.)
    Habitat for Humanity is an international nonprofit organization devoted to building homes for the people without the means to buy one. They are located in Atlanta, Georgia, and in 2006, they were busy helping rebuild after the carnage of Katrina. Our $100,000 was used to build a home in Louisiana for a family who had been displaced by the storm. My kidney stone, more viable than Freddie