Shatner Rules

during dramatic pauses.
    MBB has become a guessing game for people late to my Twitter game. Folks in the Twitterverse sometimes wonder what it means. I have often considered mixing up my sign-offs, just to keep people guessing.
    WILLIAM SHATNER’S ALTERNATE TWITTER SIGN-OFFS
     
    TO!B = Tweet out! Bill
    BTUS = Beam
this
up, Scotty!
    IYNMIBOMH = If you need me, I’ll be on my horse
    LTEBGT = Love to everyone but George Takei
    W$#*!MDSOICU = Watch
$#*! My Dad Says
or I’ll cut you
    Oh yes, did I mention
$#*! My Dad Says
? Thirty years ago, I was on the cutting edge of the “wonder computer of the eighties,” and then I was on the first television show spun off from a Twitter feed.
    Justin Halpern, along with masterful comedy duo and
Will & Grace
creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, managed to turn 140 characters about Halpern’s cranky old father into a television show, and they asked me to star in it.

    FUN FACTNER: Many call the casting of William Shatner as an outspoken, opinionated old man “inspired.” Shatner’s children call it “typecasting.”
    I had never heard of the $#*! My Dad Says Twitter feed, and was barely able to figure out my own Twitter feed, and suddenly 10 million people a week were watching the show to see me as Dr. Edison “Ed” Milford Goodson III, a sharp-tongued, politically incorrect man who has his grown son move back home with him. It even won Favorite New TV Comedy at the People’s Choice Awards. That didn’t stop CBS from canceling it, unfortunately.
    Executives don’t know $#*!
    Bill says some shit on the set of
$h*!
My Dad Says
in 2011. (
Courtesy of Paul Camuso
)
    No matter how much at sea I am with technology, technology always throws its virtual arms around me. My relationship with technology is similar to Michael Corleone’s relationship with the Mob: Just when I think I’m out—they pull me back in! And Twitter keeps pulling me in to late night comedy!
    Some of you may remember my now famous late night television appearances on
The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien
, reading the tweets of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. When the fractured nature of the 140-character feed met the somewhat fractured musings of the Grizzly Momma, it occurred to Conan that they felt like poetry. Spoken-word Beat poetry.
    Take one Twitter feed, add one stand-up bass, one set of bongos (or is that two bongo?), and one William Shatner, and you have yourself some late night gold.
    Conan introduced me to the screaming crowd. I took my spot on a stool and read Sarah’s tweets—stone-faced, dry as a bone—while the cool jazz combo played behind me and Conan snapped his fingers.
     
    From sea life, near lush wet rain forests
    To energy, housed under frozen tundra, atop permafrost
    God most creatively displays his diversity in Alaska.
     
    Tourists from across America, here, loving their forty-ninth state
    I’m reminded one heart, one hope, one destiny, one flag
    From sea to . . . sea.
     
    Awesome Alaska night
    Sensing summer already winding down.
    With fireweed near full bloom
    Finally sitting down to pen
    Listening to Big & Rich.
    Somewhere, the ghost of Johnny Carson was mouthing, “What . . . the . . . fuck?”
    We were a hit. Here I was, a technophobe, making poetry and music from technology I could barely comprehend. I was so successful, in fact, that I found myself in Sarah Palin’s crosshairs. Her comedic crosshairs, mind you. Thankfully, not the “kill wolves from a helicopter” crosshairs.
    While I was making a return appearance on Conan, this time to read from her autobiography,
Going Rogue
, Palin walked onto the stage, grasping a copy of my autobiography
Up Till Now
under her arm. The jazz combo backed her as she read some portions of my book. She got her laughs, all right, and I had to stand there and take it!
    Needless to say, Sarah Palin is no William Shatner when it comes to droll Beat poetry. I say to her: Keep your day job! Whatever that is!
    Which brings me back to my Facebook crisis. There was no longer a me to protest me getting shut down. And I was getting nowhere online.
    Facebook gave me a telephone number, but all I got was a recording telling me to log on to Facebook, which I could no longer do. Eventually, when we did contact a human—via phone, not poking—I was told that they would need a scanned “government-issued ID” from me.
    Would you send a scanned driver’s license or birth certificate to a stranger at Facebook?