Shatner Rules

deal?
    Joel and Andrew, Eric and Grant, and Elizabeth and I loved the hockey game. So did the man seated next to us, who was weeping and biting on his Canadian flag when our team won in overtime against the USA. I had perhaps forever made an enemy of a Canadian Olympic official—and if he is reading this, I apologize—but I had negotiated myself the title of World’s Greatest Dad/Granddad/Husband/Hockey Fan.
    Am I proud of what I did? I’m prouder of other things I’ve done. But I do wish I had held out for more money with the whole kidney stones thing.
    By the way, at the eleventh hour, my grandkids tried to see if there was any possibility of revisiting my “money in their bank accounts” offer instead of the tickets.
    Let me tell you—those two will not soon forget the day they first encountered the Evil Negotiator.

CHAPTER 19
RULE: Know Which Conversations Require a Bullet-Proof Vest
    “T he greatest love in my life was my first squirrel.”
    Did I say this? No, although I have formed very strong bonds with several horses, many Dobermans, and the occasional orca.
    Is this the title of some self-help book, à la
Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
? Nope. This above statement was made on the set of my television show
Aftermath
, by one Mr. Bernhard Goetz.
    The greatest love of his life was a squirrel.
    With this statement, I learned that New York City’s “Subway Vigilante” had turned into New York’s foremost squirrel enthusiast. He lives with several of the creatures in his small apartment, and he has the scratches up and down his arms to prove it.
    I imagine squirrels are the only one of God’s creatures who are perfectly comfortable asking Bernhard Goetz for five dollars.
    Aftermath
is a show I host and executive produce for the Biography Channel, the same channel that airs my other talk show,
Raw Nerve
, which I also executive produce.
    (This means there’s another 22.5 hours of daily programming on Bio that I need to start filling. Thank goodness I’m a multi-tasker. For instance, I am typing this while on the set of
Aftermath
. Mary Kay Letourneau and her husband, Vili Fualaau, are staring at me. Might need to pick this chapter up later.)
    Okay, it’s later. Had a very nice conversation with the Fualaaus. Check your local listings.
    Aftermath
is an hour-long program that takes an in-depth look at what happens to people who are yanked from their anonymous, everyday lives and then dropped down hard onto the front pages of newspapers and tabloids. I sit down with these people, some forgotten, some not, and discuss with them how their lives have changed since their fifteen minutes of fame, or infamy.
    It is an amazing experience for me—professionally and personally. In my years on Earth, I have met presidents, the occasional religious leader, a spare royal or two. And in 2010, I found myself sitting within two feet of a man most famous for shooting four teenagers he thought were out to rob him.
    Bill and Bernhard Goetz discuss squirrels and guns on
Aftermath
in 2010. (
Courtesy of Paul Camuso
)
    Goetz’s life has certainly changed since that day on a crowded subway train in 1984. He’s no longer the cause célèbre of the citizens of a dangerous and crime-ridden New York. He’s not front-page news anymore. He buys and sells electronics on the Internet, and flies below the radar financially, so to speak, because of the massive civil judgment brought upon him by his brain-damaged victim, Darrell Cabey. But he’s still pretty quick with a gun.
    How do I know this? He pulled one on me.
    Halfway through our interview, Goetz was explaining how—after a brutal mugging in the early 1980s—he got hold of an illegal handgun and started practicing his quick draw. He would practice with the loaded weapon in his home, in his office, even in the elevators of his apartment building.
    I imagine many of his neighbors—when the doors of the elevators would open revealing an armed Bernhard Goetz—would stay put and say, “I’ll wait for the next one.”
    It was during the course of this discussion that one of my producers got the idea to give Goetz a gun and let him show me his quick-draw technique. While the producer hid somewhere behind the cameras, I imagine.
    We made certain the gun was empty, and after many, many hours of checking and rechecking the gun, Goetz made me stand up, not three feet away, and demonstrate what he did on the subway that day.
    Quick draw. Bang. Quick