Greetings and salutations Hivers. Today I thought we'd do another You Should Laugh More post.

Research has shown that laughter is good for us. It has all kinds of health benefits. Despite most of us knowing this, none of us laugh enough. Yeah, I know, being an adult is tough, and furthermore there is a lot of grim stuff happening in the world. These things may be true, but that just is all the more reason for trying to get a little laughter into our lives.

Today, I want to share some Shatner clips that may tickle you. We all love Shatner. His style of over-acting may have been common at one time, but it hasn't exactly aged well and is now completely associated with him, making him a prime target of comics and impersonators everywhere. This combined with his role as Captain Kirk thrust him into pop culture. For years he avoided being too associated with Kirk or comedy. He always redirected Trek questions, refused to talk about it, always was entirely serious (overly so) in interviews. He even went so far as to appear on SNL where he told all his fans to "Get a life".

However, rather than be upset with his rebuke, fans loved him all the more as a result. This event seemed to trigger a change in him and from that point, he completely embraced both the typecasting as Kirk and the comedy. He also started joining in the comedy and proceeded to mock himself on a regular basis.

Let's look at some.

Shatner vs Gorn, part II

Of all Kirk's ridiculous fights in Stat Trek, none were more over-the-top bad than vs the Gorn. People have made fun of this since the episode originally aired in 1967. And here, years later, Shatner joined them, and gave a sequel of sorts.

Oh, not again...

Shatner sings to George Lucas

Here's the crossover you never expected: Kirk singing to the creator of Star Wars. This speech both involves a knock at himself and his hair (or lack of), but also a funny spoof of Sinatra's My Way.

Airplane II

A few years before the SNL "Get a life" sketch, he appeared in Airplane II. The first Airplane was famous for taking entirely serious actors and throwing them into slapstick roles, and that's what they did with Shatner here. It worked even better at the time given his more serious image at the time. The writing of this second film wasn't even in the same league as the first (and ripped off most of the first movie's jokes), but Shatner's performance was still amusing enough.

I guess irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.

Loaded Weapon

He also appeared as the big baddie of Loaded Weapon, a movie that was a parody of Lethal Weapon. The movie was only so so, but had some funny bits. Shatner was completely over-the-top, but funny, and his performance saves the film.

Oh, James Doohan also made a cameo in the movie.

Ok, maybe that's enough, but we'll end with this roasting of Shatner by Betty White.

Ohhh my.

So what do you think? Did it make you laugh or was it just stupid? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.

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