The truth is it’s just okay. Shatner is much funnier when he thinks he’s being serious, which is most of the time. [update, Of course, these days he doesn’t normally think he’s serious; Noah mentions Iron Chef down in Comments.] Here he knows he’s doing a joke and he has the typical overemphasis of a celebrity being a sport. Also, the bongos and upright bass aren’t the killing comedy touches they might have been in 1983. The Beatniks have taken a lot of licks by now.
And the extract is the nature stuff only, no “So, how ’bout in honor of the American soldier, ya quit makin’ things up.” When I first heard about the skit, I thought for sure they’d do “teeny tiny delicate starlets” and “perpetuating some pessimism and suggesting American apologetics” and other cases of assonance and consonance leading the ex-Gov along like a mad horse dragging a 10-year-old.
But anyway, the clip is here.
I think Shatner is usually in on the joke, actually. "Mr. Tambourine Man" is a goof, for example, I'm pretty sure. His hosting of the American Iron Chef, which was clearly tongue in cheek, was pretty spectacular.
I think the real problem is that…he's getting kind of old. He seemed to be stumbling, and he didn't have the kind of energy and punch he had in his younger days. Time will take you on, as the man said.
"I think Shatner is usually in on the joke, actually. 'Mr. Tambourine Man' is a goof, for example"
It wasn't, he meant it seriously. But true about Iron Chef.
Shatner talks a bit in his (ghosted) autobio Up Till Now about how he never knows he's going to be a joke when he does one of his really over-the-top, insane displays; he cited The Transformed Man (which includes "Tambourine Man") and his "Rocket Man" performance. He really thought they would be good.
But in the '80s the "Shatman" phase of his career began. He discovered he had an audience that loved it when he played the fool. Hence Iron Chef and so on.
The Palin reading was very Shatman; a real Shatner display would be him trying to do a stand-up comedy routine about Capt Kirk doing a stand-up comedy routine, and then being surprised because the audience didn't have a clue what he was up to (which happened a couple years back and is also cited in Up Till Now).
I apologize for analyzing William Shatner's career. That's the kind of thing that gets geeks slapped.
But the "Priceline" stuff is pure Shatman right? And funny too.
I know this isn't really related to your post, but this is the problem with the new Trek movie….while the Chekhov, Scotty, and McCoy actors are all amazingly good, the Spock and Kirk just can't be Spock and Kirk without being Nimoy and Shatner. Shatner is Kirk and vice versa. It's the borderline self-parody that makes Kirk enjoyable.
Geek-slap me too
"the Chekhov, Scotty, and McCoy actors are all amazingly good,"
Now there's a switch. Though, to be fair, Doohan really was talented.