Shatner is just fun...

I rarely come around to look up news about my favorite TV series movie series TV shows TV/movie universe, Star Trek - though in my heart I'll always be a big fan and also a proud supporter of TrekUnited. Today, I just remembered to check the Star Trek website once again - and stumbled over the fact (and an article) that Bill Shatner has his 76th birthday today.

I confess that I like the later Trek series (and the movies) better than the original ones because they were better thought through, with more love to details - but then the original series are just classics. Jim Kirk, Spock and Bones are fun, and those original stories of Gene Roddenberry founded it all. Gene had a great vision, good ideas, just much too little money, technology of the 1960s and no too big care for the small details. Anyways, to a big extent, it was Shatner, always portraying himself in some way, who made lots of those stories work, who gave Kirk his personality, and who brought lots of fun into those Science Fiction series.

And that's one characteristic of almost everything I ever saw or heard about Shatner: fun. No matter if he joked on fandom telling some Trekkies to "get a life", if he made the serious Starfleet captain still look like a human who can have fun (which was seemingly much harder for his successors), if he does projects like Invasion Iowa, or in any other appearances.
I found two clips recently that are worth viewing - and worth a laugh: a DIRECTV HD ad which is a Star Trek VI parody (and Shatner was hired specially to star on it) and Shatner's appearance to honor George Lucas, which is truly Shatner. Really crazy
Nowadays even Kirk advertising a 1980s Commodore computer is fun

Oh, and even J.J. Abrams has been talking to Shatner and Nimoy (who turns 76 himself in four days, btw) because of Star Trek XI (which will be about young Kirk and Spock) - if it was just to get info about the characters or about possible appearances? Even Shatner doesn't clearly tell...

Happy birthday, Bill Shatner - hope to see more fun stuff of you for some years to come!