Shatner's dirty old man act started when he used hand gestures to demonstrate how he has to pee in the woods, hand gestures that sort of insinuated he's packing a big dong. Then he moved on to a story about seeing a pretty girl on a train, a pretty girl he remembers so fondly that he moved his hand back and forth in front of his crotch in a masturbatory motion for emphasis. And then at the end of the interview Shatner, playfully agitated at Conan making fun of him for his inability to make the Vulcan "live long and prosper" salute, gave Conan the finger and the whole place just erupted.

All told, the entire segment is amazing. Definitely the most memorable moment to come out of the new Tonight Show so far, and something that may be remembered for a long time to come.

Video via The Tonight Show/NBC

But now that Shatner has a real show—Raw Nerve, on the Biography Channel—his bluster has been turned up a notch, as he insists former Star Trek co-star and snub-happy Gay Bridezilla George Takei needs to be "vetted" before being invited onto his show. Does Takei even want to be on his show? Apparently he does! Could someone bring in Christian Bale to smack the last wheezes of this never-ending cutesy feud out of both of them? ("Ohhhh gooood!!! Dah dah dah dah I didn't get invited to the gay wedd—SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU LITTLE PRICKS! IT'S FUCKING DISTRACTING!!") [YouTube]

We can't be sure if Shatner's professed annoyance with his onetime co-star stems more from his recent accusations on Entertainment Tonight or simply that ET syndicated Takei's grievance while Shatner's crack psychoanalysis episodes wither on YouTube, but in any case, there can be no mistaking the tentative olive branch extended herein. We hope Takei accepts and that together, they may reach the final frontier of detente. Or at least that Shatner can just get a copy of Takei's wedding video and call it good. [YouTube]

• George Takei Calls William Shatner's YouTube Rant 'Silliness' [ET]

While he enters the conversation with almost Vulcan-like logic (his former Star Trek co-star, whom he "barely knows" but desperately wishes he could have tossed fistfuls of rice at, suffers from acute psychosis-induced jealousy), things quickly start to devolve around the two-minute mark. It's at that point that Shatner begins to drift off to the outer realms, where not even the most up-to-date Universal Translators would be able to untangle his meandering theories on what might have been eating at the bridge's furtively Redshirt-lusting lieutenant all these years.

• Shatner on Sulu Wedding Snub [YouTube]

• William Shatner Responds to Star Trek Director JJ Abrams [YouTube]

The monologue, by guest host and Olympic swimming champ Michael Phelps, was to have been built around Obama and would have included an additional cameo by action star Chuck Norris. But Norris, too, canceled because of the hurricane, and William Shatner was enlisted as his replacement. Shatner was already en route from Los Angeles via chartered airplane when Obama dropped out; the monologue was reworked so that it would still include a Shatner cameo.

"It was great of him to do it," Michaels said of Shatner. Michaels said Obama was to have returned briefly for a second appearance, during the "Weekend Update" segment, but that was obviously scuttled, too.

..."His people called and said they felt they had to shut it down because of the storm," meaning Hurricane Ike, Michaels said yesterday by phone from New York. "I pleaded with them to wait and make the decision on Saturday morning, but they felt they had to do it then. There was a sensitivity to how it would be perceived — whether he would be criticized for doing it while disaster struck."

Did he make the right decision? "It was certainly the wrong decision for me," Michaels said. "Do I think there's an oversensitivity in this area? Yes." But Michaels said he would be happy to have Obama appear on a future show, provided a good sketch can be devised. "It was an enormous disappointment," Michaels said, "but they were very pleasant about it — 'Please have us back again' and all that."

Michaels went on to reply, "Oh, we will — and can you bring your wife? We kind of need her!" No word yet on whether Obama will reschedule or whether Fey will be lured back for repeat performances, but at least one thing is known: Palin herself watched the skit while on her campaign plane. Her spokesperson Tracey Schmidt said she found the sketch "quite funny" (though McCain surrogate Carly Fiorina begged to differ), adding that Palin once dressed up as Fey for Halloween. Meta madness!

• Fey-as-Palin Wins the Early Vote On 'SNL' [Washington Post]

They were working out in a running club and he couldn't take his eyes off Altman, who had a "lean, tightly muscled" body, the 71-year-old actor told AP Radio in an interview.

Takei said he asked Altman to help him train for a marathon, they fell in love, and now they've been living together for 21 years.

Altman said he proposed by getting down on one knee in their kitchen while Takei was eating a sandwich after seeing on TV that the California Supreme Court had legalized same-sex marriage. It surprised Takei, who thought he would be the one who popped the question.

They bought each other turquoise and silver wedding rings.

Takei and Altman plan to marry Sept. 14 in the Democracy Forum at the Japanese National Museum in Los Angeles.

Walter Koenig, who played Chekov in "Star Trek," will be the best man and Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura, will be the matron of honor. Castmate Leonard Nimoy will be among the 200 guests, but probably not William Shatner. Takei has said Shatner didn't treat him and most of the cast very well.

As happy as this news is, it saddens us that Shatner can't drum up for his co-star's wedding the same kinds of enthusiasm he musters for his heterosexual pursuits, and boldly join Takei on his journey to where no man-loving-man (who doesn't hail from Massachusetts and certain Benolux countries) has gone before.

• George Takei and Partner Plan to Wed in September [ABCNews.com/AP]

OK, just two more things really. LOL on the nips:

And LOL on the acne:

"How could you not put one of the founding figures into a movie that was being resurrected? That doesn't make good business sense to me!" Shatner said at a signing for his book, "Star Trek Academy: Collision Course" in Hollywood.

Director JJ Abrams has offered Leonard Nimoy and several past cast members the chance to make a cameo in the sci-fi spectacle.

Shatner told "Extra" that he would have been great for the film, insisting, "I've become even more popular than I was playing Captain Kirk. I'm good box office and I get publicity....But, they are going in a different direction and it'll be a wonderful film."

Even though it seemed that Shatner's grudging endorsement of the new film's "different direction" indicated that the actor was making slow progress towards accepting his confounding rejection, the inscription the Extra reporter found inside the copy of the book he pressed into her hands belied any such breakthrough: "To Whom It May Concern: Please, if you have any way of contacting J.J. Abrams, the man who's stopped taking my hourly calls, let him know that if he doesn't change his mind about putting me in his goddamn movie, any blood spilled will be on his hands. Wouldn't it be easier to give me a tiny walk-on part than to show up on the set one day and find me on the Enterprise bridge, clutching the still-smoking 'phaser'—haha—I used to pick off the the punk I found sitting in my captain's chair? Something to think about. Love, James T. Kirk."

• William Shatner on Being Left Out of 'Star Trek' Film: 'It Doesn't Make Sense' [Extra]
• Previously: Shunned By 'Trek,' William Shatner Not Without Craigslist-Based Options [Defamer]

Dear Mr. William Shatner,

The Enterprise may no longer want you... but a new enterprise does! We'd like to beam you up for a cameo role in FRATERNITY ESCORTS, a new raunchy college comedy about a group of Animal House-esque misfits who learn to turn tricks for wealthy Beverly Hills women in the hopes of raising forty grand needed to avoid eviction.

The part you'd be playing is tailor-made for you seeing as the character is in fact named... well, William Shatner! In the third act climax (ignore the pun), you discover that your real life wife, Elizabeth Anderson Martin, has been sleeping with one of our young fraternity brothers. (Don't worry, it's only a movie!) As a result, you end up in a high-speed car chase alongside buddies Ozzy Osbourne and David Hasselhoff (provided he remarries by the time cameras roll or isn't stuck in a rehab center in Utah somewhere), whose wives have also surrendered to the fraternity's allure. Although it might not sound like it, FRATERNITY ESCORTS is a comedy with plenty of heart. [...]

Sincerely,
The Phi Kappa Escorts

We found no similar Craigslist appeal for Osbourne or Hasselhoff, presumably because both instantly signed on to the project after hearing the compelling pitch from the Phi Kappa brothers themselves on the Scream Fest red carpet and behind a Vegas Strip Baja Fresh, respectively. Still, it might take more than a cool-sounding plot and the promise of unlimited craft services floorburgers and heroin-filled donuts to lure a talent on the level of Shatner, who may only agree to star if the role is rewritten to feature Kirk himself as the cuckolded fogey who eventually learns to wholeheartedly embrace kegstand culture.

• William Shatner [Craigslist]

"I couldn't believe it. I'm not in the movie at all. Leonard [Nimoy], God bless his heart, is in, but not me," Shatner, 76, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "I thought, what a decision to make, since it obviously is a decision not to make use of the popularity I have to ensure the movie has good box office. It didn't seem to be a wise business decision." [...]

[Director J.J.] Abrams said Shatner probably would have a part in the film, which is due in theaters in December 2008. But while Shatner said he had a couple of meetings with Abrams, nothing came of it.

Since none of us were privy to said meetings, it's tough to ascertain what part of the always-delicate script-development and casting process wouldn't allow for the inclusion of the iconic Starfleet Admiral. Perhaps it was Shatner's own pitch that Abrams had trouble with, in which a mysterious wormhole brings Kirk back from the dead, upon which he and newly hot communications officer Uhura (played by the fetching Zoe Saldana) embark upon a torrid, shipboard affair. The clincher, of course, would be the marketing campaign capitalizing on the actor's massive box office appeal, blanketing every available surface in the two-word tagline: "Shat Trek."

• Shatner: How come I'm not in new 'Star Trek'? [cnn.com]

Backstage at the after-party, a drunken Dick groped an appalled [NY Post reporter Mandy] Stadtmiller, tried to kiss her, proclaimed his love for her and finally bit her hand.

"Baby please," Dick repeated six times. "Put in something nice," he said after urinating in front of the horrified journalist in his dressing room and offering her cocaine.

"They're so mean," he ranted. "I'm not weird. Maybe I'm a little weird, they make me out to be a monster, I'm not a monster . . . I just want to have fun, baby please."

Dick, who performed his roast routine dressed in full Trekkie regalia, said that he downed two vodka cranberries to give him the courage to talk to fellow roaster Fawcett - of whom he said, "I'm going to [bleep] the [bleep] out of. Put that in Page 6, 7 and 8, that's how big my [bleep] is."

Explaining to Stadtmiller why he urinated in front of her, Dick said, "You know why I don't close the door? Because then people think I'm doing drugs, and I want you to know I'm just normal."

And why did Dick go on his licking spree? "I was doing it because I was desperately trying to tie the show together like a fisherman with tuna, and you're a little piece of fresh tuna," Dick told Stadtmiller. "But thanks for asking. Do you want me to lick your face now?

No, Stadtmiller said - "but he can pay for that tetanus shot," she told us. Dick's camp had no comment.

At this point in Andy Dick's unparalleled career of intoxicated/narcotized/sexually crazed public shenanigans, it would probably take the comedian crashing the Oscars while on mescaline, slathering his entire body in chunky peanut butter, and stabbing Meryl Streep to death with platinum corn-on-the-cob holders (yes, it would be a very slow death from a thousand tiny puncture wounds) to truly shock us. Dick, however, seems unconcerned with elevating his craft to the next level, content to cover the same drunk, inappropriately urinating, face-licking ground. A truly tragic waste of a singular talent.

• COMIC'S WORST GROSS-OUT EVER [Page Six]
• Andy Dick Is Not Ashamed Of His Feelings For Bar Fights [Defamer]

William Shatner knows how hard it is to become a bona-fide science fiction star. That's why he's making it a little bit easier for the next generation of would-be Captain Kirks. William Shatner announced today that he is holding an on-line contest to find the most talented sci-fi personality in the United States. [...]

Unlike hit TV shows American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance, which focus on contestants that have one particular kind of talent, William Shatner encourages a much broader range of applicants. Aspiring actors can submit a tape of themselves re-enacting a memorable sci-fi role or performing something new. Young directors and film makers can create a sci-fi short or a brief homage to Bill's career that demonstrates why they should win. Budding film critics can showcase their insight in a taped movie review.

The grand prize winner will receive a large cash award and will be named the Official Spokesperson for the William Shatner Science Fiction DVD Club.

Clicking through to the contest website reveals the "large cash award" to be $1000, which, in light of the recent gains in strength of the Intergalactic Currency Unit, seems a little meager to us. That's to say nothing of the fact that the winner will be signing themselves over to Shatner's employ, and could be called upon at any moment to fulfill their "Official DVD Club Spokesperson" duties. Still, we'd hate to discourage any budding, uh, "sci-fi personalities" from entering the contest, especially after having checked out the caliber of the submissions thusfar.

SCI-FI VIDEO BONUS: We saw nothing in the release about nominating procedures, but we'd like to submit Darth Vader being a smartass nevertheless.

• William Shatner wants you to be the spokesperson for his Sci-Fi DVD Club! [shatner.blip.tv]

I'm told J.J. Abrams is very interested in casting the Oscar-winning [Matt] Damon as a young Captain Kirk in the upcoming 'Star Trek' movie that he's directing and producing. He's so interested that he's apparently already sought support from the original Kirk, William Shataner. "Shatner gave his blessing," my source says. "J.J. got his approval." Damon first popped up in Trekkie circles as soon as the Abrams-'Star Trek' deal was announced. Rumor had it that the new movie would center on Kirk and Spock's early days at a space academy. "J.J. wants Damon as Capt. Kirk," my source reports. "He really loves the idea."

Possessing the quiet charisma and stately authority required to shout orders from the Captain's chair, Damon seems a good choice for Kirk. We must now hold our breaths until Abrams' pick for a young Spock is announced. Seeing the role as the perfect comeback/reunion vehicle, Ben Affleck has been begging wife and Abrams' former Alias muse Jennifer Garner to bring him over to J.J.'s house to show off his homemade, papier-mache pointy ears and demonstrate his mastery of the Vulcan neck pinch.

• Will MATT DAMON get beamed up? [the Insider]

• [William Shatner DVD Club]