William Shatner

By Joel Stein

William Shatner, Captain Kirk on Star Trek, sings on TV for priceline.com

Q. Have you made more on priceline stock or on 30 years of milking suckers for everything they're worth at Star Trek conventions?

A. When priceline asked me how much it would cost them to do their commercials, I named my own price.

Q. Do you even know what a good price for Cheerios is?

A. $1.25 is a good price for a very large box of cereal.

Q. Not even close. You starred in the only movie ever made in Esperanto. Can you say bad career move in Esperanto?

A. Malo carrero.

Q. There's a Shatner building at McGill University. What gets taught there?

A. How to get laid without much trouble. That's what happens in the student union.

Q. When you were doing T.J. Hooker, could you tell that Nicole Eggert had what it took to be a Baywatch babe?

A. I could tell because of the see-through dresses that she was well on her way.

Q. Could you tell that Heather Locklear was going to be a much bigger star than Heather Thomas?

A. She told me she was going to be a huge star.

Q. When you first get a line of dialogue, how do you decide which words to stress? Dice? Darts?

A. It's done with a stress meter. You read the line to a stress meter, and when the arc of the line is at its highest point, you know that is the word to emphasize.

Q. What other songs will you do?

A. Madonna. And a little Esther Williams: emerge from a pool, dripping water from a clinging bathing suit.

Q. She did one of these Q&As. She can talk dirty.

A. Maybe she gets off talking dirty, and I bet you get off hearing her, huh, Joel? Secretly?

Q. There's no secret there.

--By Joel Stein