CHAPTER 22

RULE: If You Go to the Land Down Under, Thumb It!

I should say that I’m not talking about hitchhiking. Australia is in the middle of nowhere, and it also contains thousands of square miles of nowhere in the middle of it. You do not want to get stuck without a lift in the bush—with or without a cardboard TWO MCGILL STUDENTS sign. A random dingo will gladly eat your baby, you, and whatever spare family members might be hanging around. You’ll be down under, all right—six feet under!

RULE: Get the Australia Jokes out of the Way Early—Everyone’s Heard ’Em Already

Australia is a rough-and-tumble nation full of wonderful, rough-and-tumble people. Open, loving, friendly, beautiful people. An Australian production company pitched me the idea of a touring night of anecdotes and stories, I agreed, and soon visited the great country in the spring of 2011 with my one-man show, Kirk, Crane and Beyond: William Shatner Live. ($#*! My Dad Says was also very popular there, but I thought the title Kirk, Crane, and Other $#*! might be a little too rough-and-tumble for even Australia.) Elizabeth and I happily made the journey to the faraway land, albeit one that felt slightly longer than my hitchhike across America as a teenager.

Kirk, Crane and Beyond: William Shatner Live was a two-hour-long program that featured me, a moderator (usually a local television or radio personality), tons of film clips, audience questions, and questions from the Twitterverse. We did shows in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne, and then swung up to Auckland, New Zealand, to do a show there. In between, I also made it to a couple of Star Trek conventions. They are smaller than the American conventions, but people still come in costume. You can even hear Klingons sizing up one another’s weapons à la Crocodile Dundee:

“Here—that’s not a bat’leth. That’s a bat’leth!”

Of course, when I perform live nowadays, like I did with Kirk, Crane and Beyond, it’s not just jokes and anecdotes and questions answered. It’s also songs!

And what do you sing when you tour Australia? Well, I know AC/DC heralds from down under, and perhaps on the next trip I will treat the crowd to my cover of “Hell’s Bells,” but during this tour, I performed two Australian classics: “Down Under,” by Men at Work, and the unofficial national anthem, “Waltzing Matilda.”

“Waltzing Matilda,” in particular, was a real treat. It’s the tale of a man in the bush, making a cup of tea, who poaches a sheep for his supper. When the authorities come to arrest him, he drowns himself in a water hole, and then haunts it for all eternity. (Actually, given its darker themes, perhaps AC/DC should do a cover of that song themselves.)

We decided to do “Waltzing Matilda” on the last show of the tour. There was no rehearsal, just me, a music stand, and our musical director on piano. He played, I interpreted, and the crowd ate it up. I really played up the drama of the song, and got to wrap my melodious diction around the following Australian words:

 

Swagman

Billabong

Jumbuck

Coolibah

I have to say that “billabong” and “coolibah” were my favorites, and I really . . . took . . . my . . . time . . . with . . . them.

(NOTE TO THE AUSTRALIANS IN THE AUDIENCE: I hope I pronounced all of the above properly, and I hope none of these terms are actually Australian curse words. If so, I’m sorry for all the obscenity.)

As you might be able to tell from my last-minute interpretation of one of Australia’s most beloved songs about billabongs, there was a great deal of working “without a net” on Kirk, Crane and Beyond: William Shatner Live. Improvising and riffing in front of an audience is one of my favorite things to do, and after a season of performing comedy live in front of a studio audience on $#*! My Dad Says, it is something I’d grown to relish.

But when working without a net, you sometimes forget there’s a possibility that you might land on the hard concrete. Concrete soaking wet with fine, Australian beer. And it was at my Sydney show that I encountered an audience member who apparently thought Kirk, Crane and Beyond would be better after twelve or thirteen cans of Foster’s Lager.

During our Q&A segment, people would step up to a microphone and ask whatever was on their mind. But at one point, some guy in the crowd starts shouting, “I got a question! Me, I got a question!” I told him to quiet down and wait his turn, but nothing doing.

In all my comedic experiences, this was the first time I’ve ever been heckled.

What are the typical responses to a heckler? I know there’s always the reliable “Ahh, yes. I remember my first beer.” But this was Australia—most people there experience their first beer from a plastic bottle with a nipple on it. That razor-sharp retort wouldn’t work.

I’ve also heard, “I don’t go to your job and knock over the Slurpee machine.” Would Australians know what a Slurpee was? They know what a jumbuck is—they must have heard of a Slurpee.

Either way, before I could prepare a fittingly acerbic bon mot, he yelled out again, “I have a question!”

I yelled, “No, don’t do that. You paid too much money for you to be talking and me to be talking. Let me do the talking. Also, there’s a microphone. That’s where you ask the questions.”

RULE: When in Doubt, Go with the “Slurpee Machine” Comeback

Unfortunately, he stood up and began to lumber toward the mic. All six foot four inches of him. I was having Lee Van Cleef flashbacks. I was beginning to wonder if the organizers of a one-man show featuring an eighty-year-old actor had had the foresight to hire a security team.

He slurred, “My question is [unintelligible].”

Seriously. I couldn’t understand what this deranged character was saying. He could have been shouting “Billabong!” for all I knew. (And for the purposes of recounting this story, I’ll replace [unintelligible] with “billabong.”)

I figured there was no assuaging him. “So what’s your question?” I asked, hoping to keep him in the audience.

“Billabong,” he sputtered, stepping on the feet of all the people in his row as he made his way toward the aisle. I figured it was time to get stern, take command, and negotiate. Give the crowd a dose of Kirk and Crane.

“Why don’t you just sit back down and take it easy? Don’t come this way because now you’re being threatening.”

He wasn’t listening, and started walking down the aisle toward the stage. Kirk and Crane weren’t cutting it. Time to go with Hooker.

“Do not come up on my stage.”

Perhaps he’d never seen T.J. Hooker, because that’s just what he did. And he began to shuffle toward me. What if he has a gun? I thought to myself. Since he was Australian, I just assumed he already had a knife on him. How on Earth was I to defuse this situation?

Lose Crane, Hooker, and just go full-on fighting Kirk? Without all the stuntmen backing me up? I knew some judo from the old days, had some knowledge of jujitsu, trained briefly in Krav Maga. Which discipline should I use to handle this sodden Aussie? One? Two? All three?

Or perhaps I could employ the ancient marital art of Running Away?

I sensed then that the moderator had gotten up and faded back to obtain the services of a police officer. I was grateful, but also thinking that William Shatner should handle any crisis that emerges during a William Shatner one-man show. A constable was procured, however.

As the cop began to head over to my visitor, I said, “No, leave him alone; it’s okay,” just as Mr. Billabong reached me on stage.

Once more with the Hooker.

“Sit down!” I snapped. And he obediently sat down.

Very obedient. Perhaps his inability to articulate came from being part dog? I didn’t want to push my luck with “roll over,” but it was tempting.

I’m standing over him and I instantly know that this is the best place for me to be. I’ve got the superior position now. I’m the star of this show and I’m in control.

“Okay, what is it you want to know?” I snapped.

“Billabong,” he muttered.

“Speak clearly.”

He was soused, and his bloodshot eyes scanned the crowd. “Farkus? Farkus? What’s the question?” he yelled.

Farkus? I thought. Who was that? Did this guy bring a friend?

He obviously felt that clarity required a standing position, and he began to rise, grabbing my arm in the process. I could see the cop coming over now.

He was gripping my arm. This guy made contact with me. He crossed the line. It was time for . . .

The Thumb.

I don’t know where I got this self-defense technique from—it’s nothing Kirk ever employed—but I jabbed my thumb into his neck. Hard. Boom, he went down like a sack of swagmans.

“Stay down!” I ordered, keeping him—literally—under my thumb. He seemed surprised that I had detained him with only one digit, and sat there in his shock while the police officer came over and handcuffed him.

Handcuffs? Seems a little easy, don’t you think, copper?

RULE: Make Fun of Australian Police Officers Only after You’ve Left Australia

I did have some personal, intimate contact with locals during my trip that I did appreciate, however. It was during my stop in Auckland, New Zealand. The show was going to run just like the Australian shows—without the seven-minute-long standoff with a drunk and his buddy Farkus—but with the inclusion of a new song called “Welcome Home,” which I was to perform with Kiwi singer Dave Dobbyn and performer Whirimako Black.

Dobbyn is a very popular performer in his native New Zealand, and in 2002 he became an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his talent and contributions to the music world there. Whirimako Black is Maori and a popular singer who often performs in the traditional language over traditional melodies. She too, is a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit. The organizers of this show were clearly pulling out the heavy guns for my performance. It was a little intimidating.

Before the show, Dobbyn and Black came backstage to meet me and go over the song a bit. Ms. Black’s face was lined with the traditional ta moko Maori tattoo, an important and striking cultural symbol of the indigenous peoples. She had a request.

“Mr. Shatner. My mother loved you when she was alive. May I hug you for her? My mother would have loved to have held you.”

I was more than willing to oblige such a wonderful and meaningful request. Sure beats your average, run-of-the-mill “Can I have your autograph?”

And it was a long hug, a silent hug, and one that she was doing so that the spirit of her departed mother could experience it. People were in my dressing room, watching us, but they all receded far, far away into the background. The only thing I could hear was my breath, her breath, and perhaps the breath of her lost mother.

Soon, I began to cry, and so did she. By the end of our hug, I was sobbing.

“Welcome home,” indeed.

And if my drunken Australian friend is reading this—that’s how you handle a William Shatner meet and greet!