Well, he's done it again. Following up on his masterful performance on Monday night's "Tonight Show," William Shatner returned to Conan O'Brien's stage in Los Angeles to once again lambaste the words of former Alaska Governor and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. In Monday's segment, Shatner did dramatic readings of portions of Palin's jumbled farewell address. Last night, the "Star Trek" veteran and Emmy winner brought his best bohemian voice to Palin's Twitter. Like her speech, O'Brien assumed that Palin's tweets were simply poems in disguise.
On her exit, Palin promised that she would keep in touch with her fans and followers via the microblogging service, though she has yet to update her feed since exiting office. Still, her history of tweets provided plenty of fodder for Shatner and his accompanying bongo and bass players. "Tourists from across America/ Here loving their 49th state/ I'm reminded on heart, one hope, one destiny/ One flag from sea to sea," Shatner said, barely able to keep a straight face. In another, he intoned, "Awesome Alaska night/ Sensing summer already winding down/ With fireweed near full bloom/ Finally sitting down to pen/ Listening to Big and Rich." Palin's message isn't any clearer when delivered from the soothing throat of the original Captain Kirk, but it certainly becomes more entertaining.
In Conan O'Brien's still-nascent tenure on "The Tonight Show," Shatner has become something of a fixture and has taken part in some of the more memorable moments in the show's run. In addition to this week's dramatic poetry readings, he also sat down for an interview a few weeks ago where O'Brien chastised him for being unable to do the Vulcan peace sign (which earned the host a flip of the bird) and told a story about getting out of a speeding ticket while in his "Star Trek" costume.
It's no "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" or "Rocket Man," but William Shatner took to the airwaves on Monday night on "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" and turned former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's rambling, magnetic poetry-esque farewell speech into a soaring benediction in the way only a tireless pitchman/geek legend/part-time beat poet can.
Wrapping his velvet fog voice around such tortured pastoral blank verse as, "Denali, the great one, soaring under the midnight sun/ And then the extremes/ In the winter time it's the frozen road that is competing with the view of ice fogged frigid beauty/ The cold though/ Doesn't it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs," Shatner almost made the goodbye address make sense.
Gravely intoning, "And then in the summertime/ Such extreme summertime/ About a hundred and fifty degrees hotter than just some months ago/ Than just some months from now/ With fireweed blooming along the frost heaves and merciless rivers that are rushing and carving/ And reminding us that here, Mother Nature wins," the "Star Trek" veteran brought clarity to an otherwise cloudy last wave from the one-time Republican vice presidential nominee and possible future Rush Limbaugh running buddy.
After watching it several times, O'Brien said it finally dawned on him that the hard-to-follow media-takedown "was always meant to be a poem!”"Hence, he invited frequent guest Shatner out to read the speech in its entirety while backed by bongos and a stand-up bass player. What doesn't make sense about that liberal media?
Meghan McCain has always been one to speak her mind. While her dad was running for president, the 24-year-old daughter of Senator John McCain kept her own blog, McCainblogette.com, complete with personal anecdotes and behind-the-scenes photos.
On the day before her dad's major comeback victory in the New Hampshire primary, she told MTV News that she thinks Obama is "cute." She even told a GQ reporter about her affection for Marilyn Manson's ex-wife, burlesque star Dita Von Teese, and how a guy once dumped her when he found out who her father was.
But in an interview Tuesday morning on the Monday Morning Clacker, a blog written by a friend of hers, she refused to take the bait on her dad's running mate, Governor Sarah Palin.
"Sarah Palin is the only part of the campaign that I won't comment on publicly," Meghan says. Read more...
By now, you're probably aware that Bristol Palin, the 18-year-old daughter of former Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin, gave birth to a son over the weekend, a seven-pound, four-ounce bundle of joy rather majestically named Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston.
By naming her son Tripp, Bristol kept in line with the men of the Palin clan (her father is named Todd, and she's got brothers named Track and Trig), and while lil' Tripp's namesake can't match the sheer WTF-ness of, say, Bronx Mowgli Wentz, we're still big fans of the handle. After all, it not only recalls the windswept vistas of Alaska's north — and "American Psycho" author Bret Easton Ellis — but it also makes him sound like a character in "Dazed and Confused" ("Tripp Johnston ... Alright, alright, alright!"). Read more...
With Britney Spears' career seemingly on the upswing and li'l sis Jamie Lynn lying low while raising baby Maddie Briann, it's probably safe for their mother, Lynne Spears, to step forward and admit she was at least partly responsible for her daughters' tumultuous lives. If things hadn't turned out well, we wonder if she really would be taking the blame while out promoting her book, "Through the Storm: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World."
To be (sort of) fair, Lynne is hardly the only, or even the worst, celebrity mother of 2008. And she seems to be trying to make up for any neglect by telling England's Daily Mail she almost called the memoir "It's All My Fault." Let's take a look back at some of the other famous moms and dads who maybe shouldn't be writing parenting guides anytime soon. Read more...
"Something happens to me when I put on these glasses," Cvenic, a self-professed "quiet type," told MTV News. "I guess playing a different person makes it easier to be yourself and talk and be outgoing, because you have this mask."
But although her Palin impression has been getting raves from her classmates, Cvenic admits it's been difficult portraying the veep candidate. "I don't agree with just about anything she says," she said. "But it's good to see a different side of things. ... It's made me a stronger Obama supporter if anything." Read more...
In just over two weeks, one of the two men vying for our nation's highest office will be out of a job. One will get ready to move into the White House, and one will head home — or to one of his seven homes. Sure, the loser will still have a gig in the Senate, but with this year’s presidential campaign winding down, could either John McCain or Barack Obama — who hoisted verbal attacks at each other during the third and final debate Wednesday night — secure future work on the stand-up circuit? Last night, both candidates attended the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where they swapped punch lines about themselves and each other.
We're not so arrogant as to think that the McCain and Palin spend their downtime reading the Newsroom blog. We know they're busy and all. So, maybe they didn't read our story earlier this week about how '80s rockers Survivor weren't too happy about the campaign using their "Rocky III" song, "Eye of the Tiger," at rallies.
And maybe they missed the stories about the Foo Fighters, Van Halen, Heart and Jackson Browne complaining about the same thing. We're not saying an intervention is in order, but while five is troubling, six is definitely a sign of a problem.
The latest? Jersey icons Bon Jovi. Jon Bon Jovi told TMZ that the band was "surprised to hear that our song 'Who Says You Can't Go Home,' was used by the McCain campaign at rallies yesterday and today.
"We wrote this song as a thank you to those who have supported us over the past twenty-five years," JBJ continued. "The song has since become a banner for our home state of New Jersey and the defacto theme song for our partnerships around the country to build homes and rebuild communities. Although we were not asked, we do not approve of their use of 'Home.'
McCain certainly should have seen this one coming, what with the singer throwing a $30,800-a-plate dinner at his house for Obama last month.
What do you think of McCain's musical miscues? Does the campaign need to be more careful, or do these musicians need to lighten up?
We've more than exhausted our allotment of boxing metaphors to describe the presidential campaign. But here goes one more: Whoever is in charge of picking the music played at Republican candidate Senator John McCain's rallies is either punch-drunk or down for the count.
You'd think after getting smacked down by the Foo Fighters, John Mellencamp, Heart and Jackson Browne (who actually filed suit against McCain for using "Running on Empty" in an ad broadcast in Ohio) that someone, anyone, in the McCain camp would vet song choices at least as thoroughly as they vetted vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin (OK, maybe that's a bad example).
But in the latest song snafu, the guitarist for '80s rockers Survivor has asked the McCain/Palin campaign to stop using their "Rocky III" anthem "Eye of the Tiger" at events, according to a post on the band's official Web site. Read more...
For years, many of us at MTV News headquarters have been lamenting (OK, complaining ad nauseam) that the music community has been way too tame in protesting the sorry state of our world. Sure, acts like Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Green Day, the Dixie Chicks, Nas and Pearl Jam have released protest songs and said things from the stage that have either gotten them censored (Pearl Jam at the 2007 Lollapalooza), or, in the Chicks' case, hounded by their own fans.
But sometimes we wish we'd never said anything and instead just encouraged artists to stick to what they do best — making pretty songs and insisting we not look them in the eye when they pass us backstage. A few cases in point:
Madonna: The pop icon has been railing against Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain and his running mate almost nightly on her current Sticky & Sweet Tour.Read more...
By now, you're probably aware that Bristol Palin, the 18-year-old daughter of former Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin, 
By Sabrina Rojas Weiss
We're not so arrogant as to think that the McCain and Palin spend their downtime reading the Newsroom blog. We know they're busy and all. So, maybe they didn't read our story earlier this week about how '80s rockers 
We've more than exhausted our allotment of boxing metaphors to describe the presidential campaign. But here goes one more: Whoever is in charge of picking the music played at Republican candidate Senator 
For years, many of us at MTV News headquarters have been lamenting (OK, complaining ad nauseam) that the music community has been way too tame in protesting the sorry state of our world. Sure, acts like Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Green Day, the Dixie Chicks, Nas and Pearl Jam have released protest songs and said things from the stage that have either gotten them censored (Pearl Jam at the