William Shatner Celebrates 95th Birthday, Smokes Cigar, Revisits 'Rocket Man' and Tests X Money

It was 60 years ago when William Shatner — born in 1931 — portrayed Captain Kirk in the TV series Star Trek. Shatner turns 95 today — and celebrated by posting a picture of himself smoking a cigar.

"At 95, I'm still smokin'!" Shatner joked, adding that in life he'd learned two things. "Never waste a good cigar. Never trust anyone who says you should 'act your age.'"

For more celebrations, Paramount's free/ad-supported streaming platform Pluto TV announced a "Trek TV takeover birthday celebration" that will run through April 3rd, according to TrekMovie.com, with marathon of Star Trek movies and TV shows — and even that time he was roasted on Comedy Central. ("Freeâ½ My favorite price!" Shatner quipped on X.com.)

Shatner still remains a popular celebrity, even travelling to space five years ago on a Blue Origin flight past the Kármán line. Since then he's led a cruise to Antarctica — and even performed an alternate take of Captain Kirk's final scene on the Jimmy Fallon show.

And this week Shatner (along with hundreds of thousands attendees) appeared at Orlando's MegaCon — and shared stories about his life with Orlando Weekly:

Shatner: Last month, I was on board a cruise ship, and they said the only thing I had to do over the next three days, "before we let you go home," is sing "Rocket Man." So I thought, "I'm not going to sing 'Rocket Man' the same way that what's-his-name did. ... So, I looked at the song very carefully to see if I could find what actors call a throughline. What is the character signing? What is he signing about? And so I look through all of these weird lyrics, and all of a sudden, the word sticks out to me: "alone." So I say to the band members, "OK, let's make this song about being alone in space." And I work on it with the band and the musicians, and again on a Saturday night, I perform the number, and 4,000 people stand up and applaud "Rocket Man." And they won't let me off the stage, again and again. Four times, I get a standing ovation, wild.

And that's the progression for me, of science fiction for me, as exemplified by this song. The song went from superficial to something of depth and meaning... It touched people enough for them to stand up and applaud, and I realized that is the story of science fiction... Science fiction with all its great technology has evolved into great storytelling that reaches people in a manner that is very difficult for other types of drama to do.

Shatner answered questions from Slashdot readers in 2002 ("My life is my statement...") and again in 2011. ("I used to try to assemble computers way back when and they came out looking like a skateboard...")

And judging by his X.com posts, Shatner is now involved in early testing of the site's upcoming digital payment system X Money.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.