5 Tangents Pursued By William Shatner During the $#*! My Dad Says Panel

After CBS exec Nina Tassler kicked off yesterday's press day by revealing that the $#*! My Dad Says pilot turned out less than optimal, critics were eager to get the show's cast onstage to ask them the hard questions (How do you make 140 characters last 30 minutes?). Fortunately for CBS though, critics did not get a chance to ask too many questions because star William Shatner was so... verbose. Herewith are five of the resulting tangents:

Twitter

"Is [the character limit] 148? No wonder they won't print my -- but I don't Twitter. I can't even remember my password name. So I have problems with electronics. So what I've done is I've hired a young man out of college -- whose very fingers are the extension of computer keys -- and he Twitters. He does the mechanics, but I very carefully modulate what I say and have used Twitter to publicize stuff, to have conversations, instigate competition. It's been an exploration in the immediate language of being short-termed and

pithy, and I have had a growing and glowing experience with Twitter."

The Dying Newspaper Medium

"You guys write for newspapers and magazines. They are disappearing because they are going to be printed electronically. There's a whole debate on whether the newspaper should exist or whether they just go on iPad. And I've got a subscription or a deal with The New York Times. It appears all the time on it. I get The New York Times on my iPad. It is a different era that has come upon us in the last five years, and I, for one, have ignored it until recently and then try to find some young people to explain it to me. You guys, everybody over the age of 25, your jobs are threatened by this electronic age, and you can't fight it. You have to join it. So does that mean you get your job writing for a service that sells itself electronically? I mean, that's a huge area."

The Evolution of Television and Paris

"I started in live television. I was there when the cameras were as big as this table, had internal fans that were whirring and tubes that -- because of the heat of the tubes and had to come as close as this for a close-up. I was there. And, now, there's -- we are talking about green screen and putting us in locations that we'll never visit. Unfortunately, we can't go to Paris. But we put us in Paris in this show and never leave the warmth of Warner Bros. It is beyond irony. It is trying to catch the tiger by the tail. It's a miracle, what has happened to us. The miracle is our inventiveness, and the tragedy of our lives is our

inventiveness. It's beyond irony. It's whatever term you guys can come up with."

Sh*t

"I wish [CBS] would call it 'sh*t' (clapping). What's wrong with --you know, you say to your -- I've got grandchildren. I brought up three girls. They've all got kids. Okay? And you say 'Boopy doo-doo, you've got to make poo-poo. Come on. Make poo-poo in the toilet.' Eventually, 'poo-poo' becomes 'sh*t.' 'Go take a sh*t, and you'll feel better.' You say that to your kids. The word 'sh*t' is around us. It isn't a terrible term. It's a natural function. Why are we pussyfooting?"

The Worst Thing That Ever Happened To His Father

"[My father] wasn't good with words. My dad was good with actions. The worst tragedy that befell him was he took me fishing at a country stream in the Laurentian Mountains, and he was after a bass that was in this river for 10 years. And one summer, standing on a rock here and a rock here, he hooks the fish, and my father falls into the river and loses the fish... And he never forgot it."