Laughing Matters: The One About Star Trek

By Ryan G. Van Cleave |  Illustrations by Darcy Kelly-Laviolette

Star Trek fans, set your phasers on “stunningly awesome,” because I’m about to blow your collective Borg minds here.

En route to see my folks who live in the Chicago suburbs before the world became one giant plaguefest, I had to kill some time at O’Hare International. I wandered from Burrito Beach to Romano’s Macaroni Grill to B Smooth to find something to nibble—I hadn’t done more to assuage my hunger than eat half of a stale Pop-Tart that morning—and I came across Wicker Park Seafood & Sushi Bar. There at the far left table? Patrick Stewart gnoshing on Maguro sashimi.

I steeled myself. I steadied my nerves. I approached this world-class actor as casually as possible and as cool as a Japanese cucumber, I said…“Is the Tarabakani here as good as Yelp claims?”

Turns out the Tarabakani (king crab leg) sushi was simply “okey-dokey,” and, equally disconcerting, the guy I was talking too wasn’t actually Patrick Stewart, but a Montana-born ex-cowboy named Ben who occasionally got work as a look-a-like when he wasn’t selling veterinary pharmaceuticals. He didn’t mind the case of mistaken identity, though, and even offered me a Tokyo Typhoon cocktail as an apology, which I naturally had to accept, since—as you already know—I’m a sucker for sake, orange juice, and weather phenomena with sustained winds of 82+ miles per hour.

It turns out we had a lot in common. He’d been to every single state in the US save Alaska. Me? I’d seen maps that include every state. He once had a wart that looked like Mr. T. I’d seen three episodes of “The A-Team,” starring Mr. T. He told me he, as a rule, never talks to strangers in airport restaurants. I assured him that I abided the exact same rule without exception.

After about twenty minutes of general chit-chattery, I brought things back around to his off-and-on again Patrick Stewart career. Then he came clean—he’d never seen an episode of Star Trek. 

“Not a one?” I asked, my eyebrows going so high that the control tower radar might’ve had an odd alert. 

“I think I saw about five minutes of one of the movies in a hotel room once, maybe on HBO?”

Ben didn’t much like TV, but he did appreciate “The Walking Dead.” “All those zombies lumbering around,” he said through a mouthful of caterpillar roll. “They’re hilarious.”

“You know that’s a horror show and not a comedy series, right?”

He cut me a look. “That’s what makes it all so funny!”

I thanked him for the drink and conversation, and we parted as friends, exchanging business cards the way people do—knowing full well the card will end up in a trash bin once the other person’s out of sight. But it’s polite, and that’s the real point here.

I headed for the baggage claim area to get into the SUV piloted by my 80-something-year-old father who, upon hearing my tales of recent woe as I loaded in my luggage, declared he wasn’t into “Start Trek” either. He didn’t even get it when he put on his blinkers, checked for traffic, and I yelled “Engage!”

What can I say? I’m just a humor columnist who thinks Star Trek was the best show ever because it had great Genes.

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Have your own Star Trek horror story? Ever run across a non-celebrity sighting that didn’t quite go the way you hoped? Did you ever wish you were the one who created this joke (“Did you hear the about the new sushi place that caters exclusively to lawyers? It’s called “Sosumi!”)?

If you’re as traumatized by your own Star Trek- and sushi-related incidents as I am about mine, then it’s best that you reach out to me immediately at DilithiumCrystalsForever@SarasotaScene.com. I think I’ve got Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s business card around here somewhere, and if you really want his digits, I’ll “make it so.” In the meantime, I’ll keep flipping open my cell phone periodically and checking for communiques from Scotty.