What a wonderful treat this one was. And what a wonderful actor and human being Leonard Nimoy is. This being his last Las Vegas Star trek Convention for reasons he only knows and we as fans should respect and not speculate was one of those magical moments that I wished I would have been there in person.
The show started with an film intro of Leonard Nimoy in a bath robe in a comical theatric short music video set to the music by Bruno Mars “The Lazy Song”(Video embedded below). Actually its the official alternate song if you want to get technical in which Leonard Nimoy goes about his life in his robe without a care in the world and looking more like Walter Matthau in the old Odd Couple movie then what we think of when we think of Leonard Nimoy. A great humorous way to start the event and a great way to let people know that he has a lighter side.

Bruno Mars Video starring Leonard Nimoy

He received a thunderous ovation when his name was announced as he walked on stage to the music of Star Trek the Motion Picture. He opens by saying . “How did I get involved with Bruno Mars ? “ Long story short his stepson Aaron Bay-Schuck, the Atlantic Records executive who signed Bruno Mars to the label asked him to do a cameo. Leonard went on to say “The next thing I knew I was in whole damn thing”.
He then turned to his life . How his parents were Russian immigrants at the turn of the 19th/ 20th century . He joked about how his parents were aliens (from Russia) “went to Boston and became citizens , I was born in Boston a citizen and went to Hollywood and became an alien”.

Changing the subject  for a brief moment and stating Star Trek started in 1966 and from that point on his life got crazy. And by the sound of it it did.  He reminisced  on stories of how he left his phone number public and fans usually called him , how they would wait at the studio and follow him home tearing up pieces of his shrubbery for mementos, his experience at an autograph sining in Brooklyn where the fire dept. had to be called to take him out over the roof top and down a ladder , and one of the funnier of the stories is how 2 female fans tracked him down in a hotel in Billings Montana and called him.
He then went on to tell the story on how he got into acting . When he started and all the ups and downs in between. One of the more pivotal moments in his early career is when he started to do adult theater and on the curtain was a saying from Alexander Pope which read “Act well your part, there all the honor lies” . That he says struck him. The words honor he took to heart and he took that very seriously.
Almost everything he said was interesting and would be way to much for me to write down . And if I did I can assure you I would lose all the feel and the emotion of them. Mr Nimoy is by far a professional narrator and teller of stories and to repeat in print what the man says in words would do the them an injustice. This is where if  I were allowed to use some voice/sound clips of the event rather then jot them down I would love it.  it would sure make this blog go a lot smoother. But I will try my best to highlight some segments as the best I could and try to keep the them short so they are interesting.

The stories that stood out the most was his time as an actor from his beginnings to now. The showed his career arc that started with him staring in his first movie Zombies of the Stratosphere
in which he said “that great experience was followed by another great movie called Attack of the Brain Eaters”. This was his way of saying that his career started off to a bumpy start to say the least and how he had to do odd jobs like fish tank cleaning and such to live.

Years later after serving the US Army for two years he got a job as a taxi driver in LA while still pursuing his craft. It was here that he met the Senator of Massachusetts Ted Kennedy. It was there that the Senator gave him some advice that kept him going ”There’s always room for one more good one”. Something I think we all should keep in mind when we think of giving up. His career soon started move where he stared in numerous projects and in those days westerns was the big thing. A few years later Gene Roddenberry sold Star Trek on the idea of “wagon train to the stars” and scifi became the big thing. There was great poster that Nemoy put up on the big screen of William Shatner, Himself , DeForest Kelly, and James Doohan all in their previous western roles with a caption on top that read Star Trek Goes West.

Then came the storie of when “Live Long and Prosper” was spoken for the very first time in a an episode called Amok Time from the origional Star Trek series. The story and I bet in years to come will be known as the legend (if not already) of the creation of that particular Vulcan greeting. It starts By Leonard Nemoy walking up to the director and saying,
“I think we should have something special tht Vulcans do when they greet eachother . The director said “What do you mean” ?  Nimoy said , “Well humans shake hands , military people salute eachother, and Asian peole bow to eachother . We should have something that Vulcans do. ” So he said “What would you like to do ? ” So he reached back into his Jewish heritage and he remember an experience he had when he was 8 or 9 years old. The first time he saw it happen he was in a Synigague with his family and at a certain point in the service it came to where the blessing was done. Its is a service that is done in both the New and Old testiments . Nemoy continued discribing the service and some details then went on to say how in this service men that covered their heads with thier prayer showels of somekind would chant and at the same time their arms would be extended and they would be holing their hands out and giving what we know more commonly because of the series as the Vulcan greating. And that in a nutshell is how the greeting came to be.

There was so so so much more that I would love to write about but it would be to long . The show ended with him tearfully announcing that this was the last show he would be doing and bowing to the audience as they errupted in aplause. A fitting salute to a great actor . He indeed has done honor to his craft. If you are a fan and are interested in seeing this presentation please go to TVOOP . It is a pay to view feature of  7 dollars but its worth it.

Some notes of interest he mentioned a couple of websites . One that has to deal with his passion for photography.
leonardnimoyphotography.com
The other is one is from company he formed with John De Lancie where they read classic sic fi stories called Alien Voices which by the way are now available for downloading at
http://alienvoices.net/