Sir Patrick Stewart (1940 – 2026).

So a long time ago, in my college days, not too terribly long after Star Trek: The Next Generation came on the air, I shared a Shakespeare class at UC Santa Barbara with a couple of good fellows. One, named Ray, actually worked just down the street from the comic shop where I was employed, at a stationery store if I recall correctly. The other person was a friend of Ray’s, named Jebediah. Now, Jebediah was a very handsome gentleman, appearing at first glance to be straight-laced and all-business. However, he was prone to saying wild and usually hilarious things, usually at the wrong, or perhaps entirely right, time. Now I realize even as I’m typing this that what I’m about to mention is the very definition of a “you had to be there” moment, but I promise you, at least Ray and I, who knew Jeb, thought this was amusing. We were in the aforementioned class, watching a perhaps 1970s-ish video of Shakespearean actors demonstrating their performances of many of the Bard’s classic…