The NY Times the other day ran a huge feature on Trekkies (like Scott Veazies here) who’ve taken to building replicas of Captain Kirk’s chair (or buying ready-made versions for $2700) for their living rooms.

Veazie, 27, was not yet born when that show first went on the air in the 1960s; even his parents were only teenagers.  But Mr. Veazie, who watched endless reruns of the original series with his mother in the 1980s, was never drawn to later incarnations. “The original show was the first one I saw,” he said. “It was so idealistic. A lot of us kids wanted to be Captain Kirk — and part of that was the chair.”

“The closet command-chair Trekkies have come out of the closet,” said Keith Marshall, 45, an unemployed phlebotomist, emergency medical technician, corrections officer and firefighter [Editor's note: the dude is unemployed, you don't have to list every job he's ever had] whose uncompleted chair, currently sitting in his brother’s garage, is slated for his own living room in Bonney Lake, Wash. [NYT]

Other Kirk-chair proponents say that the chair’s extra-soft cushions make a soothing seat for backsides that have been constantly wedgied.