Bookshelf Battle

PREVIOUSLY ON POP CULTURE MYSTERIES:

Private Eye Jake Hatcher returns to his office to find a mysterious blonde dame who, as it turns out, is legal counsel to none other than Bookshelf Q. Battler.

Part 1    Part 2   Part 3

AND NOW THE POP CULTURE MYSTERIES CONTINUE…

“A lady lawyer?” I gasped. “Jiminy Christmas! Lady drivers, lady voters, and now this?”

After falling asleep in 1955, Detective Jake Hatcher woke up in 2014 and has spent the past year investigating the crazy new world around him, wondering how he got here and how to return to his own time.

Delilah rolled her eyes and blew a cloud of smoke in my face.  My powers of deduction led me to believe that she did so on purpose.

“You certainly are a man from the first half of the Twentieth Century aren’t you?”

“I didn’t say I agree with the sexism of yesteryear, ma’am,” I said. “I’m just having a hard time adjusting to a world I barely recognize is all.”

Delilah poked her button nose back into the file of dirt she had on me.

“In 1955, you fell asleep in this very office,” Delilah said. “When you opened your eyes in the morning, you found yourself in the year 2014. Physically speaking, you hadn’t aged a bit. For the past year, you’ve been wandering the streets of LA in an aimless manner, desperately trying to figure out how you lost fifty-nine years.”

My jaw dropped lower than a discount plumber’s butt crack.

“How do you know about that?” I asked.

“Like I said,” Delilah replied. “I like to know everything there is to know about someone I intend to hire.”

“This world is the most topsy turvy ride I’ve ever been on and I want to get off, see?” I said. “Everyone beep beep bopping on computer machines, dames strutting down the street in trousers like they own the joint, and coffee shops that serve you everything but black coffee. If you know how to return me to my own time, sister, I’d sure appreciate it if you’d flap your gums and fill my ears full of that knowledge.”

“That brings us to my employer’s proposal,” Delilah said. “I represent one Mr. Bookshelf Q. Battler, a blogger who is the proprietor of a website known as bookshelfbattle.com aka the Bookshelf Battle Blog.”

I made a face that looked like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck.

“I’ve been trying my best to learn about everything I missed,” I said. “But you’re going to have to spoon feed me that one, ma’am.”

Delilah pantomimed her fingers in a motion as if she were a secretary in an office typing pool.

“My client does typey typey on the beep bop machines,” she said.

“Oh,” I replied. “Fancies himself the next Mickey Spillane I suppose?”

“Something like that,” Delilah said as she handed me a letter. “Here. Read for yourself.”

FROM THE DESK OF BOOKSHELF Q. BATTLER

World Renowned Poindexter, Nerd Blogger, Reviewer of Books, Movies, and Assorted Cultural Happenings, Champion Fighter of Yetis

June 1, 2015

Dear Detective Hatcher,

Terrorism. War. Global Warming. Virus epidemics. Reality television. By now, you have realized that the world is a much different place than the one you left behind when you fell asleep on that fateful day in 1955.

In some ways, it’s much better. If a man slaps his wife around, people are more likely to do something about it.

True, it’s still not guaranteed that someone will do something about it, but there is a clear statistical trend that shows that if a man uses his wife’s face as a stand-in for a heavy weight speed bag, the authorities may very well take notice. In another sixty years, I’m certain we’ll get that guarantee of action in the face of spousal abuse.

African Americans are no longer treated like second class citizens. At least, our government has been wise enough to demand that this be so. Whether or not this is actually the case is…well…check back on that in sixty years too.

All I know is that all of the “WHITE ONLY WATER FOUNTAIN, DRINK SOMEWHERE ELSE, DARKIES!” signs have been taken down and that is a great deal of progress since your day.

Institutions of higher learning have sprung up like wild flowers, allowing minds of every race, color, creed and orientation to blossom under their guidance while employment opportunities abound for all.

Well, at least they did for awhile until the stock market took a great big ginormous dump all over the place in 2008 and well, look, by 2075, we’re going to have this whole shebang running like clock work. I guarantee it.

Of course, things have also gotten worse in many ways since your day.

Health officials run scared over a new virus every five minutes.

I’m no medical expert, but essentially what happens is somewhere in the third world, a chicken sneezes on a goat, said goat sneezes on a cow, the cow sneezes on a human and then like 10,000 humans drop dead in ten seconds flat. And the media feels the constant need to remind us every five minutes that the dreaded “Chicken/Goat/Cow Virus” could be lurking anywhere, maybe even in our breakfast cornflakes.

Don’t even get me started on the media.

Weapons have gotten deadlier since the 1950’s and believe you me when I tell you that more screwballs have them than ever before.

Your average street gang has more firepower in the back of a van than the Russian-Cuban alliance ever pointed at the US during the Cuban Missile Crisis. For many years, the Bloods and the Crips have been threatening to nuke one another over an unseemly joke told at the expense of one of their mothers during a game of three card monty gone bad.

Terrorists run rampant the world over, demonstrating their claimed religious ideals by chopping off heads of people they disagree with and posting it all over social media.

I mean, holy shit, if I try to post the same link to my lousy book blog twice in one day, I’ll get a sternly worded passive aggressive form e-mail written by some 20 year old Silicon Valley chump who made his first million before he grew pubes but sure, let’s just let whackos the world over post their malicious mayhem for the whole world to see…and I’m sorry.

I’m off topic.
Bottomline? I don’t like the world I live in and the world has, on a daily basis since I was born, made it clear to me that the feeling is more than mutual.

I prefer fantasy worlds – ones created by writers and artists.

Books, movies, TV, video games. Yes Hatcher, they have video games now. You should play one. You will trip like there’s no tomorrow.

During the brief moments I spend in these fictional worlds, I’m happier than I ever am in reality.

But the questions, Hatcher. I have so many questions about the popular culture to which I have grown hopelessly addicted to.

You might even call these questions – “Pop Culture Mysteries.”

(Copyright Bookshelf Q. Battler 2015, Hands off you Silicon Valley Freaks!)

Who better to solve a mystery than Los Angeles’ most notorious private eye?

For security reasons, and also because my compound is messy as all get out, we will never meet. My maid just quit and I can’t find another one willing to work in the same house as a Yeti. Can’t say as I blame them.

My attorney, Ms. Donnelly, will take it from here. I trust she will handle all of the details. Be advised I have provided her with the authority to speak for me in all matters.

I look forward to working with you, Mr. Hatcher.

Yours Truly,

Bookshelf Q. Battler
Blogger-in-Chief
Bookshelf Battle Blog

Will Ms. Donnelly be able to negotiate an accord between Bookshelf Q. Battler and Detective Jake Hatcher?  Find out in the next part of Pop Culture Mysteries:  Enter the Blonde!

I know.  I know.  Horrible title but it would be too much work to change it now.