Tag Archives: amwriting

Jun 12 2015
2 Comments
Uncle Hardass

And Now a Message from Uncle Hardass…

By:  Uncle Hardassimo “Hardass” J. Scrambler, Bookshelf Q. Battler’s Extremely Cranky and Deceased Uncle

Uncle Hardass

Uncle Hardass J. Scrambler

Mother of God.  You people actually read this nonsense?  “Oh look at me!  I’m friends with an alien!”  “Oh look at me!  I have a blog!”  “Oh look at me!  I have 3.5 readers!”

Well la dee freakin’ da.  Everyone wants to be a writer anymore.  No one can be bothered to roll up their sleeves and put a good honest day’s work in at the Salt Mines.  You all want your salt but you want some other guy to get it.

Here’s a newsflash ya’ bunch of unwashed hippy good-fer-nothins!  While you’re all tappity tapping on your electro-thingy-ma-whosits, people are busting their asses just to bring salt to your table.

Think my good for nothing nephew cares?  Nah.  He’s too busy “blogging.”  Jesus.  I’m glad I’m dead so I don’t have to be reminded of the fact that all the work I put into raising that kid amounted to him writing a “blog” for the benefit of 3.5 readers.

In fact, here’s how it all went down on my death-bed:

BQB:  Uncle Hardass!  Don’t die!  I’ll do anything!  I’ll even get a job at the Salt Mines!

UNCLE HARDASS:  Aack!  Too late!  Thank God I’m dying.  If I live long enough, you’ll probably disappoint me by taking all the effort I put into raising you and starting a blog for the benefit of 3.5 readers!

BQB:  That actually sounds like a good idea…

UNCLE HARDASS:  Aack!  Oh God!  This is it!  I hope there’s no hippies in the afterlife!  Aaack!

First, I called it.  That buffoon went and started a blog for 3.5 readers.  I’d kick myself in the ass for giving him the idea but I’m a ghost and my foot would just go through my ass.

Second, there’s nothing but hippies here.  I’m not sure if I’m in Heaven or Hell.  I might be in my own personal Hell where I’m surrounded by hippies who just babble on about all the art they want to create while I bust my ass everyday until the end of time at the Afterlife Salt Mines.

Then again, this is probably Heaven, because I like working at the Salt Mines and bitching about useless hippies.

Anyway, what was my point?  Oh yeah.

My nephew’s story, “Bookshelf Q. Battler and the Meaning of Life” starts again tomorrow and I’m here to ask you to not read it. The more people read it, the bigger his ego will get and then he’ll never face facts and accept the solid employment that only the Salt Mines can offer.

He thinks he’s being real avant garde with this stuff.  You’ll learn his real name though I don’t know why you’d want to because I just refer to him as “the moocher.”

TRANSLATION OF A CONVERSATION BETWEEN A YOUNG BQB AND UNCLE HARDASS:

YOUNG BQB:  Uncle Hardass!  Will you read me a story?

UNCLE HARDASS:  A story?!  How the expletive deleted do you have time for a story?  Why don’t you have a job at the Salt Mines yet, ya moocher?

YOUNG BQB:  I’m three.

UNCLE HARDASS:  And?!  So what?  Are you going to use that excuse forever?  You sound just like your Aunt!  “He’s only three, Hardassimo!”  “Stop trying to make him get a job, Hardassimo!”  “Stop gluing a beard to his face in an attempt to pass him off at the Salt Mines as a little person day laborer, Hardassimo!”

YOUNG BQB:  Read this book to me!  It’s called “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.”

UNCLE HARDASS:  Oh alright.  Jesus H. Christ.  Shit like this is why the Japanes are beating us hands down.  You think those kids are reading stories right now?  No.  They’re too busy making transistors and practicing karate and shit.  All you kids who want to read and write will be crying your eyes out when your lack of hard work leads to the Good Ole U S of A being overtaken by the land of the rising sun but alright, here we go.  “Once upon a time…blah blah blah….there were some goats….”

YOUNG BQB:  You’re not reading it right!

UNCLE HARDASS:  I’m making improvements!  Alright, so there were three hard working goats who worked eighty hours a week at the Salt Mines and were happy to do it.  And once upon a time, they were walking across a bridge when an incredibly lazy troll popped out of nowhere and harassed the shit out of the hard working goats.

YOUNG BQB:  I don’t think that’s how it goes…

UNCLE HARDASS:  “Boo!”  said the hideous, lazy troll.  “I’m a writer!  I sit around and make up stories all day while hardworking goats like you slave away in the salt mines!  La dee da I’m so special!”

YOUNG BQB:  I’m going to bed.

UNCLE HARDASS:  Good!  And put your beard on tomorrow!  One of these days I’ll convince the foreman that you’re a little person day laborer and not my lazy moocher of a nephew!  I had three jobs when I was your age, you know.

And then I also hear that at some point in this lousy series, BQB is going to find himself a woman!

I don’t know whether I should be happy for him or sad for the gal.  I mean, hell, it’s about time my nephew settled down and started a family of his own but on the other hand, I have no idea how this clown will ever support a woman without a job at the Salt Mines.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.  I was quite the ladies’ man myself in my day.  How else do you think I scored a fox like Gertie?  Well, she used to be quite the looker anyway.  Now she just kind of looks like a wrinkly basset hound with a wig on it.

Don’t tell her I said that.  She’ll find a way to nag me even though I’m deader than disco.  Nobody reads this thing anyway right?

Read BQB’s story.  Don’t read BQB’s story.  I don’t care.  I know everything but young people never want to listen to my advice.  Make your own mistakes I guess.  God knows my lousy excuse for a nephew has.

If you’ll excuse me now, I have to go haunt my old house.  It’s the one I told Gertie that she is under no circumstances to give to BQB when she goes to the old folks home, but she’s another one that never listened to me.

Oh, right, I’m supposed to refer to it as the “Bookshelf Battle Compound.”  More of BQB’s delusions of grandeur.

Kids these days.  I tell ya.

Get a job, ya bums.

Uncle Hardass croaked years ago after a steady diet of pastrami finally caught up to him.  Even so, BQB is certain he can hear him haunting the Bookshelf Battle Compound.  Occasionally, he even manages to post on BQB’s blog from the afterlife.

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Jun 09 2015
7 Comments
Pop Culture Mysteries

Pop Culture Mysteries – Case File #001 – Here’s a Story – Part 2

PREVIOUSLY ON POP CULTURE MYSTERIES – CASE FILE #001:

PART 1 – Hatcher hates commies, fancy coffees, and angry dames in trousers.

And now Pop Culture Mysteries continues…

The LA Public Library.  The joint was lousy with books as far as the eye could see.  It was comforting because over the past year I’d kept hearing that they were going the way of the dodo bird.  I hope they don’t.  If there’s one thing this old shamus likes, it’s the feel of a printed page in my fingers as I pour through a volume of tall tales.

Iris the Librarian - She ran circles around Hatcher on the beep bop machine.

Agnes the Librarian – She ran circles around Hatcher on the beep boop machine.

They also had a bunch of beep boop machines and it became clear to me I was going to need access to one in order to solve my first pop culture mystery.  Ms. Donnelly’s men had yet to bring the ones promised me to my office.  That was aces in my book.  I wasn’t looking forward to having them.

As I sat there in front of one of the machines, I scratched my head and probably bore a close resemblance to the first caveman to ever see fire.  I tapped a key.  Nothing.  I tapped another one.  Nothing again.  I tapped a third one.  This message popped up on the screen:

An error of type 110147 has occurred.

“So fix it up and get it going, fella,”  I replied out loud.  “Come on now.  I don’t have all day to spend on this nonsense.  I’ve got a serious caper to sniff out, see?”

“SHHH!!!!”

I looked up to my left to find an old gray haired bird who was tickling the keys of her beep boop machine like she was a Jazz man in front of a baby grand.

“Sir,”  the old lady said.  “You know the computer doesn’t talk to you.”

“It doesn’t?”  I asked.  “Then what the hell is it good for?”

“What are you trying to do?”  the gal asked.  “I’m one of the librarians here.  Maybe I can help you.”

“I need to find whatever I can about an architect,”  I replied.  “Some swarthy curly haired gent who went by the name of Brady.”

“You should pull up the Internet,” the old woman said.

“The whatternet?”

“Oh,”  the lady said.  “I don’t know how to explain it to you, young man.  The computers talk to each other and share information?”

“That went over my head higher than the cow did when he jumped over the moon, ma’am.”

The old gal sighed and took the key typer thing away from me.  She ran her fingers on the keys and made the beep bop machine throw up a screen with a blank box on it.

I sat there like a useless bump on a log, watching the broad as she typed in the words, “B-R-A-D-Y…B-U-N-C-H.”

“That was one of my favorite shows,”  the lady said.  “Yours too I suppose?”

“Never seen it,”  I replied.

While the librarian surfed the Interwhatever, I opened up the file Delilah had brought me and read Bookshelf Q. Battler’s marching orders:

Detective Hatcher,

Here’s the story…of a lovely lady.  She was bringing up three very lovely girls.  All of them had hair of gold…like their mother….the youngest one in curls.

Here’s the story of a man named Brady.  He was busy bringing up three boys of his own.  They were four men living all together.  Yet, they were all alone.

I didn’t write that.  That’s the theme song to the classic TV show, The Brady Bunch starring Robert Reed as Michael and Florence Henderson as Carol Brady.

The lyrics go on:

“Till the one day when this lady met this fellow and they knew that it must be more than a hunch, that this group must somehow form a family…that’s the way we all became the Brady Bunch.”

That’s how the song goes, but it’s rather convenient, is it?  That’s how the group became a family?  That’s all that happened?  Just sweep the past of what happened before Mike met Carol under the rug, right?  Nothing to see here folks.  Move along.

If you ask me, the whole thing smells worse than an open sewer grate.  Mike Brady had three sons and no wife.  Carol Brady had three daughters and no husband.

What happened to Mike Brady’s first wife, Hatcher?  What happened to Carol Brady’s first husband?

Your first pop culture mystery – “What the hell happened to the original Brady spouses?”

Godspeed, Hatcher.  My 3.5 readers demand an answer to this baffling conundrum.

Yours truly,

Bookshelf Q. Battler.

I closed the file and looked at the Brady Bunch fan website the old librarian lady had managed to pull up.  She was a sweet old gal who reminded me of my grandmother, complete with a need to stop every five minutes and offer me a butterscotch candy, which I accepted eagerly.  It reminded me of the good old days, a simpler time when you could accept candy from a stranger without ending up in a hospital.

Her name was Agnes and on her own computer she was looking up information about high blood pressure remedies for her old husband Herbert, who she told me was at home sick in bed and feeling lousier than the floor of a bus station bathroom after a three day weekend.

She was happy to have my company and I was glad to have her help.  Win-win.

“I have a grandson your age,”  the old gal said.  “He makes fun of me all the time, telling me I don’t know anything about computers, but boy howdy, you really know nothing.”

I moved that little thing they call a mouse around but nothing happened.

“You been living under a rock for awhile, son?”

“Something like that,”  I replied.  “Wanna do a sleuth a kindness and ask this contraption to figure out what happened to Mr. Brady’s first wife?”

“Oh,” Agnes said.  “You know, that’s a good question.  I watched that show for years and never once thought to think about what happened to the first Mrs. Brady.”

“Well,’  I said.  “It’s a good question, isn’t it?  Did she dump Mike and run off with the milk man?   Did Mike ship her off to a convent?  Did she have a nervous breakdown and get carted off to a rubber room by the men in the white lab coats?  Did he push the broad down a flight of stairs, make like it was an accident to the cops and collect a big pay day from the insurance company?  God Sakes Alive, Agnes! This man might have chopped his first wife into a million pieces and buried her under his front porch for all we know.”

“Your mind goes a mile a minute,”  Agnes said.  “Just like my grandson’s.”

“And what about Carol’s first fella?” I asked.  “Was Carol a cold fish and he couldn’t take the celibate lifestyle any longer?  Did he come home one night too many reeking of cheap booze and the perfume of an even cheaper hussy?  Did she lose control and hack him to bits with a butcher knife?  Strangle him in his sleep?  Blow him away with a 12-gauge and dissolve the body in an acid bath?  That’s how I’d do it.  Not that I would, but if I had to, I mean.  Christ, I hope the poor man either passed away from natural causes or at the very least maybe he and Carol had an amicable split.”

“It’s all very interesting,”  old Agnes said, “But why are you so preoccupied with this?  It was just a silly TV show.”

“Never you mind, Agnes,”  I replied.  “Do some typey typey on this weirdo device, will ya?  See what you can come up with.  I’m gonna hit the head.”

Detective Jake Hatcher is on the case.  Well, Agnes the Librarian is anyway.  Hatcher has to tinkle.  See how this caper unfolds in the next installment of Pop Culture Mysteries!

Copyright Bookshelf Q. Battler (2015)  All Rights Reserved.

Old lady librarian photo courtesy of a shutterstock.com license.

Attorney Donnelly notes that the first Brady Bunch spouses were not murdered or otherwise dispatched via foul play and that part of this post is just a joke.

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Jun 08 2015
4 Comments
Pop Culture Mysteries

Pop Culture Mysteries – Case #001 – Here’s a Story – Part 1

By:  Jake Hatcher, Official Bookshelf Battle Blog Private Eye

POP CULTURE MYSTERY QUESTION:  What happened to the original Brady Bunch spouses? (Or, what happened to Mike Brady’s first wife and Carol Brady’s first husband?)

“Son, I’m going to tell you one more time what I want and if I don’t get it, we’re going to have a serious dilemma on our hands.”

The lad on the other side of the counter stared at me blankly, a dumbfounded expression on his face.  We both spoke English, but it felt like we were from different planets.

“I want…a cup…of coffee.  Black.  No sugar.  No cream.”

If there's two things Jake Hatcher hates, it's Commies and Fancy Coffees.

If there’s two things Jake Hatcher hates, it’s commies and fancy coffees.

Immediately, the kid started in with the fancy mumbo jumbo.

“Do you want a half-caf, quarter-caf, decaf, or slim caf?”

I slapped my forehead and looked around.  The line behind me looked like it stretched all the way back to China.

“Buddy,”  I said.  “I have no idea what you’re trying to tell me.  Just pick one of those.  Any one.” 

“Mega size, king size, or ginormo size?”

“I don’t know,”  I said.  “Smallest size you got.  I just need a little jolt, kid.”

“Vanilla shot, butter shot, raspberry shot or do you want the mango starlight swirl with optional honey berry jasmine?”

Instinctively, I reached under my trench coat and gripped the handle of my old service revolver.  Betsy, I called her.  Old Bets and I shot over a thousand Nazis together in World War II and I never went outside without wearing wearing her in a shoulder holster under my trench coat.  I’d developed a bad habit of grabbing my piece whenever I was annoyed.  (No pun intended).  That’s what happens when you live life on a razor’s edge.

It dawned on me the coffee shop worker was just a boy, no more than sixteen or seventeen, and although I was decapitating scum sucking agents of the Third Reich two at a time when I was only a little older than he was, I decided to give him a pass. 

After all, it wasn’t his fault that he was born at a time when the world was being flushed down the toilet like yesterday’s dinner.

“Take the pot of coffee behind you and pour some into a cup,”  I said.  “Then don’t do anything else to it. Just hand it to me.”

The kid acted like I’d just asked him to paint the Mona Lisa and decorate the Sistine Chapel for extra measure.  He did as I asked and handed me my coffee.

“That’ll be three-seventy five.”

One more surprise.  This strange new world was full of them.

“For a cup of coffee?!  Jumpin’ Jesus H. Christ on a Pogo Stick! Son, what kind of film flam operation are you running here?”

“I’ve got it.”

There she was, sauntering up behind me like a beautiful dream made reality, Ms. Delilah K. Donnelly, Attorney for my newfound employer, the reclusive Mr. Bookshelf Q. Battler.  She wore a slinky black dress and of course, her strand of glistening pearls.  She retrieved a plastic card out of her clutch and handed it to the lad.

“Debit or credit?”  he asked.

“Debit,” my colleague replied.

“Electronic money,”  Delilah explained.  “Takes the price of the coffee right out of my bank account.”

A dame buying me my morning joe.  The indignity of it all.

“Yeah,”  I said.  “We had credit cards in my day, ma’am.  Only tycoons, industrialists, homosexuals, communists and fellas named Lance used them though.  And back then we just had those click clack things that made an imprint of the card on carbon paper.  Personally, I’ve always believed a man should never buy something he can’t dole out the cash for.”

“Then you won’t be buying much these days, Mr. Hatcher,”  Delilah said as the boy returned her card and handed me my coffee.

“I have half a mind to report this establishment to the DA,”  I said.  “Three-seventy-five…the nerve.  Rita Hayworth better come sit with me while I drink this and…”

I stopped myself, realizing I was in mixed company.

“…and I’d tell her to take a long walk off a short pier because I’m busy with you, ma’am.”

We found a table.  I pulled the lady’s chair out and held it for her as she parked her keister.  

“That’s sweet,”  Delilah said as she clacked open her briefcase.  She retrieved a file and handed it to me. 

“Your first case.”

I opened up the file.  Notes, records, transcripts and nine photographs – three boys, three girls, a man, a woman, and an old lady in a blue apron.

“I’ll shake a leg and get to work on this right away,”  I said.

“No hurry,”  Delilah replied.  “I’m sure Mr. Battler prefers a thorough investigation over a fast one.”

I pulled a cigar out of my pocket, struck a match and lit it.  Suddenly, everyone in the place came down on me like a ton of bricks.

“Disgusting!”  shouted an old lady behind me.

“Put that out!” 

“You can’t smoke that in here!” 

“Oh my God!!!!”

The complaints bounced at me faster than a kangaroo on a trampoline.

Angry Dames in Trousers - Hatcher hated them as much as commies and fancy coffees

If there’s THREE things Jake Hatcher hates, it’s commies, fancy coffees and angry dames in trousers.

Some dame wearing trousers waltzed on over, a look on her mug like someone had just beaten her with the business end of a Louisville slugger.  I assumed she was the manager or the boss or something.

Lady bosses.  I’m not against the idea.  I’m just not used to seeing it.

“Sir!”  the woman said.  “This is a no smoking establishment!  I’m going to have to ask you to leave!”

I turned to Delilah.

“Did I miss something?”  I asked her.  “Did the Nazis have a comeback while I was asleep?”

“We’d better go,”  Delilah said.

Good old Delilah.  I hated to see her go, but I loved to watch her leave.  Her derriere was like two ripe cantaloupes packed into an airtight sack, swinging left and right to the tune of their own internal metronome.

Outside, we found a bench and took a load off.  I sucked on my stogie.  Delilah pulled a silver cigarette case out of her clutch and popped a smoke into a long black filter.  I struck another match and gave the lady a light.

“Thank you Mr. Hatcher,”  the lady lawyer said.  “Such a perfect gentleman.”

“Pull out a lady’s chair and offer her a light,”  I said.  “Two rules old Ma Hatcher taught me.”

“She taught you well,”  Delilah said.

“Yeah,”  I replied.  “What the hell was that back there?”

Delilah blew out an array of smoke, too troubled to bother with her usual rings.

“You’re in a different day and age, Mr. Hatcher,”  Delilah said.  “Smoking has been banned in all public establishments.  It’s considered vile and bad for your health.”

“Back in my day if a fella wanted to kill himself it was his funeral.”

“True,”  Delilah said.  “Although modern science tells us smoking negatively affects the health of those around the smoker as well.”

Hatcher was a ten pack a day man.

Hatcher’s a ten pack a day man.

“Hogwash,”  I replied.  “Tell me another whopper why don’t ya.’”

“You can’t argue with scientists, Mr. Hatcher.”

“Buncha no good eggheads if you ask me.”

There we sat and smoked away like a couple of broken chimneys.

“Ms. Donnelly,”  I said.  “If I may be so bold, there’s something about you I can’t quite put my finger on.”

“I don’t think you should be putting your finger anywhere on me,”  Delilah said.  “It’s never a wise idea to mix business with pleasure.”

“I never drop a fudge pile where I get my dough either, sister,”  I replied.  “But that wasn’t what I was getting at.  There’s something about you that’s different from the other dames I see around here.”

Across the street, there was a young woman with short purple hair, a ring in her nose, a pink tank-top that revealed tattoo covered arms, and a pair shorts so tiny they barely covered her posterior.

“Take that painted hussy for instance,”  I said, pointing at the floozy.  “Broads like that are a dime a dozen these days.  You?  You dress, act, and sound like a high falutin’ gal from my time and yet, you know all about this modern era – like how to pay for stuff with electronics and how to use a beep boop machine.”

“Speaking of,”  Delilah said as her phone buzzed like an angry bumblebee looking for a flower to copulate with.  “That’s Mr. Battler.  I’d better call him back.  He wants a legal opinion on the propriety of writing, and I quote, ‘the ending of Dexter sucked big donkey rectum.’”

“Helluva job you’ve got there, counselor,”  I said.  “But I’ll figure you out soon enough.”

“I hope you don’t,”  Delilah said as she stood up and stretched out her hand.  “A girl’s got to have her secrets, you know.”

“Ma Hatcher never taught me about that one,”  I said as I completed the handshake.

And with that, I watched Delilah walk down the street until she was a blip on the horizon. 

After that, I stood there on the sidewalk, puffing away on my stogie and doing my best to ignore all of the free, unsolicited advice.

“Damn dude,”  a local yokel said to me as he passed me by.  “Gotta quit that man, you’re gonna drop dead from cancer.”

“We all gotta go sometime,”  I replied.

Will Hatcher figure out what happened to the Original Brady Bunch Spouses?  Join us next time on Pop Culture Mysteries!

Copyright (c) Bookshelf Q. Battler 2015  (All Rights Reserved)

Coffee, angry woman and smoking detective photos courtesy of a shutterstock.com license.

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Jun 08 2015
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Pop Culture Mysteries

POP CULTURE MYSTERIES!

Pop Culture Mysteries is a new feature on the Bookshelf Battle Blog, hosted by a storytelling nerd of world renown, the one and only Bookshelf Q. Battler!

Jake Hatcher, a hardboiled 1950’s film noir detective in the tradition of Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe, has agreed to solve one hundred pop culture mysteries and file his reports right here on bookshelfbattle.com

LADY: Oh Detective, can you solve the Mystery of Why BQB Only Has 3.5 Readers? HATCHER: Because he stinks worse than a swamp on low tide day, ma'am. Now that'll be five bucks.

LADY: Oh Detective, can you solve the Mystery of Why BQB Only Has 3.5 Readers?
HATCHER: Because he stinks worse than a swamp at low tide, ma’am. Now that’ll be five bucks.

SOME CASES CURRENTLY ON HATCHER’S TO-DO LIST:

1)  How the hell did Doc and Marty from Back to the Future know each other?

2)  Why didn’t Rose take a seat in one of the life boats so Jack could keep that lousy piece of driftwood in Titanic?

3)  Who shot first?  Han or Greedo?

All these and more coming soon…but first up tomorrow…What happened to the original Brady Bunch spouses?

Do you have a pop culture mystery you want to put Detective Hatcher on?

Tweet it to @bookshelfbattle or leave it in #popculturemysteries (Because BQB totally owns that shit now)

Tell him on his Google Plus page

Drop it in the comments of bookshelfbattle.com

Together, we can help Jake solve 100 mysteries, earn 500 bucks and go back to 1955 where he will live like the King of Siam with his bag of green Abe Lincoln portraits.

Film noir detective and client photo courtesy of a shutterstock.com license.

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Jun 07 2015
3 Comments
Pop Culture Mysteries

Pop Culture Mysteries – Enter the Blonde – Part 6

PREVIOUSLY ON POP CULTURE MYSTERIES:

Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5

“Are you sure?” Delilah asked. “I’m not sure you understand that in 2015, five dollars is not considered a lot of money. It doesn’t go as far as it did in the 1950’s.”

I felt my smile muscles get some exercise for the first time in forever.

“Lady,” I said, “I don’t care. I’ll solve one hundred mysteries for this chump, take his five hundred bucks shutterstock_246824179back to 1955 and live like the King of Siam!”

“You could live like the Emperor of the Universe in 1955 with fifty dollars an hour, which is really a more fitting wage for a private investigator today, especially one with your training and skill.”

Delilah slinked back into my chair.

“Oh,” she said. “Please forget I said that. Mr. Battler will be very cross if he learns I spoke ill of him.”

“Ma’am,” I said. “I doubt a fella who wastes his life away watching the boob tube and making with the typey typey on the beep beep bop machines has much money. Does that big galoot even have fifty bucks per case to spend per case?”

“Between you and I, I don’t think so,” Delilah confided in me. “I wasn’t even sure he had five hundred bucks until he put the sum in an escrow account to pay you upon the completion of one hundred pop culture mysteries.”

“Then it’s settled,” I said. “Although, I have to say, I’m not sure I’m the right man for the job.”

“How’s that?” Delilah asked.

“I slept for nearly sixty years,” I said. “How in hell am I going to be able to answer cultural questions for a man of the modern era?”

Delilah slapped her hand down on the desk.

“That’s precisely why you ARE the best man for the job!”

“How do you figure?”

“You’ll come at these mysteries with no preconceived agenda,” Delilah replied. “You won’t have already formed an opinion. You’ll be able to provide Mr. Battler’s 3.5 readers with full, detailed, unbiased reports!”

“True enough,” I said as I clanked my shot glass against hers. “And I suppose it will be nice to solve a case without having anyone shooting at me for once.”

“Oh my,” Delilah said. “Now I can’t provide you with any guarantees on that, Mr. Hatcher. Hollywood folk are very sensitive about their art, you know.”

It's all about the Lincolns.

It’s all about the Lincolns.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a stogie. It was one I kept close to my heart, ready to be smoked on special occasions. I couldn’t think of anything more special than the chance to become a five hundred-aire.

“Don’t worry about me, doll,” I said. “Whatever those showbiz folk fling my way, I’ll catch it and put it up on my mantle.”

“Very well,” Delilah said as she handed me a pen and the contract.

I signed it. Instantly, I felt a strange sensation. A chill took me over and squeezed me to the very depths of my soul. It made me feel nauseous. I doubled over and grabbed my stomach but then as quickly as it came, it was gone.

“Are you all right?” Delilah asked.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Suppose I’d better lay off the hooch du jour.”

Delilah stood up and extended her hand. I shook it. It was silky smooth, like touching God’s butt cheek.

It’d been awhile since I’d touched any part of a woman. It was nice.

“A pleasure doing business with you,” Delilah said in an authoritative, business-like manner.

“Likewise,” I said. “What now?”

“Ahh,” Delilah said. “Well, we’ll need to make some changes around here. Some men will be by your office within the next few days to set you up with equipment you’ll need to research your cases, namely a T194 Alpha Desktop Unit, High Speed Transmission Cable, WI FI uplink, and of course, a top of the line Android cellular phone.”

“Come again?”

“We’re going to set you up with a couple beep bop machines.”

“OK,” I said. “Those things make me more nervous than a cat in a sack on laundry day, but hell, if five hundred big ones are on the line…”

“We’ll be in touch,” Delilah said as she snapped her briefcase shut and sashayed her way out of my life as fast as she’d dropped into it.”

Now that she was out from behind the desk, I was able to observe that her black dress went down to just above the knee, revealing the sweetest, smoothest, sultriest pair of getaway sticks this side of the Rio Grande.

To my dismay, she was using them to get away from me as fast as she could.

And who could blame her? No high society dame was ever going to be caught dead with a bum like me. It was a fact I’d learned to accept a long time ago.

I never learned to like it, only to accept it. Drinking helped with the acceptance process.

In fact, it was time for another.

It would go well with my moo goo gai pan.

This concludes Pop Culture Mysteries: Enter the Blonde!  Join us next time as Jake Hatcher, Private Eye tackles his very first pop culture mystery!!!

Copyright (c) Bookshelf Q. Battler 2015.  All rights reserved.

Detective and money photos courtesy of a shutterstock.com license.

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Jun 04 2015
8 Comments
Pop Culture Mysteries

Pop Culture Mysteries – Enter the Blond – Part 3

PREVIOUSLY ON POP CULTURE MYSTERIES: ENTER THE BLONDE 

PART 1 – Detective Jake Hatcher arrives in his office to find a mysterious blonde dame…

PART 2 – …who seems to know an awful lot about our fearless  private eye.

Attorney Delilah K. Donnelly, Examiner of Bookshelf Q. Battler's Legal Briefs (That's not an inappropriate pun or anything, he really gives her a crap ton of paperwork.)

Attorney Delilah K. Donnelly, Examiner of Bookshelf Q. Battler’s Legal Briefs
(That’s not an inappropriate pun or anything, he really gives her a crap ton of paperwork.)

“I’m here to offer you a very lucrative deal, Mr. Hatcher.”

How many times had I heard those famous last words uttered to me by a she-devil in a skirt?

“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re going to tell me that you want to hire me to take incriminating photos of your good for nothing husband in the throes of passion with his cheap floozy secretary. Only you’re going to shoot them both before I arrive and when the cops show up, they’ll mistake me for the trigger man. While I’m getting outfitted for a pair of striped pajamas, you’ll be on your way to Barbados with a pile of your dead hubby’s cash. Whaddaya say, sweetheart? Am I warm?”

“You’re ice cold,” the dame said with a chuckle. “My goodness, you certainly are distrustful of the fairer sex.”

“I trust no one, ma’am,” I said. “Dames have just given me more reason not to.”

My uninvited guest puffed away on her filtered cigarette and gave me the old once over with her eyes, looking at me in much the same way a lion must look at a fat gazelle with a gimpy leg.

“I hope one day you’ll learn to trust me, Mr. Hatcher.”

“Doubtful,” I said. “Especially when you’re probably going to try to bat your pretty little eyelashes at me out of a mistaken belief that you can make me fall in love with you and dupe me into killing your husband because you’re too chicken to do it yourself? Did I figure out your fiendish scheme yet?”

“Some detective you are!” the lady said as she snapped off her right glove and stretched out a finely manicured hand, complete with red nails polished so brightly I was able to see my mug staring back at me in them.

“You failed to deduce that there’s no ring on my finger!”

I stared at that dainty hand and silently kicked myself on the inside for letting a clue slip past me. Maybe it was late, maybe it was the extra doses of Jack Daniels, but that gal had gotten one over on yours truly, and I didn’t like it.

Not one bit.

“Even so,” I said. “It’s been my experience that a woman with a body like yours is always up to no good and this palooka didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, see? I think you made a mistake in coming here, sister. The all-day sucker store is two blocks down.”

“You’re really something else, aren’t you Mr. Hatcher?” the dame asked. “My employer warned me about you.”

“Your employer?”

“Yes,” the woman said as she handed me a business card. It read:

Delilah K. Donnelly, Esq.

In-House Counsel for Bookshelf Q. Battler

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Jun 03 2015
5 Comments
Pop Culture Mysteries

Pop Culture Mysteries – Enter the Blond – Part 2

PREVIOUSLY ON POP CULTURE MYSTERIES – ENTER THE BLONDE:

PART 1 – Detective Jake Hatcher returns to his office to find a mysterious blonde dame sitting behind his desk.

That dame was all class, but a bit snooty – like an exceptionally attractive school marm.

Detective Hatcher prefers old school typing.

Detective Hatcher prefers old school typing.

She read from the file of poop she’d scooped on me with all the enthusiasm of a professor giving a lecture on transcendental metaphysics.

“In 1920, you were born one Jacob Ronald Hatcher in Bayonne, New Jersey,” the dame said. “Parents Gus and Mitsy, a barber and a housewife, both solid citizens who never did you wrong, unlike your conniving brother Roscoe who…”

“Yeah do us all a favor a skip over Roscoe, lady,” I said.

“In 1938, you turned eighteen and moved to Hollywood, deluded by the misguided hope that your handsome face and macho physique would be more than enough to provide you with a career as a movie star…”

“People have done more with less,” I interrupted.

“Alas, like most newcomers to Tinseltown, you were turned away by every producer and found yourself on the streets,” the dame continued. “You made your living as a prize fighter, taking on all comers and throwing matches for a fee under the names of ‘Punchy McGee,’ ‘Take a Dive Dan,’ and ‘The Down for the Count Kid.’”

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, it’s not my fault that was a rigged racket.”

“War broke out three years later and in your early twenties, you found yourself in Europe, fighting on the front lines,” the dame said, studying the file like it was the Old Testament. “I see you fought in D-Day and marched with Allied Forces all the way to Berlin.”

“You ‘aint just whistlin’ Dixie, ma’am.”

“There’s a notation here that you were involved in a special mission?” the dame asked.

I gulped my drink and poured another.

“That’s right.”

“Care to share?” she asked.

“Hitler,” I said. “I punched him in the face.”

The dame’s big blue eyes widened with shock. “Excuse me?”

Adolf Hitler - historians agree that the last words he heard before Detective Hatcher's fist collided with his face were,

Adolf Hitler – historians agree that the last words he heard before Detective Hatcher’s fist collided with his face were, “Sprachen zie punch?”

“I infiltrated a secret Nazi bunker and punched Adolf Hitler square in his stupid face,” I said. “Knocked the son of a bitch out colder than your demeanor.”

I could tell by the look on the dame’s face that she was impressed.

“You punched Adolf Hitler in the face?”
“Yes ma’am.”

“Adolf Hitler…Der Fuhrer of the Third Reich?”

“That’s the one.”

“I thought he committed suicide,” the dame said.

“That’s what the powers that be want you to believe, ma’am,” I said. “Truth be told I delivered Hitler to General Eisenhower, who had Old Adolf hauled off by a bunch of G-Men to a secret government lab. They did all kinds of experiments on him. They wanted to see what made an evil lug like that tick in the hopes they could prevent another monstrous dictator from popping up ever again. Given the headlines these days, it doesn’t seem to me like they were very successful.”

“And you’re telling me this…why?”

“You asked,” I said. “I’m not a liar, ma’am. A lady asks me a question, I give her an honest answer. Mitsy Hatcher raised a gentleman, I’ll have you know.”

“But the dishonorable discharge?”

“The brass didn’t want the public to know about Operation Fuhrerpunschen and I was a loose end,” I said. “They booted me out on a bunch of trumped up charges that weren’t worth the paper that they were printed on. Ordered me to keep quiet but hell, all of those bums are long dead now so it’s not like there’s anything they can do to me.”

“I see,” the dame said, turning her attention back to the file. “You returned to LA in 1945 and joined the Los Angeles Police Department.”

“Seemed like a shot at a steady paycheck,” I said. “Didn’t realize it was an invite to every two-bit thug to declare war on me…and honest cops? They didn’t last long back then.”

“I’m not sure they last long now either, Mr. Hatcher,” the dame said as her sad lips curled up into a rare smile. “Now, after the incident vis a vis your wife’s infidelity with your partner, you quit the force and went out on your own as a detective for hire, is that right?”

“That’s the long and short of it, ma’am,’ I said. “But what gives with the twenty questions anyway? You writing a book or something?”

“No,” the dame replied. “I just like to make sure I know everything there is to know about a man before I hire him.”

“Speaking of,” I said as I looked at my watch. “It’s been longer than five minutes and you’ve yet to explain to me why you’re here.”

Why is this dame here?  Find out in the next part of Pop Culture Mysteries: Enter the Blonde!

(Yeah, I know, we really need to fire the guy who writes these post titles).

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Jun 01 2015
2 Comments
Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones – Wrap-Up – Season 5, Episode 8 – Hardhome

SPOILERS!

It was an episode of firsts:

  • Cersei gets a taste of the commoner’s life
  • Arya gets her first mission
  • Khaleesi and Tyrion meet for the first time
  • Ser Jorah’s love for the Khaleesi is finally made known
  • Theon/Reek finally admits he didn’t burn his adopted brothers
  • The first white walker attack (pretty awesome, wasn’t it?)

By the way, anyone notice that Jon Snow killed a white walker without a piece of dragon glass?

Maybe because he carries the blood of the dragon?

WHAT?!  MIND=BLOWN!

What say you, 3.5 readers?

cropped-img_1757.jpg

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Jun 01 2015
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Pop Culture Mysteries

Pop Culture Mysteries – An Introduction

FROM THE DESK OF BOOKSHELF Q. BATTLER

World Renowned Poindexter, Reviewer of Books, Movies, and Cultural Happenings, Champion Yeti Fighter and Blogger-in-Chief of the Bookshelf Battle Blog

Dear 3.5 Readers,

Let’s face it.

I’m not a very important person.

Does that come as a shock? I’m sorry, but it’s true. (Oh, it didn’t come as a shock? Thanks, but play along anyway, OK?).

Out in the wide world, tragedy and terror loom large on the horizon, peaking their ugly faces out from every corner.

BQB's soap box

BQB’s soap box

Every day, people are being killed by hurricanes, blown away bytornados, zapped by lightning, swallowed whole by monsoons, kidnapped by pirates (the billowy shirt kind, not the Somali kind), burnt up in wildfires, or carried away by hideous hungry trolls.

And that’s just in the world outside. At home? Why, you could be moseying along, minding your own business and WAMMO! You spill your ice cold glass of Diet Shasta Orange, slip on the puddle, crack your knogan on the way down and it’s good night daisy.

Did you know the home is the number one place where an accident can happen?  Why, you could drown in a bucket, get a paper cut while opening bills and develop a raging staff infection, or do a jumping jack in an effort to get healthy only to lose your squash to the overhead ceiling fan.

I’m not even going to get into the invisible bacteria growing on your feet, the latest hybrid monkey/bird/alligator/giraffe flu virus outbreak to hit the headlines, how your golf game is going to be interrupted when a celebrity crashes a vintage World War II fighter jet right in the middle of your back swing, or god damn it, the literally millions upon millions of spiders that are crawling up your nose each and every night, laying eggs, and throwing a massive disco dance party in the epicenter of your brain.

I’m not not going to worry about any of that anymore and neither should you.

Why?

See the beginning of this tirade where I did or did not shock you when I informed you I am not an important person.

As such, I have no ability to do anything about the vast multitude of problems that plague the world like a bad haircut on yearbook photo day.

Could I run for and win an elected office and use my wit and wisdom to cure all of society’s ills?

No.

Why?

First, I hate to break it to you, but I’m not all that handsome. I know ladies, I know. I’m sorry to devastate you with this news.

What? You figured it out? All men who spend a lot of time blogging look like a cross between Gollum and a chupacabra? Well, hey, let’s not go that far…um…yeah yeah, all right, that’s fair.

Second, I’m not a gifted public speaker – partly because my tongue ends up tied in more knots than a bag of Rold’s Gold and partly because I speak the truth people need to listen to, not the BS that John Q. Public wants to hear.

Third, I can’t be bought by the man – unless the man represents a prominent book publisher. In that case, then yes sir, my character can die, be reborn, wear a pink tutu, and/or kiss a goat. Whatever you want, sir. You just tell me how hairy you want that goat to be.

The average politician has to be good looking and photogenic, with a million dollar toothy grin. He needs to speak eloquently, with the ability to charm the pants off the room and a soul dark enough to allow him to spoon feed a heaping helping of horse manure with a side of fries to the masses – extra chunky, just how the masses like it.

Yes, if you wish to become a politician, you’ll be forced to compromise your principles in the name of campaign contributions. Those boku bucks come with a zip string that gets attached to your back, allowing the donor to yank on it and force you to regurgitate his agenda, turning you into one great big walking, talking Chatty Kathy doll.

The common man who cares about the average joe has no place in today’s political system. I’m not taking a side here. Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, that weird party that insists on passing a law that would require everyone to wear shoes on their hands and walk upside down…they’re all just a bunch of heads attached to one great big bloated smelly hydra.

To quote the late great Douglas Adams of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame:

“The major problem – one of the major problems, for there are several – one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”

Be honest folks, do you think good old Abraham “Born in a Log Cabin and Educated Myself by Candlelight” Lincoln could ever get elected today?

No. Those losers on twitter would have a field day with him:

Tonight on Campaign 2016 News Coverage - Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator. Sure, he freed the slaves and held the union together - but can we really be expected to follow a man with a face that craggy?

Tonight on Campaign 2016 News Coverage – Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator. Sure, he freed the slaves and held the union together – but can we really be expected to follow a man with a face that craggy?

My friends, I guarantee you somewhere out there is an Abraham Lincoln-esque individual whose heart is in the right place, whose common sense and can do attitude could lead the world into a new dawn of peace and prosperity but….he’s too fat…too old…has a crooked nose, bad hair, a hella craggy face, or has been plagued by never-ending reports of a third grade scandal during which he picked a booger out of his schnozola and flicked it at an unsuspecting classmate who ended up traumatized for life.

In short, we’ve become a nation of dummies that focus on nothing but insignificant crap and then wonder why our leaders provide us with the same insignificant crap in return.

I don’t know. All I know is that our best possible leader has some problem that he knows the media would use to run roughshod over him and therefore he’s like, “Screw politics! I’m going to sell used Sonatas at the Hyundai dealership in Tulsa!”

“3.5 READERS: BQB – do you have a point?”

Yes! Over a thousand words later, I have a point! I really do.

I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THAT WHICH I AM POWERLESS TO CHANGE.

And if you’re a follower of this blog, then chances are, you don’t either.  (Though if you do, you’re still more than welcome).

What do we do when we can’t change the sad state of affairs the world finds itself in?

We tune out and turn on the TV.

We pop in our earbuds and crank up the Top 40.

We purchase an overpriced bag of popcorn and take in the latest over the top, special effects laden blockbuster.

Hell, I heard a rumor that some people even poke their noses into a book once in awhile.

Pop culture. Open up our gobs and shovel it straight down to the deepest, darkest recesses of our bellies, Hollywood. We can’t get enough of it.

As the world gets worse and the average citizen becomes less able to change things thanks to Larry Lobbyist and Carl Corporation, we find our minds becoming more and more immersed in fictional, fantasy worlds – worlds where we can pretend we’re people that we are not, men and women we could never be, people with a voice, people who can make a difference…

…PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY MATTER!

I don’t know about you, but I devour pop culture like a fat guy at an All You Can Eat Big Mac Buffett because the worlds developed by artists are a thousand times better than the world I live in.

As fans of those worlds, do we matter?

Yes…and…no.

Yes, we matter because Hollywood will occasionally listen to us when we bitch about how they screwed the pooch with our favorite franchise, how they dropped the writing ball and steered our most beloved characters into an impermeable corner, or how sometimes they just do something out of left field (Dexter=Lumberjack??? Why???)

No, because like the other people that Holden Caulfield would call a bunch of phonies, Hollywood is also run by big corporations and CEOS who view you as one more schmuck to plunk down your cash and put your butt in a theater seat. Whether or not you are actually entertained is all too often an immaterial issue.

Can we change that?

No.

But we can ask those elusive questions – “WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN AND THE EVER IMPORTANT, WHY?”

What happened to Mr. and Mr. Brady’s first spouses?

How the hell do Doc and Marty know each other?

Why couldn’t Rose have just gotten on that damn lifeboat like she was told?

Why does Miley Cyrus insist on sticking out her tongue and making a face akin to a weasel suffering from an epileptic seizure?

What time is Hammer Time?

Questions. Like you, I have so, so very many questions about pop culture.

I want to take the plot holes of my favorite movies and TV shows and spackle them over with putty, apoxy, glue, and dare I say, the finest caulk in the land.

I want to analyze celebrity meltdowns and learn why fame, fortune, and adoration of the masses wasn’t enough to keep our favorite stars from hitting the silly sauce, popping the goofy pills, or getting on social media and ranting with all the eloquence of a bull roid raging its way through a china shop.

The long and skinny of it?

I want to learn as much as I possibly can about the fantasy worlds in which my mind temporarily resides from time to time because the powers that be have made the real world around me so utterly unbearable.

ALIEN JONES: Jumpin’ Jupiter, BQB. You sound like you’re reverting to that 1990’s phase where you wore nothing but flannel and played Smells Like Teen Spirit on a continuous loop.

BQB:  Not now, AJ.  I’m on a roll.

My friends, my followers, my 3.5 readers, my dear, dear Aunt Gertrude…it is my great honor to announce a new feature on the Bookshelf Battle Blog:

Pop Culture Mysteries.

I have questions about pop culture and I’m sure you do too.

To that end, I have retained the services of a hardboiled 1950’s Sam Spade-esque, film noir style private detective to investigate all the questions we have about our favorite movies, TV shows, music, and yes even books.

Stop by every week as Jake Hatcher, Official Bookshelf Battle Detective takes our questions, sniffs out the clues, snoops around the suspects, chases down the leads, and reports back here with his findings.

It’s going to be one helluva ride, readers. Along the way, we might even learn how a 1950’s sleuth ended up in modern times.

As we speak, Detective Hatcher is hot on the trail of the questions listed above and more are on the way.

For reasons that will soon be made clear, he has committed to investigate no less than one hundred pop culture mysteries for the benefit of my readers before he’ll be able to renegotiate his contract.

Do you have a pop culture mystery that my resident gumshoe needs to unravel?

Tweet it to @bookshelfbattle or leave it #popculturemysteries

Leave it in the comments or on my Google Plus page

You’ll have to use me as an intermediary because, you know, Jake’s from the 1950’s and is still getting up to speed on computers.

Noble readers, as always, thanks a million for stopping by.

I don’t know why, but I have a feeling in my gut that this feature will be the one that makes bookshelfbattle.com blow up.

ALIEN JONES: I have that feeling in my gut too. It’s the after shocks of that rancid seven layer dip you bought at the quick-stop and served during Scandal night.

BQB: Can you…not tell the audience that Scandal night is a regular thing at BQB HQ? Please? OK

AJ: What? The Yeti already knows. And everyone knows that the three forms of mass communication are telephone, telegraph, and tell-a-yeti.

BQB: He is a relentless gossip. It’s true.

Thanks folks. I’ll let Jake take it from here.  Stop by bookshelfbattle.com for the the first episode of POP CULTURE MYSTERIES!

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May 31 2015
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Project X

Tomorrow on the Bookshelf Battle Blog…

BQB’s undercover mystery project begins.

Don't miss Hatcher's mysterious adventures on the Bookshelf Battle Blog

Don’t miss Hatcher’s mysterious adventures on the Bookshelf Battle Blog

Jake Hatcher.  Failed boxer.  World War II hero.  Honest cop later turned hardboiled private investigator.  He carries the baggage of three ex-wives and a lifetime of regret.

In 1955, Hatcher fell asleep in his LA office only to wake up in 2014.  He’s spent the last year trying to figure out what happened to no avail.  Even worse, he’s surrounded by a world he doesn’t recognize and technology he doesn’t understand.

A mysterious blond dame offers him the chance to find his way back home but of course, there’s a catch.  He’ll need to dust off his sleuthing skills and get to work.

Is his new acquaintance on the level or is she working him over?  Time will tell.

But one thing’s for sure:

Hatcher will need your help.

One critic had this to say:

It’s writing.  Words are arranged in an order that can be read.

– Alien Jones, Intergalactic Correspondent

Best review this blogger has ever received.

Catch up on the promos.

Meanwhile, BQB and the Meaning of Life is taking a hiatus.  It’ll be back in a week or so.  Catch up on what you’ve missed here.

One thing’s for sure, on a blog that features a goofy nerd, a conceited alien, a smelly yeti, and a mad scientist, we’ll finally get a character around here who can class up the joint:

Suck in your guts, nerds! There's a lady present!

Suck in your guts, nerds! There’s a lady present!

Copyright Bookshelf Q. Battler 2015.  All rights reserved.

Images courtesy of a shutterstock.com license.

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