Too young to retire, too old to hang out at da club, the right age to buy an overpriced sports car. Happy 40th Birthday SNL!
I wish I could watch your special but I’m too hooked on Walking Dead. Hopefully tonight’s special will end up on Hulu or on NBC On Demand.
I totally love SNL. Watching it as a kid, trying to do the imitations the cast were doing – fun stuff. Everyone seems to love the cast they grew up with the best. Which cast is your favorite?
Good Day, Bookshelf Battlers.
I am Bookshelf Q. Battler and I am now a month and a half into the challenge I have issued to myself, namely, to post once a day for the year of 2015.
It has been a grueling challenge, but well worth it, as it brings smiles to the faces of my 3.5 regular readers.
I will now take your questions.
QUESTION: What are the rules of this challenge?
ANSWER: If you are new to this blog and thinking about becoming my fourth regular reader, the rules can be found here.
QUESTION: Are you just an a-hole shouting into the wind?
ANSWER: Indeed I am…and a proud one at that.
QUESTION: This reminds me of that scene in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, where Mr. Smith filibusters on the floor of the senate, except Jimmy Stewart had more charisma.
ANSWER: I think Jimmy Stewart was a fantastic actor. However, he lived in a time where you’d go knock on Hollywood’s door and say, “Hey Hollywood! I’d like to work in the entertainment industry please!” and Hollywood was all like, “Sure, come on in!”
QUESTION: It wasn’t really that easy even back then.
ANSWER: No, it wasn’t. And we even have amazing technology today that allows the common man to make his voice heard. The problem (perhaps ‘problem’ is not the best word) – the issue is that a whole helluvalot of people are using that technology to make their voices heard.
QUESTION: So this challenge is your way of trying to scream louder than the a-hole next to you?
ANSWER: Maybe.
QUESTION: Have you seen any results?
ANSWER: Since Christmas, I’ve gained over a thousand twitter followers for @bookshelfbattle – If you aren’t following it, I challenge your nerd street cred. Visitors to the site are increasing and a Google + site for the blog is going swimmingly. Join that too if you’re a Googler.
QUESTION: Has anyone tried to stop you from posting once a day?
ANSWER: Yes. The forces of evil do not like this blog. They don’t want this much awesomeness being brought into people’s blog feeds. Thus far, they have sent ninjas, aliens, bears, and asteroids after me.
QUESTION: Have they really?
ANSWER: I’m typing with my left hand and punching a werewolf sent to stop my blog with my right hand as we speak. I am a skilled mult-tasker.
QUESTION: You say odd things, like what you just said about a werewolf.
ANSWER: I have an odd sense of humor. Half of the people out there will get it and join in on the fun. The other half will think I’m an idiot who believes in werewolves.
QUESTION: You don’t believe in werewolves?
ANSWER: Um, hello! I just told you I’m fighting one!
QUESTION: Surely a werewolf will stop you from blogging.
ANSWER: I’ve trained under the world’s foremost werewolf hunters. I will be fine. It’s the werewolf you should be worried about.
QUESTION: Will anything stop you from posting once a day?
ANSWER: Absolutely not. If you can think of a hypothetical scenario that could stop me, let me know, and I will debunk it immediately.
QUESTION: Are you ever going to review some more books on your book blog? Because, you know, it’s a book blog.
ANSWER: I hope to. Even when I don’t, I do bring in a lot of literary references, discussions of writing, and so on. All in all, I feel this is a site that the average book nerd with a healthy sense of humor will enjoy.
QUESTION: Do you have any fun plans for the blog in the months ahead or is it just going to be a lot of obligatory “I like waffles” type posts just to meet the once a day challenge?
ANSWER: I’m not going to lie. By the end of this year, my 3.5 regular readers will be well versed in my breakfast food likes and dislikes. However, one fun project I am working on is the Bookshelf Battle origin story.
QUESTION: What?
ANSWER: What life is like as the owner of a magical bookshelf upon which the inhabitants constantly do battle.
QUESTION: That sounds stupid.
ANSWER: Paramount already bought the movie rights.
QUESTION: Who’s playing you?
ANSWER: Channing Tatum
QUESTION: No, really.
ANSWER: Jonah Hill
QUESTION: No, really.
ANSWER: Fine. Danny DeVito.
QUESTION: No, really.
ANSWER: Alright! CGI Gollum.
QUESTION: Anything else?
ANSWER: Come April, it’s going to be a real Game of Thrones-a-palooza around here. I treat Game of Thrones Sundays in the Springtime the way so-called normal people do with the Superbowl. Except, arguably, Game of Thrones is better than the Superbowl, because stuff more interesting than a ball being moved around is happening. If you’re a GOT nerd, stop by in April.
QUESTION: Do you always interview yourself?
ANSWER: Yes.
In conclusion, thanks everyone for following in and joining in on the fun. Together, we can bring the written word to the masses whilst not being all stuffy about it.
I love the youtube show – “Key of Awesome.” If you haven’t seen it yet, you should check it out.
As my 3.5 regular readers know, I’ve been complaining about Fifty Shades of Gray, arguing that its success exposes societal hypocrisy in that if Christian Grey were ugly and poor, it would be a horror film released on Halloween. But, since he’s rich and handsome, it’s classified as a Valentine’s Day Romance.
Great minds think alike apparently. Here’s Key of Awesome’s “Fifty Shades of Broke.” The premise? Grey loses all of his money in a pawnsi scheme and suddenly all of his “extracurricular activities” lose their appeal for the mousey interviewer.
“I liked it better when you took me to Paris after you whipped me!”
Anyway, Key of Awesome is great. Check it out.
21) Did the dinosaurs talk? I mean, like actually talk? “Hello Mr. Brontosaurus, how are you?” “Oh, I’m delightful Mr. Triceratops, thank you for asking.” Scientists assume not but none of us were there. I bet those scaly bastards talked all the time.
22) Would Abraham Lincoln win an election today? Or would everyone just be all like, “Great emancipator, my ass, look at that dude’s craggy ass face!”
23) Have you ever asked Siri, “What does the fox say?” You should try it. Seriously, you should.
24) Do ghosts really exist? I hope not. I mean sure, for the first couple years, you prank the people who move into your house. Move their shit around while they aren’t looking and freak them out. Break stuff. Jump around while they’re sleeping and laugh when they jump up and try to convince themselves it was the house creeking before they go to bed. But I have to say, that’s a pretty tedious way to spend an afterlife. I hope ghosts get to quit that crap eventually.
25) Few politicians of the 1960’s dared to speak out on the plight that was elderly criminals dressing up like monsters so as to manipulate real estate prices. Scooby Doo and the good people at Hanna Barbera were the only citizens who dared bring this issue to the forefront. And I say, god bless them. Thanks to them, I don’t have to worry about my Grandpa dressing up like a Sasquatch to drive down the price of the local abandoned amusement park.
26) If Star Fleet has the power to beam people anywhere in the Universe, why do they even need the Starship Enterprise? Or the whole fleet for that matter?
27) Speaking of, the next time you encounter a difficult situation at work, you should scratch your head and say, “Wow Boss, this is a real Kobayashi Maru!” There is a 50% chance your boss will think you’re brilliantly citing some obscure business principle and a 50% chance your boss will think you are a stone cold crack smoker. There’s pretty much no in between in that scenario.
28) Am I the only one to notice that in Pulp Fiction, they make this big deal about Harvey Keitel’s character, “The Wolf,” that he’s some kind of mastermind fixer and an expert at turning around bad situations, but all he does is tell Travolta and Jackson to spray some household cleaner in the back seat and clean up all the brains? I mean, I’m not a criminal hitman, but I feel like I could have figure out “get the paper towels and the windex” on my own.
29) I want a helper monkey. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m just lazy. He could fetch me snacks, change the channel on my TV when I lose my remote, and write this blog. Hell, he could probably do a better job.
30) Sometimes I worry that people are so easily offended by the silliest things that it is really going to take a toll on the future of comedy. I predict by the year 2100, Saturday Night Live will consist of nothing but Knock-Knock Jokes and jokes about ducks walking into bars. Thank God I’ll be dead by then and won’t see it. Or if they keep me alive through robotics then remind me to reblog this when I’m right.
Yes, noble readers, while most of you think normal thoughts, like, “I think I’d like to put some grape jelly on my toast today,” I, Bookshelf Q. Battler, am cursed to consider more bizarre machinations, such as:
11) Is it racist that Webster called his adopted mother, “Ma’am?”
12) Was The Facts of Life a 1980’s version of Little Women that left Louisa May Alcott rolling in her grave?
I lie awake at night thinking about this stuff. I really do. Stuff like:
13) Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp? And is whoever put the ram in the rama lama ding dong still at large?
:::pounds my fist on the interrogation table and shines the hot light on the suspect::: “TELL ME! TELL ME RIGHT NOW WHAT I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE BOMP OR I’M GOING TO WALK TO THE NEXT ROOM AND MAKE A DEAL WITH YOUR BUDDY, THE DING DONG!””
14) Are timelines real? With every choice you make, no matter how big or small, do you make an infinite number of timelines, reflective of the outcomes of the various choices you could have made? If so, is there another me who actually puts book reviews on his book blog?
15) What is the meaning of life? Does it involve cheese?
16) In the highly-evolved world of Star Wars, why would anyone use a lightsaber, when laser pistols are so readily available? In our own less modern world, we stopped using swords once we developed bullets. In a world where laser guns are available, are people really going to use swords made out of light just because they look badass?
Yes. Yes they are.
17) Why don’t I sponsor one of those third world children they keep showing me on TV? They tell me I could change those kids’ lives for forty cents a day. I can spare forty cents a day. It’s not that I don’t have forty cents, it’s just that I’m too damn lazy to fill out the form, go to the website, make the call, or do whatever you have to do to sponsor one of these kids?
Sigh. Somewhere in a country ruled by a man with a tall hat and a uniform filled with self-awarded medals, there is a hungry kid whose malaria could be cured if I’d just get out of my own way long enough to figure out how to send it to him.
18) If I were to strap myself to a catapult, shoot myself through the stratosphere, into the cosmos, to the edge of the universe to the point where it all just loops around and I complete a perfect 360 degree journey back to where I started – would I be able to pick up right where I left off, or would there be another me there to contend with?
19) Why must we grow old? Why must we get ill and sick before we pass on? Why can’t we just stay youthful until we’re a hundred and then just fall asleep under a cherry tree?
20) A man begins a journey in Texas. He takes a plane to India, and said plane travels at a rate of 80 miles per hour. A woman begins her journey in Moscow, where she takes a train to Norway, said train traveling at a rate of 72 miles per hour. Given that the wind speed variables have been taken into consideration, that the Earth is in perfect alignment with Mars, and that neither party has a considerable advantage over the other…what will they eat for dinner?
Blogger/Author Tommy Muncie posed this comment, so finely crafted, that I felt it merited an entire post:
Respect to you for doing this…I couldn’t write a short post if I tried (you’ve probably noticed) and trying one per day would probably give me an aneurysm. On that note, I reckon you’ll achieve the goal but I’m wondering how you’ll get past the day you get sick, as in the kind of sick where you’re bedridden and narcoleptic and running the kind of temperature the Sahara Dessert would be jealous of and thinking ‘Must…get…to….wordpress!’ and then your body knocks you out when you try. I read your random questions post tonight as well, so here’s a question: could you get past a day like that and still post?
– Tommy Muncie
ANSWER – I’ve been scheduling posts in advance, in the hopes of avoiding this very scenario. However, should I fall violently ill, I will use my last bit of energy to make a post. It won’t be anything fancy or spectacular, it will just be “post” or I’ll just bang on the keys and click “post” just to meet the once a day requirement.
Further, if, say, I am hit by a bus or otherwise left incapacitated, I have engaged a team of individuals to post in my stead, mimicking my subtle nuances and character, so that you will not even notice I am gone.
Actually, I haven’t done that, but now that I’m worried about illnesses and bus attacks on my person, I will have to do so.
Thanks a lot, Muncie!
Now that I’ve answered that question, here some others I anticipate you, my audience of three readers, may have:
QUESTION: Suppose you are cornered by a team of robot ninjas who stand between you and your computer, preventing you from making a post? Will you yield on your promise to us, the readers, to make one post a day?
ANSWER: Absolutely not. I scoff in the face of danger. Few are aware of this, but I was trained in the martial arts by Chuck Norris. I payed it forward by training Steven Seagal, teaching him all the moves he displayed in his movies from the 1980’s and 90’s, though I take no credit from his later films where he got fat and teamed up with Tom Arnold.
QUESTION: An asteroid is careening towards Earth. You have one minute to save the world and you have not yet posted on this particular day. What do you do?
ANSWER: I make a quick post, then I frighten the asteroid back into space with a glare so fearsome that it clearly communicates to the asteroid my disapproval of its tiresome behavior.
QUESTION: A grizzly bear demands to fist fight you in a steel cage UFC championship bout. The prize? Your computer. If you win, you get to post. If you loose, the bear eats your computer.
ANSWER: My post will be a selfie of me wearing the bear’s oily hide as a coat.
QUESTION: Aliens invade. They detonate an electromagnetic pulse that renders all electronic equipment useless.
ANSWER: It’s fine. I scheduled an advance post.
QUESTION: You didn’t. You were too busy watching Game of Thrones, that show that Tommy Muncie is not impressed with. Blasphemy, I say.
ANSWER: I did post.
QUESTION: You didn’t.
ANSWER: Well, if your computer is taken out too, then how can you be sure I didn’t?
QUESTION: Well played, sir. Well played.
QUESTION: You are kidnapped by Russians, who want your blog down because it is too awesome. They throw you, your computer, and a parachute out of a plane, but separately, not together.
ANSWER: I dive myself to the computer, post, then put on the parachute. Note that my first instinct was to post, not to save myself.
QUESTION: Katy Perry and Katee Sackhoff, two of your favorite Katies in the entire world, barge into your domicile, each wearing their customary garb. Perry is in her California Girls video costume, while Sackhoff is in her Battlestar Galactica pilot gear. They offer to have their way with you, but the price? You must not post for one day.
ANSWER: Define “have their way with me.” I understand the classical connotation, but it is an open ended term that can be taken a variety of ways. Thus far, in my experience, a woman “having her way with me” means she sucks up all my money, provides me with a longwinded speech about how we should just be friends, and then said friendship inevitably requires that I console her while she, with a cat in one hand and a pint of ice cream in the other, whines to me about how the men she wants to be more than friends with aren’t nice to her. I feel such a situation would not be worth sacrificing the respect of my three readers for.
QUESTION: The classical connotation.
ANSWER: Ah. Wow. That is a tough one. They won’t even allow me to post just so I can brag about it?
QUESTION: No.
ANSWER: Well, I made a promise to all three of my fans, so I would invite the Katies in for a rousing game of Parcheesi, perhaps build a few jigsaw puzzles with them, then send them on their way in time to make a post. That’s just what a selfless man who has made a commitment does.
QUESTION: Would you resent us forever for it?
ANSWER: Yes.
Do you have questions about what I would do in a potential scenario that would make it difficult for me to post? Ask away in the comments.
…that plague the mind of Bookshelf Q. Battler, in no particular order:
1) Why does Elsa view her magic freeze powers as a curse? Why does she not use them to control the world and rule her subjects with an icey fist?
2) Why do they put braille on restroom door signs? Do blind men rub their hands all over the walls of public buildings, find a braille door sign, go, “Whoops! That’s the ladies room!” and then feel their way around again to the men’s room? And would it matter if he went into the wrong room? Because, you know, he’s blind, so it’s not like he’s going to see anything.
Yes, noble readers, who have followed me on my year long quest to post once a day, these are the thoughts that fill the deep recesses of my mind. Trivial, absurd, ridiculous minutiae that few bother to even consider.
Thoughts like:
3) Why do aliens only abduct people from the South? And why do aliens abduct humans at all anymore? One would think at some point, their skilled alien scientists would reach a limit as to what can be learned from probe related experiments. I dare say, somewhere in outer space, an alien scientist has published an article entitled, “Stop Probing the Humans, We Figured Them All Out” and yet, it’s being ignored, because he only posted it on alien wordpress.
4) If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Yes – KKKKKRRRRRRRRRACCCCCK BOOOOOOM!
5) Why does Hollywood ugly up good looking people so they can play ugly people? They did it to Charlize Theron in Monster and Christian Bale in American Hustle. Somewhere, there is an overweight man with a combover who would have been perfect to played the lead role in American Hustle. The poor guy probably ignored advice from countless friends and family members – “No! Don’t move to Hollywood and try to be an actor! There will never be a part for a fat man with a combover!” And finally, finally! There’s a part for a fat man with a combover and what do they do? They take a handsome man, stuff his shirt with a pillow, and give him a fake combover wig.
Damn you, beautiful people! Don’t you already have enough? Why must you steal parts from the ugly?
6) If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime. If you take a man to Crazy Larry’s All-You-Can-Eat Discount Fish Nugget Bar, he will get food poisoning.
7) How was it possible for the A-Team to evade justice for so many years? How was the government not able to find a team that included the handsomest man in the world, an old man who smoked a giant stogie everywhere he went, a lunatic who inevitably broke out into loud and boisterous songs, and an enormous bodybuilder who was dripping with solid gold chains?
8) Was Stonehenge an ancient druid singles bar?
9) Is the Yeti little more than Big Foot’s Arctic cousin?
10) When Santa delivers a kid an X-Box, does he have to pay Bill Gates a royalty?
Join me tomorrow, I was will bring you more…RANDOM THOUGHTS.
I wish it was a continuation (i.e. a sequel) rather than a reboot.
It could start with Ray (Dan Akyroyd) and Winston (Ernie Hudson) selling the old firehouse to a new group of female Ghostbusters. After the cash is handed over and the papers are signed, Ray and Winston retire to Florida where they, oh I don’t know, become fishing boat captains. Or buddy cops.
Perhaps this is overly-nerdy of me, but I feel like a reboot wipes out the past universe of a movie franchise, whereas a sequel continues it.
Unless you’re into varying timelines. Or aren’t a nerd who spends too much time thinking about these things.
What say you, readers? What are your thoughts on the Ghostbusters reboot?
Well, in a perfect world there would be a fabulous, rockin’ party here at Bookshelf Battle HQ but instead, I’m passing out candy and watching that 1988 classic, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. For those who weren’t around in the 1980’s, she was pretty much the funniest part of Halloween. Sadly, no one has ever picked up her torch to become the next generation’s Halloween celebrity. That’s ok – perhaps she is just one of a kind and irreplaceable.
What the heck is Elvira anyway? Does anyone have the definite answer? I’m pretty sure she is a witch. I’ve heard theories that she was a vampire but she never really did anything vampire-y.
Her schtick? She would poke fun at the worst monster movies of all time – you know, back in the days when you needed your network to run a movie to watch it and you just didn’t have the ability to get on your computer and literally watch any movie you wanted.
I just checked out her You Tube Channel (she’s still going strong after all these years) and learned that she has had a new series on Hulu this whole Halloween season. Wish I knew about it sooner – maybe I’ll check it out or maybe I’ll wait until next year.
Anyway, here’s her Hulu trailer:
Bookshelf Battle 