Previously on Pop Culture Mysteries…
And now the Pop Culture Mysteries continue…
It was a full moon and like a werewolf, I was ready to howl.
Ms. Minaj’s Anaconda featured a bevy of bodacious booty, so much so that I couldn’t tell if it was a music video or a proctology doctor’s highlight reel.
“Do pick up your jaw, Mr. Hatcher,” Delilah scolded. “I dare say you run the risk of drooling into your ice water.”
Like an adorable blonde bunny rabbit, Delilah munched on a salad. It must be hard to be a dame like that, barely eating anything just to keep a trim figure.
I skipped lunch and asked for a glass of H20. I was hungrier than a bear after hibernation, but I had fifteen smackers in my pocket earned by solving three cases for Mr. Battler and my manly pride mandated that I not allow Ms. Donnelly to pick up the check this time.
I handed Ms. Donnelly’s phone back to her.
“I have no idea how to work these damn beep boop machines. Play it again, will you?”
Delilah scoffed, seized the phone, and tucked it into her designer handbag.
“You’ve already watched it seventeen times, Mr. Hatcher.”
“I’m nothing if not a thorough investigator, Ms. Donnelly,” I said. “There’s a clue hiding amidst all those hineys. I’m sure of it!”
“You’ll have to review it on your own time. I won’t allow my mobile device to be used for your perversions any longer.”
Delilah passed me a manilla envelope. I opened it. A letter from Mr. Battler.
Hatcher,
The Video Music Awards. They’re a yearly opportunity for ridiculously wealthy superstar musicians who get paid insane gobs of cash to sing songs and prance around in absurd outfits to pat each other on the back for their accomplishments made over the past year.
Naturally, pop culture junkies like myself gobble the spectacle up like rocky road ice cream.
But there’s trouble in paradise.
Pop-rapper Nicki Minaj, whose videos, what with their vivid colors, imaginative premises, and, well, yes, butts, butts, and more butts, was shunned. Forgotten. Cast aside.
Some might even say, “snubbed.”
Nicki was none too pleased and took to Twitter with her complaints, charging racism and body type-ism.
Not to be left out of the spotlight, songstresses Katy Perry and Taylor Swift stuck their schnozolas into the mix as well.
Review the tweets, conduct copious research and above all else, inform my 3.5 readers whether or not Nicki Minaj’s snub complaint is valid.
Sincerely,
Bookshelf Q. Battler
Blogger-in-Chief of the Bookshelf Battle Blog
I folded up the note and tucked it into my pocket.
“What on God’s green Earth is a Twitter?”
“It’s a social media website…”
Ms. Donnelly stopped, noticed the dumbfounded expression on my mug, and took an alternative tack.
“People like to talk a lot on their ‘beep boop machines’ as you call them. They share virtually every last mundane detail of their lives with one another.”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Very much so,” Delilah said as she pulled out her phone and snapped a photo of her lunch.
“I can’t believe that,” I said.
“Yes, just one of the things you’ll have to get used to I suppose.”
Delilah’s dainty fingers typed something on her phone. Under her breath, I heard her mutter, “Hashtag Worst Salad Ever.”
BQB EDITORIAL NOTE: Have you eaten a salad worse than Ms. Donnelly’s? Share it on #WorstSaladEver.
“People have gotten lame if you ask me,” I said.
“I did not.”
“Sharing a bunch of photos of nonsense,” I said. “I’ve never heard of anything more boring.”
“To each their own,” Delilah said.
“Hell, it used to be if a yahoo tried to show you his photo album, you’d run out of the room like your feet were on fire.”
“Times,” Delilah said with perfect diction. “They are a-changing.”
The waitress dropped off the bill. Delilah reached for it.
“Nothin’ doin,” I said as I forked over my three fivers.
“Oh honestly, Mr. Hatcher,” Delilah said. “I don’t mean to be a braggart but I make so much more money than you. You parting with the meager compensation provided to you by Mr. Battler is the last thing I want.”
Dames making more than men. You know what I’m going to say, 3.5 readers.
I’m not against the idea. I’m just not used to it.
“I won’t hear of it, Ms. Donnelly,” I said and then to the waitress, “Keep the change, dollface.”
“Hooray,” the waitress said as she twirled a finger around in the air as if she were throwing a sarcastic party. “A whole quarter.”
$14.75 for a lousy salad and a glass of wine. What a racket.
Ms. Donnelly dropped a fiver of her own on the table.
“I said I’ve got it.”
“It would be tres blaise to leave such a pathetic tip, Mr. Hatcher,” Delilah said as she stood up. “You may not care about your reputation but I have built a proper one that I must guard zealously.”
We walked outside the restaurant and stood there for a moment. I waited for Delilah to unlock the door to the ’55 Caddy but instead, she got on her beep boop machine and did some beep booping.
“Ringing your gentleman caller?” I asked.
“Not that that would be any of your concern but no,” Delilah said. “I’m calling an Uber.”
“A what-er?”
“An Internet based car service,” Delilah explained. “A company that retains the services of drivers who are treated like independent contractors, thus rendering the need to pay for worker benefits unnecessary.”
“I think I just heard Jimmy Hoffa roll over in his unmarked grave.”
Yeah, I know Hoffa didn’t disappear until the 1980s but what can I say? I’d been visiting old Agnes the librarian a lot, utilizing her books to bone up on everything I’d missed while I was pulling a Rip Van Winkle.
“Why call a cab when you’ve got wheels?” I asked.
“I don’t,” Ms. Donnelly said. “You do.”
The debutante tossed me the keys and I caught them without a hitch.
“I don’t get it.”
“A gift from Mr. Battler. He figured that if you’re going to solve one-hundred pop culture mysteries for him, you’re going to need a reliable means of transportation.”
Like a cat in a canary cage, I was overjoyed.
“I thought you said the nerd doesn’t have much moolah.”
“He doesn’t,” Delilah said. “And though notoriously stingy with his own funds, Mr. Battler and his magic bookshelf do have a certain rare ability to…make things happen when they need to.”
“Magic bookshelf my eye,” I said. “I still say our boss is nuttier than a fruitcake.”
“You’re free to think whatever you wish, Mr. Hatcher.”
“I think I’m not going to look a gift horse as sweet as this one in the mouth,” I said as I opened up the driver’s side door. “Cancel your car, Ms. Donnelly, I’ll gladly give you a lift home.”
“That’s quite all right.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
Huh. Another piece to the Delilah puzzle. She obviously didn’t want me to see her digs and I was overcome with a desire to find out why.
But I knew if I pressed the issue, she’d snap up tighter than a Chinese finger trap.
So I did the only thing a gentleman could do. I waited until her Uber picked her up and then tooled all over town with my fancy new set of wheels.
I used to have one just like it and was touched that Mr. Battler went through the trouble to find a replica.
Maybe my boss wasn’t such a dope after all.
Copyright (C) 2015 Bookshelf Q. Battler. All Rights Reserved.
Bookshelf Battle 