Quit yer Bitchin'

"Oh boo hoo hoo, Shell hasn't updated his blog in over a month and now I have nothing to look forward to in my lonely pathetic life!"

Man up, Nancy. I've been busy. You know, with things like time travel!!

And those questions to the Mail Sack don't answer themselves, you know.

So stop crying into your Transformers Underoos and get some self respect, you idiot.

Letterman ruined it for the rest of us.

Thanks a lot Dave!!

I thought we had a deal, and by we I mean the cadre of talk show hosts that secretly controls the media and by proxy people's minds. We had a good thing going, Dave. We had our pick of interns and female staffers to cater to our every sexual whim, and no one was the wiser!! Did you think I hired the top ten contestants from the Miss Brazil pageant to work in the accounting department because they were good at math?? Well, one of them was, actually. Now she teaches at Cal Tech but that's beside the point, I hired them because they were hot and had a very limited mastery of English!! And then you come along and ruin it all!!!

Do you have any idea how many ex boyfriends have tried to blackmail me over the years? I mean what are you, some sort of amateur? There's a reason every talk show hosts keeps a hitman on staff, Dave. They aren't there to look pretty. They're there to ensure that our sexual daliances remain secret (even if it does mean having to execute the majority of your staff after an ill-advised swingers party in the conference room in the middle of the day. That's what we in the business call a "shake-up.")

Really Dave, this could have been handled so much better. Scandals are expensive, but you know what's cheap? Bullets! Also stranglings. And Thai hookers, also very inexpensive.

Now I've got people looking at me funny, assuming the only way to get ahead on this show is to sleep with me! Well they're right, but that doesn't mean I want Frank from the mailroom humping my leg. This was supposed to be our secret, Dave. We had a good thing going, and now our secret's out. I mean, what's point of even having a talk show anymore if you can't sleep with the hot interns?? And forget about the monthly talk show host orgies. The next one was gonna be at my house - I bought balloons! Well there is an upside to all this - I won't have to look at Kimmel's ass anymore. But still Dave, next time you're gonna blow our cover, do it with something that doesn't matter, like embezzling health insurance or something. Keep my Brazilian interns out of it.

Ah crap, it's September??

Nobody ever tells me anything!!

Ok, here's the deal - I may have went a little bit overboard after the Emmys. Since the beginning of the month I had been spending sleepless nights worrying about our show's chances, and it only got worse as the big day approached. Then the big day approached, I put on my tux, I hijacked a limo and off I went to bask in the glory of nationwide adoration.

And they wouldn't let me in. Aparently I wasn't on the "list." How can that be? Aren't all nominees given VIP seats?? Well, as it turns out, I wasn't nominated. Nor was the show, for that matter. Or anything else on the network. Not even for a technical Emmy. 

That was the start of a rather unpleasant weekend. Let's just say I woke up yesterday morning in the middle of Nebraska. Like, exactly in the middle. I was laying underneath a sign that said "Welcome to the middle of Nebraska." There was a Japanese family taking pictures of me.  Can't say I blame them, it was either me or corn. I'd be pretty pissed off too if I was Japanese and decided to take an exciting trip to America and ended up in Nebraska. Actually I'd just be pissed off if I was Japanese. Square watermelons are unnatural.

Oh, also I was handcuffed to the severed arm of what appeared to be some type of Wolfman. Ponder that one for a minute. I'm not even going to get into how I managed to make it back to civilization, I'm saving that one for the clip show. 

So anyway, once I did make it back to the studio I saw a calendar that said it was late September, followed by a stack of parking tickets on my desk from what appeared to be a triple-parking job in a School for the Deaf parking lot by the Weinermobile. 

Stupid Emmys. This happens every year.

About that whole Swine Flu thing...

I'd just like to take this opportunity to declare that recent reports of my being responsible for an outbreak of Swine Flu among last Thursday's studio audience are completely false. 

Yes, it's true that I bused in 4 dozen pigs to roam around the audience during my interview with Ray Liotta. Just like I do everytime I interview Ray Liotta. It's a thing we have. 

And yes, it's true that most of these pigs were Chinese, having been bought wholesale from a bioweapons lab in Shanghai. 

And yes, maybe some of the pigs jumped up on people's laps and sneezed in their faces during the Mini KISS performance, but surely I can't be blamed for that. That's what pigs do. 

I mean sure, we did have to smuggle the pigs in from China inside a sewage tanker because they never would have passed customs what with their exhibiting flu-like symptoms and all, but that is purely coincidental. These pigs did NOT have swine flu! If anything, they had bird flue, not swine flu. I didn't know what pigs ate so I ground up some dead birds we found along the banks of the West Nile river and fed them those. And yes, I have a West Nile hunting permit, so don't look down your nose at me.  Stupid liberal media. 

Reality or something like it...

I hate reliaty TV "stars." Hate 'em. Whenever I'm driving down the street and I see one being followed by a camera crew as they go to the grocery store or the hat shop or the STD clinic, I always go out of my way to try and run them over. So far I've been unsuccsseful, having only managed to mangle a few camera guys who got in the way. I need a heavier car. 

Anyway, my bookers have been trying to get me to agree to interview some of these reality TV jerks for the past few months. Apparently A-list talent is becoming harder to book for my show, seeing as most of them end up getting shot in the face whenever they visit. Z-list is still my bread and butter, mind you, but it is nice to have a Tom Cruise on every once in a while, strap him into a lie detector machine, turn on some gay porn and let the comedy write itself. But like I said, this is becoming increasingly more rare. 

You might think I would love to have reality TV stars on my show, as I could then shoot them in the face and have some type of excuse - or at least get some ratings out of it. And you would have a point. But let me tell you a story. 

Remember that person who won the 3rd seaon of Survivor? No? Neither do I, actually. I was pretty sure I had a story to tell but it turns out reality TV stars are so unmemorable that they basically wipe my memory. And I have a vague recollection of someone getting shot in the face, too. Hmm.

Well there you go, there's my reasoning. I can't have anyone on the show that will prove to be so unmemorable that my memory will be wiped. I need my memory. It's where I keep all my porn site passwords. 

So if you want to be on my show, here's a simple rule: don't go on a reality show. Do something else - marry a bear, rob a Dunkin' Donuts, steal a famous corpse. But don't go on a reality show. That's really scraping the bottom of the barrel. 

About the Mail Sack...

So have you folks noticed my super-cool new feature, the Mail Sack? No, I didn't think so. Well, it exists, and you can find it here.

I've discovered over the course of my career that a lot of my viewers are remarkably stupid. And the thing about stupid people is, they like to ask stupid questions. Ater the last one got a shotgun blast to the face, my lawyers suggested that instead of lashing out at these idiots, I should instead give them a forum to ask me their idiotic questions. I think it's a terrible idea, but there you have it.

Every week I'll be dipping into my Mail Sack and answering one viewer question at random. Will it be you? At this point yeah, it probably will, because my IT guys tell me that the traffic to this site is lower than Judith Light's blog, so chances are that if you're reading it than congratulations, you're alone in your online universe. So send me a question and feel important for a brief moment in time as I read it on air.

Shell@TheShellShow.com

You know you want to.

Send in your questions!

My History With the FCC

I've been doing my show for a long time now, and during that time I've met a lot of people who claimed to be celebrities, a lot of people who swallowed oddly shaped objects and had X-Rays to prove it, and a lot of celebrities who swallowed oddly shaped things and got really upset when I managed to get a hold of the X-Rays and expose them on national television. Except Richard Gere. He didn't swallow anything.  (And yes, I realize making a Richard Gere joke just now was the easy way out, but don't blame me, blame the people who voted in my recent "Who should Shell Make an Off-Color Joke About Regarding Oddly-Shaped Objects and X-Rays?" poll. Judith Light came in a distant second. Never let it be said I don't give the people what they want.)

I forgot where I was going with this. Oh! That's right -  I was about to enter into a rant about why I hate the FCC. 

The FCC and I have had a contentious relationship ever since I started my show. The first time I heard from them was minutes after my first broadcast, when they called my dressing room to tell me I couldn't say "Ass-hat" on TV. They proceeded to tell me I couldn't even say "Ass" on TV, or "hat." Over the next few weeks I discovered that this policy stretched to "Fanny-Fedora," "Butt-Bowler" and "Booty-Beret" as well. 

Now I know that many of you are surprised that this would stop me, but you must understand that it was a different time, and I was new to the business. I didn't want to step on the wrong toes lest those toes take my show away and send me back to the Jenga factory. So I tried to play along.

That didn't last long. 

If you're a student of old timey newspaper clippings and newsreels, you may have come across some stories involving me kidnapping the FCC's board of directors and feeding one of them to an Orangutan while making the others watch, then storing the survivors for a week or four in a Sarlacc Pitt I had Stan Winston specifically build for me in my backyard while pelting them with rotting oranges from above. 

Hogwash!

Stan Winston was busy that summer. I had to use Rick Baker. Stupid media can never get anything right. 

To make a long story short, me and the FCC reached an agreement. They'd basically leave me alone as long as I didn't show any full frontal female nudity on my show or have Janet Jackson as a guest. They didn't seem all that concerned with me shooting people in the face, which has since become a staple of the show. It's an uneasy truce, especially whenever I have Sasha Grey on. But the FCC never said anything about what I can do in my dressing room, so for now I'm keeping my Orangutan in his cage, waiting for the day when I get another phone call complaining about the "Blumpkins Bonanza" segment. 

Then it's Mr. Bananas' time to shine.

 

Website news...I think...

So it's been brought to my attention that an ungodly number of people are still using something called Internet Explorer. I don't know what that is. I asked my tech guys and they laughed at me. 

In any event, apparently the people using this...thing...weren't seeing my craptastic website properly. Something about pixels, or framerates, or tubes or something. Normally this wouldn't bother me, as the website is something I don't concern myself with  too much, and which only really exists to give my loser nephew something to do besides meth. Which doesn't stop him, btw. (Btw, did you know that btw means 'by the way?' All this time I thought it meant 'Bad Taco Waterslide.' That might not make sense to you but believe me, that's a phrase I use enough to neccessitate an abbreviation. Now I guess I'll just have to go back to saying the whole thing again - damn you internet generation!!)

Anyway, like I was saying, it appears that some important people are using Internet Explorer, and when they go to the show's website it looks like I hired a five-year-old with Parkinsons's to build the thing. And we can't have that - I may not know what an Internet Explorer is, but I'll be damned if my website gives freakin' Carson Daly the impression that he runs a better operation than I do. It's bad enough his show beats us in softball every year, there's no way in hell I'm giving him the internet too, which ironically enough could have prevented Mr. Daly from ever becoming 'famous' if it had existed back when he started. I for one would have been the first one on a 'message' board to wittily bash him and his smirky face. My comments would have been so clever that the internet would have exploded in an awesome overload, killing Carson and everyone at MTV in the process. Yeah that's right, I hate MTV too. 

So as for this whole Internet Ecplorer thing, I had a 5-hour long meeting with my IT department during which I learned the following:

Internet Explorer is a browser

I've scheduled another 5-hour meeting for next week so I can find out what the hell a browser is. In the meantime, I've determined that if you are using Internet Explorer, you're a loser. But it just so happens that all the executives at my network are losers too, and they get all pissy when my site doesn't look 'hip' and 'fresh' (those were the words they used in the corresponding memo about this issue. I've issued myself a memo to go up there and punch them in the throat.)

Basically, if you're using Internet Explorer, you now need to push a little button that I'm told is on the site's main page. And that will somehow make things better, or something. I don't know, just do it. All this internet talk is making me stabby, so I'm going to go eat a sandwich. Oh, and to all you losers still using Internet Explorer: download Firefox!! I don't know what that is either, but my nephew was very adamant about it. He should know, he's a meth head. 

Green Lantern!

Well, just in time for the announcement that Ryan Reynolds will be playing him onscreen, I've just posted my interview with the REAL Green Lantern. Check it out here!!

In Defense of International Child Slavery Rings...

Recent events - namely the raiding of my studio by DEA Agents for the fifth time this week - have compelled my lawyer to "strongly suggest" that I release a statement condemning international child slavery rings. But I don't like my lawyer. I once tried to organize a midget-kicking festival, and he was a spoilsport about the whole thing. He ended up costing me a Pepsi sponsorship, and I had to settle for Billy Beer. No, I didn't know they still made that either. In the end we had to settle for kicking regular short people, one of whom ended up being Michael Eisner. I blame all of this on my lawyer.

So to that end no, I will not be condemning international child slavery rings today. In fact, I'm taking the position that child slavery excels at building character, something your modern-day SpongeBobs and Pokemans and Angelina Jolies are severely lacking in. You put one of Angelina Jolie's kids in the middle of a pack of rabit street dogs, and what do you think will happen? They'll cry, and then get eaten. Because rabid street dogs will only eat things they don't respect, such as dog food and The New York Times Lifestyle section.  

Now you put a child slave in the middle of a rabid pack of dogs? A kid that's lived a hard life of Swami beatings, monkey knife-fights and televised weasel-wrestling matches? That kid's got character,  street cred. And rabid dogs don't eat things with street cred. That's why Mickey Rourke's still alive. 

So in a way, international child slavery rings are actually saving the world's children from rabid dog attacks. Now, you don't support rabid dog attacks on defensless children, do you? Do you? I didn't think so! So sell your children into slavery today! Watch for my 1-800-CASH4KIDS commercials between the hours of 3:00 and 5:30 AM. It's a great way to protect the world's children from rabid dog attacks, and earn some extra cash to buy paper towels. 

In Memoriam of Michael Jackson

I remember back in the day when we had Michael Jackson on the show. He was young, black, and the only forewarning of his future freakishness was in his rider, which required we stock his dressing room with green Tic-Tacs and the members of Menudo. Back then my show didn't have the clout to kidnap Menudo and deliver them to Michael Jackson's dressing room, so I took a gamble and went out and grabbed 5 random Mexican kids off the street...although I think one of them may have been Puerto Rican. It worked. It turns out Michael couldn't tell the difference either, and he happily came out and debuted the moonwalk on my show (regardless of what you've heard, yes, the moonwalk debuted on MY show. The vast conspiracy to cover that up is the subject for another blog entry). 

As for the 5 Mexican kids, they grew up to become George Lopez. 

And as for Menudo, they're on the show next week! Against their will, yes, but what can I say. These days, The Shell Show DOES have the clout to kidnap Mexican boy bands. Well, the clout and the chloroform. Best. Bulk purchase. Ever. 

The Trouble With Blind Items

It's been brought to my attention that I've been showing up in a lot of "blind items" lately. Blind Items, for those of you who have lives, are nuggets of gossip found in the paper that due to the threat of lawsuits, don't name who they're talking about. Here's an example:

This washed-up actor was recently caught in an alley behind a Penn Station Peepshow doing three things simultaneously: A tranny hooker, lines of coke mixed with baking soda off the aforementioned tranny hooker's back, and speaking with his mom on bluetooth. Sources say it's the first two that make the third possible, and three is enough!

If you read between the lines, this blind item is obviously about 'Eight is Enough' star Adam Rich. I've caught him in that alley myself! Even joined in once or twelve times! The problem arises when blind items are written - obviously about a particular person - and for some reason people assume they're about you. Or me, in this case. 

I'd like to set the record straight on the recent slew of lies being passes around, and assure all of my loyal fans that the following blind items are IN NO WAY about me:

What host of a low-rated talk show specializing in Z-grade "celebrities" and assorted superheroes was overheard at a free clinic bragging about the number of times he's avoided prosecutution for statutory "offenses" at Jonas Brothers concerts by faking his death and stealing the identities of comatose war veterans? Sources say he's recieved so many ill-gotten Purple Hearts in the mail, that he's planning on melting them down and fashioning them into a statue in the likeness of Tony Orlando. 

Okay, this one is obviously about Maury Povich. I don't know where people get off thinking this was me - and the fact that I have a purple Tony Orlando statue outside of my office is a complete coincidence, I assure you. Those statues are outside every important person's office. If you've never seen one before, you must not have been in the company of anyone important. 

It's well known around town that this talkshow host with one name is a sleazebag, but even Child Protective Services (which investigated our subject when they were accused of trying to sell orphan meat to Indian restaurants) would be shocked at this latest accusation. Apparently our Tinseltown Talker likes to sneak into hospitals at night, steal newborns and take them to an abandoned parking garage downtown where they've set up a makeshift baby-fighting ring. They pit the tots against ferrets, chipmunks and the occasional otter, with the winner going back to the hospital. The recent rash of new mothers waking up to find their baby has turned into an otter is not due to contaminated water from the nuclear plant - as our host's show's press department would have you believe - but is in fact due to our one-named host's nocturnal activities. 

This one is clearly Oprah. And yes, that spy pic of me holding two bassinets running from a hospital in the middle of the night that was published in the New York Times last week may have seemed suspicious, but I was just doing some late night ham shopping. I like to carry my hams in bassinetts, so sue me. It keeps them fresher. And yes, I do my ham shopping at the hospital. Hospitals have special ham boutiques for celebrities, for your information.  Jack Nicholson gets all his hams at the hospital, and you don't see anyone making a federal case out of it. Mmm, hospital ham...

This crappy late-night talkshow host has been having a "Shell" of a time with some of his recent guests. Turns out our host-with-no-mouth has instructed his show's accounting department to stopy paying guests' appearance fees in money, and instead start using "Shell Bucks," which are nothing more than store-brand crackers with smiley faces scrawled in Cheez Whiz. Our host claims each "bill" is worth $1000 taking into consideration the time and creative energy it takes him to scrawl each cheesy smily face. This has led to somewhat of a guest revolt, with so many celebrities refusing to come on the show that recent episodes have been forced to feature the likes of Darva Conger and James Van DerBeek. It seems this "shell" of a talkshow host has been having money problems lately, due mostly to his betting on baby fights. There's also the Atlantic City stripper he supports, mostly in increments of $1. During his latest trip to his favorite strip club, he tried switching to his self-named currency, which left the club staff less than pleased and sticky with cheesy goodness. Our host was thrown out of the club and told never to return unless it was with non food-based money. Old "Shell"-head is now trying to raise money through the sale of orphans and orphan-based products to ethnic restaurants.

Uh, this one is obviously...Dr. Phil. No question. That guy's a tool. Don't trust him. 

And that, my friends, should absolve me of any vicious rumors currently swirling around me. And remember, next time you hear someone talking smack about me, tell them "Hey! That's Shell you're talking about! The man who loves orphans and woodland creatures and hates Hitler! That man doesn't have a mean bone in his body, so stop that silly  rumor nonsense! I mean really!!"

Then punch them in the throat and run away. 

Celebrity Gossip-o-rama!

People always say things to me like "Wow you're so lucky, getting to talk to big time celebrites all day!" and "It sure must be nice being able to get close to Hollywood starlets!" and "One step closer and you're in violation of your restraining order!"

Well I got news for you, folks. Most celebrities are jerks. Sure they're all smiles and handshakes when the camera's on them, but as soon as you yell cut they're back to their coke-snorting, orphan-molesting, album-pirating, terrorist-plotting, communist-sympathizing, baby-punching, kitten-drowning, SUV-driving, Jay Leno-watching ways. 

That's right, all those celebrities that you think are "nice" are actually evil for the most part, assuming they're even human. I've compiled a list for easy reference, sorted by the number of STDs I happen to know they have:

Tom Hanks: 

He's really an outer shell with the inside composed entirely of centipedes.

James Franco: 

He enjoys eating baby koala bears. I've seen it.

Daniel Baldwin: 

I once caught him backstage reading Tori Spelling's autobiography.

Sherman Helmsley: 

I witnessed the man kick a Make-a-Wish kid in the face. Twice.

Julianna Rancic: 

Is a time-traveler from the future who came back to warn us about an impending disaster. But she forgot what it was, so she's biding her time as an entertainment reporter which keeps her head clear to try and remember what it was she was supposed to do. Also she's a robot.

David Hyde Pierce: 

Him and Satan discuss American Idol over coffee and Fig Newtons every Monday.

Demi Lovato: 

Obscenely racist. Especially against the Dutch.

That Girl from the Welch's Grape Juice Commercials: 

Invented the Snuggie. All the proceeds go to funding Malaysian pirates.

Jerry Stiller: 

Once killed two people with his bare hands just to feel something. Anything.

Alex Winter: 

Refuses to brush his own teeth. Makes his neighbor's kids do it.

Elisabeth Hassleback: 

Her and David Hyde Pierce discuss American Idol over coffee and Fig Newtons every Monday.

Jon Heder: 

Don't believe that Mormon schtick. Don't. 

Charlie Sheen: 

Once lit an orphanage on fire. When they put it out, he went in and shot up the place. Then he made Hot Shots 2. 

Martin Sheen: 

Fathered Charlie Sheen.

The Ghost of Ricardo Montelbaum: 

Keeps trying to posess me and make me go have sex with his wife. She's less than understanding.

Sean Young: 

She soiled one of our dressing rooms with a stench so overpowering we had to do the show in the parking lot.

Apple Martin: 

Likes to send naked pictures of himself to my cell phone. I don't know how he learned to do that, how he got a phone or how he got my number, but the kid's got a future in social networking.

Callista Flockheart: 

Hates jugglers. Hates 'em. Has spent a surprising amount of money on having many of them killed.

Gabby Hoffman: 

Kicked me in the shin when I told her I didn't recognize her and had no idea who the hell she was. I still don't. 

Suri Cruise: Is actually a hologram.

Yahoo Serious: 

Once spent an entire week removing the axels from all the wheelchairs at the Special Olympics. Oh how we laughed. 

Melanie Griffith: 

Hates Jews. But she thinks Jews are the main ingredient in JuJu Bees, and that if they get rid of all the Jews, they'll only be left with Bees, which a psychic told her had zero calories, so she signed her kids up for  Hitler Youth, bought a beekeeper hat, and now has something to do on Thursday nights. 

Michael York: 

Once took some bad acid, flew to Dallas and shot Kennedy to stop the Moon from cheating on the Sun with Saturn. It worked. 

Tom Cruise: 

Once hijacked L. Ron Hubbard's yacht and crashed it into a Carnival cruise ship. 270 souls were lost. Paid Carnival to claim it was food poisoning from a bad batch of paella, and the gaping hole in the side of the ship was an optical illusion created by David Blaine. 

Katherine Harris: 

Is really an evil Cyborg from the future. That's not the secret though, as pretty much everybody already knows that. The secret is that she's the kind of Cyborg that runs on liberal tears and discarded ballot cards, not turbans and shredded Korans as her press office claimed. 

Why Does Everyone Think I Killed Bill?

Okay, those of you who frequent my blog have probably noticed that I've been away for a while. Sorry I didn't give you warning, as I know most of you are in federal prisons and don't appreciate wasting precious minutes of your computer-room time to visit a site that hasn't been updated in weeks. But I don't feel guilty, I was the one who posted a step by step how-to guide on how to smuggle in a cell phone through the ancient art of rectum stretches in my bi-monthly "Kiddie Krafts" feature, so you guys owe me. 

Moving on, where was I? Well if you fine folks had taken the time to stop shivving eachother and visited the common room TV, you would have realized that I was broadcasting the show from Thailand! Yes Thailand, where for $5 you can get a 5 course meal, a donkey, an underage hooker and an overage tranny and still have enough for an underage donkey and a ride on Gary Glitter's speedboat. Speaking of Gary Glitter, he was my sidekick for our week of Thai shows, and boy does that man know how to party! He can fit like 80 nachos in his mouth! That is absolutely the wildest thing I can ever imagine him or anyone else doing, and this is where I'll end this sentence...he's still serving his...

We had a lot of great guests during our Thai shows, including Michael Jackson, Bryan Singer, Paul Reubens and the guy from the Del Taco commercials, but the guest that got us the most attention had to be David Carradine. 

Now yes, it may be true that for the entire David Carradine interview I kept insisting that nobody loved him and his career was a pathetic DTV joke, but that was just gentle ribbing! And yes, it may be true that at one point during the interview I spiked his drink with barbituates and industrial-grade LSD, but that was just part of the green room welcome basket! And yes, it may be true that after the show I strapped him into a sensory deprivation chamber and piped in Bjork's greatest hits, but that's just how I assumed he wanted to unwind after the show! To imply that I had anything to do with his bizarre suicide is wholly inappropriate, even though it may be true that in his drugged stupor I convinced him to name me as sole beneficiary in his will.  I was also sole beneficiary in Vince Foster's will, and you don't see any conspiracy theories flying around about that, do you? 

I mean really, people. If you want to start digging around for crazy conspiracy theories, you could at least look into my connection with apple pie. You heard me, apple pie. Ever wonder why it's so delicious? I didn't think so. 

Now if you don't mind, I need to go buy an Alpaca with my "Kung Fu" residuals...

What's with all the washed up 70's sitcom stars?

So we had Gary Coleman on the show last night - headlining, in fact. Now, I often get asked by people why The Shell Show books so many pathetic Z-list celebrities, and the answer's pretty simple: they don't complain as much when we humiliate them and/or their families. Let's be honest, humiliating people  is what my show is all about, and when I arrange for a bucket of elephant semen to "accidentally" fall onto Russell Crowe's head, it tends to cause a lot of problems.  See, Russell Crowe has a PR team, and he likes to punch people in the face. So when he punches me in the face, he has his PR team spin it so that I was running through the halls hopped up on codine, didn't look where I was going and ran into his fist which was outstretched as he was about to point directions to a soup kitchen for a crippled orphan. 

So in short, I don't like getting punched in the face. With someone like Gary Coleman though, I have a few things working in my favor:

1: Gary Coleman only comes up to my knees. Face-punching is out of the question for him. 

2. Gary Coleman has no PR team, which is probably why he has such a lengthy criminal record

3. Gary Coleman can't afford any face-punching lawsuits, as it would result in the cardboard box he's living in being foreclosed on.

4. Gary Coleman is desperate for publicity, regardless of the amount of elephant semen involved. 

That list goes for pretty much every Z-lister we book. Willie Aames, Mike Lookinland, Paul Walker, etc. The perfect storm of obscure celebrity desperation has allowed my to get away with some pretty horrific things in the name of entertainment, and I wouldn't have it any other way.  

Next week we've booked Bonnie Franklin, and I'm trying to line up a visit from a pack of rabid badgers on the same night. They're not as easy to come by as you would think, but the possibilities have convinced me to keep calling trailer parks until I hit the jackpot. I try to take things One Day at a Time, if you will...

Miss USA thinks it's better than us...

So I watched the Miss USA pageant last night. I do this every year, and every year I'm disappointed. I keep telling myself that next year, the batch of girls will be hotter. That gives me something to look forward to during a period of time in which I'd probably be inventing creative new ways to kill myself. 

But then the show rolls around, and yet again I'm faced with a bevy of girls with fake tans, fake hair, fake smiles, and the fake belief that their fathers love them. Not that I have anything against fake, mind you, but it forces me to face the fact that there's very few girls in the media today that are my "type." Also I think people should use the word "bevy" more often. 

So what is my "type," you ask? Let me lay it out for you: pink hair, black catsuit, cartoon, sells car insurance. I know, right? Everybody tells me I can just go to any college campus in America and chicks like that are a dime a dozen - and when they tell me this, it's usually with a tinge of disappointment that someone as awesome and studly as myself would have such common and mediocre tastes in women, but the heart wants what it wants. In any event, visiting a college campus isn't that easy for me, due to my plea bargain with the GI Fund. Same reason I'm not allowed to drive an ice-cream truck. 

But I've gotten off track. Miss USA.  Yeah, so we've been trying to book the winner on the show. I know I just spent 3 paragraphs saying how much I hated all of this year's contestants, but I'm in show business so you should just assume that I'm secretly very cynical and hate pretty much everybody. It's actually a requirement when you become a talk show host. Still, that doesn't mean I wouldn't want to interview this year's winner and ask her foreign policy questions while staring at her boobs. 

The Miss USA organization - which to the best of my knowledge is headquartered in a fallout shelter underneath Ryan Seacrest's mansion paid for with the tears of humiliated American Idol contestants -   has so far not returned my phone calls. I could grandstand about why that may be, but a simple Google search will tell you that the last 4 Miss USA's who visited The Shell Show ended up dead, mauled by a bear, dead, and mauled by a dead bear. Best 'Bring your Daughter to Work Day' ever. 

Still, 5th time's the charm, right? I don't see any reason to cry over mauled Miss USA winners, but apparently the main office does and seems to have put an embargo on sending their contestants to my show. I may have found a way around it, though. There's a bunch of transexual prostitutes that walk the streets around the studio here, so I'm going to invite one on and  just say that it's Miss USA. That should get their attention. 

The Long and Storied History of My Famous Set

My show has a long history with pirates. Word around the set is that, well, the set itself was procured in the 70's when the USS Merv Griffin was boarded by Somali pirates in the South Pacific. Apparently my set was part of a larger shipment of TV-show sets that was being transported to the states from Beijing, which had been contracted by the American networks to construct all of their sets using slave labor (it sounds cruel, but it was the only way to free up enough money for Scott Baio). That's right folks, your precious Brady Bunch living room wasn't designed by Mike Brady after all - it was designed by Chairman Mao's son-in-law! I think his name was Joe. 

My set was in a crate labeled "Generic Talk Show" meant for a pilot starring either Paul Lynd or Ed Asner, and from what I can gather, ended up being auctioned off to a Vietnamese porn producer who for the next five years used it as the centerpiece of a series of poorly produced skin flicks starring Johnny Carson. I'm assuming it wasn't the real Johnny Carson, but I've been wrong about that before. 

Fast forward 3 years, and somehow my set is in another crate labeled "Porno Set" on its way to Mexico, where a Mexican Drug Lord was planning on using it for his kid's Bar Mitzvah. Over the years I've tried to count the number of things wrong in that sentence, and I still find something new every time I read it. It's the gift that keeps on giving. 

Unfortunately for the Junior Jewish Drug Lord, however, the set was once again on a ship (the USS Tony Randall) besieged by Pirates - Nigerian, this time - who rerouted the shipment to Antarctica.

Now, Nigerian Pirates aren't the smartest outlaws out there, which was made evident when on their way to Antarctica, the ship got caught in an ice bank and all the Nigerians realized that they forgot to wear coats. Or shoes. And then one of them realized that nobody actually lives in Antarctica, so the chances of them selling their cargo were pretty low. At this point the crew became rather agitated with their captain, who as it turns out was really a Polar Bear wearing a captain's hat. How a Polar Bear managed to become a Nigerian pirate - and where he got that captain's hat - was never really explained, but a mutiny ensued and pretty soon all of the crates were thrown overboard and left to their own devices. It's assumed that Captain Klondike went on to settle the first Antarctic Macy's, but that's a story for another night.

So my set drifted in the Arctic waters for around 8 years,  until it finally washed ashore in Utah, where it spent its days as a Mormon temple and its nights as a Mormon Meth lab. 100 weddings later (constituting 100 grooms and 1000 brides), my set ended up on the back of a flatbed truck, traveling the country to host local celebrities doing gay-rights telethons at gun shows. The less said about this period of time the better, as many of the homicide investigations are still active.

L. Ron Hubbard then bought my set at a police auction, and set it up on his Scientology yacht, where he used it to teach a young Tom Cruise how to not come off as freakishly creepy during TV interviews. You'll notice my set doesn't have a couch. You'll also notice what happens when Tom Cruise is confronted with a couch he wasn't prepared for. 

Three cults, two hostage videos and a shampoo commercial later, and here we are. You might be wondering how I came into possession of such a grand set, but I'm not about to give away all my secrets. Not for free, anyway.

And that, ladies and gentleman, is why my set smells like a tour through the world's oldest brothels. E-mail the show for tickets!

Why does The Shell Show have such a high mortality rate?

That's a question I get asked a lot, actually. And while the network was kind enough to send me a list of talking points to spin every time this topic comes up, I think I'm just going to try being honest. The network doesn't like it when I'm honest because my show is watched by tens of people, many of whom like to call the FCC and complain - but this is the internet! I see the weekly visitor numbers and trust me, I might as well be talking to a sandbag wearing a hat. It's the sandbag that's wearing the hat, not me. Don't get all grammar-Nazi on me. 

Ok, so back to the issue at hand. Why do so many of my guests end up dead? I think we first need to establish that the MSM really tends to distort these figures, especially since they seem to have some sort of sick love affair with the "popular" talk shows. No more guests die on my show then on, say, Leno. No really, it's true. It's just that Leno is on NBC, and NBC has money. So every time a Miley Cyrus goes on his show, then steps in a bear trap backstage and gets decapitated by a falling Chia Pet, NBC just swoops in, buries the body in the backlot mass grave, and replaces her with another girl from the Disney stockroom. No one is ever the wiser.

The Shell Show, however, works under a different system. Our network HQ is based off a decommissioned oil rig in the South Pacific, with most of our advertisers coming from Thailand and paying for airtime with fish. Now I like fish as much as the next guy, but it turns out that you can't pay for a celebrity replacement with a barrel of fish. Not even two barrels (I know, right?).  

Soooo, here's a hypothetical rundown of what would happen on my show: Miley Cyrus comes on, juggles or strips or does whatever the hell it is she's famous for. Then Jack Hannah comes on. He brings a Couger (No, not Demi Moore. That's another story altogether). Yadda yadda yadda, the Couger eats Miley Cyrus. Everybody screams, cut to commercial. I call the network and tell them that they need to find a new kid to slap a blond wig on before people start talking. At that point the network floats out of cell phone range and I'm left talking to a Thai operator who doesn't seem impressed with my anecdote about my last Thai massage.

No network, no money, no new Miley, guess who ends up looking like the bad guy? That's right, me. And I'd be willing to bet that more guests have died on Regis & Kelly  in 1 week than the last YEAR of The Shell Show!  We're just a bit more honest about it, is all. 

I hate to depress all you fine people, but the fact of the matter is that if you have a favorite celebrity, and that celebrity has ever appeared on a talk show, they're probably dead. Talk Shows are the main source of income for the Celebrity look-a-like industry. Well, that and the Saddam Hussein administration, but we all know how that turned out.  So who's your favorite celebrity? Harrison Ford? He's been dead for 25 years, the new guy is a former furniture salesman named Bill and he's the fifth Harrison Ford double since 1985. Abigail Breslin? Dead (and yes, ok, that one was my fault). They got her replacement from a Romanian orphanage. Nicolas Cage? I kid, he's not anybody's favorite anything - but still, he died on the promo tour for Leaving Las Vegas. Unfortunate ironing accident. I think now he's a hologram. 

So you see, it's not just The Shell Show. Don't blame us for the high celebrity death rate, we simply don't have the money to keep covering it up. I'd rather spend that money on new bath mats for the green room, anyway. 

The Sad Tale of My Lucky Hobo.

So as many of you are probably aware, there's a hobo that used to hang out on the street outside the studio (or the "Jim J. Bullock Memorial Theater," as it's officially known due to an internet voting contest. Yet another reason I hate the internet and everyone who uses it.)

Anyway, I would see this guy every day on my way in to the office. Most days I was getting over a hangover from the night before, so I wasn't very receptive when he asked me for change. When I was first doing the show I would usually take a swing at him, and a few times I actually managed to punch the guy in the face. Those were the nights I'd have my best shows (these include my interview with Michael Jackson with my infamous "Boys pants half-off!" joke, the time I got Chris Dodd to admit to killing a drifter, and the time we got a visit from John Mark Karr just as my annual JonBenet Ramsey Lookalike Musical Revue and Spelling Bee Competition was wrapping up. Ah memories.) As you can imagine, over the years I've come to associate punching this hobo in the face with me having a great show. It sort of became my good luck charm, if you will.

Much has been made in the media about me punching a gimpy hobo in the face every day on my way to work, and TMZ loves to run the same old video over and over while the narrator says something about the hobo being my amnesiatic step-brother and me punching him in the face every day to keep him from remembering that I owe him $70,000. This is completely inaccurate on several counts.

Count 1:  There is a lot more than one video of me punching this hobo in the face, and I don't know why they keep running the same one. I even tried to keep it festive by wearing a Santa hat when I punched him in the face on Christmas, and by mixing it up and kicking him in the balls on April Fool's Day. I am an entertainer, after all.

Count 2: I don't have an amnesiatic step-brother, all of my step-brothers are in a Village People tribute show where they travel the country performing at nursing homes and wakes and never invited me to join them because they all suck. Except that one step-brother who went missing after attending the Anvil and Roofies Expo. So you see, everyone's accounted for. 

Count 3: I don't owe anyone $70,000. I owe a few people $71,000, I owe the Japanese mafia $1.3 million, and I owe a cult $400,000 plus my thoughts between the hours of 3:00 and 8:00, but that's it. 

Anyway, the reason I'm telling you all this is because a lot of people have been asking me lately why my shows have been so crappy. Well have you figured it out yet, Sherlock? That's right, my hobo's missing! One day he just up and left, and last I heard he had carved out a nice niche for himself as the slightly ugly male lead in crappy romantic comedies, trading off of that broken nose that I GAVE HIM!! Bah! Since he took off I've tried my luck at punching mailmen, Girl Scouts, Vice Presidents, babies, Mormons and Rihanna, but to no avail. My shows still suck, and I fear that my lucky hobo may have been the only one whose face could dispense me good luck as I punched it. I'll still punch people, of course, but deep down I know my lucky hobo was probably 1 in a million :( 

There's still hope, though. My lucky hobo has apparently been running out of luck himself and made a string of crappy movies, so I doubt anyone will blame me all that much if I go to Hollywood and punch Owen Wilson in the face. 

Bowling with the Special Olympics!

So I just want it on record that The Shell Show extended an invitation for President Obama to appear on our show FIRST, before ANY OTHER TALK SHOW! It all seemed to be coming together until the Secret Service starting doing some research and uncovered some of my felony convictions...all misunderstandings, mind you...as well as a few tenuous connections between this show and certain communist dictators. It's all just politics - I mean, what talk show doesn't have connections to some form of underground shadow government? Martha Stewart Living?? You're living in a fantasy world, comrade. I've seen Ms. Stewart strangle a man to death with piano wire one too many times to believe that malarky. She does make a tasty apple turnover, though, I must give her that.

Anyhoo, Once that ass-hat Leno stole Obama away from us, I figured I might as well invite the Special Olympics bowling team on the show to respond to Obama's insult (which, if he had gone on my show instead, never would have happened. We have a filter in the control room that automatically deletes any mention of the Special Olympics made by sitting presidents. Very sophisticated technology, but necessary back when we used to have Reagan on. That man sure liked to get drunk and rail against the Special Olympics. That and the Freemasons.) But apparently now the Special Olympics is getting all sorts of TV offers and thinks they're too good for The Shell Show. 

Oh really, Special Olympics? Well remember back when you needed money for new uniforms and were begging to appear on The Shell Show to promote a fund drive? And remember how I laughed in your faces and shoved that one kid and told you to keep dreaming, that The Shell Show was only for normals? Well...I don't need you anyway! I've got some news that will knock you off your special high-horse, Special Olympics. That's right, I've booked the Average Olympics! Next week a team of guys named Steve will be visiting the show to wow us with their Sudoku skillz and mediocre ping-pong playing.  Suck it.

Who's special now. 

Octomom visits The Shell Show

So the infamous "Octomom" showed up to the show last night. She was a replacement for Marlon Brando, who has apparently been dead for several years. Not like that's stopped me from interviewing certain people before, but we had an issue with the Health Department last time, so we're trying to keep our corpse-interviewing to a minimum (my Anna-Nicole Smith interview gave us some of the highest ratings in the show's history, however, so I might just swallow the penalty next time someone interesting dies. I'm looking at you, Abe Vigoda)

So anyway, Octomom, a few observations.

1. She doesn't actually have eight arms. This came as quite a disappointment.

B. She doesn't even have four arms. Like you know how Doctor Octopus only has four arms but they still call him Doc Oc? Ok yes, I suppose if you count his real arms that brings you up to six, but still it's entirely inaccurate. Anyway, I was maybe expecting something along those lines, but nope. Two arms. Two boring arms. 

3. Two arms? What the hell??

4. She's a regular person, or at least as regular as people get on this show. Which means that she's boring. Really, really boring. Regular people are boring. She's never made a movie, held a hostage or licked a toilet seat on YouTube, so she had nothing to talk about. Why is this woman famous??

5. Oh yeah, she brought some kids with her. I don't remember how many, but it seemed like a lot. One of them got crushed by the fridge in the green room while trying to get a Sanka. Two others dropped dead after eating some rat poison. Ok, yes we do keep our rat poison in bowls labeled "Free Candy!" but mothers are supposed to teach their kids not to take candy from strangers, so it's really all her fault.  Three others got into some guy's van...I'm still a little fuzzy on the details there. After we told her six of her kids were either dead or missing and presumed molested, she took a calculator from her purse and crunched some numbers, then asked me if I could get her booked on Maury. 

6. I hate Maury. 

7. After she left a hospital van pulled up and dropped off eight baskets. The Shell Show has a strict policy against opening strange baskets, so we threw them in the industrial mulcher we keep in the alley. 

8. All in all, it was a pointless visit

My First Blog

All right...um...

The network told me I had to start a "Blog," whatever the hell that is. Sounds like some sort of mythical cockroach, but whatever. Apparently I'm expected to "log in" every now and then to let all you internet weirdos know what's going on with the show, or what my thoughts are on different brands of toothpaste, or rant about 9/11 conspiracies. They told me it could help expand my audience, and since my current audience is mostly convicts and Libertarians, I figure adding some internet geeks to the pile won't hurt things. Maybe you'll buy some T-shirts. Remind me to start selling T-shirts.

Ok, so, let's get started then. The network hired a team to redesign my website, so you should go check that out. Let me know how it is, because I'm not going anywhere near it. I heard websites can give you viruses, and I'm sick of taking that Airborne crap. But I'm told you should be able to find past episodes and the new ones on there, so give it up for the local community college web design workshop!

Let's see, what else...oh, apparently I have an e-mail address now, too.  It's Shell@theshellshow.com so write me there and if I can figure out how to write back, I'll be sure to think about it.