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.