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.