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  • Imaginary TV Fights: Shatner vs. Shatner vs. Shatner

    Sure, this weekend's Emmys got us all thinking about nice stuff like the rewards of a job well done, the power of television as a communication medium, and Tina Fey cleaned up real purty. But we know what you were really thinking about. You were wondering Jon Hamm couldn't have tackled Bryan Cranston and taken the award for himself. You were wondering why Neil Patrick Harris hasn't challenged Jeremy Piven to a duel. You wanted Kyra Sedgwick and Holly Hunter to shove Glenn Close out of the way and decide this like animals.

    We did too! Which is why we are now inaugurating a new feature on The Remote Island: Imaginary TV Fights. Fights that we all know could happen -- should happen -- on our televisions, but somehow never will. Maybe we can't get real-life actors to battle it out, but darned if we can't determine which of their characters would reign supreme in a full contact deathmatch. (You can't argue with science!)

    Our guide through this Alternate History Channel will be Jake Kalish, raconteur and cryptopopculturalist, whose book Santa vs. Satan: The Official Compendium of Imaginary Fights is helping worldwide to settle the question "Who'd win?" Han Solo or Indiana Jones? Muhammed Ali or Bruce Lee? Voltaire or Voltron? We contacted Kalish in his palatial Aspen estate and asked him to consider the many untapped wells of violence and domincation that exist throughout TV history, and identify a few of the most intriguing ones. Here is the first: the many sides of William Shatner duking it out in a threeway battle of the stars! (Well, "star," anyway.)

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    Posted Sep 23 2008, 12:25 PM by Bryan Christian with | with no comments
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    • about the blogger

    Bloggers


    Lindy Parker has worked as a ghostwriter, editor, dance instructor and a purveyor of dreams, one beer at a time. She loves Charles Dickens and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and also, straight-to-video releases with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. It's possible she reads more teen fiction than she should. She hails from Los Angeles, her hometown and soul mate, but she lives in Brooklyn, the fling she'll never forget.

    Olivia Purnell left Ohio for sunny Los Angeles; then found that she couldn’t ignore New York City’s call, and brought herself to Brooklyn where she has worked with GenArt, BlackBook, the School of American Ballet, and finished an M.A. in Creative Writing from N.Y.U. She loves one-liners with sting and hates the stench of the subway in the summer. That said, she can’t get enough of either.

    Jake Kalish is a freelance journalist and humorist whose work has appeared in Details, Maxim, Stuff, New York Press, Spin, Blender, Men's Fitness, Poets and Writers, and Playboy, among other publications. He is also the author of Santa vs. Satan: The Official Compendium of Imaginary Fights.

    Contributors


    Ben Kallen is an entertainment, health and humor writer who's been lectured to by Sidney Poitier, argued with by Lea Thompson and smiled at by Jennifer Connelly. He's the coauthor of The No S Diet and author of The Year in Weird, along with hundreds of magazine articles. He lives near the beach in Los Angeles, just like the gang from Three's Company.

    Nicole Ankowski has lived in Ohio, Oakland, and on the high plains of South Dakota, but is now proud to call Brooklyn home. She wrote for alternative weekly papers in the first two states, and tried to learn Lakota in the last. (The vowels can be tricky.) She just earned her MFA in Creative Writing and has been published in Beeswax literary journal. She is unable to resist good writing or bad TV.

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