Ed's Bookshelf: Ask Ernest

My collection of crap doesn't just end with my videos and old amusement park brochures, I have also accumulated quite a collection of non-best selling books that would make a librarian gag. So we're going to kick off a new feature here at WWoB called "Ed's Bookshelf". To kick things off we present this literary masterpiece ASK ERNEST by Ernest P. Worrell (1993, Rutledge Hill Press) I'm a big fan of Ernest on both the small and big screens but his downhome slapstick act doesn't translate too well to paper. This book is filled with odd graphics and lame jokes and somehow manages to miss the goofy charm that Jim Varney's character used to sell hundreds of different products in thousands of commercials during the 1980's. It's kind of on the level of CRACKED magazine, and reminds me of a joke book you would have got through the Schoolastic book club in the 6th grade. ASK ERNEST came out sometime between the fourth and fifth Ernest films. As you can see from the front cover featured here, I didn't even pick it up new...I got it at some clearance book store at an outlet mall several years later. Still, I'm a big fan of Ernest and this is a nice little piece of Ernest history.

Here's a sample of some of the high-brow comedy you'll find inside: