The saga of Rex Morgan and Brother Almonzo

Rex gets a little handsy in this latest adventure.

There's no easy way to say this, so I'll just say it. I read the comic strip Rex Morgan, MD every single day. Yes, I know that this is shameful. Yes I do it anyway. There's not much to this strip. Rex is a doctor. He's married to a woman named June. He has some really creepy kids. The cast is rounded out by various patients, people who work in Rex's office, and assorted friends and relatives.

Anyway, in his most recent adventure, Rex is investigating some phony spiritualists who claim to be able to heal people. He attends some kind of vaguely New Age seminar and recognizes one of the con artists, Brother Almonzo, as being Rene Belluso, an art forger from a story that happened several years ago. Rex takes Brother Almonzo aside and tells him the jig is up. In his desperation, the conman tries to bribe Rex. And then this happens:

If the Sistine Chapel ceiling had been painted by Mort Walker instead of Michelangelo

Here, God is represented as lecherous, senile, alcoholic General Amos Halftrack.

It would have looked like this.

This way lies madness: 'The Doggedly Dogs'

A dog, Muffin, is about to enjoy some secular music in "The Doggedly Dogs."

Bible Truths For Children.

What is it about religious shows for kids? Why are they always a direct gateway into a world of complete, bat-shit insanity? You tell me. These programs are generally low budget and semi-amateurish in terms of production values, so you'd expect some degree of wonkiness in the sets, costumes, props, animation, music, acting, and chroma key-style video effects. And you'll definitely find all of that stuff in these shows.

Generally, religious kids shows are labors of love, made by well-meaning people with a shortage of money, experience, and technical know-how. It's understandable that they'd be cheap, cheesy, and tonally awkward. But that's true of a lot of low-budget productions, including secular ones. None of this explains the total delirium that emanates from these particular shows. There's something else going on here.

A big factor is the religious element. All religions seem kind of nutty to me, and the further you commit to any particular faith, the further you stray from reality and science and sanity in general. And by the time you're doing a religious kids show with puppets and talking animals, you're obviously way, way off the deep end. I mean, you don't just start out dressing like a cowboy clown and singing songs about Jesus to four-year-olds. You have to progress to that mindset over time, probably many years. By the time you arrive on the other side, your brain is pretty much the equivalent of butterscotch pudding.

There is a definite element of brainwashing or indoctrination going on here. Kids don't naturally come to religion on their own, after all. It has to be sold to them and reinforced all the time until they believe.

But there's also something dark under the shiny, happy surface, since Western religions tend to center around a capricious creator God who can banish you to Hell for all eternity if you get on his nerves. I guess what makes religious kids shows so entertaining is that contrast between the relentlessly cheerful songs and skits and the more sinister undertones of their true, ultimate purpose.

All of this is my long-winded way of introducing a highlight reel from a video called called Bible Truths for Children. I have very little background on this, other than the fact that it might be a VHS compilation tape of highlights from a mid-1980s Texas-made program called The Filling Station or God's Filling Station.

I honestly don't want to over-explain or oversell what you're about to see. It's better if you go in cold. Just know that I love this video and have watched it at least a dozen times. It encapsulates everything I like about religious kids shows.

Clearly, the main event is "The Doggedly Dogs," which is definitely worth following until the very end, when... well, I don't want to spoil it, but pay attention to the voice of Muffin. The rest of the video is delightful, too: the nerdy ginger kid reading Bad magazine and proclaiming that "Reading is Seeding," the parade of "instruments for righteousness," and the Bob Duke family of Greenwood, Indiana, whose deeply creepy Sears family portrait is emblazoned on the robe of an animated Christ. Enjoy.

Ravi Shankar and George Harrison: Their obscure, late-career masterpiece

Two friends, captured decades apart: Ravi Shankar and George Harrison

I have written of my atheism on this blog several times in the past, but I wouldn't want people to get the impression that I think I have the universe figured out or that I'm not awed by nature. On the contrary, I am sometimes overwhelmed by the beauty and complexity of this world and of what lies beyond it. 

Some of my favorite art has been created in service of religions to which I do not subscribe, and sometimes this very art -- particularly music -- makes me wish that I were a believer, too. That's the experience I had when listening to the little-known album Chants of India (1997). 

I didn't go out looking for this album. I'd never heard of it until I (more or less) accidentally found it through a YouTube search, and even then I didn't know exactly what it was. I just wanted some relaxing music to listen to while I worked, and I prefer longer videos because they're more practical for such purposes. (I didn't want to go looking for new clips every four or five minutes.) I saw a YouTube video of something called Chants of India that ran for 1 hour and 3 minutes, so I clicked on it and went to work. Soon, however, I began to notice how truly beautiful this music was and stopped what I was doing to investigate.

As it happens, Chants of India was recorded by world-renowned sitarist Ravi Shankar (1920-2012), the most famous Indian musician of the last century. A great deal of his popularity outside India was due to the fact that his music was strongly advocated by the Beatles, particularly George Harrison. Shankar and Harrison formed a long-time friendship, and the two organized the famed Concert for Bangladesh in 1971. Over a quarter-century later, George produced and sang on Shankar's Chants of India LP. 

Despite the participation of a Beatle, the album is not currently in print as far as I can tell. At the time of this album's appearance, George had not put out a studio album under his own name in ten years; he died only four years after Chants of India's under-the-radar release. Shankar would live another 15 years, but Chants was his last major professional collaboration with the ex-Beatle. Why it's not instantly available on iTunes in 2013 is beyond me. Still in all, one track in particular stands out: "Prabhujee," a devotional hymn whose lyrics translate as:

Oh Master, show some compassion to me. 

Please come and dwell in my heart.
Because without you, it is painfully lonely.
Fill this empty pot with the nectar of love.
I do not know any Tantra, Mantra or ritualistic worship.
I know and believe only in you.
I have been searching for you all over all the world.
Please come and hold my hand now.

When I first heard the song, I didn't know any of that because the lyrics are all in Hindi. I didn't even know who had recorded it. My thoughts during that first listen were of a traveler who had spanned a great distance, crossing a vast ocean, and had arrived safely at the shore. I felt that this journey was a metaphor for life itself and that the shore was the afterlife or one's ultimate destiny. 

Knowing that George's own life was nearly over when this was recorded gives the song a special significance, as does the line about hand-holding, since it beautifully (if unintentionally) echoes the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and gives that up-tempo Lennon-McCartney rock number an unexpected religious significance. 

I was also struck by the fact that "Prabhujee," while not tied to any particular era in music, was so similar to the music being made by contemporary bands. Specifically, the song combines the slow, sweeping grandeur of Sigur Ros with the keen melodicism of Arcade Fire. In fact, if I were describing this song to someone who'd never heard it (as I am doing now), I would say, "Imagine Sigur Ros covering an Arcade Fire ballad and stretching it waaaaaaaay out."

Here is the song that so impressed me. I hope it impresses you as well.

"A Twinkie Too Far": A short story by Joe Blevins

So delicious, so deadly. The Twinkie that changed everything.

I

His body somehow knew it before his brain did. His extremities went numb. His jaw went slack. His stomach felt like an elevator whose cables had snapped.

The blue and white box. The cheerful red logo. The cowboy-hatted mascot. It couldn't be true. But it was true! The Twinkie had returned!

Ray had just turned a corner with his cart at the Shopway when a display in the middle of the aisle stopped him cold. Twinkies. Boxes and boxes of Twinkies arranged into a pyramid. Panicked, Ray grabbed the fluorescent vest of the first employee he could locate, a wispy lad of about 15 with a vague expression on his face.

"Is this... I mean... are these permanent?"

A pregnant pause, then finally a response from the kid:

"...What?"

"The Twinkies, man! The Twinkies!" Ray gesticulated wildly in the direction of the pyramid. "Golden sponge cake! Creme filling! TWINKIE THE KID!"

Total incomprehension on the kid's face.

"Useless! Absolutely useless!"

Ray staggered out of the store, a man possessed. He practically had to remind himself  how to walk. One leg in front of the other. Repeat. He felt weirdly disconnected from his surroundings. The volume had been turned down on the outside world, but there was an audible throbbing inside his head. Oblivious to the world around him, he stepped in front of the path of a shiny black RAV4 in the parking lot. The driver, a suburban mother, was able to slam on the brakes in time to avoid hitting the seemingly-intoxicated man, who walked as if he were in a trance.

Once he'd reached a vacant section of the parking lot, Ray stopped and breathed deeply. He held his arms out at his sides. His rational mind was beginning to reassert control over his body. Unselfconsciously, he started to verbalize his thoughts:

"This is happening. This is happening. This is happening. Your name is Ray Dauber. You are 40 years old. You work as a computer programmer. You live at 2307 Creighton Avenue, Apartment B. You have a sister named Dale who lives in Utica. You're in the parking lot of the Shopway on Frontage Road, near the highway."

He slapped himself across the face.

"C'mon, man! Get your head in the game!"

He slapped himself again. Harder.

"Okay... okay... okay...." The word became a mantra.

More deep breaths, then a pronouncement: "Home. That's where you need to be right now. Go home. Go home, Ray. Go home."

A beat.

"Where did I park?"

Roy Rogers and the deafening silence of God

Roy Rogers: a cowboy's prayers go unanswered

"The dust has won."

-Roy Rogers

His name seems to be rapidly fading from the public's fickle memory, but for many decades in the middle of the last century, Roy Rogers (1911-1998) was a towering American icon. Together with his (third) wife, Dale Evans, and his trusty horse, Trigger, Roy Rogers appeared in a series of television shows and movies that sold viewers—mainly children—a kindly, simplified version of the West in which there was no such thing as moral ambiguity. Good and evil were clearly delineated in Rogers' world, with the former always triumphant over the latter. If we think of Roy at all these days, we probably remember him smiling as he and Dale sang their signature song, "Happy Trails to You."

Funny, then, that Roy Rogers should also have recorded one of the bleakest songs I have ever heard in my life. Its name is "Dust." Give it a listen.

I accidentally stumbled upon this track several years ago in a four-disc compilation of vintage cowboy music innocuously titled Songs of the West. A whole disc of that set is devoted to Rogers' songs, but "Dust" stands in sharp relief from the others. Far more typical of Rogers' music output is this almost unbearably wholesome ode to domestic bliss entitled "Lovenworth."

How could the same man record both "Dust" and "Lovenworth" in a single career? The two songs would seem to be mutually exclusive, yet there they both are on that same CD. I've only made it all the way through "Lovenworth" maybe twice, but I've listened to "Dust" dozens of times. The song, likely inspired by the severe, disastrous dust storms of the Great Depression, paints a far more realistic version of the West than Rogers usually offered. It tells the story of a cowboy trapped in a hopeless dust storm and begging God for mercy. Or, rather, it presents this man's plight and then leaves him stranded somewhere on the plains. There is no relief at the end of the song, no happy ending to comfort the listener.

The following lyrics from "Dust" are among the most dour and hopeless I have encountered in the English language.

The cattle and the sheep,
Bedded down to sleep,
Seem to realize their fate.
The vultures in the sky
Know the time is nigh.
Will they fly away or wait?

Even the livestock have adopted the narrator's fatalistic attitude. These words could have come from Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, had that novel been turned into a musical. This is followed by the cowboy's direct appeal to God.

Oh, Lord, please ease my pain. 
Oh, Lord, where is your rain and sunshine?

God's answer, at least in this song, is not forthcoming. The cowboy returns to describing his miserable, purgatory-like fate in the dust. ("Can this be eternity?") This is followed by a bridge which rewrites and thus subverts "Home on the Range," perhaps the most beloved and comforting of all cowboy songs. In "Dust," the range has been transformed into a desolate wasteland.

Here was a home where the buffalo roamed,
Where the deer and the antelope played.
Here was a place where the cattle would graze.
The corn and alfalfa once swayed.

The cowboy will reprise his prayer later in the song, but again there will be no response. What is interesting here is that Roy Rogers was a devout Christian, while I define myself as an atheist, and yet we have both dealt with the same basic issue. We have both grappled with the deafening, even maddening silence of our supposed creator. Does he exist? If so, we want proof. Theologians may argue that God need not communicate directly with us to prove his existence, but I think that as human beings we have a fundamental need to express ourselves to others and to know that others have heard and understood us. And, yes, this includes God.

I realize this post may have been a bit of a downer, so here's a track from the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street which may or may not tackle the issue of our desire to have proof of God's existence. It's called "I Just Want to See His Face." Enjoy.

Forget the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Let's talk about the Lava Monster.

A terrifying creature made of lava

Atheists and those who believe in evolution often use an absurd fictional deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster (or FSM) to underscore their basic point about the absurdity of religion and its creation myths. While I wish these people well, the FSM is of almost no use to me as a metaphor or allegory and has had very little impact on my beliefs, religious or otherwise.

I am much more concerned about the Lava Monster. Let me explain.

I want you to picture, reader, a village built in the shadow of a large and terrifying volcano. Within this volcano dwells an enormous, terrifying creature made of hot molten rock. At any time he desires, this Lava Monster can demolish the village in whole or in part. In fact, he has done so on several occasions, and his powers seem to be without end. Summoning the awesome forces of nature at his disposal, the temperamental and unpredictable beast can create or destroy at will, however he sees fit. The villagers are well aware of the Lava Monster's existence, and the majority of them live in fear of the creature and seek to appease him by holding ceremonies in his honor and following an arcane and complicated set of traditions supposedly "approved" by the Lava Monster. The worshipers of the Lava Monster feel they know his wishes because he has directly communicated these wishes to them in no uncertain terms. The motivation of the villagers is simple: they don't want to be incinerated by rivers of hot molten lava.

Got all that? Good. Now I want to ask you a few basic questions:

1. How likely is it that there would be widespread disagreement among the villagers about the Lava Monster's wishes? 
2. If the Monster had very particular desires and could easily communicate them, why would he allow the confusion to persist, especially when that confusion has led to deadly sectarian violence among the villagers?
3. Would it be possible to live as a non-believer in this village? How?
4. Would there be any need for the villagers to advertise or proselytize on behalf of the Monster? How could you possibly forget him, when the evidence of his power is all around you?
5. Assuming you do know the will of the all-powerful Lava Monster and carry out his wishes, what is the moral basis for your behavior? Why would you feel morally superior to someone who disobeyed the Monster's commands?

I don't know how long the Lava Monster has gestated in my imagination. Maybe since childhood. I do know, though, that whenever I think of an omnipotent God, my mind inevitably returns to the story of the Lava Monster. It is that fifth issue which particularly troubles me. If God is real and omnipotent, then obeying his wishes is merely common sense and has nothing whatsoever to do with morality. There's nothing righteous or lofty about giving a bully your lunch money or carrying out your boss's orders at work. You do it to preserve yourself, which is something we all do every day. I don't touch hot stoves, for instance, but that's because I don't want to burn my hand. If you choose to touch hot stoves and repeatedly incur severe burns as result, that may make you foolish but it does not make you immoral.

Virginia Woolf

Have you ever read the Old Testament? You should. In my amateur estimation, it's the work of literature which has most affected the course of human history and led to the civilization we now know. Professional historians may disagree. In any event, the main character in this multi-book saga -- for the Bible is truly a collection of books, like The Hunger Games or the Harry Potter series -- is an all-powerful deity named God, and he is a complex and ambiguous character at best. "I read the Book of Job last night," observed Virginia Woolf, referring to one of the works which make up what we call the Bible. "I don't think God comes well out of it." She is astute in this observation. The character of God, as he is portrayed in the Old Testament, is temperamental, insecure, jealous, vengeful, and capable of incredible violence. In brief, even if God were real, you might not want him running the universe. You'd probably want someone a little calmer and more rational at the helm.

Again, I do not claim to have any answers. I don't know how the universe functions, but I'm sure there are underpaid scientists working on the problem now. I hope they're getting enough sleep at night. If we are lucky, we have five senses with which to take in information and one brain with which to process that information. And that's all we'll ever have. Think about everything and everyone you have ever known. Remember every experience of your past, both major and minor. Everything you can recall about them was conveyed to you by your senses and processed by your brain. Your brain and sense organs are imperfect, yet we must rely upon them. I'll never truly know what it's like to be you. You'll never truly know what it's like to be me. We're all just guessing. What frightens me are the people who are certain they know how it all works. I can cope with uncertainty, but certainty scares me.

This post was not meant to settle anything but rather to raise questions and provoke discussion. Have at it. And don't touch hot stoves. You'll burn yourself. That I think we can all agree on.

No voices in the sky: On my atheism

 Is the sky just the sky?

"Some people say the sky is just the sky, but I say why? Why deny the obvious child?" - Paul Simon ("The Obvious Child")

I am an atheist.

I say that with neither pride nor shame. I don't feel like I've "won" something by declaring my atheism or that I'm "smarter" than you are if you're religious. I don't feel like I've moved on to some more advanced level of thought by giving up a belief in an omniscient, omnipotent creator. I will not quote The God Delusion at you. Relax. Everything's fine. I'm not about to get all Richard Dawkins on your ass. And I'm not going to link to a Ricky Gervais or David Cross monologue either. Yes, I've heard what Gervais and Cross have to say about religion, and I've found humor in their words. But there is more than a touch of "I know better" smugness to these comedians, and that's a trait I'm trying to avoid.

A factory producing atheists.

I come by my atheism naturally, having been raised Catholic. I think the Catholic Church might be the greatest manufacturer of atheists the world has ever known. Have you ever sat through one of our masses? It amuses me that some people think of the Catholics as a weird, mysterious cult with bizarre beliefs and sinister rituals. In truth, an hour spent in a Catholic church on a Sunday will likely be one of the most boring experiences of your life. I should know. I attended them for over twenty years. Once you've gone to, let's say, a year of Catholic masses, you've heard everything the church has to say. The rest is just repetition. Years and years and years of repetition. 

It's been a decade since I was a practicing (though non-believing) Catholic, and I can still recite some of those prayers. The same few readings from the Bible are trotted out again and again. These readings represent a tiny fraction of that book; the rest simply goes uncovered. As a kid bored out of his mind in church and wishing the ceiling would cave in just for variety's sake, I wondered why we never got to hear about David and Goliath or Cain slaying Abel or even about Noah's ark. Later, thanks to Ken's Guide to the Bible by Ken Smith, I learned there was all kinds of juicy stuff in the Good Book: sex, violence, and just general weirdness. You'd never guess that from attending mass. 

Even the homily, the portion of the service in which the priest gets to divert from the text and speak directly to the congregation, is apt to be boring. As a Catholic kid, you hope that at least the priest will throw in a few good jokes along with the message. Some priests are genuinely funny, engaging speakers, but many are dull and rambling. And then there's the music! Oh, dear lord, the music in a Catholic mass is the worst, most dispiriting stuff you've ever heard in your life. Every song becomes a dirge. It blew my mind to learn that other religions had "catchy" music. Much of what we know today as rock and R&B music, after all, has its roots in the church. When I hear a gospel group like the Soul Stirrers, it makes me want to believe.

It's important for you to know that we were a Catholic family, but it was Catholicism with a small c. I know there are some horror stories out there, but I didn't experience any of that. I was never molested by priests or beaten by nuns. I only ever attended one year of Catholic school -- kindergarten -- and my memories of it are positive. We had a young, pretty teacher, Miss Smith, and my strongest memory is that she once played us "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen because it was the Detroit Lions' theme song that year (1980). Isn't that weird? The first time I ever heard Freddie Mercury was in Catholic school. You can't make this stuff up, folks. My older sister got as far as second grade in that institution, and she grew up to be healthy, normal, and well-adjusted. After that, we both attended public school.

Who's down with CCD?

Catholic kids who don't go to Catholic school are expected to attend something called CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine). It's basically "Catholic night school," and you go once a week. Now this I truly hated. I just felt it was pointless and juvenile, and eventually I refused to attend. With great reluctance, my parents agreed to this. It was literally the only argument we ever had about religion. My parents were admirably open-minded about all of it. They had pretty left-leaning political views and thus disagreed with many of the Church's policies. 

Truth be told, religion hardly ever came up as a topic of discussion in our household. We attended the services both on Sundays and on holy days, and we observed Lent, but that's pretty much it. We didn't pray before meals, and there were no crucifixes or images of Jesus on our walls. My mother inherited the religion from her mother, who was from a family of Sicilian immigrants. My father was raised without religion but converted to Catholicism in order to marry my mother. To this day, twenty years after her death, he still attends the masses out of loyalty to her. 

I personally attended the masses with him until 2001 when I moved to Illinois and started living independently. Since then, I've been a full-on atheist. The only time I ever set foot in a church is when my community band plays a concert in one. Some of the buildings are magnificent, by the way, and have terrific acoustics. The church I attended for 20 years, though, was just a utilitarian, barn-like structure. You'd probably call it ugly.

But we're avoiding the bigger issue. Did I ever believe? I don't know. Maybe a little when I was very young. In fact, when I was about 8 or 9, the topic of God actually did come up in a discussion with other neighborhood kids, and one boy said something dismissive like, "Everyone knows God is just some imaginary fairy in the sky." I remember getting briefly defensive about it, but it didn't last. By the time I was an adolescent, I was a confirmed non-believer. I attended the services strictly out of obedience to my parents. My sister, somehow, managed to talk her way out of them, and I was envious of her for that. Ironically, she went through the Sacrament of Confirmation, and I didn't. I did get First Communion in, though.

God: A class act all the way!

Here's the bottom line: I think it's much more likely that we created God than the other way around. I think as human beings, we hate and fear what we don't understand. We couldn't deal with a universe that we could not comprehend, so we came up with a creation myth to explain it away. We've been elaborating on that myth for centuries and arguing (sometimes with deadly consequences) over the specifics. 

In a way, it gives us some freedom. The bigger issues of life are all sorted out in our minds, so we can focus on living day to day. Religion handles the big stuff, while we cope with the details. And it works! Some of the happiest, best-adjusted people I know are religious, while I am neurotic and insecure. It did not surprise me to learn that atheists are, in general, better-informed about religion than the average, God-fearing citizen. It's because atheists think about this stuff a lot, while believers simply accept and move on with their lives. There are many times when I wish I could join them. And I will admit that in moments of extreme fear and anxiety, I pray. Still to this day, I have the nervous tic of making the sign of the cross when I experience relief.

There is clearly more to be said on this issue, and this is far from the last word. If there is sufficient interest among my readers, we can discuss why I feel there is no moral basis for worshiping an omnipotent deity. But I think I've said enough for now. I'll leave you with the lyrics to "No Voices in the Sky" by Motorhead. The song was written by lead singer Lemmy Kilmister, an avowed atheist.

Nobody gives a damn about anybody else

Think everyone should feel the way they feel themselves
Rich men think that happiness is a million dollar bills
So how come half of them O.D. on sleeping pills?
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, you all know what I mean
What's the use of a cry for help, if no one hears the screams
No one hears the screams

No voices in the sky, confusion blinds the eye
Can't take it with you when you die
No voices in the sky

The ones who dedicate the flags to make you brave
They also consecrate the headstone on your grave
Ritual remembrance when no one knows your name
Don't help a single widow learn to fight the pain

Politicians kissing babies for good luck
T.V. preachers sell salvation for a buck
You don't need no golden cross, to tell you wrong from right
The world's worst murderers were those who saw the light

Always working for a concept: Father Guido Sarducci and the search for God

Father Guido Sarducci and James Belushi chat about God in an airport lounge on SNL.

Hello, long-neglected blog readers! Recently, while browsing through Saturday Night Live clips online, I found a remarkable sketch from the show's 1983 season called "Airport Friend." Despite that unpromising title, it contains one of the more profound ideas I've heard on a comedy show.

In this scene, Father Guido Sarducci is stranded at an airport, waiting very impatiently for his flight. He reacts badly to news of an additional delay, throwing down his bag and kicking an ashtray. Enter Bob Armstrong (Jim Belushi), a pleasant-tempered doofus in a tacky suit. The fictional airline, TransEastern, has paid Bob to be the priest's "friend" during the delay. At first, Sarducci is brusque with the phony friend and tries to shoo him away, but eventually he takes pity on the man, who is just trying to do his job. Belushi explains that he works for jerks. Sarducci says he works for jerks, too, at the Vatican. Everyone in the world, they agree, works for jerks.

The exception is the Pope, who works directly for God. God isn't a jerk, says Sarducci. God is a concept. Yes, this is a phrase that also crops up in John Lennon's song, "God." And that's what leads Father Guido Sarducci to his epiphany: "You can put a man on the moon, but we'll always be working for a concept."

Recently The AV Club did a nice article about profound comedy. The usual names came up -- George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Louis C.K. -- but one name absent from the roll call was Don Novello a.k.a. Father Guido Sarducci. Honestly, Novello has probably made me ponder the big questions of life and death more than any other comedian has. I've listened to his 1986 album Breakfast in Heaven dozens of times. I wish I could find a video for the title track from that LP, a thoughtful and very funny monologue about the afterlife. But in lieu of that, here's Father Guido's concept for a "five minute university" in which he teaches us that "God is everywhere. Why? Because He likes you."



The AV Club's Nathan Rabin once pointed out that the Sarducci character "represents the very humane, approachable face of the Church." He's the one comedian who makes me hope that God actually does exist.

At long last... ZOMBY!!! confronts his maker