God's Comic

STORY IDEA! Quick, Scott, take this down!

(Scott shakes head, backs away, runs out door and across parking lot)

Fine, I'll do it myself.

Anyway, the story. God is fed up…and seeking revenge!

That’s right, this is a story of God hisself (or herself, but for arguments sake and to true everything up with what comes later, let’s say hisself. Or Hisself, I guess) looking to get back at all the peeps who have royally fucked up His world.

Like for realsies get back at them. Not just frogs and boils and all that jive that has totes been done before. No, this God is comin’ hard for their souls, stalking all of us ungrateful bastards like a steroided up Omar Little of The Wire.

Fun idea, no?

Even more fun. God in this story isn’t replete with the flowing beards and the glowing and the choruses belting out “Hallelujah” behind him. He won’t even look like George Burns. Or Alannis Morissette. (I’ll leave Morgan Freeman out of this one, because we all know if He is in fact a He, he looks just like Morgan Freeman.) But, no, this God will be kinda tacky. Like waterbed tacky. Like Andrew Lloyd Webber-listening tacky. The kinda Guy who enjoys reclining with a trashy paperback and drinking off-brand cola. It’ll almost be like the Real Househusbands of Heaven. Or mayhap the Republican National Convention.

So that’s what God will look like in this story.

And what’s His plan? How will he get back at the world for all of the upfuckery?

Oh, it’s a sinisterly delicious idea. He appoints a gatekeeper—St. Peter is getting far too old anyway at this point—someone who will have 100% of the authority over Whose Soul Gets Saved and Whose Soul Gets Sent to H-E-Double Hockey Sticks. One dude will own all that awesome power. Just one. Forever.

Only. Only it won’t be no Captain America-Steve Rogers-flag-saluting-squared-jawed-church-every-Sunday-Golden-Boy motherlover, neither. No, God’s Self-appointed sole arbiter of Who Gets Saved is going to be a lousy, shiftless, lazy boor of a drunk, the worst souse you ever stepped over in the gutter on your way to pee against an alley wall. This disgusting, drooling little waste of human oxygen is going to be God’s Bad Cop. And if you want to get into heaven, you gotta get through him.

Kind of a crazy little story, no? But isn’t it kinda one you may want to hear? Or at least have someone try and tell it?

Dear Dan—Will you get to the point please? Love, Dan.

Well, you’re in luck. Because this story exists, in songform. And it only takes a little more than five minutes to tell, with an acoustic shuffle that ticks along like a drunk taking a stroll in the park, backed with a glompy brass band and a fun little snare to keep it on track. And it works magnificently.

Because it was written by Elvis Costello, as part of his deliriously perverse 1989 solo effort Spike.

It’s called “God’s Comic.” And in a canon of exemplary material he’s been churning out since 1977, it still stands out as one of his finest hours.

Here. Have a listen. And don’t worry; it’s not what really awaits us on The Other Side.

(We think.)