The Last Testament: A Memoir

by God

  19 “Like thou wouldst not believe,” said Uriel.

  20 “Jesus, is this true?”

  21 “Father, when he opened his mouth, I felt as if he could walk on water.”

  22 “Jesus Christ!”, I screamed; it was the only time I have ever shouted his name in that fashion.

  23 “And thou wert so swept up in his ‘it’-ness that thou didst nothing to prevent the extermination of over half the Jewish race?”

  24 “Forgive me, Father; there is no justification; but I know something about public speaking, and verily, that guy . . . lo, that guy . . .”

  25 He shook his head as his voice trailed off.

  26 “Moses!

  27 Thou art the founder of the Jewish people; and moreover, thou hast a bounteous supply of ‘it.’

  28 I have seen thee induce a throng of nearly a million people to march single-file through a narrow desert pass simply by raising thine eyebrow.

  29 Wilt thou now look me in the eye and say the sheer force of this man’s personality rendered even thee powerless to take action on behalf of thy own people?”

  30 I will never forget the look on Moses’s face at that moment.

  31 It was so intense it felt palpable; as if his eyes were reaching out to mine, seeking some shred of sanity therein;

  32 But at the moment I had none to offer; I could only meet his gaze, and follow it as it slowly, slowly traveled downward, to land at last on his forearm...

  33 . . . and the faint outline of an erased swastika tattoo.

  34 Why the Holocaust?

  35 ‘It’ happens.

  GLOSSY ONES

  (“On Celebrities”)

  CHAPTER 1

  1 Celebrities are beloved of God; they are radiant in my sight; they are not merely famous people—they are my Chosen People.

  2 (Yea, the Jews are also my Chosen People; but there’s a lot of overlap.)

  3 Celebrities are like unto me: adored; worshipped; tantrum-prone.

  4 We live in our own universe, our every whims catered to by loyal assistants, who chideth us not lest they wish not to work in that town again;

  5 And our public appearances are limited, and for promotional purposes only.

  6 I tell thee truly, that those who deem the pursuit of earthly renown futile and empty are nothing but straight-up haters.

  7 For three hundredscore generations of man have come and gone; three hundredscore generations of the famous and three hundredscore generations of the obscure are both now equally returned to dust;

  8 But the dust of the famous still glitters with that certain special something.

  9 Besides, how can I hate famous people, when my own son is the biggest celebrity of all time?

  10 (Do not quibble, he is the biggest; I know the Beatles said they were bigger, but they were not;

  11 They came close, but they skipped Woodstock; which, I admit, might have put them over the top.)

  12 Yet I never intervene in the lives of the famous; in fact I take extra care to remain undetected by them.

  13 The reason is obvious: the last thing a famous person needs is to think God is talking to them.

  14 That is why, as has been widely reported, I almost never make my presence known in Hollywood.

  15 And yet I have shared many special moments with celebrities; in Hollywood, and New York, and Milan, and all over the world.

  16 I have been there with them through the good times and the bad; the laughter and the tears; the joy and the pain.

  17 Yea: I have been present for every single moment of every single celebrity’s life;

  18 Which means that I have witnessed the single most horrible thing each of them has ever done when they thought no one was watching.

  19[Pause.]

  20 Ah, the stories I could tell.

  21[Pause.]

  22 Wouldst thou like to hear some?

  CHAPTER 2

  1Then let us godsip.

  2 For I know all, and I tell all; I am the Ultimate Insider and the Original Gawker; as superior to People as I am to people; greater than Us, for I am Me; I am E!, only my E standeth for Eternal!

  3 Of dirt wert thou made; and now dirt will I dish.

  4 And first I shall speak of those celebrities, who have interpreted Jesus’s maxim to treat their bodies as temples, as if those temples were synagogues in Berlin on Kristallnacht.

  5 I have seen Andy Dick fall off the wagon, then grope it.

  6 And I have seen David Hasselhoff run out of whiskey, drive to a bog, put peat moss in his mouth, and wait for it to ferment.

  7 I have seen Larry Hagman place a delivery for 25 orders of penne à la vodka, “but hold the penne à la.”

  8 I have seen Melanie Griffith guzzle Cosmopolitans like they were going out of style; which in fact they were.

  9 I have seen Tara Reid attain a blood-alcohol percentage whose mathematical significance she could never have grasped, even stone-cold sober.

  10 I have seen Matthew McConaughey so stoned he thought he saw Me;

  11 I have seen Snoop Dogg so stoned he did see Me;

  12 And I have seen Harrison Ford so stoned he did Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

  13 I have seen Whitney Houston accumulate so many empty vials of crack she filled each one with different amounts of water and used a coke spoon to play “Greatest Love of All” in each of the twelve major keys before shitting on the minibar.

  14 I have seen Chevy Chase steal the painkillers of colleagues who desperately needed them to kill the pain of working with Chevy Chase.

  15 I have seen Courtney Love refer to Xanax as “one of my top ten favorite palindromic drugs that I’m addicted to.”

  16 I have seen Nicole Richie abuse substances for years until the substances finally found the courage to leave and take refuge in a shelter for abused substances.

  17 I have seen Britney Spears so drug-addled she tried to buy meth from her baby and burp her dealer.

  18 I have seen Lindsay Lohan and her mother Dina get so drunk, they wound up switching jail cells with each other one Friday;

  19 It was freaky.

  20 I have seen Oprah Winfrey’s weight fluctuate so rapidly her midriff fluttered.

  21 I have seen Jennifer Hudson respond to the imminent closing of an Arby’s by breaking into a stirring rendition of “And I Am Telling You (I’m Not Going).”

  22 (That was a long time ago, of course; these days Jennifer looketh terrific!)

  23 I have seen Kate Moss order a neutrino for lunch, and eat half.

  24 I have seen Ginger Spice throw up meal after meal; ironic, since ginger is a digestive aid.

  25 I have seen Kirstie Alley replace her hot and cold water pipes with mayonnaise and ketchup and then stick her mouth on the faucet and guzzle gallon after gallon of lukewarm Russian dressing.

  26 I have seen Zac Efron cut himself to see if it would make his face register emotion;

  27 I have seen David Duchovny masturbate to a staggering .000007 percent of all available Internet porn;

  28 And I have seen Carrot Top compulsively exercise so much it would have been funny, had it not been Carrot Top.

  29 And through it all I have seen Dr. Drew Pinsky pray for more celebrities to develop horrible addictions, that he might cure them televisually.

  30 Consider it done, Doctor; love the show.

  CHAPTER 3

  1 Then there are those who have regarded the body and face I gave them as mere jumping-off points.

  2 For I have seen Nicole Kidman Botox her hair.

  3 I have seen Meg Ryan suck collagen directly into her lips with a straw.

  4 I have seen Burt Reynolds lie down on the side of the road and call a tow truck to come lift his face.

  5 I have seen Kim Kardashian’s ass get a rest-of-body reduction.

  6 I have seen the remnants of Kenny Rogers’s and Dolly Parton’s original faces dissipate like islands in the stream.

  7 I have seen Heidi Montag order “one
of each.”

  8 I have seen Carmen Electra transform a simple boob job into an entire boob career.

  9 And I have seen Michael Jackson... hoo boy.

  10 Michael, Michael, Michael.

  11 I think of Psalms 27:8: “When thou saidst, Seek ye my face, my heart said unto thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek.”

  12 Did Michael read that and take it literally?

  13 His songs celebrated my Creation; his dancing was praise in movement; he ruled the Kingdom of Pop with a bejeweled glove and a diapered monkey.

  14 But uneasy lies the head that wears a crown; and for MJ, even uneasier lay the skin and cartilage at the front of that head.

  15 Yet I pitied him; so at the end, as he faded away, entombed in that chalky, polymerous face-soup, I filled him with one last vision of the angelic youth who once fronted a sublime fraternal quintet;

  16 And I heard his final, heartbreaking thought as he beheld that nine-year-old:

  17 “I want you back!”

  18 (By the way, in case thou wert wondering: Michael is in heaven.

  19 No, we do not permit pedophiles here; but what is a just God to do, when the cherubs’ parents keep settling out of court?)

  CHAPTER 4

  1 Yea, the breadth of the dubious behavior practiced in secret by the famous would fill a book;

  2 And that book is this one, so let us proceed.

  3 I have seen Christian Bale call Nelson Mandela’s three-year-old great-grandson a useless sack of shit.

  4 I have seen Mel Gibson . . . actually, nothing worse than what thou hast already seen, which is bad enough.

  5 I have seen Angelina Jolie place four Botswanan orphans in a steel cage and order them to “fight for my love”;

  6 And I have seen Brad Pitt tell those Botswanan orphans that the first rule of fighting for Angelina Jolie’s love, is not to talk about fighting for Angelina Jolie’s love.

  7 I have seen Jennifer Aniston bounce back from breakup after breakup tougher and stronger than ever.

  8 (Strictly speaking that is not godsip; I mention it only because I know how much all of you worry about Jen, and rightly so; but trust me, that gal is one tough cookie.)

  9 I have seen Tommy Lee affix an American flag to his penis and order three groupies to perform an “Iwo Jima.”

  10 I have seen Gwyneth Paltrow leave an upper-decker in the women’s room at Spago.

  11 (Deny it not, Miss Perfect; it was October 2, 2005; thou hadst overheard Wolfgang Puck dissing Coldplay.)

  12 I have seen Axl Rose . . . no; I wish not to revisit what I once saw Axl Rose do.

  13 (That was one where I watched it occur and thought to myself, “I would not be witness to this”;

  14 But I had no choice, being omnipresent, so I had to stay there and watch it for 73 straight hours.)

  15 I have seen Tiger Woods cheat on his wife with many, many, many women; I deliberately eschew an easy golf double-entendre on this one, so as not to distract from my main point, which is that I am talking about many, many, many women.

  16 I have seen Tom Hanks slightly undertip.

  17 I have seen Paris Hilton lost in thought; it takes but one.

  18 I have seen Eminem two-timin’, using his rhymin’ for social climbin’, gettin’ rich chicks to chime in like he’s Paul Simon.

  19 And I have seen Jessica Simpson refer to Tonto as “the capital of Canada”;

  20 Which is wrong in two ways.

  CHAPTER 5

  1 But wait; for lo, there is more.

  2 I have seen Miley Cyrus blossom from a fresh new teen star to the troubled young woman there was never a chance she would not become.

  3 I have seen the Black Eyed Peas spend two weeks in Bali studying gamelan to figure out the best way they could rot that style of music from the inside, too.

  4 I have seen Elisabeth Hasselbeck pray that I, the LORD thy God, King of the Universe, might one day find the wisdom to be less liberal on social issues.

  5 I have seen Jamie Foxx not instantly succeed at something he tried; it was the flying trapeze; he was OK at it, but he was not great.

  6 I have seen P. Diddy behave in such a way as to disgrace not only himself, but the entire Diddy name, back unto ten generations of Diddys.

  7 I have seen Mariah Carey demand that hotel staff address her in the fourth person.

  8 I have seen Ryan Seacrest take Communion and eat the Host; not because he is Catholic, but because he is threatened by other hosts.

  9 I have seen Tyler Perry defecate, call it Tyler Perry’s Taking a Dump, and pitch it to Paramount; which green-lit it.

  10 I have seen the form Madonna briefly takes between her transformations; it is that of a black smoke-lizard.

  11 I have seen Kate Gosselin’s uterus attempt to hang itself from a nearby Fallopian tube.

  12 And lastly, I have seen Sarah Palin . . .

  13 Oh, I just fucking hate Sarah Palin.

  SEMITICUS

  CHAPTER 1

  1 The rest of the Old Testament after the Pentateuch is an eclectic goulash of two dozen or so books; the exact tally varying depending on whether thou countest the longer ones as one work or two, and whether thou includest certain semi-sacred books on the “Bible bubble”;

  2 Books like Judith, and Tobit, and Ruth (more on her later), and my own least favorite, Lamentations, which is every bit as mopey as it sounds; yea, a more blubbery collection of tedious whining thou shalt not find anywhere this side of Lifetime Television.

  3 As for the canonical books, they can be divided into three types: the historical, the poetic, and the prophetic.

  4 The historical books cover the 1,000 years of Jewish history after the death of Moses, ending in the 5th century B.C.; just as Plato, and Sophocles, and the rest of the Hellenic handbaskets began besmirching Eurasia with the full frontal assault on family and traditional values they ironically called “Greek culture.”

  5 I remained deeply involved in the affairs of my Chosen People for everything that transpired from Joshua through Nehemiah, so I can vouch for the books’ unimpeachable historical accuracy; even the brief resurrection of the prophet Samuel from the dead at Saul’s behest by the Witch of Endor.

  6 Yea: 1 Samuel, 28:3–25; book, chapter, and verse; check, check, check; it’s citable, so it’s true.

  7 Now, the total length of these historical works considerably exceeds that of the Five Books of Moses, and their content hath as many fast-paced thrills and chills as early Crichton; but my editor has advised against explicating upon them at length.

  8 For she saith that for the most part those protagonists hold little interest for the general reader; and that no matter how lively my recollections may be, nothing I could have said to, done with, thrown at, or inflicted upon Othniel son of Kenaz brother of Caleb, could possibly be worth the ink.

  9 Still, there are at least a handful of figures and events in these pages that continue to resonate with thee; “resonate” being my (verily, Uriel’s!) clever segue into the first such event: Joshua toppling the walls of Jericho with little more than moxie and a horn section.

  10 Jericho is not only the oldest permanently inhabited city on earth, but the lowest; it sits 700 cubits below sea level, so low that any wayfarer within a three-day-camel-ride radius wishing to find it need only drop a ball onto the ground and follow it until it stops rolling.

  11 It was the first major city encountered by the Israelites in Canaan, and ripe for conquest; but it was surrounded by a stout wall as thick through as two men.

  12 I knew such a wall would resist string instruments; I knew such a wall would be impervious to woodwinds; I knew that for such a wall, even the beating of a dozen percussionists along its very base would do little to weaken its structural integrity.

  13 No, this called for a radically new approach; and so one morning, the watchmen of Jericho beheld the spectacle of seven priests walking around the city, bellowing loudly on their ram’s horns; and behind them the ark, borne by other
, less musically-talented priests; and behind them the 20,000-man Israelite Army, marching in dreadful silence.

  14 From the watchmen’s vantage point, it must have looked like unto “Seventy-six Trombones” as directed by Luis Buñuel.