I Used to Write a Lot

Back in the day when the Internet was fun–back before USENET was a abandoned to the spammers pushing porn–there was a small group of (should we call them friends? I don’t know) who hung out on alt.fan.tom-servo. It was an interesting cast of characters with a wide variety of interests, but our chief interest seemed to be making each other laugh, usually at the expense of someone outside the group via cross-posting (this was known generally as trolling, although we practiced a specialized for of trolling called peeping).

AFT-S has a very few of the old irregulars posting there anymore. There have been maybe 5 threads started in 2010–compare that to dozens a day in the late ’90s early ’00s–the irregulars have gone on to other things. It’s sad, really. But sometimes I get nostalgic and I go back and read some of the threads from back in the day. Back when Babylon 5 was still new, when people cared who the better Captain was: Sisko, Janeway, Kirk, or Picard, or which would win in a fight: the Whitestar or the Valiant.

I was once awarded the Peeping Commendation Medal for a post I did on an animated TV show called God, the Devil and Bob. You don’t remember GtD&B? I’m not surprised. NBC ran exactly 3 episodes before it was cancelled because of complaints from Religious People who took Offense at the premise, the content, the execution, etc. I didn’t care much for GtD&B, but I could see where it was going. I was a retelling of Job (you know, the story in the Bible where God and the Devil test Job to see how strong his faith is), and I though it was ridiculous the Christians would be offended by a modern retelling of Job. So I decided to have a little fun.

Here is the complete post (Note: This was before the Peter Jackson version of Lord of the Rings, the LOTR I mention in my post is the dreadful Ralph Bakshi animated/rotoscoped version):

As a conservative Christian I knew that I would be offended by “God, The Devil and Bob”. I mean really, a cartoon about religious characters? I knew that the apostates that put out most TV shows could never have treated such a Serious Subject with ay kind of appropriate reverence. Besides, just look at all of the other cartoons aimed at adults, none of them have any redeeming values: The Simpsons is antireligious; The Family Guy is vulgar; Futurama is Sci-fi and therefore denies the existence of God; Stressed Eric was athiestic; The Critic’s main character was a Jew (and you know what they did); The Fish Police had talking animals; Fritz the Cat was all about sex; Heavy Metal was all about rock and/or roll; Cool World had violence sex between real people and cartoons, adn rock and roll; The Lord of the Rings had demons and sorcery; and I won’t even go into all that is sinful about South Park.

So I watched the premier, fully expecting to be offended. And I was. Here’s why:

1. It showed God drinking beer. Everyone knows that alcohol is evil and that everyone who drinks it is, ipso facto, evil as well. Therefore, showing God drinking beer is a blashpemy. Plus, beer is a common drink, used by the common man. God is not common.

1a. God was voiced by James Garner. Garner has made a career out of playing confidence men and slick characters. Are we to believe that God is a slick con man?

1b. God was made to look like Jerry Garcia. Are we to believe that God looks like a druged out hippy beach bum with no redeeming moral virtue?

2. The Devil was voiced by Alan Cumming. What kind of a name is ”Cumming”? How vulgar can a person get? Besides, isn’t he a gay homosexual? Gay homosexuals ar not like normal people. They have black hearts that pump, not blood, but a black oily substance. They are evil. And even if he’s not really a gay homosexual, he played one in Cabaret. That’s just as bad.

3. Bob was voiced by French Stewart. French plays an alien on 3rd Rock from the Sun, which is a Sci-fi show and, therefore denies the existince of God. He’s obviously an atheist.

4. The writer for “God, The Devil, and Job” is a former seminary student - “former” being the operative word. He’s obviously a backsliding apostate.

5. They talked about his daughter’s period. That’s Dirty.

6. Bob yelled at God, saying he was inconsistant and vague. Blasphemy.

7. They made Hell look like a not-so-bad place where Guy Lombardo plays the lounge instead of the pit of ever-burning molten, sulfuric lava that it is. And what’s wrong with Guy Lombardo andyway?

8. The whole premise is flawed. I mean really, God is going to destroy the world unless he can find one person who is worth saving. God and the Devil make a bet that the Devil can’t make Bob fail in his task? Who ever heard of such nonsense?

9. The language they used was blasphemous. Where were the Thees and Thous? Everone knows that God speeks in 15th century English and always sounds so noble with lots of reverb and lightning and thunder.

10. Finally, this is a work of fiction. Religion has no room for fiction. Only true, real, literal stories like those in the Bible can have any real meaning.

Shows like this should be banned from the airwaves. The people responsible for this debased, evil and blasphemous show should be burned at the stake. I think we should boycott NBC and all of its advertisers until they confess their sin and publicly apologise for airing this abomination.

–
pgb
“Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.”
- Sherlock Holmes”

You can follow the rest of the thread on Google Groups if you like. I cross-posted it to alt.fan.tom-servo, rec.arts.tv and rec.arts.sf.tv. I thought it might catch one or two people, but I was really surprised. Suffice to say that I got lots of fun responses.

Then, several years later I came across this on atforumz.com. It’s nearly 2-and-a-half years after I originally posted it, and people began (albeit briefly) talking about it again(!).

Then, in 2007 (seven years later) I get an email at my yahoo account (which is now mostly filled with spam thanks to my USENET activity) from someone asking if I was serious.