Crazy Daily News headline: "President Obama hits church with First Family in bid to altar 'Muslim' myth."

Quite aside from the (deliberate?) misspelling — "altar" for "alter" — and the repetition of the "myth" — which I'm putting in quotes only because it's their word — the newspaper purports to know why a man (and a woman and 2 little girls) go to church.

Let me give you a quiz. (The first response below is the one The Daily News ascribed to the President and his family.)

Excluding weddings and funerals and the like, what's the primary reason you'd attend a religious service?
	To enhance my reputation in my community.
	To accompany a family member or members and thus please or set a good example for them.
	To get together with friends and associates.
	For the beauty of the music, the literature, and the art and architecture.
	As insurance, in case there really is an afterlife.
	To worship God and pray.
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: I'm glad at least a couple people admit to the afterlife insurance motivation. But here's the thing: What if doing religion as afterlife insurance is the one thing that pisses God off?

"I regard the afterlife as a fairy story for people who are afraid of the dark."

"Maybe there'll be window in heaven where he can watch Nixon slowly roasting on a spit."

The first comment on the Gawker post "Journalist Daniel Schorr Dies at 93."

My child, the advanced moralist.

"[Y]our child may wonder why you have twice the home you need. Kevin Salwen and his wife were so taken by their daughter’s conviction in this particular matter that their family of four decided to sell their 6,500-square-foot home. They bought a new one less than half the size and are giving away about $850,000, more than the price difference between the homes."

It's a conundrum of pride!

What should you learn from your child's moralistic inquiries?
	How to reach a higher standard of morality.
	How to talk about substantive issues with a child.
	How to resist being shaken from your own decisions about how to live.
	How to be proud of yourself AND your seemingly brilliant offspring.
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

"Watch J.J. Abrams Say 'Lost' Is Not About That Thing It Turned Out to Sort of Be About."

"We're sure in the weeks to come, there will be lots of discussion about the distinctions between 'purgatory' and 'heaven,' and 'the afterlife' and 'being dead,' and 'misleading information' and 'flash sideways is not the island,' and 'when did the Lost creators actually know how the show was going to end' and 'why didn't Darlton care at all about the show's mythology?!' — but in the instant aftermath of the finale, it seems that something sort of like purgatory, insofar as purgatory is a place full of dead people, did in fact have something to do with this here series called Lost."

Hey, you know what would really be funny? After we really die, if we find ourselves somewhere and we're talking about the distinctions between "purgatory" and "heaven," and "the afterlife" and "being dead," and somebody says "Deja vu! This is like exactly the same conversation I had after the last episode of Lost."

There are 2 reactions to the knowledge that we're all going to die.

"One: religion. You create an afterlife. Now I think it's a good idea, it makes people calmer. And then there's humor. At its basis humor is a very strange, nervous reaction to, you know, death. To me that's the only explanation of why so much of what makes people laugh really hard is scary. There are so many death jokes, so many movies where the humor situation is based on great danger—just a slight twist and it would be a horror movie. So to me that's how we're coping with it. We see right through our own narrative that everything's OK, and the way we handle the resulting anxiety is to make jokes about it."

Says Dave Barry.

Tea Party people.

The shirt says "And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torment. Luke 16:23. (Don't let it be you.)" I had trouble reading the numbers on the Biblical cite and at first saw that 16 as 18. I looked it up:

And a ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said, “All these I have kept from my youth.” When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich.

I thought, wow, that is not the right Biblical citation for the Tea Party!

Why believe in a religion? Why not believe in 2 or 3 or more?

And throw in astrology and ghosts while you're at it.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a report [that]... points out that many Americans are now choosing to “blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs” and that “sizable minorities of all major U.S. religious groups” said that they have had supernatural experiences, like encountering ghosts....

Twenty percent of Protestants and 28 percent of Catholics said they believe in reincarnation... [A]bout the same percentages said they believe in astrology, yoga as a spiritual practice and the idea that there is “spiritual energy” pulsing from things like “mountains, trees or crystals.”...

[T]hose who identified themselves as Christian were more likely to believe these things than those who were unaffiliated....

Furthermore, 16 percent of Protestants and 17 percent of Catholics said that they believe that some people can use the “evil eye” to “cast curses or spells that cause bad things to happen.”...

... Democrats were almost twice as likely to believe in ghosts and to consult fortune-tellers than were Republicans, and the Democrats were 71 percent more likely to believe that they were in touch with the dead....

Religion is the snack food of the people.

"Who lives longer? The man who takes heroin for two years and dies, or a man who lives on roast beef, water and potatoes 'till 95?"

"One passes his 24 months in eternity. All the years of the beefeater are lived only in time."

An Aldous Huxley quote. Not the one I went looking for, just one that distracted me.

The one I was looking for was:

"It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'Try to be a little kinder.'"

Those were not his last words. His last words were instructions for injecting him with LSD. An eternal life strategy?

ADDED: LSD, it's good for dying. It's the blue pill, that works better for you, grandfather:

"Even though I didn't win the crown that night. I know that the Lord has so much of a bigger crown in heaven for me."

We get crowns in Heaven? And will everyone be swanning around in bathing suits and high heels? It's at least as likely as white robes, harps, and flying.

"I thought I saw him walkin' up over the hill, with..."

I'm listening to the old Dion song this morning:



No, it's not because I'm trying to come up with a verse about Teddy Kennedy... or that I picture him — accompanied by angel-harp music — walking into Heaven with various beloved dead political heroes. (Get a grip, people, Teddy lived to a ripe old age and died in the normal course of things, which is the best any of us can hope for. He was not cut down in his prime like Abraham, Martin, John, and Bobby.)

It's because I need to pull this comment just buried under the "Third Man" post and elevate it to the heaven of today's front page. It's a comment about lost commenters — a song parody. And please, write new verses for that song. The collection of beloved old commenters who have wandered off is longer than Trooper, Titus, and Palladian. And they haven't died. I'm picturing them not in Heaven, but drinking and talking late into the night in some bar over on Atlantic Avenue.

Go!

Directly to heaven.

***

Thanks for the intense joy you gave us — gave me — Heinz Edelmann.

Imagine an eternal afterlife in which you can do nothing more than wander around observing the scenes of your own life.

Now, what should you have been doing differently in life? Less time on the internet, for sure. But you probably should be doing just about everything differently.

I posted that on Facebook 2 hours ago.

(So I am confessing part of how I whiled away 3 hours.)

"Sky Saxon, the mop-haired bass player and front man for the psychedelic protopunk band the Seeds..."

"... whose 1965 song 'Pushin’ Too Hard' put a Los Angeles garage-band spin on the bad-boy rocker image personified by the Rolling Stones, died Thursday in Austin, Tex. He was thought to be 71.... Sky Sunlight Saxon was the name he used in later years, the middle name given to him in the 1970s as a member of the Source Family, a spiritual cult whose leader — known as Father Yod or Ya Ho Wha — started what has been described as the quintessential hippie commune... 'Sky has passed over and Ya Ho Wha is waiting for him at the gate,' his wife wrote on Facebook. 'He will soon be home with his Father.'"



ADDED: When protopunk sets up in front of the fireplace in your sedate living room, please be careful. Don't drop your tambourine!

Well, all I want is to just be free, live my life the way I wanna be. All I want is to just have fun, live my life like it's just begun... And maybe you can, but however you live your life — pushin' hard or soft, like it's just begun or like a mature hippie — it will one day be over. The tambourine must, in the end, hit the carpet.

AND: What sitcom is that in the clip? I recognized the actress Kaye Ballard, and using IMDB, deduced that it must be "The Mothers-In-Law." The episode — directed by Desi Arnaz! — was called "How Not to Manage a Rock Group":

While I cannot truthfully say I've seen the entire episode, the 10 minute portion that I have seen is very funny and, of course, has the incredible 1960s band The Seeds in it. They portray The Warts, a band that the kids want to manage. The Seeds' great "Pushin' Too Hard" is performed, and is simply incredible. Singer Sky Saxon is a terrific frontman. The adults try to steer the group into a more traditional sound, offering some silly novelty tunes, and creating some big laughs. It all ends with the adults doing "Some Enchanted Evening," oom Pa Pa style. Extremely corny and very amusing, with the rockers joining in. It must have actually influenced their music, because on the band's underrated 1967 LP "Future," they actually use a tuba in a couple of songs.

"Heathers," etc.

1. The Daily News has a where-are-they-now photo essay on the various actors from the great 1989 movie "Heathers."

2. I didn't know Jennifer Connelly turned down the Winona Ryder role, though I did know that Ryder has done nothing of note since her 2001 arrest for shoplifting. That poor woman paid such a heavy price for her crime. Come on, everyone. Forgive Winona.

3. I didn't know Kim Walker/Heather Chandler died of a brain tumor in 2001. (Classic "chainsaw" video clip — language alert.) ("Please send Heather to Heaven.")

4. I was happy to see that Glenn Shadix/Father Ripper is still a busily working actor. ("I love my dead gay son.")

5. And look what became of the nerdy boy.

6. "Betty Finn" was a real Estevez.

7. They're working on the Broadway musical version of "Heathers." The new Veronica Sawyer might be Kristen Bell. What do you think of the idea of "Heathers," the musical? Is the movie popular with Broadway fans? Sort of like "Hairspray"? I loved the movie and I loved the original movie "Hairspray," but I had no interest in seeing the show "Hairspray" or the movie made from the show. But that's just me. I guess I don't want to see any Broadway shows made from movies, though I did see "Nine" many years ago... when Raul Julia played Guido.

8. I miss Raul Julia! But what the hell was going on here?

"Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got."

But there will be no more writing from Philip José Farmer, dead at 91.

Do you think he's gone to Heaven? "I can’t see any reason why such miserable, unhappy, vicious, stupid, conniving, greedy, narrow-minded, self-absorbed beings should have immortality."

A 2-year-old boy has been "married" to a dog to ward off the evil signified by a defective tooth.

"The 'bride's' father, Parakrama Munda, said: 'This is just a ceremony to please the tribal deity - in the great epic Mahabharat a dog helped the Pandavas reach heaven.'"