The Last Testament: A Memoir (21 page)

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
B
ut 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 L
ORD
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
T
he 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.

¹⁵
Once a day for six days did this hour-long circumnavigatory ram-jam session take place; then, on the seventh day, it was repeated seven consecutive times;

¹⁶
And by the thirteenth march, that priestly horn septet had evolved into quite a tight little ensemble, I must say.

¹⁷
Lo, they actually made those shofars sound halfway decent, which is nearly impossible; for I once beheld Miles Davis attempt to play one at his record company president’s grandson’s bris, and he gave up after 45 minutes, having produced no sound but the squeal of a screech-owl passing a kidney stone.

¹⁸
Still, they were but amateur musicians; the important thing was not that they played well, but that they played with gusto; and even more importantly, that they played
loud
;

¹⁹
Loud enough to conceal the sound of the sledgehammers wielded by the 60 Israelite spies who’d been hiding in Jericho’s catacombs all week.

²⁰
By the end of the final march the wall was ready to fall; but to let the army feel like they had played a part, Joshua bade them let out a war cry; and this appeared to be the cause of the collapse, at least to anyone who had not spent the last week pouring hundreds of gallons of smuggled lye into subterranean boreholes.

²¹
Let it be: what matters is not the method, but the outcome; and by sunset the Israelites, working together, had conquered the town, destroyed every living thing in it (including the children), and burned it to the ground.

²²
Yea, it is amazing what can be accomplished when no one cares who takes the credit.

²³
When the last ox had been gored, Joshua looked at me and said, “Capturing Jericho proved little challenge, O L
ORD
.”

²⁴
“I am glad thou feelest that way,” I responded, “for it will be all
uphill
from here!”

²⁵
He tittered; I thought it deserved better.

CHAPTER 2

1
O
f Joshua there is little else to say, other than that he continued besieging, burning, and massacring his way through Canaan, obliterating its inhabitants and all record of their existence from the face of the earth, until he died peacefully at 110, surrounded by his grandkids.

²
But in these historical books there are three other figures, a brief mention of whom I have been advised would not be unhelpful in the moving of precious units.

³
The first of the three is the
last
of the judges chronicled in the book of that name; leaders who served not only as dispute-arbiters, but as a kind of intertribal prime minister in the days before the monarchy.

⁴
There were 14 such judges, of whom the wisest, bravest, and most respected was the fourth, Deborah; the greatest female leader in the entire Old Testament; though also, technically, the worst; for she was the only.

⁵
(Verily, I have never divined what it was about the ancient Jews’ rigidly patriarchal polygamous society that made it so hard for its female chattel to succeed therein;

⁶
Especially since women were regarded as clean, uncursed, and fit to appear in public nearly three-quarters of the time.

⁷
In any case, it is a shame that Deborah turned out to be the last female judge for the next three millennia; for she was great.