The End Times Comedy Show: A Novel

By Thor Ramsey

Los Angeles, circa 1998, Sam Seitz is a mildly successful comedian with five Tonight Show appearances who is actively trying to lose his religion so that he might "pursue the mindless goal of becoming famous for the sake of fame, without hindrance, setting aside the truth that so easily besets" him. Coming from a family of the most famous evangelicals in the country, apostatizing is no small task. After all, his family has been called "the Kennedys of the evangelical world." For the first time in his life he feels like unbelief is within reach, until he notices that Jesus is following him. Literally. Not to mention the demons he starts seeing, but they might be with the drug dealer who happens to be his stripper girlfriend's ex-boyfriend. And let's not leave out the night God tells him in a dream that he only has twenty-four hours to live. Thus begins his quest to find a way to reverse this proclamation, but hopefully one that doesn't involve repentance, since he's trying to deconvert and all.

The End Times Comedy Show is a satire of the evangelical landscape that is filled with kindness, faith, and warmth for its characters. Blending magical realism and dark humor, Ramsey takes the theological subject of "crucified with Christ" to parabolic and hilarious extremes, all while avoiding heresy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Apr 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781666797732

Thor Ramsey

Thor Ramsey is a Christian, husband, father, pastor, author, screenwriter, actor, vertebrate, biped, and stand-up comic, in that order.

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The End Times Comedy Show

A Novel

Thor Ramsey

The End Times Comedy Show

Copyright ©

2022

Thor Ramsey. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

3

, Eugene, OR

97401

.

Resource Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

3

Eugene, OR

97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-3781-3

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-9772-5

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-9773-2

June 10, 2022 7:53 AM

Table of Contents

Title Page

Part 1

Roman Numeral Number One

How Not to Believe

The Proverbs 31 Woman

The Curse of Woody Allen

Lana, Reader. Reader, Lana

Pagans, Whores, Lepers & Comedians

The Most Beautiful Pessimist in the World

Do You See What I See?

The Dutch Reformed Counselor

Part 2

Follow Your Paranoid Dreams

Crucial Conversations

Ben: An Introduction

Whatever You Say, Don’t Say . . .

Strategies for Reversing Death

I’m Not Afraid of Death

In an Alternative Life

Bill Hicks vs. Jerry Seinfeld

Death at the Doorstep

All Kisses Being Equal

Best Places to Live

The Place of the Skull

If I Was Crucified with Christ

My Deconversion Wasn’t Going Well

Everyone Is Guilty

Untitled

Blisters from Glass Slippers

The Famous Evangelicals

Get in the Car

See You Next Time

Part 3

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

Part 4

Once You Survive Death

Romance in Aisle Nine

Happiness is a Warm Gun

The Mistake You’ll Never Make Again

Fundamental Disturbances

Theological Liposuction

Beware the Family Tree

Post-Traumatic Stress Memoir

Love of My Lie

Please choose one from the following dedications:

I’d like to dedicate this book to my wife, even though it will probably make her mad.

To Dinika, all the good parts are based on you.

To Forrest and Heather Short,

good friends and sane Christians.

To the evangelicals, my family.

If anyone gets saved reading this book, yeah, well, I’ll be as surprised as you.

To Westminster Seminary, California,

because everything’s theological, baby.

To Brian Brookheart,

Thanks for the bad parts of your life.

To Charles Portis.

May you rest in peace, even though you’re not dead.

None of the above.

All comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and death.

— Flannery O’Connor¹

1

. By the way, Miss O’Connor, Loyola University removed your name from the dormitory that was named after you. But don’t be too dismayed. The novel itself has fallen on hard times these days. And the short story is as dead as you.

A

ll the people in

this story are fictitious, except for the ones whose real names I use. Other real people I made fictitious by changing their names. But everyone’s part in this story is fictitious as far as they know. Many of the supernatural elements in this story happened to people I know who don’t appear to be crazy liars. Make of that what you will. Most of the non-supernatural elements in this story happen every day to cessationists I know personally. The events in this story take place from

1998

to

2000

and should not be confused with any real events that happened during that same timeframe, unless they did. What follows is a work of satire. I think. It’s difficult to tell when you’re living in satirical times.

Part 1

Roman Numeral Number One

I met her at a strip club.

Thursday night at the Spearmint Rhino, masquerading as a gentleman, I sat there, front row, bar side, waving dollar bills at Paradise Lost in the middle of my descent into the underbelly of exposed bellies when one of the dancers looked down at me and said, Hey, I know you.

Having appeared on The Tonight Show six times by this point in my life, which happened to be in 1998, occasionally someone recognized me. This was always a big moment for me, so I always took time to enjoy it while aping humility. Lingering for a moment of anticipation, I said, Maybe you’ve seen me on television.

No, she said. You used to be my Sunday School teacher.

Yeah, my deconversion wasn’t going well.

And this was before Jesus started stalking me, literally, but that comes later as does the dream where God gives me twenty-four hours to live (see page 64), not that you want to skip ahead because—and this is something I owe to my evangelical upbringing—context, context, context. The point being, my own personal apocalypse only makes sense if I begin here, in a defensive posture, where I simply responded to her accusation by saying, I don’t think so.

Unabashed, she knelt down to look me in the eyes. Everyone wants to see into someone else’s soul. Sensuality is driven by more than just a desire for titillation. Strip bars are a cry for help.

Yeah, she said. It was you.

I think I’d remember you.

It was a couple summers. In Chicago.

And I knew then she was telling the truth, my head nodding back to confirm that before I adopted la-la land as my home, I was originally from chi-town.

Guilty, I said.

Yes you are, she said, her face remaining expressionless.

Nice to know I made a difference.

She just looked at me, not understanding I was joking, which I took as a bad sign. So, I asked, How old were you then?

Fifteen, she said. You were old.

I couldn’t have been more than twenty.

Yeah, like I said—old.

Sugar, her real name, after a song by the Archies (yeah, the comic book characters who had their own Saturday morning cartoon show and a hit song that apparently inspired teen mothers) exerted a physical pull on my person from the very beginning and not just because she was naked. Though she didn’t give me her full name at the time, her middle name was Spice, because her mother was also influenced by nursery rhymes, being that her memories of childhood were not that distant when she was pregnant. Her full name was Sugar Spice Valentine, which ironically sounded like a stripper’s stage name.

Our Sunday School history together was cloudy to me, because it had been over a decade since I had set foot in a church. Memories of her at church didn’t surface because there was no prior relationship other than teacher to student, which thankfully curtailed some of the creepiness, as much as that could be done for a Sunday School reunion in a strip club. Now here she was in her mid-twenties, a magnet to my body.

From the very beginning, I knew this girl would ruin me—not that I wasn’t already doing a bang-up job myself. This I can assure you: she wasn’t just any stripper, but the visible image of Rita Hayworth, a World War II pinup, a revival of sensuality masquerading as innocence, La Dolce Vita teasing me in person, a body that evoked pain, sparking an ache inside me that screamed if I couldn't get close to this girl I would die. In the depths of my soul, I felt I would leave my home and landsmen to follow this woman around the world, a willing stowaway in her ship of fools.

You’re the kind of woman I would cross the ocean for.

It sounded dumb when said out loud.

She looked at me (precisely as Bill Hicks described) like a dog that’s just been shown a card trick.

That’s a weird thing to say, she said.

Under normal circumstances, I would have abandoned the entire conversation after such a bad start, but the chemistry between us was so intense that I asked her if she felt what I felt. She asked me what I meant by that and I could only think of that most unimaginative and clinical description for lovers: chemistry. There was a powerful current flowing through the open space between us, a pheromone laser show.

Chemistry? she said.

I nodded sheepishly, the evangelical way, feeling stupid for saying it.

So, you wanna leave with me, is that it?

Me and a hundred others, I said. Sorry. I know it’s ridiculous. Hitting on you, I mean.

Giving up already? Where’s your faith?

I’m trying to lose it. And that brought a tilt of her eyebrows that gave me hope, so I said, Can you help me with that?

Then she frowned at me like that was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard in her life, besides the last thing I just said.

Do you even need my help? she said. This is a long way from Sunday school.

That’s the idea.

Then she nodded at someone across the room and said to me, I’m on break. Join me at the bar.

Being that I was willing to cross the ocean for her, I followed her to the bar. She held up two fingers for the bartender, then swished a circle with them showing him where to place the drinks. I didn’t even like beer, but I said nothing.

So, you’re on TV? she said.

"I’ve been on The Tonight Show a few times."

"You’ve been on The Tonight Show? she said. What for?"

I couldn’t tell if she was impressed or skeptical. It was wonderful.

Comedy. I do standup comedy.

You?

This was definitely skepticism.

What kind of comedy do you do? she asked.

"What kind? The funny kind."

According to her expression, this won me some points, but it wasn’t even my line. I heard someone else say it once, though I don’t remember who, just some other mildly successful comic with one memorable line.

Then she said, You don’t seem funny.

The only thing I could come up with was a hackneyed line used against hecklers by beginners everywhere: When you’re at the grocery store, do you seem like a stripper?

Where do you think I was discovered? she said.

My mouth dropped open. Beautiful, funny and naked. The only thing missing from this classic male fantasy was a PhD.

Before you become a comedian, I said, people always tell you, ‘You should be a comedian.’ Then after you become a comedian no one ever says that to you.

Why’s that?

I suppose once you’re making people laugh for a living you have no need to make people laugh in real life. The need has been met. Thank you, goodnight.

That’s sad, she said. I still find it fun to take my clothes off in real life.

Isn’t this real life?

No, she said.

I don’t see anything fake.

She rolled her eyes in a way that made me feel small.

Money makes people pretend, she said.

I like pretend.

Fake lives have side effects.

When she said this, it was difficult to tell whether she was being funny or serious.

You know anyone famous? she asked. Besides Jay Leno, I mean.

This was a common question. Everyone wants to be friends with someone famous because it says something about you, that this famous person whom everyone values, values you. Showbiz is salvation by works, the works being that wonderful thing you do that makes people love you. The more fans you have, the more value you have as a human being. There is no sola gratia in Hollywood, just a bunch of people trying to get saved by fame and notoriety. Still, it was my religion of choice.

Actually, I said. I was on once with Carson.

So who else do you know who’s famous?

People either ask you to namedrop or they make fun of you for namedropping. Sometimes they ask you to namedrop and then make fun of you for doing so. It’s a tricky question. So, I gave it some thought before I answered. I worked with Drew Carey five times in various comedy clubs around the country and had a couple of meals with him at Denny’s before he was the famous Drew Carey, but he has since stopped sending me Christmas cards. There was a guy who never really made it as a standup, but when Conan O’Brien was replacing Letterman’s old time slot, he was looking for writers and this dude became one of the original writers for Late Night with Conan O’Brien. I knew him. Another guy I knew graduated medical school and then became a comedian who later hosted some show with ninja fighters or gladiators or something. Then there was the guy who was really funny and young but was so good-looking that he became an actor and had one line in the movie Traffic. He eventually hosted some reality show about odd things left in the walls of old homes. None of them could be considered friends, though.

The closet I came to friendship was with the guy who was given 25 grand to write a pilot for another comedian’s sitcom that only lasted a season, but he went on to write for other sitcoms and is now a successful producer in Hollywood. These were all comedians originally from Chicago, the city where we fought for stage time in the beginning of our journeys to being nearly famous in Los Angeles or New York. That’s not an insult to any of those guys. They’ve had good careers in comedy and television. I was the host of two television programs myself and have been on The Tonight Show six times. But no one actually knows Brian McCann, Matt Iseman, Mike Siegel, Mark Gross or me, Sam Seitz.

Impress me, she said.

Now, people might know Billy Gardell from his hit sitcom Mike & Molly, but he wasn’t famous yet when this took place. When I worked with him, Billy was just a comedian like me. He bought me a dance once at a strip club. That was bonding for comedians. You’d spend twenty-four hours a day together for a week while you worked a club and then you wouldn’t see each other for a decade. I ran into him years later here in Los Angeles after his television series was a hit. He not only remembered me, but he stopped and chatted. He was busy, but he seemed genuinely interested. If there would have been a stripper around, he would have bought me a table dance.

But I couldn't really say I knew him.

I didn’t really know any of those guys, but Mark Gross would remember me. I don’t know if he’d return my call, but he’d remember me.

There must be someone, she said.

I once helped punch up a script for a film that Stephen Baldwin starred in before he became a Christian, but I won’t name the movie because I’m embarrassed about it now. During that time, I had several meetings with Stephen, so out of all the famous people that I’d met, I guess I knew him the best. This was right after he was fired by Brian DePalma during the filming of Casualties of War, which is a great story when he tells it because he doesn’t just tell it, he performs it. It’s not just a story, it’s a one-man show.

Yet, of all these possibilities to loosely brag about, I ended up choosing the famous person that was closest to home. You see, my pop is a famous evangelical. For that matter, my mother, my sister the singer and both of my brothers are too. The New York Times once called our family the Kennedys of the evangelical world. The following events took place during my Teddy Kennedy Chappaquiddick stage, sans the drowning, but including the strip club, with my apologies to soccer moms everywhere. So, not expecting Sugar the stripper to know him, because fame in the evangelical subculture is anonymity in hers, I said, My father’s a famous preacher.

What’s his name?

Dr. Marcus Seitz.

"Where is God in Our World?"

Yes, I gasped, looking for something to hold me up. You know that book?

I went to his church, duh.

At the time, I thought that I’d mentioned my father’s name to avoid the shameless namedropping that I so often relished, but now looking back I wonder if maybe it was a cry for help from a fallen believer who was trying to lose his faith—if it was even real to begin with.

I really was your Sunday school teacher? I said.

Why would I joke about that?

Who could tell when she was joking about anything?

How’d you end up here? she said. You still seem like a Sunday school teacher.

Yeah, my deconversion wasn’t going well.

How Not to Believe

(The Very Thing You Believe)

My goal in life was to lose my faith so that I could pursue the mindless goal of becoming famous for the sake of fame, without hindrance, setting aside the truth that so easily beset me. You see, I still believed. It was just now I believed I was going to hell. It was certainly an odd state of mind to do comedy in. Though I was striving for apostasy with all that was within me, deep down when all the lights were out, I still believed Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, God incarnate, having two natures, one fully human and one fully God, that he made the lame to walk and the blind to see, that he died on the cross as a substitute for our sins and three days later rose physically from the dead, then appeared to the women, the apostles, and over 500 brothers and sisters, and finally ascended bodily into heaven.

Yeah, I was having a little trouble shaking the family faith.

While others searched for the historical Jesus, I was trying to lose him. Even the night I met Sugar, I believed all of that without wanting to admit it, but I knew something was off in me. Maybe I never really was a Christian. But if that was the case, why couldn’t I shake the faith? I questioned myself as much as anyone else did. One of the residual effects of being raised in a theologically astute home was that it made me incredibly self-aware, for if I had been of them, I would not have left them. I wanted to not believe, but couldn’t seem to get there. All that could be said definitively was that I was a fallen believer who was giving apostasy his best shot. In my mind, the further I could get away from my evangelical past, the less self-loathing I would feel. That was before I met Sugar. Yes, she was a stripper, but it’s not what you think. She was also a hooker. But that comes later.

I have that book, she said, referring to the one by my pop.

Again, all I could say was, Wow.

You’re the one trying to pick up a stripper, she said.

You’re right.

You’re his kid? I never connected that. Everyone just called him Pastor Marcus.

I am Sam Seitz, I said, of the famous evangelicals, the boy who grew up in a dynasty of born-again, Bible-believing Christians, the black sheep in a family of very prominent sheep, though I had always suspected my brother Timothy of only wearing a woolly costume with something more nefarious underneath. My pop was once hailed by Time magazine as the most influential evangelical thinker, circa 1987, out of twenty-five possible contenders. A full shelf in our house displayed his books on Christian spirituality and theology, such as the aforementioned Where is God in Our World? and The Distance of God’s Love, just two of his bestsellers. More than this, he believed so strongly in his confession of faith that he was convinced preachers were more important than doctors. A bad doctor can only kill you, he would often remind us, but a bad preacher can damn your soul. Which seemed like a good reason to avoid church to me. If not for church, I would not have known I was damned, but I believe that’s a highly questionable paraphrase.

It is not exaggerating to say that my father influenced an entire generation of thinking evangelicals (if you can believe there is such a thing). And our family was decidedly evangelical. We didn’t call anyone reverend or issue last rights or christen babies or wear collars or robes or anything that might suggest we sang in harmony. Ours was an earthy, physical faith, as much about now as later.

Pop became influential after he made waves by teaching a class on Historic Revival at Wheaton College, which he did for over a decade. Some in Reformed circles took exception to his definition of revival, which was based on historic records, but the criticism was these accounts promoted a more pentecostal or charismatic experience of religion. Pop didn’t limit his definition to Jonathan Edwards alone, and the revival on the Isle of Lewis in the 1940s was a little too experiential for some of his peers in academia. There were charges that Pop had a Holy Ghost encounter of the pentecostal kind, but Pop never spent too much time worrying about critics, even when they were purported to be friends.

He still publishes. He’s still Reformed, meaning a Calvinist, and part of the oldest denomination in the country, the Reformed Church in America, which is a troubled denomination to say the least. He actually hadn’t embraced Pentecostalism, but he did have to switch publishing houses. But it was his book about my brother Ben, the martyr, that put him on the map, smack dab in the middle of the evangelical Walk of Fame. Thanks to that book, anything he wrote sold.

Anyway, you can understand my jaw-dropping reaction to a stripper named Sugar being familiar with a highbrow though popular evangelical author like my father.

Why aren’t you a preacher? she asked.

I’m a comedian.

What’s the difference?

She made me laugh.

You’re right, I said. Comedians are just preachers who haven’t answered their call. Listen to Chris Rock. He’s preaching. It’s a different gospel, but he’s preaching.

She caught the bartender’s eye, pointed in front of her with her index finger, and swirled it again. Another? she asked.

No, I’m good. You should come see me some time.

Why?

Why? I repeated like an idiot.

You haven’t made me laugh yet.

Deflated, but not quite giving up, I said, You haven’t slept with me yet.

And that was one of the few times I made her laugh.

I’m here all week, I said with renewed confidence.

So this is what you’ve done with your college education.

How do you know I went to college?

Please, she said mockingly.

You’re right.

Where?

Wheaton.

I couldn’t tell if that information annoyed or confused her. Then again, I didn’t know if that information annoyed or confused me.

I was a Crusader, not a Thunder, I said.

I could tell that information confused her, so I changed the subject and asked, Are you from Chicago?

Florida.

When did you live in Chicago?

I didn’t. I just spent the summers with my grandmother.

When did you move to LA?

Couple years ago, she said. I have to get back to stage.

I’ll be here.

We’ll see, she said. I go to the highest bidder.

The Proverbs 31 Woman

(Minus 25)

Never being much of a drinker, I sat and had six or seven Cokes in an atmosphere that was best enjoyed drunk. It wasn’t just that the place was dim, but with the dimness came a dankness. Every naugahyde piece of furniture in the place felt eerie, covered with the sins of the night before, lust too deep to be washed away with a mere spray bottle of Jiffy Clean. The bar had that long black protective pad running down its length as edging to lessen either cracks to the head or damage to the bar itself, possibly inflicted by someone’s head. The stage was nothing short of Hollywood tacky, big round lights lining a floor of mirrors, mirroring a ceiling of mirrors, all held up by mirrored beams. Thanks to all the mirrors, one woman equaled thirty-four breasts.

Dwight, the club manager, casually approached me and said, How you doin’ tonight?

The manager was just a 22-year-old black kid, always sharply dressed with clothes that fit him perfectly, probably what is called the smart-casual look, his shaved head with an outline of needlepoint dots remaining. The owner, some Columbian guy I never met, had hired Dwight because he was Rick James’ cousin. While Rick James was famous for both Super Freak and partying at this particular club, Dwight became known for being levelheaded and honest, two rare traits for people who hung around scantily clad women with surgically implanted Superball-hard mammaries. Other famous people wanted Dwight around when they partied too, because he didn’t drink or do drugs or brag about owning a handgun. He became their designated sanity. It was his tax-man vibe that calmed everyone. He’s just here to make you feel safe, and to make sure your 1099 is filled out properly.

When Dwight was initially hired, the owner would leave out large wads of cash to test him, but Dwight always gathered up the cash, cropped it into a neat rectangle and turned it over to the owner. Everyone liked Dwight, especially the dancers, because he never propositioned them or made banal compliments about their bodies, primarily because he was scared to death of catching something.

I’m doin’ good, I said, holding up my Coke.

"I noticed you givin’