Yesterday Nuggie and I went out for happy hour. At the beach. On foot.

This is always a situation where we should hire a camera crew to follow us around. I would instruct them ahead of time to strap microphones to us and record EVERY SINGLE word, even when we are not in their view. Lord knows what comedic treasures could come from Nuggie or I talking to ourselves in the bathroom.

As the somewhat sober one of the two, I was talking to a tipsy Nuggie about a friend from a lifetime ago, who is married to a Pastor from my hometown.

You met her! She came to Maven’s funeral. Remember?

   Oh yeah… Was she there by herself, or did I meet her husband too?

No, she was by herself.

   Well, are they still married?

Oh yes… they have been married probably forty or so years!

   Why wasn’t her husband with her? That’s kind of lame…. send your wife to a funeral by herself…

He’s a pastor of a church of like 20,000 or something! He can’t go to every funeral… 

   Wait a minute… the guy’s a PASTOR and he’s not going to go to a funeral with his wife? That doesn’t make SENSE! 

Here is where I gave a laundry list of excuses in defense of my former friend’s life choices, and why it was okay for her to attend a funeral on her own.

She came to support me and my family, I guess… Plus her husband probably was teaching a sermon that evening and couldn’t come. PLUS, even if he could, you have to understand, with such a huge church people are dying and getting married daily… He can really only physically go to the funerals of people he actually knows, I guess.

   He knows you, doesn’t he?

That was years ago. We aren’t friends any more.

 

I should have said, She is an adult, isn’t she? She can decide to go or not on her own, right? But no, I wasn’t clear headed enough to state the obvious. I also got Nuggie’s point, because that is just the kind of guy he is. If I were attending a funeral, he would offer to go at whatever cost, and make it happen if at all possible. End of story. It’s why I love him.

 

But there is something you should also know about Nuggie in order to understand what happened next. He is an actor. He actually works as an actor in pursuit of his career. He’s not a waiter, trying to be a full-time actor. He really is an actor. You’ve probably seen him in something, but you would have to go to his IMDB profile to see his body of work. If you know him, you actually SHOULD go to every one of his films or television shows he has ever been in, find him in the cast, and click on him. Do this MULTIPLE TIMES. This influences his STAR METER.  The lower the star meter, the bigger a star you are.  Someone like Tom Cruise has a Star Meter of about 47, yet someone like Tom Hardy (Inception, The Dark Knight Rises) has a star meter of 11. 11 to someone for whom I had to provide a list of work he’s done. The reason that is the case is because his most recent Bat Man film got millions of hits on its page, and subsequently his profile. Star Meters are a squirrelly business. They go up and down with the wind. But a high Star Meter gets an actor “stuff” – entry into great events, swag bags, more work, you name it.

INTRODUCING THE ICDB

 

And Nuggie continued…

   They should have a Star Meter for that. If they did, that guy wouldn’t have a great star meter.

What do you mean? 

  Like IMDB. They should do that. They could have the I — (thinking for a second) C–D–B, Internet- (pause)- CHURCH – Database!

OH.MY.GOD. That’s funny! What? Would he be about a fifty?

  FIFTY! No WAY! 

Well he’d be up there, right?

  No. JESUS would be up there!

It sometimes takes me a minute to get what is really at play in the inner recesses of Nuggie’s mind, but I finally understood.

So what? God would be like number one? But then would he be listed as God, AKA Allah? Because you’d have to have them both right! Yeah – that’s good. God a.k.a. Allah. That would be funny.

  GHANDI – HE’D be at FIFTY.

What do you think Jesus would be? A three? Then you’d have to have Satan – because he’s a player too, you know. He’d probably be like, number five, sadly. 

 

THIS my friends — when God (Jesus, the devil and every other spiritual persona) goes high-tech —  was after I had just ONE cocktail.

I’m not sure why, but you’re welcome.