king of kings and lord of lords

In all fairness, if I am going to pay hommage to my favorite satan, I should also take note of my favorite portrayal of The Big Guy, The Man Upstairs, God. Now, this could be a tough one: George Burns was not a bad 1970s god, and John Cleese makes a great British god, but when you take a man who stands head and shoulders above the rest as any character at all, and you make him Al Mighty, you have a winner. In my favorite film of all time, "Glory, " Morgan Freeman played the first former slave to be comissioned an NCO in the Union Army...an fantastic role for a man with incredible depth in his portrayals. In the poorly timed and overly preachy "Deep Impact," Freeman is the first man to play a black President of the United States, and he does so quite believably. Although the film's meager success was trumped by the entertainment value of the similarly premised "Armageddon" (where a bunch of smart-assed, porn addicted oil riggers led by Bruce Willis--nuff said--save the world by imbedding explosives into and destroying an approaching asteroid), it was hard not to recognize the sincere and solid leadership of President Freeman. And although W. Bush would probably like to follow Morgan's rise from U.S. president to Almighty God, let's hope he get's his fat dose of reality soon enough. Morgan Freeman, on the other hand, makes this transition fluidly in the cute but insignificant film "Evan Almighty." Predictable dialogue and the amazingly funny Steve Carell aside, Morgan Freeman makes a sincere God: humerous, reasonable, comforting, and shockingly un-self-rightous. His attire is simple, his manner of speech is unpretentious and his countenance is approachable. And when "dishing out" advice to the wife of the millenium John Denver, who has just left her nut-case husband, he appears as the waiter who serves her and her kids in a diner, and sports the nametag "Al Mighty." Now, I think of God as a balance to the universe, an as-of-yet undetectable harmonic that unites everything, but if I thought of god as a conscious, cohesive being, Al would be my kind of God. And despite how NOT religious I am, I think of Al Mighty, and I think, "I'd pray to him..." Contemplation over a Starbucks...and I'm sure he would have a venti low fat caramel macchiato, just made for the 7th day...