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Wednesday, May 14, 2003

My grandmother used to say that Tom Jones was the devil. Said that about Lyndon Johnson, too, but Tom Jones was on TV more. This is the kind of ready-made cultural nonsense that shaped our early conclusions about the Prince of Darkness. I didn't care about Tom Jones, but I thought it was interesting that the devil would wear a tux with one of those frilly shirts.

Hey, we didn't dress that way for the prom for nothin'.

This musty knowledge oozed to the surface the other day when it occured to me that I could benefit from a nice relaxing exorcism. Just one of those days, you know, when the weather was nasty, the people nastier, and the issues I kick around for a living seemed irretrievably divisive. Some call it the blues, but frankly, calling it the blues gives me the blues. By calling it demonic possession, I'd at least know where to go.

Pastor Jack Stahl, of course.

Pastor Jack will get you an exorcism that's quick and clean. No screaming, no preening, no big theatrical "THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU" motif for Pastor Jack. No frills, no chills, no spew; it's new. Or relatively. And cheap. You can get it for the price of a long-distance phone call.

The only problem, at least for me, is that Pastor Jack can't exorcize your deepest Tom Jones because he does his exorcisms in the name of Tom Jones.

Right. How could I make that up?

There are at least 200 people in California who understand this (you're stunned by the locale), as they are members of the Progressive Universal Life Church, the doctrine of which likely would not exist if it weren't for the famous Welsh baritone.

"In 1969, when I was 6 years old, 'This is Tom Jones' first aired on television," Pastor Jack explains on one of the several hundreds of thousands of sites on the Internet that are so depressing you could almost slap Al Gore for inventing the dang thing. "Every week, I would sit in front of the TV hypnotized by this gyrating god. Jones' voice made me feel as if I was surrounded by angels. It is a feeling I still experience today. It is an inner peace, not easy to describe."

Oh no, you're doing great.

"It is spiritual," says Pastor Jack. "Considering Tom Jones was responsible for my spiritual awakening as a child, it is only natural for me to incorporate him into my ministry as an adult."

Perhaps it was only natural, although in a psychotic sort of way. It's like saying it would be only natural for all those clerics who watched a good amount of the Three Stooges as children to have founded differing sects of the Nyuk Nyuk Temple.

But in Pastor Jack's case, the Tom Jones connection lives in everything he does from the pulpit, even to the extent that he'll dress and dance like the Vegas crooner himself to make his spiritual point. For the sake of decorum, he discourages the throwing of panties, as it would offend the Holy Spirit. Perhaps the Holy Spirit of Engelbert Humperdinck.

When he's not invoking the name of Tom Jones in baptisms, weddings, funerals and exorcisms, Pastor Jack distributes, through the church's education department, degrees, clerical titles and psychic certifications designed to help you offer the very same kinds of services he does.

"At Universities, it takes years and thousands of dollars to obtain a Doctoral Degree," he says at www.pulc.com. "For a limited time, we are offering our doctorate courses for an unbelievably small donation. ACT NOW! You are guaranteed to pass all courses (Doctoral and Psychic)."

As for your chances of becoming a minister of the church, that too looks fairly promising, and, Pastor Jack points out, "thousands of ministers have become enormously wealthy performing simple religious ceremonies [and] . . . get many discounts, such as fares on airplanes, buses, ships and trains. Many hotels and clothing stores also offer substantial savings."

All of this, of course, is to say nothing of Pastor Jack's own title of Gifted Psychic, which is definitely the kind you want. You don't want a Bumbling Psychic or a psychic who has been designated clairvoyantly challenged.

But none of this was getting me my exorcism. It was time to call the 24-hour Tom Jones Exorcism Hotline. At first I heard only Tom Jones, bellowing "It's not unusual to be . . . " then Pastor Jack came on and screamed at the devil:

"YOU GET OUT, DEVIL! YOU FOUL DEVIL; YOU'RE TRYING TO POSSESS THIS PERSON'S BODY, MIND AND SOUL. I CAST YOU OUT IN GOD'S NAME. YOU WITH YOUR STUPID POINTY EARS AND CURLY TAIL! I LAUGH AT YOU, DEVIL! I CAST YOU OUT! YOU'RE A COWARD! I CAST YOU OUT! YOU GO, DEVIL, GO!"

Oh that feels better.

And see? I'm not even sweating much.