American Freak Show by Willie Geist

soldiers have, once and for all, taken the onus off me to make a decision on this vitally important issue. For that I am eternally grateful because, seriously, I had no clue what to do on this one. Whew.
    “I’m also very pleased to have won my friendly bet with Osama bin Laden. I didn’t want to have to part with all that Gino’s Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. The month’s supply of lamb kebabs is gonna taste a little extra sweet with this win. You’ve got the address, OBL.”
    The Al-Qaeda leader bin Laden was less gracious in an audiotape released after the game.
    “That was some bullshit out there today!” said an emotional bin Laden. “How much did Obama pay those refs? Those two pass interference calls were both uncatchable balls! Next time just let me know the game is fixed beforehand so I don’t waste four hours watching a lie. I had an entire ‘Battle on the Bay’ theme party in my cave for no reason. The place is a mess and I’m up to my ears in guacamole! And don’t hold your breath on the kebabs, Obama. Boy, am I steamed.”
    Bin Laden’s frustration with the officiating notwithstanding, the Detainees’ surprisingly competitive performance on Saturday earned unlikely praise from their mortal enemies.
    “I think the extremists, militants, and outright terrorists over there won a measure of respect with their effort today,” said Guards head coach Navy Rear Admiral. “We expected them to roll over like the whiny little bitches they are, but they didn’t. It’s especially impressive when you consider we didn’t allow them to wear football equipment. Just the turbans and flowing robes. Those guys put up a heck of a fight. Doesn’t mean I’m not throwing ’em all into stress positions first thing tomorrow, but we’ll certainly give ’em the night off.”
    The Detainees may have come up three yards short of freedom, but for just one bright afternoon on a breezy open field of fresh-cut green grass somewhere in the Caribbean, they were free to dream.
    “This is a tough loss to swallow because we were so close. We allowed ourselves to think about life on the other side of that chain-link fence and it cost us,” said the star receiver and bloodthirsty Yemeni radical Al Yafii. “No words will make it better. I mean, the words ‘Death to America’ always help, but this still stings. It’ll just take time, which we’ve got plenty of now. On the bright side, how cool was it to meet Burt Reynolds? I’m a huge Smokey and the Bandit fan.”

Chapter 10
Oprah Is God
    S ince the very beginning of human history, scientists, philosophers, scholars, clerics, and just guys sitting around in bars have debated the existence of God. Now, a group of prominent American theologians has rocked the religious world with a new study that, they say, proves a higher power exists. So who, or what, is God and how can the authors of this potentially earth-shaking new research be so sure? They make their case in the latest edition of the quarterly academic journal Harvard Theological Review .
    HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
    Harvard Divinity School
Cambridge, Massachusetts
    “GOD IS OPRAH, OPRAH IS GOD”
    Nearly a decade ago, a group of us were sitting around the faculty lounge at the Harvard Divinity School smoking clove cigarettes, drinking brandy, and talking about how frustratingly dumb most people are when a spirited argument broke out over the existence of God. We vowed that night, inside the walls of a smoke-filled room in Cambridge, that together we would author the definitive study on the subject. We also ended up taking some mescaline and playing a dangerous Tantric sex game with the folks in the Sanskrit and Indian Studies Department, but that is not germane to this report.
    No matter how long it took us, we decided we would leave our mark as the mere mortals who answered humanity’s oldest supernatural question: Is there a God? Today, after nine years of exhaustive research, we are proud and humbled to say