…to muse about Dane Cook. Of whom I had never, ever heard before an episode of The Office in which Michael (the clueless boss, played by Steve Carrell) says to a group of kids (brought there on "Bring Your Daughters to Work Day" – a great episode.), in an attempt to entertain them, "Now who likes Dane Cook"  – and they all enthusiastically jump and raise their hands. The point being, I suppose, that it is inappropriate for kids to be listening to Dane Cook.

So, I guess Dane Cook is a comic – quite popular among young adults. He was raised Catholic and that’s a part of his act – born in 72, so you get a taste of how the post-Vatican II babies view their upbringing – total lack of seriousness, no "there" there at all, blasphemous about Eucharist, coming up with all sorts of "cute" names for it, and so on.

But then…

Last night, after Deadwood (which I really only half-watch, partly because of the language, partly because I have no idea what’s going on) on HBO, they played a snippet of a Dane Cook act – apparently one of his more well-known riffs on a conversation with an atheist.  It starts off with an atheist being offended when Cook says "God Bless You" after a sneeze. Cook responds, the atheist responds – "Y’know, "Cook says, "like he’s gonna school me!" Cook’s atheists waxes on about how after he dies, his being or whatever will be transmogrified (or whatever) into a tree, and Cook proceeds to take us through what will happen to the tree…wouldn’t it be cool, he says, if the tree grows really big and is chopped down by a guy with an ax (and we think, ah, this is all about revenge)…and then taken to a paper mill, and Cook goes on and on until the climax until his fantasy has the former atheist-then tree being ground up and made into paper…for a Bible.

There may be nothing else in the Cook ouevre, such as it is, worth salvaging, but that bit, with the utter contempt for the atheist’s arrogance and the perspective of God’s Ultimate Irony…was refreshing.

Now…for the next step, which is always the hardest. God exists…so what?