CNN.com – Mourners file past pope’s body – Apr 4, 2005

Hey, did you hear that the Pope died? I know, you probably did catch it in your newspaper, your radio, and every freakin’ second of every TV news show on cable and broadcast.

Now that John Paul is gone, I really hope the next elected Pope gets a cool Pope name. John Paul is gone, let there be now Pope George Ringo! Or, let’s go to tradition and have a new Pope Urban… bonus points if he’s black! (Urban, black, get it?) How about Pope Fabian, he sings, he acts, he’s in a few bad beach blanket movies… You can’t go wrong with Pope Innocent, though it sounds either presumptuos or redundant, I can’t decide… I could go for Pope Adrian, if only for the cheap Rocky joke. OK, seriously, the next pope should adopt the name of five of his predecessors, Sixtus. He could be Pope Sixtus VI — Sixtus the sixth! Woe be unto the newscasters if Sixtus the Sixth’s sixth sheep’s sick! Or if Sixtus the Sixth seeks six sheiks, sixty Sikhs, and slick chic sneaks to speak Greek for sick sheep!

(Elected? if he’s the infallible messenger of God on earth, you’d think there’d be a much more profound announcement from the Almighty than a bunch of old dudes casting ballots for their new class president and a few puffs of smoke. He should lighting-in with a flash and a mighty thunderclap, fully nude, a la Schwarzenegger as the Terminator from the future. Makes you wonder why God’s so stingy with the special effects lately. A month didn’t go by in the Old Testament without floods, plagues, burning bushes, parting seas, but lately, the best we get is the Virgin Mary on a toasted cheese sandwich.