Smote This, A Comedy About God ...and Other Serious $H*T

Dear reader,

I want you to know that I have every intention of giving you the show of a lifetime, the show you deserve. The trouble is, I have been met with great obstacles from the powers that be. I’ve argued for a chorus of golden-voiced singers and an army of distractingly toned dancers; alike, fire eaters and lion tamers. I even offered a compromise of settling for a VW Bug packed with a mere fourteen clowns, but alas, at the end of the day I was told by producers, “dude…really?”

They’ve left me with no choice but to present you with all I have left at this point, a simple story of one black man’s struggle to reconcile with his religion, his grief, and legacy itself. I tried to aggrandize a bit with tales of performing duties as a fighter pilot and secret spy missions at the Kremlin, but those were disproved and forcibly edited. My stories of triumph as a diplomat in West Africa and South America met the same fate. I will admit to being confused by all of this. I thought we were firmly in a world of alternative facts.

There are no car chases, intergalactic warfare, no government secrets to blow the whistle on. I’m fear-stricken by the naked task of telling this personal story honestly. Rest assured that at this moment I am somewhere looking in the mirror and asking myself, “dude…really?” But someone, somewhere once wrote, “Cowards die many times before their death; The valiant never taste of death but once.” All that said, I hope this show makes all of our truths just a little bit less scary.

—Rodney Gardiner