Another airport. Another weird-looking person I am unable to refrain from staring at. This one has got a handlebar mustache twisted tightly and stretched like pulled taffy. The respective sides look eerily like blonde antennae. It makes the guy donning it look like some white trash bug. As my eyes peel away from the minutiae of his faux-antennae, the full mosaic of the group of 4 sitting across from me is clearly revealed.

Effin’ Mormons.

Not surprisingly, I am waiting to go to a stand-up gig in Salt Lake City. And, of course, Salt Lake City has almost become synonymous with Mormon, which, TO ME, has become synonymous with ‘What the hell are magical underpants?’

The venue is called ‘Wise Guys,’ which serves as a nice bit of unintended (I’m sure) irony to me. The Mormon religion/race/lifestyle more closely resembles the clandestine, family-oriented, and ultimately illegal and tragic workings of the Italian Mafia than any other group in America.

One of the crazier ironies about the Mormon religion is how “golly gee” nice its practitioners are juxtaposed with the misogynistic, violent, and destructive religion itself. Rape, murder, incest, deceit, abuse, embezzlement, tax fraud – and that’s just happy hour on Tuesdays! Oh wait, they don’t drink. “Hmmm, I guess if you’re sober, Eli, you might realize that girl you’re defrocking is TWELVE…”

If I had any doubt the Jerry Springer bug sitting across from is Mormon, I see him put his arm around a much, much younger girl. His pretty ginger-headed girlfriend sitting next to him — with freshly budding boobs and skin the color of paste — is poring over, I shit you not, a coloring book. She is currently plotting her next selection from the 64. Trailer insect looks proud of her. Yay!

I am racking focus to the duo sitting across from them, a mother and daughter pair – clearly evidenced in the fact that the daughter suffers from some of the more unfortunate genetic missteps seen in the elder’s face. A stark generation gap sits between them. The mother borders on Amish in her austerity and the daughter has slut-on-the-sneak written all over her Hello Kitty backpack.
Watching this family, I can’t help but become keenly aware of the collision between Joseph Smith’s ‘old-fashioned’ ideals and the current currency of fashion and fitting in. The daughter is dressed in a hodgepodge of possibly hip but borderline scandalous. Her face is overly powdered, her pink blouse a little too form-fitting and too closely matching her pale pink lip gloss. Weird? Not really.

Mormonism has possibly become, after all, the sexiest thing in the world now. After Edward gave that super piggyback ride to Bella in ‘Twilight,’ millions of people became obsessed with Stephanie Meyer’s world – a thinly veiled metaphor for her belief in the BOOK OF MORONI; in particular, the values of fidelity and abstinence. I’m not quite sure that Meyer has converted much youth of America to the teachings of Joseph Smith, but it stands as a far more successful bit of propaganda than ‘Battlefield Earth’ — the Scientologists and John Travolta’s homage to ANOTHER pedophile’s religion.

Ouch. Stings reading this, doesn’t it, Tom Cruise!

Still, Edward is sexy. Travolta is a fat gay troll. Poor recruiting techniques.

Mormon daughter pulls out a pink iPod that matches her, yes, eye shadow. Mom sees me looking and shoots me a withering stare. She is, obviously, from a different generation. Hair cut across the forehead evenly, face sans makeup, long skirt, blouse buttoned to the neck, and eyeglasses straight out of a Granny Halloween costume bag.

Why do I hate them? It bugs me. It’s not their fault that they were indoctrinated into an absurd religion and were also coincidentally born without brains.

Maybe it’s because I have an 11 year-old daughter. I know Warren Jeff’s and that screwy compound in Texas is not indicative of the entire religion, but I have my doubts about the whole kit and caboodle in general.

I will be performing for a bunch of Mormons in a few hours. I’m Irish. I might drink. I flirt with this joke: “I like Joseph Smith. He was a brilliant man. Anyone who can invent a religion so he can legally bang 14 year-olds is okay in my book… What did I say? You’re right – 13 year olds, I should be historically accurate…”

Stay tuned…

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