4-G iPhone has Bible Thumpers a-Thumpin’!

I just started this Theatre of the Absurd column a few weeks ago, so I hope readers will be patient while I play catch-up on some pet peeves. First, all the lame iPhone jokes on the morning talk shows. Gee, can it shave you? Can it percolate your coffee? Make your waffles for you? Yahdayahdayahda.

In response, Apple has offered a special 4-G bible-thumper edition of the iPhone. Steve Jobs, the company’s founder, speaks about the new application in his keynote address to a Southern Baptist convention at Liberty University in Virginia.

“We’ve designed something wonderful,” he says. “It’s a smart phone without a keyboard, it has a 3.5-inch, HD widescreen, it’s thinner than any other handset, it has a digital cam and it does everything but make Chinese bird’s-nest soup.

“But that’s not the half of it. Point it at your TV, touch the Sopranos icon, and it instantly and automatically sanitizes The Sopranos reruns. It makes A&E’s slashed-up, goody-two-shoes versions look like Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s a revolutionary new function in that it doesn’t censor the raunchy dialogue. No! Instead, it actually rewrites it, making Tony Soprano sound like Ned Flanders.”

“Praise the Lord!” the crowd shouts like a chorus of little angels.

“It even changes the visual background as needed.  No more Bada Bing strip club—that’s definitely out. Instead, for R & R the crew goes to the opera.”

“Ooh! Aahh!”

“Yeah, the fat lady always brings them to tears. Business, meanwhile, is conducted in a back room of the local Sunday school. Take a look.”

The huge HD screen comes to life showing an excerpt from a Sopranos episode. In it, a nasty surprise greets the crew when they discover Christopher in the Sunday school with a stripper on his lap and some white power on his nose.

He’s totally out of it, singing “I’ll be comin’ round the mountain with a bimbo on my knee…”

“Yo, hidilly-ho!” Tony exclaims, “What the dickens is this?  I hate to be Suspicious Aloysius on you, but are you inhaling cocaine through your nostrils again?”

“And biblically getting to know the exotic dancer, too,” Paulie Walnuts says.  “Goodness gracious. This is all too much for me.”

Adriana is beside herself. “Christophah!  Oh my God, Christophah…how could you? And we were supposed to get married!”

“Gee willikers,” says Tony, “we all trusted you.”

“Golly, I’m sorry, Tony.”

“You’re darned tootin’ you’re sorry—a sorry spectacle. You little munchkin, you wascally wabbit, you’re done for!  You’re done-diddly-done for.  You’re done-diddly-doodly-done-diddly-doodly done-diddly-doodly.”

And Larry, Larry, Larry, what’s up with the lame questions? Something the iPhone should do for Larry King the next time he interviews Paris Hilton (or anyone, for that matter): MAKE HIM ASK SOME TOUGH QUESTIONS FOR A CHANGE. Is that asking too much? It’s not exactly a revolutionary task, you know. Doesn’t the iPhone have a teleprompter application? Why couldn’t some savvy producer key in some sensible questions? Remember Paris Hilton on Larry King when she couldn’t think of her favorite biblical quote—after claiming the Bible was her favorite book in jail? No-nonsense, hardboiled, hard news question like:

1.  Paris, do you like older men?

2.  How about older men in suspenders?

3.  I know, I know, it’s really tough to remember Bible stories. All right, you’ve done a little, er, acting, right?  Let’s pretend the Bible is one long porno movie. Say the parting of the Red Sea is like…parting your legs.  Which prophet did Charleton Heston play in this movie?

4.  Are you wearing panties now?