Would you believe there are people in this world who think the universe was created by a single being, and this single being had a son with an Earth woman who grew up and could do things like turn bread into fish and walk on water? Would you double over with laughter if I told you they actually believe this son was killed and stuffed into a cave, but a few days later he rose from the dead and danced around? They also believe that by simply stating your love for this special man that all past transgressions are null and void, and you will get to spend eternity in a magical kingdom in the sky. Pretty nuts, huh? Well, what if I told you that there are well over 2,039,000,000 people worldwide who believe this? Still, this is not enough. There exists still a great number of people who think these notions are absurd, or know nothing of them at all, and some of them are children. Well in 1975, a couple of young forward-thinking evangelicals came up with a brilliant strategy for witnessing to the most malleable of Earth's beleaguered populace, the fucking kids. Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker had just started their own television ministry in North Carolina, the fledgling PTL network. It was here they first introduced two loveable characters, a borderline retarded Alligator named Ally (voiced by Jim) and a cloying pig named Sue (voiced by Tammy,) that looked suspiciously like Porky Pig in drag. See Jim and Tammy understood that lying to children is easier done with puppets, and ventriloquism is easier done on records. Hence the album bearing the gramatically stunted title, Oops! There Comes a Smile was born. Side one is a collection of some of the weirdest, most uncomfortable hymns to Jesus ever comitted to tape. When Sue sings of her love for JC it seems rather inappropriate. Take for instance the song Happiness Is to Know the Savior where Sue ecstatically sings "Jesus and me in close relations/Having a part in his salvation." I guess there's more than one way to feel the love of Christ come all over you. And this is hardly the most twisted song on the album, oh not by a long shot. There's the track God Is Watching You All the Time, which tells of an omnipotent creator who watches everything you do including extorting money from your ministry or banging your secretary, which Ally, I mean Jim, coincidentally did in 1987. And what about Heaven Is a Wonderful Place? In this song Sue sings of her eagerness to die and "see her saviour's face." Well, in 2007 Sue, I mean Tammy, got her wish when she died of lung cancer. Cancer was like her golden chariot that delivered her into Jesus' arms, cancer is a wonderful thing. Then a bit off topic is the cut I Wonder. It is here where Ally and Sue wrestle with their uncertain futures and wonder what career path they should choose. While Sue deliberates on whether to be a "nurse or a teacher or a mother of three,"Ally contemplates a future as a policeman, a firemen or a fisherman. Ultimately these two animals decide to not decide and let Jesus solve this conundrum by choosing for them. Nietzsche famously stated that god is dead, but Ally and Sue claim he isn't in the rollicking jam God's Not Dead. Who are you to believe, one of the most influential philosophers of western civilization or a pair of doltish animal puppets? I know, tough call. Side two has some bible stories told by Ally. I have never successfully made it through side two. There is no shortage of disturbing christian children's records collecting dust in the Goodwills of the red states, but the songs on Oops! There Comes a Smile are perhaps the most bizarre with their blatant message of subservience and forfeiture of mind. To the rest of us evangelical christians are fucking creepy, and Oops! There Comes a Smile does little to change this, but is it really possible that 2,039,000,000 people, an alligator, and a pig could be that fucking stupid?
