Previously, on Pagan Idol:
two weeks to go
week zero
week one
week two
week three
week four
week five, part one
week five, part two
week six



WGMY 104.1
week seven

...and finally, soccer – no game this weekend for the GMY Henchmen, still on a high after that 5-0 mauling of Goth Haven Loborillas. Across the water Parodopolis Pudus welcome Atlanta. Head coach Tony Fontaine wants to see another big home crowd, and says fan power could make all the difference as the Pudus strive to overturn their 97-game losing streak. Last week Pudu Park saw a season-high attendance of Scott Martino and his daughter Leann. Stacey.

STACEY: That’s Dan with the pro sports roundup. Hey Dan, how ‘bout them Henchmen, huh? Could this be their year?

DAN: That’s an interesting one, Stace. I reckon it hinges on left-back Trent Coleman and his recovery from that hamstring tear. Of course, for the upcoming trip to arch-rivals Arkham, they have the option -

STACEY: Minimum contractually required banter works fine for me, Dan.

DAN: They might do okay.

STACEY: Super. So it’s eight-seventeen, and this is WGMY, number one for news, culture and comment. Still with me is Maria Cardigan, deputy curator at Parodopolis Museum of Antiquities. She’s been telling us about Objects of Power, a new exhibition of sacred artefacts spanning the last six thousand years.

MARIA: Hello.

STACEY: Also in the studio, bodily at least, is critic, blogger and creative director of the uber-hip VoidSpacE gallery, Ephraim Pointybeard. His new book is The Unbearable Dreariness of Being, colon, Stranded In A World That Shrinks From Creativity.

POINTYBEARD: *theatrical sigh*

STACEY: Regular listeners to the Breakfast Show will know that we’ve been following the troubled reality show Pagan Idol. As luck would have it, this week’s show revolved around divinely-inspired artworks. Let's get some expert opinion. Maria, I believe you watched the episode with interest?

MARIA: I certainly did. It was fascinating to hear the judges – pagan gods themselves, of course – giving their perspective on the role of art in man’s engagement with the divine.

POINTYBEARD: Tch.

STACEY: In this challenge, the seven remaining candidates for godhood sought to impress the Inuit pantheon and the viewing public by inspiring great works of religious art. Why might that be a desirable skill in a deity?

MARIA: It’s not quite true to say that image is everything, but art can play a huge role in what we might call the “worshipability” of a god or gods. The most popular item in the museum’s collection is our tremendous marble of Neptune, beard flowing, trident aloft, poised to unleash the full might of the ocean. The artist took his understanding of the deity and gave it a form which the rest of us can’t help but respond to, even centuries later.

POINTYBEARD: Pfft.

MARIA: The same is true of our extensive collection of ritual masks from west central Africa. It’s true of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. These are works which make the abstract vibrant and tangible. The Inuit pantheon needs a member who can provoke a similarly strong creative reaction.

STACEY: Ephraim, did you share Maria’s enjoyment of the show? …Ephraim Pointybeard is making the “whatever” sign. Coming back to you, Maria, the first contestants took a well-trodden path. I’m thinking of Alix, candidate goddess of hamsters and hamster care.

MARIA: Mm, indeed. She inspired a local sculptor to produce a limestone bas-relief showing Alix surrounded by happy frolicking hamsters. It reminded me at once of a similar -

POINTYBEARD: Stupid.

MARIA: - of a similar Etruscan lintelpiece which features in the new exhibition. Attractively proportioned and -

POINTYBEARD: Vacuous.

MARIA: - perfectly clear in its meaning. Alix is presented here as very much the authority on hamsters. If hamsters are important to you, she’s your go-to goddess. Simple and direct.

STACEY: Meanwhile Hope, potential goddess of lentils, inspired a vast mandala – transient floor art – painstakingly assembled over four days and nights from eight hundred pounds of different coloured lentils.

MARIA: Excellent tweezer work. But this highlights why the challenge was at once interesting and -

POINTYBEARD: Nauseating.

MARIA: - frustrating. Even taking just the two contestants we’ve described, the works are so -

POINTYBEARD: Odious.

MARIA: - different in execution that it’s impossible objectively to choose a “best” one.

STACEY: Nevertheless, a show of this kind needs a winner. Would it be Felix, wannabe god of the actress Rosanna Arquette, who gave us a gilded icon in the Orthodox tradition?

POINTYBEARD: Unadventurous.

STACEY: Or Oscar, candidate god of croutons, who prepared an epic poem about his mighty deeds but soon ran out of words to rhyme with “crouton”?

POINTYBEARD: Futile.

STACEY: Letitia, who explored in mime the financial plight of traditional Inuit sealskin mitten manufacturers?

POINTYBEARD: Despicable.

STACEY: Attention-craving Brandii’s five-act rock burlesque?

POINTYBEARD: Ugh.

STACEY: Or Ernesto, prospective god of Vaseline®, who teamed up with conceptual artist Anne-Kath Pointybeard to produce what I’m told was a “performance event slash found-media installation”.

POINTYBEARD: Easily the most adventurous, challenging work I’ve seen from a young artist in this millennium, a work sparkling and fizzing with possibilities, brimming with contempt for moribund notions of aesthetic and unabashedly articulating its own reflected nebulosity with a devout anomie that penetrates to the core of your self-in-the-moment. Breathtaking.

STACEY: So coming over to you, Ephraim, did you have a particular favourite?

POINTYBEARD: Ernesto’s performance at the nexus – as the nexus – of this life-affirming piece redefined for me the very concept of godhood. As he paced between tallow stalagmites, crooned Turkish threats towards a bag of clams and crouched weeping, shuddering, thrashing himself with birch twigs under an impassive stuffed gazelle, every element of the work sang its own haunting song of lust contorted and divinity deconsecrated.

STACEY: Right. And it had what to do with Vaseline®?

POINTYBEARD: *theatrical sigh*

STACEY: At this point, we can go to the phone. It’s not a great line, but at the other end is Haqqisaqq, Inuit god of vengeance and public relations.

HAQ: Yeah, another round of strawberry daiquiris. Thanks.

STACEY: Haqqisaqq, glad you could join us.

HAQ: Oh hey, hi there!

STACEY: Our erudite studio guests found plenty to enjoy in this week’s show.

HAQ: Of course. When so much on television homes in on the lowest common denominator, we refuse to patronise our audience. Creativity is what Pagan Idol is all about.

STACEY: I hear the series has even been getting interest from abroad.

HAQ: Yes, that’s true. As I’ve said all along, the Official Inuit Pantheon is an operation with global reach.

STACEY: I’ll be specific: just before this week’s episode aired, we heard news that an anonymous Russian collector had bought all seven artworks, unseen, for nearly five million dollars. Cash.

HAQ: That’s also true, and it shows just how influential the -

STACEY: A collector since identified as ruthless oil tycoon Kresus Korruptnikov, who has turned to buying overpriced art after running out of sports teams, airlines and ex-Soviet Navy submarines on which to dissipate his ill-gotten wealth.

HAQ: You know I can’t comment on the buyer’s identity. But I did speak with his representatives and it seems he’s a rather a enthusiast for sacred works. This unique chance to acquire art actually created by a pagan deity – or a soon-to-be pagan deity – would have been irresistible.

STACEY: A bit harsh on Ernesto, though? Last seen looking bewildered as he, stuffed gazelle, limestone bas-relief and all were forklifted onto a cargo plane bound for Rostov-on-Don.

HAQ: As he sees it, the buyer paid for the works... Ernesto, as performer in his, ah, thing, was an integral component of the work...

STACEY: So no qualms about posting him off to caper at the whim of a man Newsweek called “Ivan the Terrible with a briefcase.”

HAQ: You can’t trust what you read in the gutter press.

STACEY: “A briefcase full of rusty implements for torturing business rivals and any lackey of whom he tires.”

HAQ: That’s just a figure of speech, which I suppose means that, er -

STACEY: What it means, accusations of human trafficking aside, is that for the sixth week in a row the audience phone vote has had no bearing whatsoever on which contestant is actually removed from the running.

HAQ: It’s a turbulent world, Stacey, and I think everyone understands that we have to respond to new situations and seize opportunities as they arise.

STACEY: Even when it makes a mockery of the format, exhausts the public’s patience and now breaks the terms of the producers’ contract with the TV network.

HAQ: If I might sound a note of -

STACEY: Then again, that money will come in handy, won’t it? A five million dollar windfall would go some way towards placating Channel Nine’s furious executives.

HAQ: I hardly think -

STACEY: Or so said Blanqqcheqq, Inuit god of fiscal responsibility, ahead of this afternoon’s crisis meeting between the Inuit Pantheon, the show’s producers and the network’s top brass. You did get that message, right? About the meeting? About bringing the suitcase full of money?

HAQ: ...

STACEY: Hello?

HAQ: Sorry Stacey, it’s bzzzz -errible line, fssssss -eaking up rrrrrrr *click*

STACEY: Haqqisaqq there, on the line from a five-star casino resort in the Maldives.

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