Remember when some whack-job tried to assasinate Pope John Paul back in ’81? Eddie Murphy commented on that event on his very first album of stand-up comedy, which was recorded just a year later. My friend Kurt Stephensen owned that album. He and I must’ve spun it about a thousand times on his crappy old Yorx record player, laughing ourselves sick in his musty basement bedroom. We believed we were so grown up and sophisticated at the age of fourteen because we were listening to a profane comedian tell jokes about the Pope and President Reagan and a lot of other sacred cows. So to speak.

Well, thanks to the extensive collections of the Bennion Archives (also known as my basement), I’ve managed to come up with my own copy of that album and review the applicable passage. It’s still funny, and not nearly as blasphemous as I used to think. In fact, I suspect that Karol himself would’ve seen the humor in it. So, to brighten your Monday afternoon, here is Eddie Murphy on the subject of shooting the Pope:

“What’s your rationale for shooting the Pope? I guess the guy figured, ‘Hey look, I want to go to Hell and I don’t wanna wait on line with everybody else.’ …You walk up to the door with your ticket, they say, ‘Shot the Pope? You can go right through, man.'”