The Five People You Meet in an Afterlife Dive Bar

This past Sunday ABC aired "Oprah Winfrey Presents: Mitch Albom's For One More Day."

I did not watch it.

It's not that I don't appreciate Mitch Albom's efforts to make us realize the mortality of our loved ones. I just can't stand the saccharin sweetness of those efforts. If I were Mitch Albom, I'd write about the kind of people you probably wouldn't necessarily want to encounter in the afterlife--the people who are too difficult to go to heaven and too badass to compete with Satan in the Hellfire Olympics.

Peaches. I know she isn't dead. This would not stop her from crashing your dead man's party. Or your living room when you're watching Mitch Albom movies. At the afterlife dive bar, she would be the one enfleshed soul making you do body shots off of...

Gertrude Stein's stomach. Ever read Tender Buttons? Stein would be sure to berate you for not getting it while she downs another shot of vodka. No delicate flower, she. Gertrude Stein can hold her liquor and revolutionize literature at the same time.

Ike Turner, however, is not so stolid. You don't know what you said, but he has a broken beer bottle, and he's coming for you. Or, he just wants to play some blues. Take a chance.

John Kennedy Toole is there for you if you want to escape Ike's rage and/or blues. He'll make fun of you for ordering that girly drink, and then you two can talk about why there's no "Confederacy of Dunces" movie. I mean, really, what is that about?

And right before last call, have a beer with Ruth Gordon. She may even give you a ride home and tell you what it's like to be a person who's written scripts for Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn and hosted Saturday Night Live. Careful, though--she never got a driver's license when she was on this side of living.

Who's at your bar?