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Brilliant Careers: Satan
The world is filled with petty little creeps, but even after all these years, there's only one Monarch of Hell.

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By bell zebub

April 1, 2000 |  These days, everyone's an evildoer.

Once the province of masterminds, geniuses and dictators, the field of evil has become glutted with copy-cat killers, serial rapists, teen pop bands and sundry other recidivists with nary an original act of depravity between them.

Against this backdrop -- what his spokes-minions dismiss as "McEvil" -- Satan's body of work stands as a testament to what an archfiend can do when he really puts his mind to it.

To say that Satan's work is ubiquitous is to do it an injustice. He is beyond prolific. From his masterpieces -- Hitler, DOS -- to his playful flights of whimsy -- airplane seats, genital warts -- Satan's work is tactile, earthy and excruciating. He enjoys mass appeal while maintaining his underground caché. Satan, beyond a doubt, is the original material boy.

A lifelong workaholic, he is also an admitted perfectionist. But, like anything, he says, evil is more about process than results. It's a crazy, quirky organic continuum of wrong places, wrong times, bad luck, sharp objects and a seriously morbid imagination combined with way-cool supernatural powers.

Satan's range alone could make one's head spin and emit green vomit. He's dabbled in -- and mastered -- every genre of evil imaginable. As a malignant force, Satan has truly evolved.

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Considering this résumé, it's not surprising that when I arrive for my interview with Satan, I'm more than a little apprehensive. I'm 15 minutes late, and his handlers have warned me that he doesn't like tardiness. Thoughts of being subjected to one of Mr. S's fabled punishments fill my mind as I dash into the Mondrian's fabled Sky Bar, and for a minute, I think I already have.

But the moment I lay eyes on His Satanic Majesty, sitting regally in a shadowy arcade by the pool, I realize I needn't have worried. As Satan rises to greet me with a warm yet mysterious smile, he exudes not just the invincible aura you'd expect from a chronic overachiever (this is the guy responsible for all evil in the universe!), but the slick sophistication of someone eminently comfortable in his own skin -- as well as that of countless others. Say what you will about Satan, the guy is smokin'!

Alas, the infectious grin was not meant for me. "Holy crap," he says, spotting someone from across the room, "that's Kevin Spacey! Love that guy." Satan's handsome, rugged face glows beneath a wavy frame of pitch-black hair. Sixteenth-century lordly airs are hard to come by in these times, and it would be wrong to call the 56,000,000,000,000-year-old Satan haughty. But the fiend has an undeniably confident and solid look to him -- the look of an antichrist at the top of his game. He is immaculately dressed in a Paul Smith suit and Gucci loafers. ("Do you want to know the tragedy?" he says with a chuckle as he snaps his fingers for the waiter. "I've always worn these -- way before they were trendy.") The slight smell of sulfur that accompanies him is, frankly, intoxicating.

Next page | "What if 10 million locusts fell from the sky right ... now!"

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