I HAVE, AT LAST, BEHELD THE FACE OF EVIL

Having endured the entirety of Tristan & Isolde in a single sitting, having actually watched each and every one of George W Bush’s State of the Union Addresses including the post-peroration commentary, having actually seen Warrant in concert without resorting to gnawing off one of my own appendages, having actually grown up in the state of New Jersey, having survived a night in a Days Inn in Ocala, Florida while awaiting the repair of my broken down Caddie, having seen all of these things and worse in my relatively short lifetime I thought I knew the visage of evil, but no, I was wrong. I can now say with a reasonable degree of confidence that I have looked into the eyes of evil itself, that I have stared down the worst that the devil himself can bring forth; I have been to the Devo2.0 website.

One might ask, at first, what could be wrong with that? Devo was and still is one of the greatest bands of all time; they are legends of Punk, the progenitors of popular devolution. One could perhaps feel a little trepidation at the “2.0” component of this moniker, but when starting with Devo, how bad could things get? One might go into such an experience with just such a mindset, but that would be wrong. I advise you, dear reader, to feel fear, great and tremendous fear.

Normally I would advise you to simply avoid such an experience altogether, but in this case I cannot do so. I must instead suggest you gird up your loins and venture once more into the breach, dear reader, once more, to then go forward and issue forth your venom – to be joined with mine – against our common foe, the creators of this evil: Disney.

While one might forgive many of the sins perpetrated upon the populous by the Disney Corp over the years – think Pocahontas – this most recent monstrosity is unforgivable, is indeed a horror beyond all others, is a perversion reaching beyond unholy, is, well, just plain wrong.

What I must wonder is who in the world thought a bunch of untalented adolescents doing ill-advised and sanitized versions of Devo songs would be a good idea. Did some mentally defective junior executive watch one too many Target or Swiffer ads – both companies used Devo songs in commercials, carefully attempting to avoid the songs’ condemnations of consumer culture – and exclaim, “Let’s do more of that!”

As I said before, I thought I knew fear, but the first time I heard “Beautiful World” with the new tag line of “It’s a beautiful world for you, and me too,” [breaking from the original alienation of “But not for me”] I saw that something sinister was, indeed, slouching towards Bethlehem.

The temptation is great, dear reader, to vent endless spleen over this, but I shall attempt restraint and beg you to judge this horror for yourself, to face this evil incarnate and then go forth and rain vengeance upon our adversary – or at least join me in great and mighty scorn and mockery, those dual weapons against the perpetrators of such cultural misdeeds.

The only thing I can hope is that Mark Mothersbaugh and the gang all received copious quantities of money in recompense – I’m talking more money than one could shake a stick at – otherwise my fear must turn to shame and the great peril in encountering this foul demon, Devo2.0, was for naught.