a beast unleashed, indeed

I don't know where El DeBarge is now but I hope it is a dark place. I hope that his life has become tragic and unpleasant and that people say My God, I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy or That poor bastard; I know he deserves to be in a horrible place, but this place he is in now is so unspeakably horrible that I might pity him if he didn't deserve it so. In short, I hope there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth and the like.

You see, I've spent the better part of aught-seven with his horribly unlistenable song "Who's Johnny?" stuck in my head, and it is all the fault of Meat Loaf.

It all began over the holidays when I found myself lazily collapsed on the couch before a flickering television late one night. I had probably eaten too much and then washed it down with half a pot of fully caffeinated coffee, thus rendering myself into a state of being hummingbird alert while still trapped in my slothful mortal casing. It was the perfect sort of thing for a "Twilight Zone" marathon, zombie movies, watching the same Sports Center over and over again, or whatever the hell it was that I subjected myself to on that particular evening. The television program itself isn't important, mind you, for offensive Meat Loaf visitation and the demon seed that implanted the foul fruits of DeBarge deep within me came in the form of a commercial.

Did any of you know that there is now a Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose? I dare say that you didn't, as Mr. Loaf has taken to promoting the thing through television commercials.

Look, I've made my love of the Loaf's original Bat Out of Hell no secret. However, though I have yet hear it and lack even the slightest desire to subject myself to any portion of it, I know that this offering, much like the ill-advised sequel, is nothing more than a defiling of the original.

Still, the Loaf had a number of accomplices to help him on this one, and a list of them rolled by as if I needed even less incentive to purchase Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose.

Look, Loaf, if the burning questions about how "the monster" indeed escaped, who was to blame for the failure of securing said monster, and the resulting compromised safety of me and my family didn't sell it to me, then knowing that there is a guest spot by Steve Vai--the very same Steve Vai who got his ass handed to him in a guitar duel with Ralph Macchio in Crossroads--can do very little to sweeten the pot, as it were.

At this point those of you who are still with me here might be asking yourself, My God, does El DeBarge have a guest spot on the new Meat Loaf album? I can assure you that he does not. However, it was another name on the list that began to torturous journey to DeBarge, for there with Vai, Todd Rundgren, Nikki Sixx, Diane Warren, and Brian May was a chap by the name of John 5. I couldn't place him at first and therefore did some old-fashioned googling within the dark corners of my primarily unused brain space. By brain returned with this entry:

John 5 was that robot in Short Circuit, a film so bad that they couldn't even get Steve Guttenberg to do the sequel.

Indeed. This settled the matter for a while. However, it was the strains of DeBarge's "Who's Johnny?", the theme song to Short Circuit, playing in the back of my mind some time later as if accidentally placed on the mental phonograph while rummaging through dust covered boxes for the John 5 reference that alerted me to the fact that the robot in question was actually christened "Johnny 5" and that John 5 was, in fact, some hack guitarist from one of those talentless NuMetal-Hop abominations.

Well, the matter had then been cleared, I suppose, but I had been left with a steady loop of unwanted DeBarge as a consequence, a price certainly too great to pay for having such a petty matter put straight.

Damn you, Meat Loaf.