Crazy, But That’s How it Goes

Did you see Ozzy do “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the Cubs game this week? It was funny--very, very funny. He got off on the wrong foot by beginning, “Let’s go out to the ballgame,” and then mumbled his way through it ‘til he got to the part of the song where it says, “I don’t remember what I have to do.” Must be from a verse I’ve never heard before. Dude is fifty-something years old and, while we don’t know how bright he was at, say, fifteen, he’s clearly spent the balance of his life drinking himself into oblivion. He walks like Mr. Burns and seems to struggle with day-to-day functions. (I nearly wet myself the first time I saw the Superbowl Pepsi commercial where he couldn’t put the trash bag in the trash can.) I’m not sure when I’ve seen something so truly sad and yet so genuinely funny at the same time—got to be something wrong with me. Still it’s amusing that the guy they tried to convince us was Satan himself when we were kids is now a benign, even loveable, television personality selling us soft-drinks and popping up at afternoon baseball games. I can’t wait to see Marilyn Manson in 35 years…