Sympathy For The Devil Elmo!

I don't have anything to say about this picture, I just liked it. I stumbled on this shot in a stock photo search, but I was looking for something I could actually use. I forget what, it doesn't matter. Unless someone is selling Eagles albums, I don't imagine anyone would ever need this picture. And if they are selling Eagles records, I want to know: why? The Eagles were awful. I won't even say they sucked hard, because except when smoking pot, I don't think they were ambitious enough to suck hard.

But it dislodged something I thought of Christmas morning, while Mo was playing with her new Elmo, prior to incapacitating it with scissors. Now he's a scary plastic skeleton that sings 'Shout.'


No, my daughter doesn't hate Elmo. She worships him. And I signed off on the IEP with the OT goal of getting her to use scissors a few years back and you can't un-ring the bell. You can try to keep scissors away from her, but if you can get to them, she'll get to them. Eventually you find that anything with a lock can be opened. Anything that can be pryed off is not really nailed down.

Yes, we had 'Tickle Me Elmo,' and 'Chicken Dance Elmo' and so on. The batteries wear out, but not before the novelty of the song sung in a lo-fi version of the Muppet voice.

But with the 'Twist & Shout' version, they are bordering on picking up music you might hear without being in a Kindergarten room, on the 'Barney' studio set, or at a wedding reception. I got to wondering what would be next?

'Highway to Hell Elmo?' Or give Elmo a mohawk and program him with a Dead Kennedy's tune: 'Kill The Poor Elmo,' or 'California Über Alles Elmo.' Em told me that no one would ever want to buy an 'I Kill Children Elmo,' but that was before Twist & Shout Elmo's foot had been pressed 465 times a day until he was slurring the words, the low batteries making him sound drunk.

Since the punk thing was pissing Em off, I headed back to the relatively tame waters of hard rock. I don't know any Ludacris or Eminem bits, so I couldn't outrage children of all ages with speculation about Elmo's potential rapping career. Then it hit me, the perfect song for Elmo to do next Christmas:

'Sympathy For The Devil' by the Rolling Stones. The 'hoo-hoos' are even in Elmo's natural register. And while it's technically a 'satanic' bit, the baby boomers who buy these things for their grandchildren probably wouldn't connect those dots. They'd just remember the killer weed they had the night they saw the Stones perform that tune, think it was cute that Sesame Street was tying in with classic rock material.

Yes, I know there are people who will rail against 'Sympathy For The Devil Elmo.' I saw in the paper today where a woman is trying to get an entire shopping mall in Olathe reclassified as an 'adult business' because she was offended by something she saw at Spencer's. But assholes who think that way are a good reason to have things like an overtly satanic Muppet.