It’s too bad this blog software doesn’t let you change fonts, because doesn’t that blog title practically scream that it should be dripping blood red letters? And maybe with a scrolling gothic T and a pair of capital Os? It should also have a couple of bats flapping around at the corners. Blogger, you need to improve your graphic interface.
(And Jen, you need to be on another platform, like LiveJournal or Substack or something that can be monetized. Not that I update this thing often enough to be monetized.)
Anyway, we received the sad news today that rock idol Ozzy Osbourne, he of biting the head off a live bat and summoning “demons” (actually, dancers in costumes) onstage, has gone on to the Garden of Beautiful Souls. RIP, Your Ozzness. Mr. Osbourne had probably the craziest 76 years of anyone who has ever walked this planet, and if I die having done half the stuff he did, I hope somebody stopped me fairly early on and got me appropriate treatment.
I cannot possibly pen a fitting tribute to Mr. Ozz in this space. I am instead reduced to telling you the above-titled tale. Because really, it needs retelling.
Circa 1984, I was about fifteen years old and in North Dakota for part of the summer with my cousins. They lived in Minot, which is next to the Souris River. It has an air base, a Great Northern Railway hub and a couple of good hospitals, but really, not a whole lot else to recommend it. It does, however, have the North Dakota State Fairgrounds, and it just happened to be mid-July, which is fair time.
You guys probably don’t really remember the Satanic Panic of the early 80s, but I do, and let me tell you, it was quite a thing. It started with this professional hoaxter writing a book about a woman named Michelle, and kind of exploded into the public consciousness with the McMartin Preschool trial in Los Angeles. And to just illustrate how crazy all of this got, three people who (as it turned out) were perfectly innocent ended up getting life sentences because of what a bunch of freaked out adults coached out of two and three year old kids who were still learning English. Really quickly, the story was that all the kids were being sexually abused as part of a Satanic cult. I’m not sure why a Satanic cult; child abuse all by itself is horrible enough.
Lest you think this thing has finally petered out, I was in San Diego in the early 2000s and it was still going on then. There was, in fact, a huge high-profile trial of a mentally divergent man named Dale Akiki. You can Google him if you want. After a seven-week trial, Akiki was acquitted of forty-seven counts of child sexual abuse, torture, attempted murder and animal mutilation. The acquittal was a total shock to prosecutors and absolutely no surprise whatsoever to anybody who was actually following the case.
Among the allegations was that Akiki, who stood about 5’4”, slaughtered a giraffe and an elephant in front of the kids to terrify them into not talking. Mind you, nobody pulled up the carpet to look for blood or animal hair. Nobody even reported a giraffe or an elephant missing. But children don’t lie, apparently. The jury later said the only reason they debated more than a day was that they had to go through forty-seven fucking counts. “Count one. Slaughter of a giraffe. All who think this is utter bullshit.” (Counting.) “Okay. Count two. Slaughter of an elephant.”
(To be fair, they probably also stretched things out because they wanted dinner on the Court’s dime. That happens.)
Back to North Dakota, though. Ahead of the State Fair, rumors were abuzz in Minot. The Satanists were in town and they were looking for ten victims. No, the Satanists had always been in town; they founded the town, carried on in secret since 1886 and they were looking for a hundred victims. Young girls were disappearing on the way home from school. There were secret rituals out on the prairie at midnight. And Ozzy Osbourne was going to play the North Dakota State Fair. People, the level of hysteria was so high that you would have thought the very Devil Himself was coming to town.
I was aware of the rumors in a fuzzy, not-very-important kind of way. I was fifteen and on a long trip away from the one boyfriend, which was dramatic enough to take up most of my attention. Besides, it was North Dakota in the summer. There were water ski trails to be blazed, rafts to be swum to, barbecues to be had. And lots of alcohol to be consumed, too. Not by me, unfortunately. I was too square. Or more to the point, it never would have occurred to me to pour a wine cooler into a clear glass and tell my parents I was drinking a strawberry soda.
So it happened we were going to be in Minot the day of the Ozzy Osbourne concert. And since it was the State Fair, it wasn’t sold out or anything. You just had to buy a gate ticket. So without our parents knowing what was up (I think my aunt knew, because she pretty much had her finger on the pulse of all things Minot, but she didn’t say anything), we older kids made arrangements to go to the State Fair that night and see Ozzy.
I mean, the atmosphere was electric. There was a fairly large police presence. You’d expect a lot of Goths dressed in black at a show like this but it was North Dakota. Everyone had on jeans and floppy t-shirts. I think I wore a pair of earrings because it was a special occasion. But the excitement was palpable. Would Ozzy do a human sacrifice of a virgin right there on the stage? Would he summon the Devil? Would all the Satanists show up and start killing people right when he finished “Crazy Train”?
Uh. No.
You guys, I’m sorry to tell you this, but Ozzy was so blitzed on his substance of choice that he could barely stand up, much less sing. I mean he was terrible. All the colored lights and flame effects from the stage were wasted because it was sunny as high noon. (The sun doesn’t really go down in North Dakota in the summertime; it gets twilighty dark around eleven and starts getting light again around four.) The summoned “demons” either didn’t show up or they missed their cue because they were smoking something back stage. At one point Ozzy tried to get the crowd clapping along to the beat. “Put your hands together like this, mates! That’s the way!” Nary a Devil or Hell got uttered. I don’t even think he raised his voice.
My cousin's friend leaned over and said, “This guy is boring.” I said, “Yeah. You guys wanna go on the Ferris Wheel again?” “Nah. Let's do bumper cars” And so we left. Ten minutes into the set.
Hey, I'm sorry it's anticlimactic. The rumors about the Satanists were pretty anticlimactic, too. As far as anybody knows, not a single person was killed, raped, kidnapped or otherwise inconvenienced that whole weekend. Though a couple of people were ticketed for public intoxication.
Anyway, farewell to the great Ozzy Osbourne. I did hear that he got better.
Posts
