Society in Decline? Blame BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD

Have you noticed a recent disregard of your personal appearance? Are you now oddly obsessed with genital and scatological con-ditions?Do you suffer from late-night cravings for bad music videos? Do you express a directionless nihilism via idiotic giggling? In discussing 17th-century literature, have you recently blurted out “Milton sucks!”

If any of these behavioral aberrations sound familiar, cancel your cable immediately. You’re obviously a sufferer of TMS (Teen Moron Syndrome), infected via MTV’s “Beavis & Butt-head”-Bastards out of the Metroplex, Scourge of the Suburbs, and scary reminders of my high-school years. (Yours, too, maybe? Come on. ’Fess up.)

Being a 38-year-old professor I suppose I should eschew these menaces to society. Yes I know they’re stupid yes I know they have no redeeming social qualities yes I wouldn’t let them near my children pets or personal property nor dare eat any fast food they handled with their slimy unwashed you-don’t-want-to-know-whete-they’ve-been hands, but moment for moment, moronic giggle for giggle, MTV’s cartoon antiheroes Beavis and Butt-head are two of the funniest characters on TV, way better than that “Home Improvement” dude or Roseanne, who suck big time anyway, and like, should be riding Mr. Ed piggyback in a cheesy rerun of “Circus of the Stars,” But if you’re new to the planet or like the panelist on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation” who recently asked, “Who are Beavis and Butt-head ?” (see under dork reporters), perhaps a brief description would help identify the suspects:

Their misshapen heads are as big as the rest of their bodies. Their eyes are tiny, their teeth are a nightmare of prognathic jaw and premature gum rot. They could be anywhere from 13 to 16 years old, but their hairlines are receding and though they are virgins, their heaven would include pornographic magazines, like, for free. They live unsupervised in a ratty house, sitting on a fetid couch watching bad music videos and crime shows, though they do wreak havoc in the greater world of shopping malls, sperm banks, and burger barns, If their parents have not committed suicide, they have moved to another state and left no forwarding address. They wear the same clothes (shorts and AC/DC and Skull T-shirts) every day of their cartoon lives. On a recent psychological profile, the only hobby they listed was “spanking the monkey.” They pick their noses frequently. If they ask, do not pull their fingers.

Yes, I realize they symbolize The Decline of Western Civilization, and now I understand why, right before Rome fell, a pair of giggling Romulus and Remus morons were seen opening the gates to the barbarian hordes, saying, “Vandals are cool.” They are stupid, they are dangerous-and they are funny. Why? They remind me of my high school-my dumb friends, my dumb behavior, my dumb self. Sitting in detention for chewing gum or shooting the finger. Listening to my sex education lectures in health class, where Coach Rogers frothed at the mouth while detailing VD symptoms and teaching us all the cool names for the drugs we tried and the drugs we hoped to try but couldn’t find. They are realistic. If you can’t laugh at yourself, they give you a good reason to laugh at someone else-namely, teen geeks.

Creator Mike Judge spent his formative years here and B&B are as much a product of Dallas as H. Ross Perot; no doubt Judge had a Dallas-area high school in mind when Beavis stumbled into Spanish class disguised as The Great Cornholio and was appropriately asked, “Donde esta su hallpassa?”

And keep this in mind: Butt-head is the smarter one.