I think Ozzy Osbourne looks cute. On the cover of his album, Bark at the Moon, I mean,

okay, on this album cover, it's nighttime, there's a full moon, and Ozzy is clearly supposed to be

a weirwolf. He's done up all pale, like some kind of Arctic werewolf, maybe? I don't know. They hired some monster

makeup person, and Ozzy is bearing his big fake fangs and mugging at the camera, and he

looks cute, I think. I remember him often looking cute, or at least harmless. And I thought

this way before Ozzy's current incarnation as kind of a cuddly

confused person back when he was at the forefront of the satanic panic, back when certain people

believed that rock stars, especially in the heavy metal uvra, were worshipping Satan, trying

to indoctrinate youths into the ways of Satan, or were

possibly just Satan himself taking over the bodies of rock stars. Like Ozzy, people were

scared of Ozzy Osbourne. There were stories about him. Most fake, many outlandish, he was on

people's minds. And people like Ozzy would play into it,

of course, to try to be scary, to be something dangerous and spooky, that the kids would love

and that would make parents upset and frightened because rock and roll, you know? But I think on

the cover of Bark at the Moon, he just looks like he's playing

dress-up and doing it well and having fun. The reason I'm thinking about and talking about Ozzy

and Bark at the Moon is that I googled scary album covers, and this was one of the first to come up.

And no, I'm not scared of it. It's not that scary. Iron Maiden's

album, Number of the Beast, is on there too, which has Satan on the cover, along with Eddie,

the kind of zombie monster mascot of Iron Maiden. And I don't know. If this kind of thing

was scary when I was a kid, it's not anymore. It just looks like someone in shop class drawing Iron Maiden stuff, but, you know, the pinnacle of that art form. It's the platonic ideal of someone doodling in shot class. It looks like a comic book. It's even a little cute, too, because Satan is all red and has horns and he's holding a trident.

It's funny.

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