Rant & Rave

By Cherie Chun

Tuesday, January 7, 1997

Characters only Butt-heads can possibly like

WHEN Beavis and Butt-head first showed their hideous faces on my TV screen, I did what any sane person would do - I screamed and changed the channel.

Unfortunately, there weren't as many sane people out there as I hoped there would be. Only a lack of rationale can explain the continued popularity of those two animated imbeciles of MTV fame.

It just goes to show that you can't always get what you want in life. Even though I sincerely want Beavis and Butt-head to disappear and have all their related merchandise blasted off to a remote part of the universe, I doubt this will ever happen.

So I've been trying as hard as I can to simply ignore Beavis and Butt-head, but they refuse to go away. It kind of reminds me of how my mom used to say, "Just ignore so-and-so, and he/she will stop bothering you."

That advice never worked then, and it still doesn't work now.

Testament to the failure of that advice is the fact that the idiotic pair's new movie, "Beavis and Butt-head Do America" made more than $36 million so far, and it's going to make a lot more.

I think that the movie's success comes from attracting brainwashed teens and other curious individuals who must have had nothing better to do.

The worst part of it all is that the phenomenon of those morons has invaded my life uninvited.

Thanks to two of my best male buddies, I have been bombarded with more than enough reminders of Beavis and Butt-head ever since the craze caught on. The craze has affected my buddies to the point where our phone conversations now resemble a sound byte taken straight from a "Beavis and Butt-head" episode:

Buddy 1: Uh, hello? Like, is this Cherie? Uh, huh, huh, huh.

Me: Yes, who is this?

Buddy 1: Like, are you stupid or something? It's me. Heh, heh, huh, huh.

Me: No, you're the stupid one.

Buddy 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm stupid. Uh, huh, huh.

WHILE this does make for fascinating conversation, it has left me wondering what kind of strange experiments were done on my buddies' brains. Heck, it's as if their brains were removed and they acquired the combined personalities of Beavis, Butt-head and their original selves. This means that they talk in a blend of all three voices, drive me absolutely crazy, and on occasion, get me talking like that too.

Sadly, it looks like it's too late to save my buddies from the clutches of Beavis ("yeah, yeah") and Butt-head ("uh, huh, huh"). But in the interest of all the remaining sane people out there, I have come up with three methods that might help to prevent this terrible affliction from infecting the minds of your own buddies. Believe me, I've seen firsthand what can happen once a person is infected and it's not a pretty sight.

Distract your buddy with a cool new hobby. Fun pastimes like dismantling televisions will keep your friend too busy to watch "Beavis and Butt-head." What's more, even if your friend wanted to sneak a peak at the duo, he/she would have no TV set.

Send your pal on a one-way trip to a remote location of your choice. What better way to let your friend see the world and escape the insanity of Beavis and Butt-head? (I hear Paraguay is pretty this time of year.)

Convince your friend that he/she is delusional. When all else fails, plead insanity! For your friend, of course. Just convince your buddy that Beavis and Butt-head are evil figments of his/her unsound mind and prescribe a good dose of therapy.

Uh, huh, huh. Yeah, those are, like, uh, three methods you can use on your friends. Uh, huh, huh. If they don't work, uh, huh, uh, then, I guess you're stupid or something. Yeah.

---

Cherie Chun is a freshman at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Rant & Rave is a Tuesday Star-Bulletin feature allowing those 12 to 22 to serve up fresh perspectives. Speak up by fax at 523-8509; by answering machine at 525-8666; snail mail at P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu 96802; or e-mail, features@starbulletin.com