Beavis

It's not the end of civilization as we know it - but it's a sign that at least part of the art world is taking its esthetic and humorous cues from the famously sophisticated world of . . . junior high school. We're referring, of course, to the minor midweek dustup over the art exhibit in City Hall that featured a parody of a convenience store, offering such "products" as "hot meat sticks" and "Fag cigarettes" (with the slogan "Grab a butt today"). When City Council President Anna Verna was forced to walk past it on the way to her office, she was offended, and got it moved - to a spot near the mayor's office.

MTV recently announced that it is pulling the plug on Beavis and Butt-head, its most famous creations, after four years as a night-in, night-out programming staple. Beavis and Butt-head had a spectacularly successful run. They entered the national mind; they made a successful feature film; they spun off another show, MTV's grim Daria, and got their creator, Mike Judge, a prime-time sitcom on Fox. Most important, they changed the way grown-up people talk and think about television.

In her previous cartoon hometown of Highland, Daria Morgendorffer was forced to share a classroom with MTV's nacho-munching, TV-worshiping, generally anti-social Beavis and Butt-head. The duh duo would often serenade her to "diarrhea, cha-cha-cha. " No wonder she's so cynical. Audiences got to know the character from her sarcastic asides aimed at Beavis and Butt-head, and now she's a star; in its second season, Daria is one of MTV's highest-rated shows. The makeup-free teen in oversized glasses disdains shallow pop culture and materialism while making brainy individuality and a cool, skeptical perspective into an unlikely fashion statement.

It's been a rotten year for true crime and us young folks, and the untimely death of River Phoenix was the absolute last straw. Older generations had Bonnie and Clyde. We X-ers have Erik and Lyle Menendez, charged with gunning down their folks in a Beverly Hills mansion. And then there was Heidi Fleiss, 27-year-old "Madam to the Stars," with her sunglasses and miniskirts, her desperate grin and her little black book full of (alleged) dynamite. Teenagers lay down in highways after a football movie called The Program told them it was courageous.

America's best-loved losers escaped a much-expected bruising yesterday when senators took on television violence at a committee hearing and barely mentioned the arsonist follies of Beavis and Butt-head. Had the dimwitted cartoon characters from MTV been able to comment, they probably would have said: "Coo-ool. " The senators and many of their witnesses, including Attorney General Janet Reno, did rave and rage about the violence in network and cable programs, especially those televised during children's viewing hours.

Look out Katie Couric, Al Roker and Willard Scott - Beavis and Butt-head may be moving in on your turf. That's right - while NBC airs its official coverage of the 71st Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, MTV is considering its own coverage, hosted by MTV newsman Kurt Loder and the moronic animated duo. "It's going to be them talking, and Kurt throwing back to them," "Beavis & Butt-head" creator Mike Judge said. MTV hasn't given the concept final approval, although Judge and company have been toiling on the show for some time.

They are in the great tradition of cosmically clueless comic relief - you know, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Abbott and Costello, Bill and Ted. But in their feature debut, Beavis and Butt-head Do America, the nation's most revered and reviled commentators are . . . comatose. In this asphalt odyssey, they prove you can take the sofa spuds off the couch but you can't make them cross the road. When a pair of beer-bellied numbskulls steal their television set, Beavis (the pompadoured blond in the Metallica T-shirt)

WASHINGTON SURVEY: TEENS SNUB READING Seventeen-year-olds think it is more important to learn math and computer skills than to read. And only 42 percent spend time each week reading books other than homework, according to a survey on children's reading habits. Nine-year-olds are twice as likely to read books as are 17-year-olds, the survey found. Some 86 percent said they do so at least a few times a week. The survey was released today by the American Federation of Teachers, a union, and Chrysler Corp.

BEAVIS & BUTT-HEAD IN THE FLESH? Actor Daniel ("Homicide") Baldwin says he and brother Stephen want to make a live-action version of "Beavis and Butt-Head. " "I'm Butt-Head and he's Beavis," Daniel told Entertainment Weekly. "Can't you see it? But they'll probably get people like Dana Carvey and Robin Williams to do it. " Besides, it would be awfully tough to get the "no-animals-were- mistreated- in-the-making-of-this- picture" disclaimer on that one. CHEVY CHASES WARNER BROS.

Mike Parker is thrilled to be trusted with a piece of pop culture history. Even if it is "Beavis and Butt-head. " Parker handles the artwork for the new Marvel comic book series based on the animated MTV duo best known for leering at heavy-metal video babes and huh-huh-huhing their way into the dark hearts of teens everywhere. He and the comic's writer, Mike Lackey, will be autographing premiere editions at Steve's Comic Relief at Franklin Mills tomorrow. For a 47-year-old fine-arts major, who until a few years ago specialized in doing "assemblage" art for his SOHO gallery in New York City, it's a bit of an artistic leap.

SAY . . . SPA-A-A-A-H It's Borgata Spa Experience week at the luxe Atlantic City gaming complex through Friday, with prices starting at $85 for treatments at Spa Toccare and Immersion at the Water Club, plus free seminars and demos. 609-317-1000 or theborgata.com. HEH-HEH The boys are back. Mike Judge's, um, trailblazing cartoon "Beavis & Butt-head" returns to MTV at 10 p.m. Thursday with new episodes. BUCKS STOPS Should you need a reason (other than the fall foliage)

For MTV, the situation was more than awkward. In fall 2008, the network was bingeing on manufactured reality shows that celebrated wealth and excess just as the country was staggering into a recession. Banks were failing, people were losing their jobs, and college students were facing uncertain futures. But on MTV, the glamorous clique from The Hills was indulging in West Hollywood shopping trips and getaways to Cabo San Lucas. And on My Super Sweet 16, the parents of a South Carolina beauty queen spent tens of thousands of dollars to give her the perfect birthday party, with a baby-blue Hummer.

Same time, next year. Remember that 1978 movie about two people who met for sex once a year, every year, unbeknownst to their spouses? Not only was it funny - really, really funny - but it was also moving and wry, because the two people were interesting, and their relationship was textured and complicated. Unlike this sex farce. The First Day of School, opening 1812 Productions' new season at Plays & Players, is based on the same premise: Suburban parents decide to take advantage of the first day of school when they've all taken off from work and their children are out of the house.

Playwright Billy Aronson's new comedy The First Day of School is receiving simultaneous world premieres by Philadelphia's 1812 Productions and the San Francisco Playhouse. Which is fine. But just as fine, says Bala Cynwyd native Aronson - whose many and various writing credits include the original concept for the musical Rent, a stint with Mike Judge's MTV adolescents Beavis and Butt-head, and a string of short plays - is the fact that he's returning to the place where it all began.

[Editors note: Michelle Malkin wrote this prescient column about MTV well before the current Super Bowl brouhaha. It was published on Aug. 1, 2001.] 'GROSS. " That was the reaction my high school friends and I had to one of the very first music videos we ever watched on MTV. It was the 1984 debut of Madonna's "Like a Virgin. " We gasped in disbelief as she writhed on the ground and panted shamelessly about being "touched for the very first time. " The most horrifying Madonna-inspired spectacle, though, was not on TV. It was at the mall, where our teen-age peers paraded half-naked in Madonna garb, lip-synched to her crude lyrics and imitated every self-gratifying bump and grind of her trashy videos.

There's nothing like a horde of giant, tongue-snapping toads on pogo sticks to grab your attention - not to mention a hailstorm of nuts and bolts flying off the screen straight at you. Resurrecting the kitschy '50s film fad of 3-D, the one-man-band known as Robert Rodriguez (He writes! He directs! He produces! He shoots! He caters!) regroups his sleuthing Cortez clan in Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, the first Hollywood feature to require the use of those chic red-and-blue-lens spectacles since 1991's Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare.

They say that irony was among the collateral-damage victims of the terrorist attacks, but it would appear that nobody bothered to tell Tenacious D, a musical-comedy duo that aptly describes itself as "the Smothers Brothers meets Beavis and Butt-head. " The D consists of Jack Black, who stole the show in High Fidelity with his turn as an obnoxious record-store clerk, and Kyle Gass. It is encouraging that in a pop era dominated by airbrushed pubescence, two portly, middle-age dudes can sell out the Electric Factory - as was the case Thursday - armed with nothing more than acoustic guitars, an innate gift for heavy-metal burlesque, and a boundless command of pop-culture effluvia.

It's not the end of civilization as we know it - but it's a sign that at least part of the art world is taking its esthetic and humorous cues from the famously sophisticated world of . . . junior high school. We're referring, of course, to the minor midweek dustup over the art exhibit in City Hall that featured a parody of a convenience store, offering such "products" as "hot meat sticks" and "Fag cigarettes" (with the slogan "Grab a butt today"). When City Council President Anna Verna was forced to walk past it on the way to her office, she was offended, and got it moved - to a spot near the mayor's office.

Chris Prynoski wanted to keep it real. The MTV animator wasn't looking for plots or characters when he dreamed up Downtown, the cable channel's latest prime-time 'toon, which shows its second episode tonight at 10:30. Instead, Prynoski, 27, who has worked on the MTV hits Beavis & Butt-head and Daria, hit the street corners and pocket parks of New York's East Village with a tape recorder, looking for the true voices of teens and twentysomethings. He had pitched MTV execs "a show about a bunch of kids hanging out. " The suits got excited.

The state of social satire and black comedy in Hollywood is in serious disrepair - for proof, look no further than this week's "Jawbreaker. " (See Page 53.) Hollywood is good at making fun of itself, but seems mystified by anything going on east of Mulholland Drive. As a consequence, its political commentary is uncertain and clumsy ("Bulworth"), its social commentary is ugly and lacking perspective ("Very Bad Things"). The best work, particularly on the subject of jobs and families, is being done by cartoonists - TV shows like "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill," or the newspaper strip "Dilbert.