(To the uninitiated, I introduce Steel Panther, and this is what they think of your intelligence. I am not allowed to show the picture displaying what they think of your confusion concerning your sexuality.)

Scumbag Style recommends you stock your useless bomb shelter with as much Aqua Net as your local CVS carries, because there’s about to be a run on the hairspray banks. What we as Americans dig is dictated by heads of corporations, and they are running out of marketable material. Since they won’t be advocating free will any time soon, repackaging one of the most embarrassing eras of rock and roll seems to be the best option. Since the American consciousness has a weird combination of ADD and OCD that makes it fall romantically for anything it is told to, and the guido fascination has maybe a year left on it (Jersey Shore will still run for 7 seasons), look for big hair, leopard leggings, and Irocs to come back in a big way.

That’s right, Hair Metal is making the rounds again, and noone is safe. Especially Tawny Kitaen, whose death would take the phenomenon from mild ironic fascination to full blown Twilight. A couple of examples have hit the news in the past week, the temporal proximity of which guarantees that this thing will snowball out of control by the new year, and we’ll all spend 2010 in eyeliner and skinny scarves.

First of all, Def Leppard, which is to metal (even Hair Metal) what Jon Secada is to Oi! Punk. They’re looking to make their own comeback by shifting publishing rights to Primary Wave in order to unload useless video games and cell phone apps on consumers with enough cash leftover after buying B.U.M. sweatshirts and bicycle shorts to wear under their mini-skirts. But the best plan in the works is a cartoon television series based on the band. One can only pray it will a Hanna Barbera tour de force, and engender a sort of combination of Scooby Doo and The Monkees. “Hey hey, we’re Def Leppard, and people say we prance around like girls!” Only instead of playing doofus tag with fake ghosts, viewers will be treated to the resoundingly hilarious shame of the boys opening for Billy Squire, and the hysterical losing of a member to alcoholism. And just imagining the physics-defying chase scene comedy version of Rick getting his arm ripped off in a car accident makes me go an offensively huge rubbery one. Mayhap it will also have the hidden message for children of cynicism in the face of fear-mongering, assuring the kids that Def Leppard never really existed at all, and they’re all just ornery old farmers in white chick masks.

In related news, contemporary (?) Hair Metal and testical-strainingly awesomely named act Steel Panther are moving up in the world. And not a moment too soon. A glorified house band for years at the Key Club in Hollywood, their home venue has just been moved to the House of Blues on Sunset Strip. No word yet on what the news will mean for their regular appearances (well) off the Vegas strip at Green Valley Ranch, though their European tour (seriously?) has already seen several of those dates canceled. Reports are that they started out as a parody metal band (also as Danger Kitty, Metal Shop, and Metal Skool, successively), but all of that changed when girls and metal icons alike did not get point at all and started showing up at their shows. Now we have a bonified, younger generation “legitimate” Hair Metal act on our hands, and we all know that when you get one going, you can’t stop it til it blows its blue eyeshadowed load all over everyone’s denim jacket.

In the meantime, the man who brought Hair Metal to the college chicks who didn’t think it was gay enough, Mr. Jon Bonjovi, survives to fight off obscurity once more, at least metaphorically. Seems Satan came to claim his endof Bon Jovi’s inexplicably successful rock star deal and take the lead singer’s son. No dice, Satan! The kid was rushed to hospital for an undisclosed illness (soulrapevictimitis), but was released so quickly it was a wonder it even made the news. Just kidding. Everybody knows celebrity children are more important than war, famine, genocide, female circumcision (illegal today in Uganda, bitches!),  The press wouldn’t say which son, because if it was revealed that it was his first born, the less clinically retarded half of his fan base might have started to catch on.

One thing Hair Metal did right was try to put sex back into a genre (metal) that would eventually become the

The very obvious exception to the "hair metal sucks" rule of thumb.

avatar of the nerd. The high female attendance of Steel Panther’s concerts even today shows that femininity and uninventive riffs are libidinously preferable to the more legitimate metal (whatever that means) of Megadeth and Scar Symmetry. Mentioning to a chick at a party that your favorite band is Lamb of God will earn you more Posehn points than going on a half hour tirade about who shot first, but say you dig Motley Crue and for some reason the panties fly like Jello at the special school. Also, the big hair looks phenomenal on chicks, especially the dark haired ones. When we came down from all the coke binges and neon of the 80s and 86ed the entire culture of the decade, losing the big hair was like throwing away the baby with the Crystal Pepsi. Oh, and androgyny fetishists, prepare to spend the next few years of your life beating off to MTV 5, the one that actually shows music videos.

But in this new Hair Metal revival that’s sure to take this country by storm like Sarah Palin on speed, we’re sure to see far more of our past regrets than actual benefits. Prepare for your exxxxtreme rock station to adopt girlish wails on its promo bumps, and Hot Topic to continue “ironically” carrying what every little girl wants to wear anyway. Add to this the need for everyone to already cite Hair Metal apologists and genuine women Journey as ”one of their favorite bands” and Bon Jovi to simply not die, this brave new world of slap bracelets and head bands promises to be one confuddled mass of misunderstanding and annoyance. Though it may be the silver bullet that finally puts Nickelback out of its misery. If so, I can live through another decade of the post-apocalyptic, artless void that was the 80s.

(Hit up Steel Panther’s official site, if you have a steel sense of humor. The best part is that every vowel has an umlaut over it. This is some extreme. ass. umlauting. If you had any doubts that Steel Panther is not fucking around, this should comfort you.)