PEOPLE ARE STILL OFFENDED BY ALICE COOPER? SERIOUSLY?

In case you didn’t know, Alice Cooper is a lame old man. How lame and old? He plays golf…

…and wrote a book about playing golf…

…and is friends with Pat Boone. Yes, that Pat Boone.

So how is it possible that a church group could still find this 61 year-old boring fart threatening?

I don’t know, but one of them does. From Metal Underground:

Veteran American singer ALICE COOPER’s concert scheduled for Tampere in December has been shifted to Espoo because of concerns over his shock-rock image.

Tampere Arena, which was to have hosted the December 11 show, cancelled it because a perceived conflict with the venue’s “Christian-based policies”.

“The [Lutheran-based charismatic revivalist] group Nokia Mission and others use Tampere Arena for their events, so the venue’s management did not want Alice Cooper appearing in the same hall. The contract which we received from Tampere Arena specifies that no artists may perform there who ‘incite evil and the power of darkness’,” promoter Kalle Keskinen told YLE.

Now, to be fair, this all happened in Finland. I’ve never been to Finland, but I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re one of those European countries you sometimes encounter where they’re really, really far behind the rest of the civilized world (Citizen of Prague to Axl Rosenberg in 2003: “Have you heard this awesome new album, Bonded by Blood? We just got it last week!!!”).

(I’m also guessing that none of them are aware that Cooper is, himself, a Christian – see again: his friendship with Pat Boone.)

But if my geo-centric stereotype isn’t true, I’d just like to say: holy shit, guys, if you find Alice Cooper scary, what do you do when Marilyn Manson comes to town? Sacrifice a virgin and bring in the national guard? Institute a curfew and unleash the dogs? Sheesh.

In other news, the same people just had the movie Short Circuit banned for being too sexy (Guttenberg and Sheedy are unmarried, but deign to kiss), and for insinuating that anyone other than God can create life.

-AR