The Osbournes.

IMAGINE THIS: All the dark forces that ever hung from the arena rafters at a Sabbath show get together one night, and just to fuck with people – they can do that – they erase all the Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne music that was ever made. It's gone, vanished, like it never existed. And the next morning when the world wakes up, what happens? Of course no one can hum "Paranoid" in the drug-test line at work, but who cares as long as the bottle of clean piss your brother-in-law gave you hasn't leaked out and stained your Levi's. What happens is you're living in a world with no Paranoid, no Master of Reality, no Sabotage. And without Sabbath, without Ozzy, and without all the music they inspired, you've got no soundtrack. And without a soundtrack, not one single person anywhere can remember one single moment about the years – the unhappy, lasting-damage years – they spent suffering in junior high school! Ozzy Osbourne might have been a limey lowbrow, but he was there when we needed him; the eighth grade would not have been the same without him.

Ozzy helped birth heavy metal, his bent mind providing the disturbing undercurrent that marked Black Sabbath like the toilet in a tour bus. Ozzy might have been troubled, but his problems made the band more than just another cartoon. He was booted from Sabbath in 1978 for being too hard to handle, but he managed to cheat death and launch a successful solo career. Now, in a turn of events as unlikely as John Bonham's body rising from the grave to pound out the backbeat to "Whole Lotta Love," the Big O is famous all over again.

The Osbournes, MTV's reality show about life with Ozzy and his family, is the season's big surprise, and it's his flesh and blood, if not his brains, floating the operation. The Osbournes is the South Park of 2002, and Ozzy, who once looked deader than Kenny, seems to be stable and healthy. The show is MTV's most popular ever, and while that's not saying much, at least maybe Real World will finally croak. And it's rumored that the family will be together for another season, which is the Hollywood equivalent of winning British knighthood, only better because it comes with cash and great Nielsen numbers.

In Ozzy's prime, his music fed a stoner's soul like junk food cured the munchies. Ozzy was out there, crazy like Iggy but without the inner fox. Today his legacy is preserved and enhanced and rewritten and bastardized on Internet bulletin boards (such as the Osbournes Files and the one on MTV.com) that are energized by the sons and daughters of Sabbath OGs. The kids might be light on facts and insight, but they have computer chops. Read them and weep – a lot of the stories are glorious bullshit, but the kids seem to love the tales of violence, ritual, and blasphemy. So at least they've got that going for them. Just call it freedom of speech and thank Ozzy, the world-class fuckup who once connected with fans alienated by weird talk about peace and love that didn't exist in their world, kids who wouldn't know a good vibe if it were put in a bag with some airplane glue for them to inhale all night long.

Ozzy once bit the head off a live bat and had to leave the stage and go to the hospital for rabies shots, or so the story goes. And there was the live kitten he is said to have passed to his congregation, who a few minutes later gifted him with paws, intestinal goo, and bits of bloody fur.

That's legend, but this much is certain: Ozzy O. is currently perched on a Hollywood throne once occupied by television pioneer Ozzie Nelson, who long ago defined the American family by serving up his squeaky-clean kin to the nation. Ozzy may be as slow as a snail and barely able to communicate; he would no doubt qualify for SSI were he not a working rock star. But America loves him, and that's a development that beats the hell out of life with the right-wing storm troopers who jam fascist family values down the country's throat. Is it finally Armageddon time? Is Ozzy paying off a debt to you know who? Is American culture out of gas? Are the daughters Bush really out of control?

Ozzy gigs, with or without Sabbath, offered over-the-top testimony to the power of rock and roll. The awesome lift and the frantic fun and even the scary stuff – liberation, even a simple silly night on the dark side – had a price. And for anyone who cared to think about it, the shows spoke to the forces that produced such intense need: a watch just ticks, while a time bomb explodes.

Oh, how times have changed. Watching Ozzy stumble through the kitchen to stare blankly at a garbage can for a few minutes while trying to figure out how to install the plastic liner is like seeing McMurphy, the rebel in Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, after Nurse Ratched has him lobotomized.

With that in mind, imagine yourself back 15 years and consider the unintended but still gross insult of this question, found recently on the Osbournes Files.

Subject: I have a dumb question

Does Ozzy really worship Satan? What is his story? I thought it was for show but with the Devil on his front door I thought maybe it was true. I respect his right to do whatever but I have really always wanted to know. I was never really a fan of Ozzy until recently and now I desire to know as much as I can about him. Thanks Oz!

Subject: Re: I have a dumb question

I think the only thing Ozzy worships is his family! I think that's been shown by how he is with them on the show. As far as the devil head, I doubt Ozzy worships it (devil) I think it's more for shock value, like some of his tattoos. He also has a ton of crucifixes in his house, but I doubt he runs to church each Sunday!

What really hurts is that given the circumstances, the question is reasonable, and the answer is true.

The idea for it was hatched last year, when the Osbournes appeared on MTV's Cribs – which features videotaped tours of musicians' homes. The episode worked, and The Osbournes was born: 12 weeks with 12 cameras documenting four people who may be acting normally, or may be trying to act as if they aren't acting, or may be, cameras and all, trying, against all odds, to pretend this is all just business as usual. Dad's a rock star, so who knows, maybe it is.

Sharon, Ozzy's wife, is the real star of the show; she's funny, irreverent, and a first-class control freak who makes all the decisions. She negotiates the sometimes surreal pitfalls of life with Ozzy with cynical good humor and the awe-inspiring competence of someone who once managed bands – including her husband's before they married. She understands why brown M&Ms are banned from the dressing room, and for that reason she has been as crucial to his career as she is to the basic needs of his life. And she's picked up a few moves from her clients along the way, as shown on the night she heaved a baked ham, split down the middle ("It looks like his girlfriend's cunt," she giggled), over the fence into the yard of her noisy neighbors.

Her top-dog position is underscored by the directors, who have opted in the main for a minimalist soundtrack anchored by the Ozzy Osbourne one-stop SOS – "Sharon!" – which he bellows whenever he has a problem, which is most of the time. On top of this they layer the arrhythmic groove created by the censorship bleep that punctuates each and every family conversation, which could be recontextualized as an improvised remix of what amounts to a celebration of the spoken four-letter word. Variations on the word "fuck" (go fuck; get fucked, fucker; fucking; fucked; and so forth) are essential to all Osbourne communication. And in Ozzy's case, the word and its many variants are more than just his favorites. On a good day, his verbal skills are limited to three-word sentences, each of which includes either "fuck" or "fucking"; on a bad day, the f-word is all he's got.

Do you want to read an Osbournes joke I found at one of the many Web sites inspired by the show?

Q: How do you know when you're watching the Osbournes too much?

A: When you give your teenage kids a 2:30 a.m. curfew.

It's not really much of a joke, is it? The Web is cluttered with Osbournes jokes these days. I read hundreds of them, and the fact is that none of them are very funny. It makes me sad, but not really in a bad way. People are nice, just not very clever; all they really want is to share the warmth and laughs inspired by The Osbournes. They just aren't quite up to it, and you know what? Neither were a lot of Ozzy's original fans. Ozzy has touched an army of admirers who are trying to find the Ozzy within; they don't seem to care much about the big questions, because what's the point? Which is what Ozzy himself would tell you if he could talk.