South Park takes on the 'Twilight' fad

I haven't read the "Twilight" series of vampire romance novels. But then, I don't think I'm the target audience for the teen angst chronicles of a 17-year-old girl who falls for the charms of an "impossibly beautiful" teen vamp with alabaster skin and superhuman strength.

I'm guessing the creators of South Park also fail to see the charms of teen draculas for the One Tree Hill audience, given Wednesday night's spoof of the hype surrounding the new movie inspired by the best-selling young adult novels. You know how we know Trey Parker and Matt Stone are making fun of the vampire fad?

Goofy little Butters decides it's cool to be a vampire.

Actually, he's following in the wake of all the formerly preppy kids at South Park Elementary who used to shop at Banana Republic before discovering Stephenie Meyer's novels. Soon half the school is wearing black, spray-painting their hair and waxing on about the joys of drinking blood-colored clamato juice. This annoys the Goth kids to no end, because they used to have the black end of the wardrobe spectrum to themselves before the herd discovered vampire-chic.

The Goth kids still are the only ones smoking and drinking coffee, because the preppy vampire-wannabes don't want to stunt their growth. But the Goths can't stand being lumped in with the vampires, so they make the drastic decision to start wearing clothes from the Gap.

That doesn't last long, because it's still better to be lumped in with the poseur vampires than to be called "the fat girl, the midget and the kid with pock marks on his face" by the soccer-playing jocks.

Never has there been a more sympathetic portrayal of the preteen Goth community, a fairly small community, I would imagine.