A couple years ago, I heard about “The Times They Are A-Changin”, a musical being developed that was based on the songs of Bob Dylan. Being a huge Dylan fan, I obviously was intrigued. The musical opened in San Diego and even was headed to Broadway. It suffered a quick death, however, and I never heard much about it. I always regretted not getting a chance to see it … until this past weekend, when I found this clip. It’s a performance on The View to promote the musical.

I was literally left speechless. I shudder to think about how this abomination wrecks Dylan’s other masterpieces. Seriously, clowns humping exercise balls? And I love how literal their interpretation of the song was. There’s a line in there about clowns? Let’s put in a troupe of dancing clowns. The song is called “Like a Rolling Stone”? Let’s roll some big exercise balls around. This is the antithesis of Dylan. Ironically, this performance would’ve made an amazing satire of a bad interpretation of a Dylan song, like something you might see on Saturday Night Live. The critics agreed on this butchering of the bard’s work. Well, all except for Rosie O’Donnell and the studio audience on The View, who burst into thunderous applause at the end of the clip above, punctuated by a “Wow!” from Rosie. Wow indeed. I think this response from Craig Ferguson sums it up pretty well: