Congratulations on combining two of my least favorite things, theater and bad songs, with two of my other most hated things, bad storytellling and bright-eyed young adults. It’s really the perfect storm, except instead of a hurricane, I’m experiencing a tidal wave of diarrhea which is pushing my boat (made out of saggy boobs) into a sea filled with flakes of that cheese that John Goodman scrapes off his balls after a long week felling trees in the Canadian wilderness.
Why would anyone consider this a legitimate form of entertainment? Check any one video on youporn and it has more views than your musical would get if it packed the house for three weeks, yet we can’t watch people fuck onstage? Instead, we suffer through this shit?
The fundamental problem here is that musicals, by nature, combine singing and acting, so therefore we get a mediocre blend instead of the best. Can Robert Deniro sing? Who the fuck cares? Can Steve Perry act? One viewing of the “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart” video will tell you the answer to that quandary. So why the fuck would we combine two good things in such a way that it takes a little of the goodness away from each? If you can act, act. If you can sing, put out an album and autotune the shit out of it because apparently we don’t even give a fuck about hearing voices that don’t sound like Rosie from the Jetsons singing while sucking Elroy’s dick.
Can I tell you a little story about how much I enjoy theater? My mom went through this phase where she wanted to take me to plays. I also went through a phase where for some reason I forgot the phrase, “I have diarrhea, it’s hot and it’s pushing, and I can’t go.” On one of these excursions we went to see Othello, a play I’m convinced was written in 1975 and with Shakespeare’s name slapped on it because someone wanted to get James Earl Jones onstage.
At half-time or whatever, I went out to the pop machine. I was so bored that drinking a Dr. Pepper would be exciting. I wasn’t so dumb as to think that dudes on surfboards would come shooting through the ceiling and rescue me and use the power of their radness to turn some stuffy lady into a hot babe with magic surf powers. I just hoped that thinking about those commercials would give me SOMETHING to think about.
It’s difficult to say what was more embarrassing for my mom, the KSSHHHHH sound in the quit theater, or the CLATINK of the empty can hitting the floor after I fell asleep what felt like 4,000 years later, but it was our last play.
That’s how much of a fuck I give about theater. I find drinking a Dr. Pepper, a drink that has been around my whole life, readily available at all times, more exciting, engaging, and life-changing.
Let’s move onto the shitty songs.
I understand that these songs have a purpose. They usually try to show off the vocal range of the singers, which is great. But I don’t want that. If I go to a basketball game, I want to watch a fucking basketball game, not a break in the middle of the game where they all jump straight in the air and measure vertical leaps just to demonstrate their abilities. I’m not a fucking recruiter, nor am I putting together a broadway musical, so save the high notes for your unwatched Youtube channel.
And these songs are godawful. There are two kinds:
“Plot point/here’s what’s happening in the plot/don’t forget the plot point/what will we do about the plot point/fuck it, roll the car onstage.”
And then there’s
“Here’s who I am/Here’s what I’m about/This shit rhymes/It blows your mind.”
Those songs are shit. When Cutting Crew tells me “the curtains are closed/cat’s in the cradle” I have no fucking idea what they’re talking about, and that’s fine. Because that is a listenable song. Your songs blow.
If you could do me a favor, once this letter arrives in your time, please kill yourself. And maybe a couple other people too. There are so many assholes in the future. It might fuck with spacetime, but let’s take the risk.
Best,
Helpful Snowman