I Hate Musicals

2002-08-06 - 2:28 p.m.

Where do you head when the hills are alive with the sound of music?

I don't like musicals. Neither the creative or the logical parts of my brain can get into them.

How is it that no matter what your emotion, or environment, an original song springs to mind expressing your innermost feelings? Why is it that everyone around you seems to already know at least the chorus to your ad-libbed outpouring of heart and soul? I can understand this sort of behavior from a disfigured recluse shacking up in a supposedly haunted opera house - that's his schtick. I don't see race riots from rival gangs in NYC involving choreographed dance numbers. Cats don't sing about their ninth round mortality. Plucky Irish orphans don't deny their plight by flashing million dollar smiles and caroling about their optimism for what tomorrow may hold (which isn't likely to be a bald, non-child molesting, rich guy).

Disney, I love you, but how many fairy tales can you regurgitate with an album's worth of cartoons singing their story? Doesn't Phil Collins have somewhere he should be?

A Chorus Line is the crown jewel. It's a marketing dream come true. Is there a market? Yes, there seems to be an infinite supply of high-society checkbooks dying to pay way too much for seats at a live movie with singing in it. How do we hose those fuckers? Let's make a musical about being in a musical! Will the good times ever end? Not as long as upper-crust snobbery keeps going to this shit, making their peers and the bottom feeders below them think they too need to expose themselves to fake smiles and jazz hands in order to earn their "cultured" merit badge.

"Culture" too often means "shit you hate, but need to experience, so you'll know just why it is you hate it, then later make others feel bad about not having experienced."

Anyway, all of this comes about because I had the opportunity to see the absolute absurdity and impracticality of musicals in reference to real life today. I was eating lunch with the ladyfriend in front of my building today. It was in a quiet little area where office types go to smoke cigarettes and be in "time out." While we were eating our slices of pizza, a nice little Asian lady, in a nice yellow dress, with nice flowers in her hand, and a nice bicycle helmet on her head, began to sing in the style of afore mentioned musicals. She wandered in circles and belted out what was going through her head, covering many octaves, but missing any key. She did this for about 10 minutes, and she did it loud as fuck.

Everyone hated it. She was lucky to survive the event with only a barrage of dirty looks and one gentleman asking her to go screw.

So, I will continue believing that musicals are stupid, and I will reference this as evidence of mass society's unconscious agreement.

Admittedly, I do sing little jingles to myself about some of the mundane tasks I do throughout the day. However, the first time I'm in the stall of the men's room, and I'm singing the "I'm going to make poopy" song in my head, and the guy in the stall next to me joins in for the chorus and dances, I'm going mental and hurting someone.