“Rock of Ages” is pretty much the platonic ideal of an 80s period jukebox musical. It’s the story of a kid who wants to play hair metal on the Sunset Strip. There’s a band on stage, and they rock really hard. The costumes and music perfectly evoke the aesthetics and mood of the time period.

So my question is, what would the ideal 90s period jukebox musical be like? I’d argue that the 90s don’t have as clear of an identity as the 60s, 70s, or 80s. Would it be set in Seattle and feature grunge music? Or what about LA with early 90s hip hop? It could even use the LA riots as a current events backdrop (which Rock of Ages lacked) and would have the side benefit of allowing for Asian characters (I’ve always seen myself as playing a gun-toting Korean grocery store owner in my Broadway debut).

The latter also raises the question: could a hip-hop musical ever make it to the Great White (ahem) Way?

Perich
I would mortgage my future to finance a musical about the golden age of hip-hop, so long as it was set in Brooklyn.

Lee
Well, we can have the best of both worlds. Make it an East Coast vs. West Coast story with thinly fictionalized versions of Biggie and Tupac.

Forget mortgaging your future. I bet something like this could catch fire on Kickstarter.

Belinkie
It would obviously have to be bi-coastal. You might even have to split the stage in two visually, with Cali on the left and New York on the right. Atlanta could have a balcony, but honestly I don’t know how heavily the south or midwest would feature in a golden age hip hop musical.

Perich
Too late! Future mortgaged!

Also, which story are we telling—a rags-to-riches success story about a rapper rising to the top (which would have to be one coast) or a West Side Story tale of two studios, both alike in dignity (which could feature both coasts)?

Fenzel
You can represent the South with a James Brown figure who appears to one of the characters as he wrestles with his place in the historical legacy of music. You do a medley where a soul/funk song is first played straight, then sampled and incorporated into the corresponding hip-hop song.

Belinkie
Okay, so it’s about two friends that grow up in the Brooklyn projects together. They grow up performing “Rapper’s Delight” on a street corner, free-styling to impress the girls. When one of them is twelve, he gets moved out to Compton. Maybe an aunt adopts him after his mom gets shot. Then they meet again at a rap battle ten years later. They want to resume their friendship, but there is tremendous pressure from their entourages to start a rivalry, show some east/west coast pride. Maybe they each have a hotheaded sidekick/protege who is a little more aggressive and does the violent dis songs.

Oh, and there’s a girl who grew up with them who is now an exec at Atlantic Records. She’s the love interest, and also the “Hey, maybe hip hop could go mainstream!” person. And cast a famous white comedian as some shady promoter type.

Personally, I’d shy away from the “they both are shot” ending, and also the “let’s put aside our differences and record an album together” ending. Maybe we can stuff the girl in a fridge to get the boys to stop feuding.

Fenzel
You can have the East Coast and West Coast rappers at a standoff, guns drawn—and they fire at each other nine times. At the last second, a Midwestern rapper leaps between them, taking all nine bullets and falling in a crumpled heap on the ground, which convinces the two other rappers that violence isn’t the answer as they see its terrible toll.

The Midwestern rapper then gets up, dusts himself off, and sings “Candy Shop.”

Sheely
Matt’s description of the female character reminds me a bit of the song “I used to love H.E.R.” by Common.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C99iG4HoO1c

In the song he personifies hip hop as a woman and uses her story to tell the story of the evolution of the genre. In the musical, this could be played out literally in this character, tracking the changes in hip-hop and changing with the times, kind of like the Jenny character in Forrest Gump.

Instead of a promoter, the shady white dude could be a record company A&R, the position charged with identifying and signing new talent. I’d very much like if he happened to be a mountain climber who played the electric guitar.

Perich
All right, Belinkie has convinced me the bi-coastal thing can work. (Blessed are those who hadn’t yet seen Belinkie’s response and still believed) Now what’s the tracklist?

Belinkie
Making good progress here. So of our two main characters, the one whose mom was shot and moved out west has a harder, gangsta style. (He’s the one who would do “Gangster’s Paradise.”) Let’s call this guy Otis. To balance him out, his sidekick is a more mellow, fun-loving, Snoop Dogg stand in. He’ll do “Gin and Juice,” obviously, and some of the other goofier rap classics. Maybe he does “The Humpty Dance” trying to mock the comic relief rap promoter.

Meanwhile, his east coast friend is more of a “socially-conscious” Talib Kwali/Eric B/Mos Def type rapper. He’s got better rhymes and better flow, but he’s not as commercial. Maybe he feels pressure to sell out a little once hip hop starts to take off. That’s his character’s dilemma—do you rap what the public wants to hear, or what’s in your heart?

And I realize that “Gangster’s Paradise” is by no means a “hard, gangsta” song. But it would definitely be in the musical, right?

Perich
Whereas the West Coast protagonist’s dilemma is: do I keep rapping what’s true to me (violence on the streets, anger at the cops) even as it inspires younger generations to imitate a gangster lifestyle that puts them in danger?

Sheely
I’d love to have the female character do Lauryn Hill’s “That Thing”, as I can see it working well as a ensemble number (the lead girl warning the others to “watch out”).

When the two characters are about to reunite, I’d love to have “Going Back to Cali” and/or “California Love”, possibly in medley?

When the character moves from Brooklyn to LA, could “Straight Outta Compton” be his introduction to his new environment? The only issue with that song is that many of the lyrics and references are very specific to the members of N.W.A.

Stokes
There are at least three related ways that musical lyrics and rap lyrics are not alike.

First, musical theater songs usually have a really tight focus: they are ABOUT something. It can be something stupid and irrelevant to the plot, but the songs don’t usually run off on tangents. Rap songs are usually all about tangents. The Rick Ross song “Hustlin’” is, uh, unusually specific in its focus, but it’s still all over the place by Rogers and Hammerstein standards. Put a line like “I know Pablo/ Noriega/ The real Noriega/ He owe me a hundred favors” into a musical, and what can you do with it? Either you let it hang there feeling out of place, or you introduce Noriega as a character, and establish the relationship he has with the Rick Ross character, and see some of those favors called in.

And it wouldn’t stop there. Where’s Jose Canseco? Where’s the guy serving a hundred lives? Where’s the lil’ Mama who claims to be twenty-two? That’s all in one song, remember. Take any two songs, and the problem will escalate. And when guest rappers start dropping by contributing unrelated guest verses… (Granted, you could probably do an interesting jukebox rap musical set up along the lines of Company if you make Ludacris the main character and limit yourself to songs where he does a guest verse.)

Second: Within one show, you typically only get one or two songs about any given topic. One song about working through grief, or clambakes, or whaling, or June busting out all over is fine. Two is pushing it. The only exception is love songs — these go back and forth all night — but even then you only get one or two for each of the couples, and the songs end up being about their relationship, or even about a specific moment in their relationship, rather than about relationships in general.

But rap songs, especially gangster rap songs, focus on the same limited territory: you show off not by finding new things to talk about but by finding a new and better way to say the same things. West Side Story has exactly one song in it that is about how awesome the protagonist’s crew is (“When You’re a Jet”), and exactly one song about how tough life on the streets is (“Gee Officer Krupke,” kind of). It would not work at all if every song were about those issues. But a rap album that didn’t have that kind of thematic unity would feel kind of sloppy. We wouldn’t call Illmatic one of the great artistic statements of the medium if it had a random song where Nas’ girlfriend talks about how much fun it is to put on pretty dresses.

Third, some songs in musicals are just distractions from the narrative, and rap would work fine for that. But there are also a lot of very important songs that do relate to the narrative, and these function by stretching out and intensifying a particular moment. (Sticking with West Side Story for a minute, the “Tonight” montage is probably the best example of this.) Rap doesn’t work for this purpose at all. When rap songs have a narrative element, they accelerate time rather than slowing it down. In “Gimme the Loot,” it only takes a couple of minutes for Biggie to 1) get out of jail, 2) meet up with his old accomplice, 3) decide to go out robbing, 4) reminisce with his buddy about what incredible hardasses they are, 5) find two victims, 6) rob them, 7) get noticed by the cops, and 8) shoot up said cops. A musical would need two songs at absolute minimum to get through that territory (1-4 and 5-8), and could squeeze eight or even nine songs out of it without breaking a sweat.

Belinkie
So at the very end, the two rival crews are poised for a climactic shootout, on the very corner where Otis and Wrather (I’ll go ahead and call him Wrather for fun) learned to rap as children. They stare each other down, knowing the insanity of what they’re doing, but unable to see a way out. There’s no common ground. Then, all of a sudden, a beautiful woman crosses the stage, oblivious to the standoff. For ten seconds, everyone just watches her pass.

Finally, one of them speaks. “Oh. My. God,” says Otis. “Look at her butt.”

“It is so big,” says Wrather, nodding. Then, he smiles a sly smile. “She looks like one of those rap guys’ girlfriends.”

Otis glares at him and tightens his grip on the pistol, wondering whether to take it as an insult or not.

Suddenly, he cracks up. The tension is broken, and everybody laughs.

“But, you know,” Otis chuckles, “who understand those rap guys anyway…”

Cue the bassline.

OK, guys, I think we’re ready. What do we call this? “Dropping English?” “Smoking Aluminum?”

Think we’re onto the next Broadway hit? Want to improve the plot or track list? Is Stokes right after all? Sound off on the great hip-hop musical in the comments.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USxhXb5VC5E

…and are at least familiar with the broad outline of the plot of the original stage musical:

Set in LA’s infamous Sunset Strip in 1987, Rock of Ages tells the story of Drew, a boy from South Detroit, and Sherrie, a small-town girl, both in LA to chase their dreams of making it big and falling in love. Rock of Ages takes you back to the times of big bands with big egos playing big guitar solos and sporting even bigger hair!

But you may not be aware of a major change in the plot: in the stage version (which I saw recently), the owners of the Bourbon Room rock club face off against greedy real estate developers who want to bulldoze the seedy Sunset Strip and replace it with “clean living.” As you can see in the trailer, these developers are replaced by a pack of Bible-thumping prudes who oppose the “sex, hateful music, and sex” of the Bourbon Lounge as epitomized by rock god Stacee Jaxx.

Lord, have mercy! What’s going on here? Why the change in villains, and pray tell me, what does it mean?

We Built This City on Rock and Roll

First, let’s unpack the conflict of the stage musical a little more. Is it a simple story of corporate greed run amok, similar to what we saw in The Muppets? Is it a simple story of the downtrodden 99% rising up against the 1%, similar to what we saw in Newsies? It’s actually neither. It’s really about the importance of urban planning.

We built this city on eminent domain seizures

No, seriously. Allow me to explain. In the brief synopsis above, I left out a couple of important details: 1) the developers are German and 2) they effectively bribe the mayor of Los Angeles to gain approval for their project and the eminent domain property seizures that spell doom for the Bourbon Room. As far as I know, their portrayal as Germans isn’t connected to any specific historical threat of German real estate developers (if they were going for an existential overseas threat from the 80′s, the Japanese would have been a more appropriate choice). Instead, it’s done to accentuate their “other-ness”: they’re not of the community and have no interest in understanding its values. They bring their predisposed ideas about what’s best for people (and what will make them rich). As for the significance of including the bribing of the mayor and the eminent domain property seizures in the stage show, they show how the political process that’s meant to protect local communities from bulldozers has been corrupted and circumvented by moneyed interests.

Imperious developers ignore local contexts, use their money to influence political support for their plans and steamroll opposition, and destroy unique local communities. I could go on all day about this, but instead, I’ll point you to the Wikipedia articles on Le Corbusier and Robert Moses and leave it at that.

Le Corbusier did not build his cities on rock and roll.

Back to what the Rock of Ages stage version is about: it’s about the importance of urban planning on a more micro level, but on a more macro level, it’s about the ability of hegemonic forces like deep-pocketed corporations and governments to squelch the artistic expression of unique local culture and replace it with stifling homogeneity under the guise of “economic development.”

So why exactly was all of this discarded for the movie version?

Sister Christian, Overtime Has Come

Based on the trailer, the movie tells a simpler story than the one I outlined above. Bible-thumping prudes hate rock ‘n’ roll. They don’t want people to party, to get laid, to play awesome rock music, or otherwise have a good time. These culture warriors have roots in the Tipper Gore-instigated Senate hearings on the subject matter of pop music, which led to the awesome sight of Dee Snider testifying before Congress:

He's not gonna take it...

Twenty years prior, Christian groups were burning Beatles records:

...no! He ain't gonna take it!

And on top of this cultural legacy of conservative opposition to the content of pop music, we have our current conservative culture warriors who generally oppose sex and having a good time:

...he's not gonna take it, anymore!

These are all good reasons for making the villain of Rock of Ages a Bible-thumping prude, but they don’t give us a reason for making the villain a Bible-thumping prude at the expense of the greedy developers and the message on cultural homogenization brought on by poor urban planning and corporate/government greed.

Perhaps the filmmakers thought that the culture war story would be more relatable and appealing to a 2012 audience than that of the greedy developers. The culture war has a more specific set of symbols, institutions, and leaders than the more amorphous concept of “greedy developers” and will therefore resonate more with viewers.

I mostly buy this justification, but I also can’t help but consider a more cynical motive: in becoming a major motion picture, Rock of Ages is now part of the “movie industry,” which is one of those corporate hegemonic forces that spreads stifling cultural homogeneity. When the moviemakers realized that this was at odds with the central conflict of the stage version, they rewrote the nature of the villain in a way that both removed this conflict and setup the movie industry as being on the same side of the scrappy Bourbon Room owners. Sure, Hollywood may be an agent of cultural homogeneity, but at least they want you to have sex and rock out. You know who wants to prevent you from having sex and rocking out? The Bible-thumping prudes.

Any Way You Want It

We’ll have to wait until June to see how exactly this new story gets told in the movie version, but until then, we can debate the finer points of urban planning, the culture wars, the hegemonic forces of stifling cultural homogenization, and monster guitar riffs.

So what do you think? Is the stage version really about bad development policies? Will the movie’s culture war theme resonate more with the audience than German real estate developers? And most importantly, why are we still taking it, when Twisted Sister said almost twenty years ago that we are most definitely not going to take it anymore?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q16_LDI-tsU

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Am I talking about the Occupy Wall Street movement…

…or the plot of the Disney musical Newsies?

I’m not the first to point out the connections between Newsies and the Occupy Wall Street movement. As the stage adaptation prepares to occupy a Broadway theater in March 2012, media observers have pointed out the parallels and even asked the show’s producers if there’s anything to it, but they have shrugged it off as mere coincidence. They’re largely right to do so, since the musical has been in the works years before occupations and the 99% were part of the national discourse.

But Newsies has the odd distinction of being one of the few movies about large scale social justice protest movements set in New York City, and as such, it’s begging for people to look for the parallels between it and OWS. For the most part, those parallels break down once you get past the broad plot summary, but the differences between the strike as depicted in Newsies and the OWS movement can lead to some insights on both.

“Even though we ain’t got hats or badges / we’re a union just by saying so…”

Newsies is not ambiguous at all about its positive stance on labor unions. Early in the film, newsboy leader David Jacobs laments that his father was fired from his job after his injury because he had no union to protect his position. Later, as the newsboys make their final push against Joseph Pulizter, they enlist thousand of other young workers across the city to walk off their jobs in solidarity with them. Even though all those young workers may not have been unionized, or even organized in any sense of the word, their work stoppage was nothing short of an organized labor action, a strike, and as the film tells it, the strike eventually led to legislation that curtailed the abusive child labor practices of the day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dw9GJKTrqg

Occupy Wall Street, however, is not a labor movement or organization of workers in any sense of the word. The movement’s ambiguous, all-encompassing “99%” nature means that it’s not defined by a common occupation or opposition to a specific employer. Unions came to OWS after the movement had gained steam and were not part of its early organization or successes. And some within the movement view labor unions as part of an ineffectual “institutional left” that will ultimately harm more than hurt the movement’s progress.

So why does this matter? It’s a perfect illustration of how the role of the labor union in the United States has vastly changed in the 100 years between the events of Newsies and OWS. Or for that matter, the twenty years between the release of Newsies and OWS. Unions, once the standard bearers of progressive movements and staples of American middle class life, have seen their membership roles steadily decline since their peaks in the 1950′s. More importantly, their members are often vilified as the unfireable, overpaid, unproductive teachers, factory workers, and civil servants who are preventing our nation from remaining competitive with India and China.

In other words, the Newsies story of labor unions representing the 99% and triumphing over the 1% is not likely to have resonance with the Occupy Wall Street movement and its members, most of whom have probably never been in a union in their lives and hardly see themselves as “striking” against anyone.

“The newsies were a ragged army, without a leader. Until one day, that all changed.”

“Leader” being the operative word in the above quote from the beginning of Newsies. Both the film and historical accounts of the 1899 newsboys strike place great importance on the union’s leader. In the movie, Jack Kelly is clearly the catalyst for action and the unifier of an otherwise un-unifiable group. And he’s also the target of Joseph Pulitzer, who tries to buy out Jack and demoralize the movement with the site of the co-opted leader-turned-shill.

OWS on the other hand, is famous for its consensus-based decision making and its lack of public leadership. Behind the scenes, the movement has an identifiable “cadre of prime movers,” but publicly, no single person goes on the talk show circuit representing OWS. More importantly, no single person meets with Barack Obama, union leaders, Jay-Z, or any of the parade of people accused of trying to co-opt OWS to serve their own purposes.

Pulitzer has no Jack to buy off. Or, as Jesse Jackson more pointedly observed, “there’s nobody to assassinate.”

“Dreams come true / Yes they do, in Santa Fe”

As Belinkie pointed out in a previous article on this site, “Santa Fe” is Jack’s expression of an unrealistic fantasy, a western dream-land that promises prosperity and an escape from the gritty New York life. But behind that fantasy was the reality that America at the turn of the century still had a undeveloped frontier that offered considerable commercial opportunity for anybody willing to move there and tame the wilderness.

This backup plan looms over Jack throughout the movie. Even after he leads the striking newsboys to victory over Pulitzer, he still has Santa Fe as an option, and he strongly considers it before staying New York to get the girl and…keep selling newspapers at pittance wages.

Fast forward to the 21st century. The frontier, the undeveloped land of future prosperity, is no longer in America–it’s in the aforementioned “emerging markets” of India and China. And even to the extent that freedom of movement around America still offers greater exposure to economic opportunity, that too is limited due to the mortgage crisis that has people stuck in homes they can’t sell. In 2010, domestic migration in the United States had dropped to the lowest level since 1947, the first year that the government tracked these rates.

The America of OWS doesn’t have a Santa Fe escape valve. OWS is trapped within the 1%-controlled fishbowl of the United States, and with nowhere else to go, it chooses to agitate for change here.

Conclusion

I highly doubt that the “cadre of prime movers” of the Occupy Wall Street movement are losing sleep searching for the right movies to inspire their cause. And even though it’s not out of bounds for social movements to take their cues from pop culture (e.g., Uncle Tom’s Cabin), I doubt that a Broadway musical that’s based on a 20 year old movie would have much influencing power over OWS, even if their themes were more closely aligned.

But  Newsies is still a small and, dare I say, important part of our collective imagination around social change movements, and probably one of the most popular movie depictions of protest movements in New York City. Given this, and the aforementioned similarities with OWS, it has a valid place in the conversation around OWS, even if the insight it provides on OWS is more the result of its differences with OWS than its similarities.

Although there’s one lesson that I think OWS can draw from Newsies: they should replace the drumming with toe-tapping Disney tunes and choreographed dancing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPud_H94_i4

Now that’s what I call entertainment for the 99%.

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Never seek to know for whom the bell rings.

When God decided to ring out the Rapture and lift His people from the earthly realm at the Eve of the end of the world, Randy didn’t wait for the bell – he launched a bionic elbow from the top rope of corporeal existence before the fight even started. Leave it to the Macho Man to greet the End of Days with a folding chair and a grimacing smile.

In all seriousness, against the backdrop of this weekend’s surreal end-of-the-world social narrative, it seems fitting to frame Randall Poffo as leading the way with his very own, unmatched enthusiasm. Poffo is the birth name of Randy Savage - the legendary, widely beloved professional wrestler. Randall died from a heart attack suffered behind the wheel of his car this morning.

Randall’s death is sad and a great loss, but as so many people seek to repent for lives led other than how they believed they might in anticipation of an imagined reckoning, it is worthwhile to consider someone who stood as a symbol for living life to the greatest extent it might be lived, even in the face of a very real one.

I hope Mr. Poffo doesn’t mind being referred to by his stage name – it is the only way I ever knew him (except as Bone Saw) – and I suppose when we consider how well we can really know anyone, that is close enough.

Macho Man always struck me as a wrestler of the ring – a performer who didn’t seek to transcend wrestling, like contemporaries Hulk Hogan or Andre the Giant, peace be upon him, but to give it life – to embrace with all the urgency of existence the role of the agent – the person – the energy – that give wrestling its immediacy and, ironically enough, its authenticity.

“Oh, yeah”

When I refer to the authenticity of professional wrestling, I’m not referring to the strength, endurance, risks or other physical realities of completing its acrobatics, I’m not talking about the real blood or real sledgehammers, and I’m not talking about its cultural authenticity as a homegrown theatre art – indeed the strangest, most popular form of native improvisation to come out of the Western Hemisphere.

No, I refer to the vital energy imbued into wrestling by the performers who invest themselves into it fearlessly – who create in the squared circle a space to heighten and explore human will and the vitality of the moment. Macho Man was always among the most vital of wrestlers, the most alive of performers – and even in the times in his life when excess brought with it hardship or sadness (especially the loss of his once-wife, the late great Miss Elizabeth – perhaps the grandest and most sincere romance in the history of the art), it is a worthy message to we the living that we can fill life with being alive to the point of overflowing. In the echoes of this simple act is where we find ideas of glory – and in the moments when Macho Man was under the lights, there was a theatre of redemption.

Macho Madness

I always liked the Macho Man’s relative humility. While the energy of Hulkamania came from hero worship and the Hulkster’s relationship with the crowd (and not to diminish it), Macho Madness comes from the Macho Man’s desire to inhabit himself, not to be loved. He didn’t have his own song, he used “Pomp and Circumstance.” He wore a heavy beard and covered his face in promos; it was never about adoring the Macho Man, about transferring one’s own participation in life to the Macho Man, about the Macho Man’s superiority or fame, but about the Macho Man’s personal energy – his sense of humor, his love of entertaining, his frenzy for the ring, his “Oh yeah!” approach to any challenge he faced.

Macho Man was one of the wrestlers I always preferred to play as in video games – rather than, say, The Undertaker or The Ultimate Warrior – I didn’t want to be Randy Savage; I wanted to do what he did.

We could all do with a little more “Oh yeah!” in our lives. Hunched over our computers or buried nose-first in our smartphones, there’s a promise in “Oh yeah!” that speaks to a need in all our hearts.

The Tower of Power

His appearances on Arsenio Hall are still a joy to watch – he hides himself behind his character, but he’s still full of fun, humanity and wisdom. Here he is in 1992:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMDZihE-KrA

And here he is again in 1989:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQxyD0Q7GtU

And lest you doubt the Macho Man’s artistic complexity, his use of “Space is the Place” as a catchphrase and his getup in general are compelling references to other celebrators of life and transformative entertainers – Afrofuturist jazz and funk musicians like Sun Ra and Bootsy Collins. I hope someone asked Macho Man while he was alive what his feelings were about these artists – and that I get to track it down someday. It probably has something to do with drugs. I hope he really loved the music.

At any rate, it’s quite the influence to pull into professional wrestling, but funk can come from unlikely places.

Farewell

We can laugh and joke about how the world isn’t ending this weekend, but it is important to remember that things do end – even things with the inexhaustible energy of Macho Man Randy Savage. May we take from life the lesson Randy tried to teach us – to take joy in our madness, to do what we love to do as hard as we can, and to embrace the moments of glory, love, and authenticity even in lives that can feel irretrievably lost in fictions of our own and others’ design.

May we all have cause to call out “Oh yeah!” as long as we live, even if we don’t find the same regular opportunity or perfect intonation. And, like Randy and Miss Elizabeth, if we choose to love, man or woman, for man or woman or whatever, may we not care how ridiculous it seems, because, in the end, love never really looks ridiculous, even when it really, really does:

Rest in peace, you glorious, beautiful, heteronormative space cadets.

“Oh yeah,” indeed.

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If it looks corny, it's because it actually is corny.

In early March 2011, I saw the infamous Broadway musical, Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark while it was still in previews and immediately before director/writer/auteur Julie Taymor was fired from the production (due to her unwillingness to accept major revisions to the script and music). I won’t do a review of the show; I already did that to some extent on the podcast, and the show has already been skewered by more than enough reviewers to obviate the need for an additional screed on the topic.

Instead, what I’d like to do in this space is explore some of the larger issues at stake with this troubled musical. It gets incessant coverage in the entertainment media, yet few are pausing to ask, “why all the fuss over this musical?” Granted, there’s the lurid appeal of injuries and the flashy A-list names (Bono, Justin Bieber, The Edge), but we wouldn’t be Overthinking It if we just stopped there.

So that’s why I’m asking the question, “What are we talking about when we are talking about Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark“?

Hint: it’s not Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.

Julie Taymor: One of the Boys?

Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.

I was ready to dismiss gender politics as a significant factor in the furor over this musical. If people are rooting against Julie Taymor, it’s not because she’s a woman; instead, it’s because people like to root against anyone who embarks on hugely expensive creative projects and promise a work of staggering genius. Remember how everyone seemed to want James Cameron to eat crow leading up to the releases of both Titanic and Avatar? Remember the collective meh and Axl-bashing that accompanied the long-delayed release of Chinese Democracy? It’s not about gender, I thought.

But then I realized that Julie Taymor explicitly says that it is about gender by the way she wrote the show. Allow me to explain: the first people we see on stage aren’t characters in the Spider-Man story; they’re a “geek chorus” that are discussing their ideal, canonical Spider-Man story. At first, three teenage boys quickly rehash the outline of the story that we’re all familiar with, but then a girl interrupts their fun, ridicules them for their juvenile attitudes towards gender, sexuality, and Spider-Man, and insists upon adding her own flair to the story.

That flair? The much-maligned Arachne character and plotline, in which the spider-woman from Greek mythology enters Peter Parker’s dreams and…oh I’m not even going to try to explain. It’s a hot mess, but more importantly, it’s a decidedly gendered hot mess. I think it’s pretty clear that Taymor’s additions of the sassy female member of the Geek Chorus and Arachne are her way of asserting herself in the male-dominated comic book/superhero world. A story once told and dominated by men is now in the hands of a powerful woman.

There are a lot of unflattering pictures of Clinton on Google image search. Go ahead, try it and see for your self.

Any of this sound familiar? Remember what happened when Hillary Clinton ran for president? Many saw her as a woman trying to get a man’s job and questioned her qualifications due to her gender, both implicitly and explicitly. Granted, we don’t see the same degree of overt, gendered criticism for Taymor, and I think that has a lot to do with the fact that the world of musical theater isn’t male dominated in the same way that politics and comic books are. But Taymor was either anticipating a gender-based backlash, or was already receiving such backlash when she wrote this show, and her reaction is undeniably forceful and direct.

It’s also utterly convoluted and detrimental to the Spider-Man story, but that’s because it’s actually convoluted and detrimental, not because a woman is trying to tell a superhero story.

So are criticisms of this musical and Julie Taymor indicative of latent sexism in society? That’s debatable and would require a fairly exhaustive scouring of media reactions and the language they use to suss out, but what’s not debatable is that Julie Taymor saw gender as enough of an issue to make it such an important part of the show.

More Money, More Problems

If you’ve been following this story, you’ve probably noticed that the show’s $65 million (and growing) price tag is mentioned in nearly every news article on the topic. It’s the most expensive musical in Broadway history (besting the previous record holder, Shrek: The Musical, by at least $40 million), and that fact is part of what keeps the show in the news. Now, details about the excesses and extravagance associated with that budget are starting to emerge:

Left largely to her own devices Ms. Taymor hired top-dollar stars to design the sets and costumes and to choreograph the show. The costume team alone had 23 people — 4 designers, 4 shoppers and 15 dressers. At one rehearsal in November at least a dozen designers and crew members struggled to fasten a spider costume onto the actress Natalie Mendoza. Not enough, it seemed.

“Can we get the puppet department up there?” Ms. Taymor said into a microphone. With that, 20 more people took the stage to help Ms. Mendoza. A video crew documented the creative energy.

Even without knowing the details of the swarm of extraneous costume designers and videographers, one cannot help but be repulsed by the show’s gargantuan costs, particularly while the economy continues to flounder, houses continue to go into foreclosure at alarming rates, and governments with massive fiscal crises are laying off cops and firefighters by the droves. On one hand, we’re told to do more with less and to embrace a new sense of financial austerity. On the other hand, a trainwreck of a Broadway show taps a seemingly never-ending stream of cash and has…a laughably campy air to show for it:

Yes, the Green Goblin actually looks this stupid.

Now, to be fair, it’s not like some insanely rich, evil hedge fun tycoon has been solely and indiscriminately financing this show for the past decade. In fact, the production came close to bankruptcy a few years ago and will do a lot of damage to the show’s investors if it flops. But details like that get lost when people casually scan the news and hear about this Spider-Man musical that’s THE MOAST EXPENSIVE EVAR and is also TEH SUX while they stare at their dwindling bank accounts, wonder how they’ll make the mortgage this month, and then read about increased taxes and reduced police protection in their community. Couldn’t they have found something better to do with those $65 million, besides put the Green Goblin in a silly rubber suit and injure a lot of stuntmen?

Like, for example, hire someone to come up with a better title?

Worst. Title. Ever.

Turn off this show...please

Turn Off The Dark

Seriously?

I’m surprised I haven’t heard more people talk about this: I firmly believe that one of the reasons why this musical gets so much attention and is ridiculed so much in the press is that its title is bad. Really bad. I mean, unfathomably bad. It’s so bad and so obviously open to parody (read the comments on “Overthinking It Podcast Episode 140, ‘Hulk: Turn Off The Smash’” for proof) that I think people haven’t stopped to appreciate the magnitude of this particular showing of incompetence.

Let’s talk about titles for a moment. A good title primes the audience to expect a certain tone (Terminator: sounds menacing), and it communicates an idea that ideally is reflected in the work of art itself (Terminator: it’s about terminating). Consider other titles (besides my favorite, Terminator) that work well in this regard:

The Dark Knight

The Wire

Bat Out Of Hell

We take awesome titles like these for granted because they are associated with awesome things. Now, consider a less awesome title:

Terriers

To my knowledge, there were no flying wire stunts or bullshit Greek choruses in this TV show.

What’s that? Never heard of it? Have no idea what it’s referring to? I don’t blame you. Terriers was by all accounts a fantastic television show, but it had an awful title that probably did significant damage to the show’s chances at survival.

Here’s the show’s premise from the Wikipedia page:

Ex-cop and recovering alcoholic Hank Dolworth (Logue) partners with his best friend, former criminal Britt Pollack (Raymond-James) in an unlicensed private investigation business. The series is set in Ocean Beach, San Diego, California, although it is portrayed as a distinct town, Dolworth having been a member of the fictional “Ocean Beach Police Department”

Sounds cool, right? Unfortunately, none of this is reflected in the title. At all. So when you’re flipping through your cable channel guide or scanning through a TV blog and thinking about what you’re going to watch tonight, coming across the word Terriers brings to mind…dogs…not a grizzled private detective and his misadventures. Skip. Show canceled. Not helped by a bad title.

Now, back to Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. It’s a nonsense phrase and therefore incapable of communicating anything substantive about the show. And before you ask, no, there’s no discernible theme of lightness vs darkness in the show’s plot. It’s offensive to the rules that our brains subconsciously follow when parsing titles.

More specifically, the phrase Turn Off is just that–a literal “turn off.” I put the picture of the light switch in this article mostly as a cheap joke, but it actually illustrates my point. In English, the phrase “turn off” almost always carries a negative meaning. People talk about their “turn-offs” on online dating profiles, and they are not things you want associated with a musical. “Turn off the lights,” beyond the literal meaning of deactivating electrical illumination, implies shutting down or closing operations, sometimes for good. This, too, is not an idea you want associated with a musical or, for that matter, anything that’s supposed to be rousing and exciting.

And the final insult to injury? The fact that this nonsense, depressing phrase, “Turn Off The Dark,” is paired with one of the most iconic, effective, and evocative titles ever conceived:

Spider-Man.

Conclusion

So there you have it. When we are talking about Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, we are talking about gender politics, the economy, and the curious ability for a title to kill the work of art that it adorns.

Okay, fine, we’re also talking about the injuries and the fact that Bono and The Edge wrote some crappy music for this show. In addition to gender politics, the economy, and the WORST TITLE FOR ANYTHING EVER.

Readers: what do you think? Is Julie Taymor getting a hard time because she’s a woman? Should that $65 million been spent on cops and teachers? Can you think of a worse title than Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark? Sound off in the comments.

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I tried buying a gong and banging it right before I decided to go someplace, but it's just not the same.

As regular readers are aware, I have become somewhat obsessed with Law & Order. When the series ended recently, I was reduced to reading Law & Order fan fiction, including this crossover with Angel. (Here’s Jack McCoy’s plea bargain offer to a captured vampire: “Helene pleads guilty. She allocutes. She tells us all about her condition. She tells us who made her. She tells us about other vampires in the City. She finds a way to render her safe. She does all that, and she gets to serve twenty-to-life. We’ll find a facility for her.”)

I also spent a lot of time musing over what makes the show so addictive for me, and I think a lot of it is the structure. Episodes are divided between the detectives and the D.A.s, and within those halves are other patterns: the detectives usually discover an unexpected motive for the crime, or a seemingly innocent witness turns out to be hiding something. The smug defense attorney will get key evidence thrown out on a technicality. Someone will usually confess something, accompanied by an electric violin. (Naturally, these cliches are common to many cop shows, but let’s focus on this one right now.)

In a lesser show, the repetitive nature of these stories would be tedious. But with good writing, the formula becomes a strength. The familiar contours of the story go down easy, like comfort food or a cozy sweater. But the unique twists of each episode keep the show fresh. All TV is like that, to some extent. Yes, we want creativity, but we also want to see Dr. Cox insult Zach Braff, or Ben Linus stare at the camera all creepylike, or George Costanza get brutally dumped. The shows that succeed give us formulas, with all new trimmings every week. Having that basic structure is what allows creativity to blossom.

Structure breeds creativity, exhibit A.

This isn’t unique to TV. Take music. We don’t necessarily want to hear a songwriter invent new chord progressions. We want to hear the old chord progressions, but have them sound new. Or take movies. As someone who has sat through large chunks of The Cremaster Cycle, I can safely say I like originality. But I also teared up a little at the end of Star Trek.

There is another form of entertainment that builds originality onto a rigid structure: improv comedy. I took a couple classes at the UCB Theater, but Overthinking It actually counts several semi-pro improvisers among its ranks. The kind of improv I’ve always liked best is “long form,” in which the performers will create an entire show based off of one suggestion. The type of improv most people know from television and comedy clubs in “short form,” in which the performers play “games” (“Every time I ring the bell, you have to become a different celebrity!”)

I’m completely unqualified to do this, but I have come up with the rough plan for a Law & Order-based improv show, in which the troupe will use the structure of NBC’s masterpiece mixed together with elements of long form and short form. I invite all you more experienced improvisers to help me make this better. And maybe, just maybe, someone will make me very happy by attempting to perform this someday.

Law and Order Improv

1. The group enters. Without any introduction, the group leader asks for a suggestion from the audience — any sort of suggestion at all. Two improvisers step forward and play a scene based on that suggestion, which ends with the discovery of a body. When another improviser feels the scene is over, she should literally jump in front of the performers and lie down. (This kind of thing happens all the time in the TV show. The police are talking to an attractive young couple that’s just been caught having sex in the park. Suddenly, shots ring out…)

2. Cue the Law & Order theme song. The entire group steps forward. The leader welcomes the crowd to Law & Order Live, the show in which the people are represented by two separate yet equally hilarious groups of improvisers.

3. Ask the audience to name a relationship between two people. Then ask for a household chore. In this scene, two detectives talk to another character who knew the deceased through the relationship suggested (lover, dentist, pool cleaner, etc). The character is doing the suggested chore the whole time. No matter what, the detectives do not ask him to stop. (This is maybe my favorite Law & Order cliche. If I were ever being grilled by two homicide detectives, I would definitely stop carrying trash to my garbage truck for five seconds. But nobody ever does.)

4. When the character from #3 reveals interesting information about the deceased, the other improvisers waiting in the back should step in and become a new character the detectives could be interviewing. For instance, if the character from #3 mentions the deceased was a Civil War reenactor, another two improvisers can step forward to be interviewed, loading rifles and firing all the time. (NOTE: All the interviewees should be doing complicated tasks. Under no circumstances should anyone look at the detectives.)

5. The improvisers playing the district attorneys now convene a “grand jury”: everyone in the audience. This starts with one of them presenting the story of how the crime took place — if the detectives haven’t uncovered any motive, the D.A. now has to create one, making it as logical as possible. Then the audience members are free to ask any questions they want. The district attorneys have to answer, even if the questions are wildly irrelevant. This scene always ends with the district attorney asking for permission to bring this guy in, and the crowd erupting in cheers.

6. Before the show begins, the performers hand out a slips of paper to the audience members and ask them to write down the thing they want most in the world. Now the leader divides those slips into two piles. He gives one to the D.A. improviser and one to the defense attorney improviser. Both sides are going to present their motions to the judge improviser. They take turns going back and forth, trying to make a persuasive argument for why these requests are completely justified under the circumstances. “Motion to… [reads] ‘have a date with Megan Fox.’ My client cannot receive adaquate representation if his attorney is constantly watching Transformers 2. I need to get this out of my system.” The judge then has to approve or deny each motion.

7. It’s time for the attorneys to examine each of the witnesses that the detectives spoke to earlier. It’s likely, of course, that the improvisers playing the attorneys will also have played those very witnesses. But there’s nothing wrong with someone having to cross-examine themselves–in fact, it sounds hilarious.

8. Three improvisers leave the room. The defense attorney explains to the crowd that these witnesses have horrible secrets, and if she can get them to admit these secrets on the stand, they’ll lose all credibility with the jury. She asks the audience to suggest what these secrets are. Then the improvisers come back in. One at a time, the defense attorney asks them a series of questions, designed to get them to admit their “secret” (which of course they don’t know).

9. Closing statements. Both the D.A. and the defense attorney address the crowd directly. They should feel free to go in any direction they want. However, before each speech, the group leader asks for two random objects out of the purse of an audience member. The leader than puts the objects in the two lawyers’ pockets, without showing them what they are. During their speeches, each lawyer must pull out their object and use it to make a dramatic point. (“In many ways, justice is like… this bottle of lube. Slippery. And water-soluble.”)

10. The judge asks the crowd to vote on a verdict, via show of hands. He then announces the verdict, and the defendant reacts accordingly.

11. Final scene is the D.A. talking to his grizzled boss at a bar. They wax poetic about the case, and life in general. Then the most memorable characters from the entire show can enter the bar for a drink (the Civil War reenactors, the defense attorney on a date with Megan Fox, etc).

Naturally it goes without saying that between every scene, the Law & Order gong sound must play. There should be a red light that flashes, cuing the audience to make the noise. Everyone loves making the noise, even though nobody does it well.

I figure the whole thing should take 30 minutes, start to finish. What do you think? Did I forget any other Law & Order cliches that would make fun scenes?

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Waaaay back in the day, Fenzel and I decided that it would be a good idea to write an elaborate Broadway musical.  About zombies.  There have actually been zombie musicals before, mind you, but what sets ours apart is that it would be played completely straight.  Or rather, as I think one of us said at the time, “No parody element that we can dream up is going to be more fundamentally ridiculous than the fact that there are singing zombies on the stage.”

Anyway, that was a long time ago.  We put in a lot of work.  But we did not put in enough.  And for a long time, it looked like no part of Brains! The Musical of The Living Dead would ever see the light of day.

But since we mentioned the project on the podcast a while back, it seemed only appropriate to toss something up this week.  This isn’t necessarily the best song we wrote for the show, but it’s definitely the most stand-alone-y.  All that you need to know to enjoy this is that the heroes are about to make a stand against the zombie hordes, and they’re reviewing strategy.  The guy who is singing is named Hank.  (That might not have made the final draft.)

Here’s the sheet music:

The Only Way To Kill A Zombie (PDF)

Here’s a terrible MIDI realization (think of it as lo-fi, if that helps).

The Only Way To Kill A Zombie (MP3)

And here are the lyrics…

Remember – aim high!  shoot ‘em in the head!

The only way to kill a zombie

is to destroy his brain!

You can carve his heart out of his chest

But that won’t slow him down.

The only way to kill a zombie

is to destroy his brain!

You can cut the legs out from under him

But he’ll push along on his stubs.

The only way to kill a zombie

is to destroy his brain!

You can chop his head off at the neck

But his jaws will snap at your ankles.

The only way to kill a zombie

is to destroy his brain!

He will keep walking and keep feeding

until somebody stops him.

And that, gentlemen,

Is what we have come here to do.

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Check out the names above the title. Christian who?

I feel like the words “cult classic” sometimes get used to defend pretty much any film that was a complete commercial failure. Saying a movie is a cult classic can be the equivalent of saying a girl has a nice personality. But to me, Newsies is a real, actual cult classic. I know this because if you casually name-drop the movie in public, four out of five people will stare at you blankly, and the fifth will jump up and down and say “OH MY GOD I LOVE NEWSIES!!”

For the four out of five of you, the movie is based on the real-life Newsboys Strike of 1899. Christian Bale plays Jack “Cowboy” Kelly, a vaguely Dickensian street urchin with an accent as majestic as the Brooklyn Bridge. Back in those days, the newsboys had to buy the papers themselves (and eat the cost for any they couldn’t unload). So when Joseph Pulitzer decides to start charging them an extra 1/10^th cent for each pape (the cool kids call them papes) it’s a big deal. (I believe 1/10^th cent is about $84 in today’s money.)

But before this goes down, Jack gets to sing a song about his fondest dream: leaving New York behind to move out west. It’s called “Santa Fe.” Please take a moment to enjoy Batman singing and dancing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xgjd6TZs_c

When Newsies came out in 1992, a young man named Jonathan Larson was writing a musical called Rent. It’s also set in New York, ninety years later. (In Rent-talk, that’s 47,304,000 minutes.) The show is about young artists struggling to survive on the Lower East Side, and it takes most of its plot from La Boheme. For instance, in Puccini’s opera, one of the characters is a philosopher named Colline. In Larson’s updated version, he’s a philosophy professor named Collins.

Midway through the first act, Collins gets to sing a song about his fondest dream: leaving New York behind to move out west. It’s also called “Santa Fe.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-ekSr9xX4Y

These songs not only have the same name, they’re about exactly the same thing: an unrealistic fantasy that somewhere out west lies this perfect paradise, if only the singers could escape Manhattan. But in the end, both men give up these plans (at least for now) because, well, they heart NY, warts and all.

Yet another New Yorker who dreams of Santa Fe.

The similarities are pretty striking, and it’s tempting to hypothesize that Jonathan Larson might have seen Newsies (after all, he DID like musicals) and put his “Santa Fe” in Rent as a sly little homage. But Wikipedia claims that Larson wrote the song sometime between 1989 and 1991, before the film was released (see the first paragraph of this section).

But if it’s a coincidence, it seems like an unlikely one. In 1990, Santa Fe’s population was a measly 55,859. But size isn’t everything, and as it turns out, Santa Fe is a perfectly logical place for these particular characters to fixate on.

In Newsies, Jack’s longing for the west seems to come from a dime novel he carries around with him. The script describes the cover as…

…a blue-perfect sky over a perfect yellow desert; a large red sun shines down on a perfect adobe.

And this is exactly the image that the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Company wanted turn-of-the-century New Yorkers to have. In All Aboard for Santa Fe: Railway Promotion of the Southwest, 1890s to 1930s, Victoria Dye writes about how the company was actively promoting that particular city, as a way to increase business.

To challenge the Southern Pacific’s monopoly, the AT&SF became the first industry to exploit the history and scenic attractions of New Mexico, and the town of Santa Fe represented the essence of the Southwest… Starting in the 1880s, the AT&SF began its promotional campaign to sell Santa Fe as a travel destination.

Dye, All Aboard For Santa Fe, page 16

These promotional efforts actually did incorporate dime novels like the one Jack has. So even through Santa Fe was a tiny town, it’s historically accurate that he’d view it as the epitome of the southwest. (Newsies fans: Savor the irony that Jack, a consummate salesman and spinner of tall tales, is completely taken in by the railroad’s stealth marketing.)

There’s also a good reason why Collins would pick Santa Fe. Collins is gay. And Santa Fe is really gay. In fact, the city trails only San Francisco in percentage of households headed by same-sex partners. So when Collins sings about how his drag-queen boyfriend can hang out in his restaurant, well, that would not only be socially acceptable there, it would probably make it a popular destination.

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X-Ray gun? Yes. Pants? Not bloody likely.

Greetings, Earth-People:

Against the advice of some, and as many of you may know, I gladly (if not always ably) serve as the Overthinking It staff scientist™.  It’s an odd amalgam of roles, requiring mostly that I be at-the-ready if one of my fellow overthinkers needs a formula derived, has questions about standard units of measurement, or if something they took a pill for keeps on doing its thing for more time than they wanted/expected it to.

(I’m talking about erections, there.)

(…well, mosly.)

On rare occasion, though, I also get the chance to directly OverThink an aspect of Science in the popular culture.  The last time I did this for any serious length, actually, one of you responded to it by trying to debunk Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

We in the Scientific community hope you get the help you so desperately deserve, Joe Nahhas, anonymous OTI reader.*

Still, if nothing else this may serve as some general indicator of a demand for sciency-type-stuff on our humble website.  Now, said sciencey-goop finds its way into our popular milieu through more venues than that most obvious route of Science Fiction.  As has been beautifully enumerated elsewhere, action movies are particularly adept at taking the kinds of “liberties” with Physics (both stunt- and plot-based) that can only be considered awe-inspiring.  But beyond that, arguably any cultural element for which characters, say, depend on some trendy (if not fictional) electronic devices, or suffer from/receive medical care for a fictional (if not trendy) ailment, evokes the Specter of Science in that work.  Not to mention those pop culture artifacts that, though not ostensibly about science, per se, feature a character who’s a scientist…

This isn't helping things... for anyone.

The thing is, I have my favorite examples of where Pop Culture gets it right, (and wrong), but listening to me gripe about it isn’t much fun, is it?  It’s time to crowd-source it.

SO, dear OTI readers, I’d like you to chime in on a semi-regular piece I’ll write called “Ask A Scientist.”  I’d title it something more creative, but it takes enough self-restraint for me not publish these posts with an abstract and Materials/Methods section.  We’ll worry about the nuances of “clever titles,” “word order,” and “not using swear words to describe other peoples’ work in print” later.

Let’s get the ball rolling.  Got something you’ve seen on TV, in a movie that makes you think, “Is that really how that would work?”  or, “there’s no way a platypus could survive that!” or “can you really tell if it’s human DNA just by looking at a cartoon of it?”**  Sound off in the comments.  Or, you can always send me an email at mlawski@childfriendfinder.com shechner at overthinkingit dot com with your questions/observations regarding science in the popular media.

The lucky ones will get their questions addressed in an OverThought and moderately comic way, by me: Dave Shechner, professional scientist™.  Unlucky ones will be publicly harangued by me: Dave Shechner, semi-professional harague-ist (RM; patent-pending).

Extremely lucky ones will get a T-shirt bearing the likeness of Mr. Peter Fenzel.

And of course, members of the OTI writing staff, or its parent corporation are eligible to enter, and are encouraged to do so.

Nanoo nanoo.

* It was Joe Nahhas.
** Don’t get me started.  Seriously.

That’s how the Associated Press derisively reported plans to adapt Michael Jackson’s classic song/music video to a Broadway musical. It goes downhill from there; it seems the haters have written this one off about as fast as the Internet’s collective knee can reflexively jerk.

Make a music video a musical? Silly, right? Not really. First, it’s not just based on the music video; there’ll be plenty of other Jacko songs in the show (I know, that makes it a “jukebox musical,” but that’s a rabbit hole that I won’t go down right now). But at its heart, this is just another adaptation of the visual styling and plot from one art form (music video) to another (musical theater).

How is this so different from…say, the upcoming Watchmen movie?

(Image from Rope of Silicon)

There, I did it. I compared the “Thriller” musical to the Watchmen movie. OK, I know, not all adaptations are created equally (No Country for Old Men, novel made into a movie. Wing Commander, video game made into a travesty.), and that the “Thriller” musical is getting bad buzz partly due to Michael Jackson’s tarnished public image. But it’s an adaptation, and that by itself is no reason to condemn a work of popular culture.

So I, for one, welcome the ‘Thriller’ musical, and I do hope that it sets the precedence for a Guns ‘n’ Roses “November Rain” musical:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbkG6Za6w5s

Hey, you know what else would make a great musical?

Watchmen.

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