WHY I HATE HIGH FIDELITY

by Razz Trumble

The novel and the movie, even though I actually had a somewhat good time reading the novel, but probably only because I read it while at the beach and I used to associate it with girls in bikinis and other girls in bikinis rubbing lotion on themselves and that makes for a damn fine novel except that now, those dreams of creamy sunsoaked skin are completely obliterated because those fuckers who made the movie of the book parked on my street while they filmed that stupid fucking movie and by the way, that rain scene, where John Cusack is whining into a pay phone--it wasn't raining, it was a hose and it was sticking out of the second story window of Jinx and there's no motherfucking pay phone there, there was a bike rack, which got moved, so that the movie company, Assfucker of Movieville, Inc., could film a film that obligated them to set up twenty thousand vans and trucks along the street I lived on and which obligated some power hungry junky freakazoid "set guy" to scream at me one night when I came home raging drunk, riding my fixed gear, and decided to simultaneously skid the length of the street while yelling at Beau, the greatest drinker of whiskey who has ever lived, that InnerTown is NOT open at 5:30am no matter how many times and how hard you pound on the door and also, there isn't a damn person in this neighborhood that gives a shit that you left your favorite lighter on the pool table that afternoon.

The reason I am bringing this up now is that I just read a piece of cultural criticism about books and musicals and their similarities and differences in terms of their effects on the canon of Art and Culture, which made me think of High Fidelity, the musical, and also the musical of all that Billy Joel music with Twyla Tharp or Thorpe or maybe Sharp or whatever--the leggy dancer lady--and I thought, "My god, it's a trend!" and while none of this is technically a trend because a) none of it is happening right now; b) two does not make a trend; c) none of it is actually related in any way; and d) I'm biased because currently, I am contributing to this trend as I am in production for the musical version of "The Metamorphosis," where Gregor is not a dung beetle, but a mosquito, who wants to tap dance, but can't, because his family insists on him pursuing the lost art of interpretive dance, which he simply cannot get, being overly mosquito-esque and therefore unable to make up his own steps, despite his valiant attempts to do so, so instead of being stuck in his room out of sheer frustration from not being able to put his glasses on his head, he is instead voluntarily staying there out of embarrassment and then there's the happy scene at the end where the entire family realizes the importance of dance, any kind of dance, and peace reigns supreme; and so, as you can see, it is scientifically and artisitically creepy, this trend of making musicals, despite what they are based on, creepy in a way that reeks of an impending conspiracy much like the way I am pretty sure there is an impending conspiracy where world leaders are not real people, merely bobbleheads who are controlled by aliens who have a fierce sense of humor when it comes to bright, shiny things like bombs, which the aliens see as enjoyable, like fireworks.

The beauty of punctuation is that you can make one sentence go on until infinity, which works out well when you've stuffed your head so full of hallucinogenic drugs that periods have become physically, mentally, brutally, intimidating.