A Touch Of BoMA

Top 5 Songs That Aren’t In A New Hit Musical But Should Be

1. “Sometimes When We Touch,” Dan Hill
2. “I Would Do Anything For Love,” Meatloaf
3. “All My Life,” Linda Ronstadt, feat. Aaron Neville
4. “At This Moment,” Billy Vera
5. “We’ve Got Tonight,” Bob Seger

Imagine the set-up for #5. Time: 2 a.m., the present. Place: the Wayne Hotel bar; Honesdale, PA. Characters: Bartender, age 40ish; blonde in waitress uniform, age mid to late 30s; heavily hair-gelled male of indiscriminate (but definitely older) age. Stage opens to Bartender passing a bourbon and soda to Hair Gel. Waitress hunches over a pile of maraschino cherry stems several stools down. Hair Gel rustles the ice in his drink, looks at his watch, looks at Waitress, and gives an exaggerated “What the hell?” shrug to the audience. He grunts off of his stool. He taps Waitress on the arm. He says, “I know it’s late. I know you’re weary.” Bartender pulls a high-hat cymbal stand from beneath the seltzer hoses. Lights fade.

None of my Top 5 Songs are in the new musical High Fidelity, which premiered in Boston last weekend. But the musical High Fidelity, like Nick Hornby’s book and the John Cusack movie, has a bunch of bad song-themed Top 5 lists. My favorite: Top 5 Worst Duets. I don’t recall if “All My Life” made the cut, but #1 was “Anything with Peabo Bryson. That man is a duet whore. He’ll sing with anyone.”

Eric isn’t a big fan of musicals, but he knows I am, so he landed us both on the mezzanine of the Colonial Theatre for High Fidelity’s debut. I think he enjoyed himself enough. He chuckled at the Peabo line.

Eric also dislikes “We’ve Got Tonight.” When he tells me this, as I am warbling to him on the phone, I switch to Paula Abdul/MC Skat Cat “Opposites Attract.” This seems to work. “Oh, for god’s sake,” he grumbles. “Go back to Bob.” (In the musical version, he would announce: "I would do anything for love...but I won't do that.)

We’re not really opposites, me and Murky. We’re both a little nuts about music mixes. We both sing in the car. And though I “go to bed early,” I wouldn’t exactly say he “parties all night.” He mostly plays Warcraft. (I’ve recently reconnected with The Sims -- to be addressed in a later post.)

Also, we both enjoy “Mystery Science Theater 3000,”another important staple of my Boston visit. Thanks to Netflix, Eric and I devoted much of Sunday afternoon to cohabitating in a La-Z-Boy while the mad scientists and the robots dissected The Touch of Satan. I won’t attempt to reconstruct the D-movie plot -- as with all MST3K victims, the plot is essential only in its sheer awfulness. (Memorable line, delivered by the possessed farmgirl to her unsuspecting paramour by the pond: “This is where the fish lives.” As pick-up lines go, it seems as effective as “I know it’s late. I know you’re weary.” Note to Bob: it helps if you’ve got Satan on your side.)

Probably, I like MST3K for the same reason I like the Seger tune. “We’ve Got Tonight” and the MST3K movies are both overblown, overdramatic, self-important. Not unlike yours truly. This may come as a shock -- brace yourself -- but I’m occasionally guilty of taking myself too seriously. Ex: two weeks ago, when I called Eric threatening to kill myself by consuming large amounts of packaged spinach. I meant to be darkly humorous, but Eric didn’t laugh. Suicide jokes, generally not all that funny. Nor cracks about child-killing epidemics. Oops.

If God forgives me the e coli joke, it’s likely He or She will still require me to watch a playback of my life. On the Big Screen, I’ll be strutting and fretting. God will have the bucket of popcorn and the one-liners. “What do you get when you fall from grace / You get enough germs to catch pneumonia...”

It’s true that Murky “takes it easy,” while I “get obsessed.” Thank goodness. Somewhere in the middle of all my BoMA theatergoing, Seger singing, and cinema viewing, I realized I was really having fun. Not self-deprecating fun, or tongue-in-cheek. Just an excellent time. And although the honesty might be too much, I hope there’s more to come.