Oh What a Life!

As part of my continued attempts to become more traditionally masculine, this afternoon I went to a musical with another man. A friend of mine is a music teacher, and she got tickets to the critically acclaimed musical Jersey Boys for her students. She had two tickets left over, and she gave them to my other friend Mike. Mike's girlfriend was unavailable, so he took me along instead. I must admit, I looked ravishing as his date.

Jersey Boys tells the story of the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, a popular music group from the 1960s. I'm sure some of you are saying, "Who the fuck are the Four Seasons? Are they the guys who started the hotel chain?" Not exactly. You may not know the group's name, but you've heard their music. You have to know "December 1963" ("Oh what a night, late December back in '63. What a very special time for me..."); they still play it on the radio all the time, and I think Billy Joel may have done a cover of it. But their other songs have been used for countless product jingles over the years. I seem to recall "Big Girls Don't Cry" being used for a Pampers commercial, and I wouldn't be surprised if "Walk Like a Man" was used in Reebok commercials. I'm almost certain I once saw some tubby man serenading Mrs. Butterworth with "Can't Take My Eyes Off You."

The musical was excellent, but what struck me the most was the group's riveting tale of success. By the age of 22, Frankie Valli had a string of number one hits and a boatload of money. This doesn't even take into account the throngs of adoring fans. I'm 25 now, and my life consists of watching Boston Legal DVDs, making copies of church bulletins, eating leftover meatloaf (sometimes while listening to Meatloaf), and then blogging about my stygian existence on this blog.

Oh sure, the Four Seasons had their share of troubles, and the play ends with certain tragic overtones. One of their members racked up enormous debts to the mob. Frankie himself even ended up divorced, and his daughter was killed in her early 20s. But failures are so much easier to take after glorious success. People talk about how money doesn't buy happiness, but I'll bet the gloomy abyss seems a bit more bearable when you can drown your sorrows in the finest wines while cruising on your yacht with women of dubious moral character.

And I'm sure the royalties from this musical aren't keeping Frankie Valli awake at night.

Jersey Boys is ostensibly about living the American Dream. Even a group of poor Italian boys from Jersey can make it big. But to me it only highlighted the fact that I could have made it by this time if I'd been scrappy and cunning enough. This performance only drove home my own failures. It also didn't give me a lot of hope for the future. Even if success is achieved, you're still doomed to a failed marriage and huge mob debts. So if I one day become a wildly successful producer of pornographic films, I'll probably be diagnosed with terminal dysentery before my first check arrives in the mail.

Although there was one bright beacon of hope in the production. There's a small subplot featuring a exuberant but dopey kid named Joey from their New Jersey hometown. Apparently Tommy DeVito (no relation to Danny), one of the original Four Seasons, took great delight in their teenage years in tormenting and mocking poor Joey and using him to run errands. Tommy DeVito is the one who later accrued the massive mob debts, and he was kicked out of the group. Joey, meanwhile, would later group up to be Joe Pesci.... yes, THAT Joe Pesci.

And in a delicious twist of fate, Tommy DeVito now WORKS for Joe Pesci!! (I have no idea if character of Tommy DeVito that Joe Pesci portrays in Goodfellas is a direct reference to this relationship, but I wouldn't doubt it.)

I don't see myself as Joe Pesci in this little tale. Nay, I am Tommy DeVito. I find solace in the fact that at some point after years of wretched unemployment, some successful guy that I wronged in the past may take pity on me and offer me a job. In a cruel bit of irony, maybe I'll end up as the secretary for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

And then someone can write a glorious musical about my life.

-----------------------------
Big girls don't cry, but sometimes big unemployed bloggers do.