My Evening with Fancy Muppets

I got into a little bit of trouble the other night. I attended a stage musical of the animated film The Lion King with my wife. She was very much anticipating this production. I nodded off several times during the performance. Therefore I am an inconsiderate jerk. Hear me roar.

Here's the thing, though. I'm a 29-year-old grown man. Maudlin puppet shows adapted from Disney cartoons are not really my thing. I enjoy heavy metal rock music. Football. Red meat. Yard work. Action movies.

So perhaps you can see how I don't feel that it's completely unreasonable to doze during a conversation between a talking baboon and and a gay meerkat. My wife, however, does not find me a reasonable man.

Elaborate animal constuming, Elton John power ballads spontaneously breaking out during spoken dialogue, and cute anthromorphic lion cubs in love. What's a dude not to love, right?

Hakuna Matata!

I thought I was being a good sport about it. We went with two other couples and I did my very best not to complain or show my dismay over being subjected to a three hour cuddle fest on stage. In fact, from the reviews I read, I kind of anticipated a glorious spectacle of majestic performing arts. What I got instead was a bunch of fart jokes by a purple warthog with a highly publicized worry-free philosophy.

And my favorite football team was playing that evening as well. As a diehard fan, I never miss a game. So I bought a new Blackberry with Internet capabilities last week for the sole purpose of streaming it live over my phone during the performance. Unfortunately, it was a dark theater and the bright backlighting of the phone made viewing completely impracticable, so I had to merely check scores during intermission.

But Sunday night, my wife was incensed as to how I could possibly fall asleep during the Battle for Pride Rock. I, however, was equally incensed as to how the Battle for Pride Rock was interrupting my nap.

When I was courting my wife back in college, I bought her tickets to a touring production of Les Miserables. Now listen - no straight man would ever go see a French musical about a disenfranchised tree pruner. But when a boy loves his girl, he'd do just about anything to please her. Even if it means sitting through the worst form of entertainment ever produced. But that doesn't mean he has to like it.

But here's what my clumsy chauvinistic attitude can't quite seem to convey: I don't mind going to these things as long as we're together. There was a time not so long ago, we weren't sure how much time we'd have left together. Well, now that everyone's healthy, it's easy to slip back into old habits of taking each other for granted.

So I very much enjoyed an evening out on the town with my wife.

But I didn't enjoy the stage performance of dancing, singing, personified Disney safari creatures.

Because it was stupid.