The Protomen: A Mega Man Rock Opera.
Really, is there anything more deliriously delightful than a good rock opera? It defies you. It defies you to laugh; it defies you to be unmoved. There is grandeur in even the ridiculous film version of Tommy. Even the densest among the American public were moved by the shameless sorrow of Freddie Mercury in "Bohemian Rhapsody." Brendon Small understands the mystique of rock opera, at once hilariously cheesy and brashly emotional, and that's why Home Movies was such an awesome show.
I wish particularly that I could see the Mega Man show, because -- well, to be shameless myself, I want to honor these guys. They have accomplished something that I had even forgotten that I dreamed when I, too, was a "diminutive Mississippi child." I saw broken fragments of ignored stories everywhere, in cartoons and particularly in video games. Grownups, even the ones who made them, didn't seem to care about the stories at all -- about Link and Zelda, Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea, any number of others. No one thought about them, talked about them, loved them like I did. Then, of course, there was that whole "puberty" thing. Afterwards I remembered about the stories, yes, and it made me smile, but I never believed they were important. And now other people my age come forward to say: yes, those stories were important. They were important to us. It is enough to make one cry out with awesome.
Now I wish I could write a rock opera about my favorite Nintendo game. Even if I could, that wouldn't leave me with too many options. When I was a kid, I played a lot of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, but thanks to Anne Rice and everyone writing after her, vampires are pretty much ruined for everybody. The Magic of Scheherazade? Forget it, you couldn't afford security. Then there was Life Force, about a lone spacefighter pilot (or two lone spacefighter pilots if you had a friend) who had to fly inside of a giant intergalactic organism that had just eaten his planet and destroy its internal organs and immune system. There's something in that, possibly my lunch, but not music.
