Ha Ha! Men Hate the Arts!

Goodness gracious. Seriously? This?

Here's a list of things most guys would rather do than sit through The Nutcracker: Watch football, drink beer, mow the lawn, go fishing, ask for directions, watch Sleepless in Seattle, eat glass and run naked through the lion exhibit at the zoo while smeared in barbecue sauce.

So, so witty. Barbecue sauce! Ha!

But, try as we might, many of us will, in fact, be sitting through The Nutcracker sometime over the next few weeks (if we haven't already). So, wipe off that barbecue sauce and man up - here are a few reasons to actually look forward to the experience.

Man up!? Dude! Tell me more!

Those dancers are serious athletes:

Duh.

Assuming you see a production with trained dancers, take a minute to consider how hard it is to do what they're doing. Ballerinas train their whole lives to develop the strength to stand on tiptoe like that, and if Reggie Williams could jump like those Chinese dancers in the second act, the Jaguars wouldn't be in the mess they're in.

Ah, your sports metaphor totally makes me feel okay to see ballet. Whew! That was a close one.

If, on the other hand, you've been dragged to your niece's fourth-grade production, you're on your own, pal.

1) Your niece's fourth-grade production of anything is going to be cute and awful.

2) Thanks for calling me pal, pal.

The story is totally psychedelic, dude:

Dude! Pal! Chief! Boss! STOP IT!

This little girl, Clara, gets a nutcracker doll for Christmas. (Who gives a kid a nutcracker anyway?) She falls asleep and dreams it comes to life and battles this man-size mouse. Then she and the nutcracker guy visit the Kingdom of Sweets where the Sugar Plum Fairy treats them to a show put on by dancing tea, hot chocolate, peppermint sticks and flowers in tutus.

Thanks for the synopsis. It's totally like not the most famous ballet, ever, dude, pal.

There's some serious violence: Not, like, Steven Segal violence.

Dude: how awesome would it be if there was? Or maybe Chuck Norris?

Fuck yeah!

Then Segal would never wear a leotard.

Your lack of comma confuses me. You seem to mean: in the event of...Segal would never wear a leotard. In the event of what?

There's a battle scene between the mouse army and the nutcracker army and a nasty one-on-one fight between the Nutcracker and the Mouse King.

Appeals to dudes! And pals!

You might actually recognize some of the music:

Get the fuck out.

The tunes in The Nutcracker are pretty much inescapable. You hear them in Publix.

I don't know what that is. [Google] Oh, Jacksonville super market chain. Fair enough.

In commercials.

Friskies Cat Food, anyone?

In your wife's car when she makes you take it in for an oil change.

Ha ha! Women are incapable of doing that.

And there's good reason for that. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a rock star of his day, a regular Axl Rose of 19th-century Russia.

Analogy:

Analogy is both the cognitive process of transferring information from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target), and a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. In a narrower sense, analogy is an inference or an argument from one particular to another particular, as opposed to deduction, induction, and abduction, where at least one of the premises or the conclusion is general. [via wikipedia]

You're doing it wrong.

He wrote operas, symphonies, ballets, chamber music, piano music and some of the earliest forms of grunge.

What the fuck?

Well, not that last one.

Oh. Ha ha! Good one.

But still, in an era dominated by a group of composers known as The Five, he was a rebel, an outsider who was, reputedly, quite fond of vodka (which might explain the whole dancing peppermint stick thing).

You...what? Seriously?

You can score big points with your lady friend:

Ha ha! Men only go to ballets to get laid. Good times.

As the couple is dancing near the end of the show, lean over and comment on how the pas de deux they're performing is far superior to anything on this season's Dancing With the Stars.

Fuck me running. [Ed note: I'd rather stab myself in the eye with a knitting needle than watch Dancing with the Stars. Also, dude, pal, don't capitalize prepositions.]

Did we mention the ballerinas in tutus? Enough said.

Ha ha ! Women are objects!

Jebus.