50-48 #65: ARKANSAS MUSICAL

50-48 #65: ARKANSAS MUSICAL

Alas, it has been a full month since 50-48 has come to you, full of throat and diction, filling your eye-holes with sound and fury, signifying nothing. In our time away, we have seen many changes to the 50-48 family, and therefore have foregone our communal time with you, the faithful Razorback nation. We regret this, but our 50-48 Gratuitous Apology Desk assures us that we had good reason. That it couldn’t be helped.

During our hiatus, Hogball has continued its monumental swoon, losing just about every game they’ve played. Nay. They have lost EVERY game. The 50-48 Context Desk assures us that the Alabama win didn’t count, as it was the team’s first game after its coach’s resignation and sometime soon after Ronald Steele quit. Twelve left-handed zombies who had already gnawed off their own left hands because brains were too scarce could have defeated the Tide in such a contest.

If those very same zombies poked out their own eyes, ripped off their right legs for an ill-advised jousting contest, then spent a month cutting their own thighs—slightly, carefully, just above the line of the miniskirts I’m imagining them all to be wearing—because they were upset about their zombie lots in life, or because Bobby told them he loved them, but then after he got in their pants, all of a sudden he decided that Brittney was his soul mate (AS IF!!! And the zombies SEE the way Brittney looks at them in homeroom, the bitch, and how she’s always like, “Bobby went through his undead phase, but he’s matured,” as if that magical moment in the back of his Mustang didn’t mean ANYTHING! As if when they were doing it, he didn’t totally forget about Brittney and his buddies, and they didn’t totally forget about how good brains taste on a hot summer night. Brittney is such a dirty cheerleader cunt anyway. The zombies feel sorry for her. They really do. Fratboy mattress, that’s what she is.), they would still beat the ever-living shit out of our pathetic basketball team.

Coach Pel, apparently, hasn’t given them the PROPER MOTIVATION.

And since OUR basketball team is so horrendous, 50-48 has decided to instead spend its few short moments here in front of you talking about a different team—the East High School Wildcats. Those aforementioned changes to the 50-48 family have led us to spend time with High School Musical, a five-act television movie that tells the story of star-crossed lovers Troy and Gabrielle, the jock and the brainiac, who find each other through the ancient art of singing.

True, 50-48 disapproves of its message that cliques are counterproductive. (Cliques help ensure that no one wants to be around 50-48, who is categorically left out of all groups, which leaves us plenty of free time to dream fancifully of a Hogball team that plays with guts and a zombie corps with a cutting fetish.) True also, it’s an overly-simplistic crib of Romeo and Juliet, complete even with a balcony scene, and doesn’t even give us the payoff of sex or double-suicide. And true, there were moments when our minds drifted to thoughts of which of the students parading around East High Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris would pick off first.

And then, of course, there are the plot holes. For example, Troy’s potential basketball career would be far more dependent upon his AAU tournament schedule than on his high school season—and particularly more than his play in one city championship game. The movie doesn’t acknowledge the evolution of modern scouting. Still, the story’s redemptive qualities far outweighed its debits.

And so, we would like to announce that High School Musical is now the official movie of 50-48. It is, taken in total, 50-48 writ large. First, it demonstrates the magical sexual power of karaoke. Second, and more important, it demonstrates the kinetic energy created when athletics and smarts come together.

And yes. We know what you’re thinking. 50-48 isn’t athletic. And, for that matter, 50-48 isn’t very smart. TRUE! But 50-48 was engaged in the act of WATCHING the jock and the brainiac. And by the transitive property, it’s safe to analogize by arguing that 50-48 likes watching athletics, and it enjoys the same things that smart people like, even though those things often confuse 50-48, leaving it in a dazed state, walking around its neighborhood, eating the buds off flowers, while the woman in the front yard watering her lawn looks on in disbelief. Then she says, “I’m going to call the cops,” to which 50-48 mumbles something to the effect of, “The deification of Gary Gilmore in Norman Mailer’s Executioner’s Song made me want to murder someone in a trailer park, but then I thought better of it, because the interpretive power of reading has the wholly existential consequence of making every written word an act of fiction, whether or not the author ever intended it that way.” Then she beats 50-48 with a fucking rake.

QED, motherfuckers.

Anyway, when our DVD goes back to Netflix headquarters, and Troy and Gabriella are memories, fading with temporal distance as all such memories do, we will be left to cope with the catastrophe of the season. 50-48 has come to terms with it, and has in fact decided to revel in the losing. The more games we lose, the more pathetic Texas looks for falling to us. The more games we lose, the greater percentage of wins our Texas victory becomes. REMEMBER: We beat Texas. This season will always be a success.

Besides, we’re young. There will be plenty of time for these green freshman to BOP TO THE TOP.

They will find themselves. And will, ultimately, be BREAKING FREE.

Sorry for the unannounced hiatus, 50-48icans. We’re bound and determined not to let it happen again. Until next time, buoy your spirits by hugging a Hog, watching High School Musical, or murdering someone from Texas.

It’s good to be back! Long live 50-48 and all its loyal friends!

50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS