At Prufrock Preparatory School, the most senior official we know about is Vice Principal Nero who you don’t want as an administrator. How he became head of that school I have no idea. But he’s basically what Donald Trump could be if he ran a boarding school and took up a hobby. He’s delusional and narcissistic about playing the violin which he does abysmally horrible. Doesn’t help at all that he makes the students sit in the auditorium for his recitals every evening. Students who fail to do so have to buy bags of candy for him and watch him eat it. Yet, he’s unable to see how bad he is or doesn’t care that his students don’t like his recitals when they have better things to do. Like homework, for instance. He treats the Baudelaires and Quagmires like shit, mocking them by repeating what they say in a high pitched nasal voice. Oh, and he adores Carmelita Spats despite she’s an insufferable brat and sends her on errands. Not to mention, his punishments are ridiculously harsh like taking silverware for showing up in his office without an appointment or tying hands behind students’ backs for being late to class.

A good song to describe his recitals would be “He Plays the Violin,” from 1776. The original version has Martha Jefferson sing about her husband Thomas whose accomplishments are just too long to list even then. I mean the guy basically wrote The Declaration of Independence. However, in this version, I have Duncan and Isadora Quagmire describe how terrible Vice Principal Nero’s violin talents are just abysmal and how they hate watching him for 6 hours every night.

“He Plays the Violin” (ASOUE Version)

Duncan:
Oh he always speaks his passions
He always speaks his views
Whereas other folks keep quiet,
Vice Principal Nero fumes
In truth I can recall
Ringing ears at the auditorium
Even now

Isadora:
He plays the violin
To all of the students’ chagrin
And he blows, oh he blows
But we go, yes we go
That it’s hi-hi-hi-diddle diddle
With screeches from Nero’s fiddle
My strings are awry
Hi-hi-hi-hi
I want to die

Duncan:
I hear his violin
And I get that feeling within
My ears bleed, oh they bleed
While he strains on the stage
And it’s hi-hi-hi-diddle diddle
For six hours straight with that fiddle
My strings are awry
Hi-hi-hi-hi
I just want to die

Isadora:
We only go to see
So we won’t buy candy
If we miss, he’ll be pissed
But he would, yes he would

For it was hi-hi-hi-hi-diddle diddle
While he makes us hear his fucking fiddle
And ever ’twill be
Hi-hi-hi-hi
Through eternity

He plays the violin.