Glee, you sure are terrific!

Tonight I experienced the televisual equivalent of complete geek euphoria.

The show is (most aptly) called Glee and it is a musically inclined breath of quirk-filled fresh air. It's the perfect mixture of Popular, Mean Girls and Freaks and Geeks (the high school is even called McKinley!) with a sprinkling of High School Musical (is that another Troy Bolton I see waiting to burst out of the locker room and into a inspirational power ballad?). And that's just the beginning.

The cast includes two original cast members from my favourite Broadway shows: Matthew Morrison (The Great White Way's original Link Larkin in Hairspray) and Lea Michele (Spring Awakening's first Wendla). Oh and the pilot episode alone features not one, but two (!) Journey classics: "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'" and of course, pop rock's pièce de résistance, "Don't Stop Believin'".

My friend Melissa once claimed that I had a serious jonesin' for underdogs. I laughed it off but after watching this show, I totally see it. Like those other McKinley castoffs I love, the kids from Glee, are not the privileged kids with the perfect hair and ludicrous lack of genuine problems or social awkwardness (see: 90210, The O.C. - both of which, I can't stand). They are the under-appreciated, the misunderstood, the down-trodden, the nerds, the freaks and the geeks all wrapped up into one. And I absolutely love them for it.

P.S. - Forgive my punny title. I couldn't resist. You should be happy I didn't do something involving the phrase "Gee Whiz!". Cause I was totally thinking about it.

Mood Music: "I'm Alright" by Kenny Loggins

Awful sweet to be a Spring Awakening fan..

I saw Spring Awakening at the Canon last night and honestly, as cliched as it sounds, I don't think there are words that could describe how much I loved it.

I saw the show for the first time two summers ago in NYC and was completely head-over-heels in love with everything about it. Particularly, I had a humongoid crush on John Gallagher Jr., who plays the helplessly tragic teen, Moritz Stiefel. He was not only hopelessly adorable, but he had won a well-deserved Tony for his role. Plus, I met him after the show and he was literally the nicest guy I've ever met (if only my camera hadn't broken earlier that day, I'd have a pic-toral with his ridiculously cute self! The boy posed for like 10 pics we me and let me just say, we were very cosy.)

Anywhos, enough about J. Galls (although I beg you to please check out his former band, Old Spring Pike, which now goes by The Spring Standards). The point is, since I had such a connection to the cast that I saw in NY, I was worried that the touring cast, particularly the new Moritz, would fail to live up to my expectations. Boy, was I wrong.

While I'll admit the Wendla wasn't perfect (she was never my favourite anyways), most of the cast was spot-on. Matt Doyle, who plays Melchi these days, is actually perfect. And my god, Blake Bashoff, is quite possibly the closest thing to J. Galls that you could get. Honestly, sometimes he sounded exactly like him - especially during "Don't Do Sadness/Blue Wind", which is my absolute favourite song from the show. I'll admit, he wasn't as cute as J. Galls was - and still is - but he had the twitchy Moritz-isms and the sky-high Stiefel-do down. And that's enough to pull at my heartstrings.

And the cast wasn't the only thing that had my Broadway-lovin' heart-a-beatin'. The bare bones style set fit perfectly in the Canon. It seemed so natural that if you didn't know better, you'd think that SA was the only show that had ever played at the theatre. The lighting was also still as breathtaking as ever (those blue lights during "The Mirror/Blue Night" gave me goosebumps). Oh and that score. The musicians played the songs so perfectly, I felt like I was listening to the soundtrack again for the millionth time.

Basically, all I could think during the show was, to quote Moritz, truly, heaven must feel like this.

Mood Music: "All That's Known" - Spring Awakening

Is your green army jacket the only thing keepin' you warm tonight? Emile? Emile? Emile? You're my dirty man candy, Emile.

Hirsch-y Kisses + Denny not having weird ghost-sex with Izzie + Liev Schreiber in drag (!) + Ang Lee + boys in army jackets + Jonathan Groff, he's such a frizzy-wigged radical! + my future father-in-law Eugene Levy + most important musical festival in history = I just jizzed in my pants.

August 14 is too frickin' far away.

P.S. - I am a threat to national security according to Google. I searched "taking woodstock trailer" and it took me to a page that said "Your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now. We apologize for the inconvience and we hope we'll see you again on Google". Have I just been banned from the most popular search engine of the times because I wanted to get my Emile on? This is the defintion of injustice.

P.P.S - Take a long-winded gander at these pictorals. Is it just me or is Hirsch-y channeling Leo DiCaprio in Romeo + Juliet?

Mood Music: "Annie Waits" - Ben Folds Five