Friday, November 24, 2017

I've never really liked "Turkey Lurkey Time"

... mostly because of its toddler-creativity title and Hal David's criminally mind-numbing lyrics. But the gloriously jerky melody and never-gonna-be-boxed-in phrasing are Burt Bacharach at his finest, and I think Michael Bennett defined an encyclopedic choreography vocabulary for the next half-century of show choir competitions in this song alone. Plus I've had a gay-dancer crush on Donna McKechnie -- she of the endless legs and beguiling self-awareness and almost poetic extensions -- since probably before I was born. Plus HOW THE HELL DO THEY ALL DANCE THIS NUMBER WITHOUT IMPLODING IN CATASTROPHIC EXHAUSTION?

Anyway, it's Black Friday, which means it's Turkey Lurkey Time somewhere. So please shout the lyrics to anything -- ANYTHING! -- else to drown out these linguistic burps as you marvel at Donna McKechnie (in red, who first captured my heart as Cassie in A Chorus Line), Baayork Lee (in green, who kinda got shafted when all her great Connie recitative got cut from the original A Chorus Line cast album) and Margo Sappington (in blue, who went on to a life of fame and fortune as the choreographer for the Doonesbury musical) powering through their tipsy steno-pool production number that has absolutely no relevance to the already convoluted, dirty-sexy, nothing-to-do-with-the-holidays story of Promises, Promises:

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