Today's Moment Of Pure Ridiculous Joy: Tony Bennett singing "Snowfall"

Today's Moment Of Pure Ridiculous Joy

#JustBecause

Morning glow! By your light
We can make the new day bright.
And the phantoms of the night
Will fade into the past.
Morning glow is here
At last!

Today's moment of pure ridiculous joy: Bridget rolling around in delirious happiness

This song may or may not fill me with such joy that I’ve listened to it on repeat for well over two hours as I excavated and organized and cleaned my room:

Today's Moment Of Pure Ridiculous Joy: "I Just Wanna Dance"

Fun fact: There is a 2001 three-act opera exploring, parodying, mocking and even sympathizingly understanding the cultural underpinnings and social normalizations of The Jerry Springer Show. It is called (if you can even believe this name wasn’t already taken) Jerry Springer: The Opera.

Its breakout song—at least for gay men at massive circuit parties in the early 2000s—was “I Just Wanna Dance,” in which a stripper who is done being belittled and called a whore takes ownership of the actions and choices her circumstances have offered her and proclaims “I’m tired of all this trying / I wanna do some living / ‘Cos I’ve done enough dying / I just wanna dance / I just wanna fucking dance!”

Yes, there is swearing. It’s about JERRY SPRINGER.

But back to us gays and our massive circuit parties (which are massively massive dance parties with laser light shows, rampant shirtlessness, speakers the size of industrial refrigerators and deafening remixes of awesome dance songs, with the exception of Madonna’s appalling rendition of “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina,” which is in every conceivable on this and all other planets way the polar opposite of awesome and you are to NEVER MENTION AGAIN). Anyway, we gays OF COURSE made many deafening remixes of “I Just Wanna Dance,” which is an awesome dance song. Plus it’s about wanting to dance. TOTAL TWOFER.

Speaking of twofers, here’s one of the remixes paired with dance clips from every awesome genre of awesome movie musical from West Side Story to Xanadu. IT. IS. SO. AWESOME. Watch it. Love it. Sing along with it. If it doesn’t make you wanna be gay, it will at the very least make you wanna dance. I mean wanna FUCKING dance!

Without so much as a kiss my foot or have an apple

White Christmas is the dumbest, plot-hole-iest, staggeringly-implausible-storyline-iest movie ever made -- and I adore every second of it. I used to host a party every year in Chicago and invite only the friends I knew were able to shut up for 120 minutes so we could all enjoy its ridiculous awesomeness together in peace. And then I usually watched it again on my own. And maybe one more time. But now my DVD is buried in a box in my storage locker ... and I’m thrilled beyond belief that I’m -- as we speak -- finally about to see it on the big screen.

All that said, it still drives me NUTS that Rosemary Clooney runs (well, clomps in four-inch stilettos) away from Bing Crosby in a self-righteous fit over a laughably stupid misunderstanding that she could easily clear up with a simple question and then boards a train with a little satchel in which she's packed all her clothes, wigs, makeup, gowns, those white sequined oven mitts she wears in "Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me" plus four of the Vermont dancer boys. And then she happily -- yes: happily, despite the loathing she had for Bing's appearance on TV that was so toxic it prompted her to sneak away from Vermont in secret -- watches Bing's appearance on TV, suddenly has a mis-misunderstanding revelation, sneaks back to Vermont in the dead of night with her sensible orthopedic Army-issue oxfords in tow and somehow absorbs all the "Gee, I Wish I Was Back in the Army" choreography out of thin air from some secret backstage rehearsal room in that drafty barn that apparently a cast of 1,000 people had mysteriously never even known about.

But those gowns!

And don't get me started on that stupid "Sisters" number -- it sure gets a LOT of mileage for having only one verse and an enormous dance break where Rosemary and Vera basically just stand on stage and smile dewily at Bing and Doofusface while presumably the rest of the audiences watches and thinks they're being somehow entertained by all that standing around.

But those gowns!

And Bing Crosby sings “Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep” after chugging a quart of buttermilk and Rosemary Clooney’s and Vera-Ellen’s “ugly” brother is actually totally cute when they show Bing and Doofusface his picture and WHAT THE HELL IS THAT “MR. BONES” SONG?

But those gowns!

And then Vera-Ellen — who does the entire movie in funnel-collared outfits tailored to hide whatever the hell is wrong with her neck — descends from the sky in her tearaway Ostrich Barbie outfit and executes some wicked nerve taps WITHOUT EVEN WEARING TAPS.

But those gowns!

And the general is clearly on laudanum binge in the attic of his hotel-theater as every U.S. war soldier past, present and future swarms all over the entire property and fills every hotel room not already taken by the swarm of singers, dancers, directors, and costume and tech crew members, and when they all finally surprise him they seat him at the table of honor behind a three-foot-tall cake that completely blocks his view of the show that they put together ESPECIALLY FOR HIM TO SEE.

But those gowns!

Today's moment of pure, ridiculous joy: Kristin Chenoweth sings "Veronique"

You want to know what brings me pure ridiculous joy on the stage, in my car and dans le rue? THIS does. This gorgeous, inspired, culturally literate, perfect little theatrical montage of brilliantly silly ridiculousness from Betty Comden, Adolph Green and Cy Coleman's brilliantly silly -- and just plain brilliant -- musical On the Twentieth Century.

From the virtuosic coloratura runs to the not-having-sexual innuendo of "she close the door/and start the Franco-Prussian War," this piece is The. Perfect. (Non. Sondheim.) Showtune.

And I may or may not have listened to it on repeat for two hours last night as I folded a towering mountain of laundry.

Watch and listen. Because it WILL be on the test.

Today's moment of pure, ridiculous joy: Liza Minnelli sings "Ring Them Bells"

I don't know why I love this song so much. It's not technically from a show. I've never been a huuuuuuuuuge fan of Liza. In fact, most of her Liza with a Z concert makes me bleed from my nipples. Bob Fosse's choreography to the song -- and to the entire concert -- is clownish, poorly rehearsed and alarmingly sloppy. And oh, dear. That dress.

But "Ring Them Bells" is Kander and Ebb at their collaborative finest: simple melodic lines with enormous hook and impact, broad storytelling through seemingly offhand details, a seamless fusion of pathos and humor, an underscoring of inspired silliness, and a big belty chorus that throws me against the farthest wall in a puddle of goosebumps every time I hear it. I can't find a YouTube video of it with terribly amazing sound, but it doesn't even matter how watery the sound is when you see Liza finally marching downstage flopping her knees and hyperextended elbows between the rows of sloppy clown dancers as she belts to the rafters for the umpteenth time that ya gotta Ring! Them! Bells!

Even in that jailbait babydoll dress.

Today's moment of pure, ridiculous joy: Liz Callaway sings Meadowlark

Golden-voiced (she can sing as sweet as a Disney princess and she can belt like a diva) Liz Callaway (who sang the theme song to The Nanny with her sister, Ann Hampton Callaway, who also wrote it) has made a signature of "Meadowlark," an oft-overlooked story song (from the musical The Baker's Wife) written by Stephen Schwartz (who also wrote Godspell, Pippin, Working, Children of Eden and Wicked, among others) in a masterful fusion of narrative, metaphor, emotional arc and melody. I've listened to it non-stop since I got to work this morning and discovered that a friend of mine had posted it on Facebook as his moment of pure, ridiculous joy. 

I recommend you listen to it at least three times: once to immerse yourself in the gorgeous, heartbreaking story, once to drink in Liz Callaway's breathtaking, shimmery voice and storytelling, and once to listen to the sumptuously layered orchestration -- especially the hearty, powerful lower brass in the last chorus. 

I guarantee you repeated shivers. And smiles. And pure, ridiculous joy.