Make Room For Defying Gravity

Despite my Viking genes, Texas upbringing, and 15 years of New York City grit and hustle, I am an absolute softy when it comes to show tunes and Broadway musicals.

My favorite experience to take visitors to in NYC is a small basement bar in the West Village that has a piano player leading a sing-a-long every night. The entire bar knows the words to every song, and the closer you are standing to the piano, the better a singer you likely are. When they inevitably play One Day More from Les Miserable, the regulars all know who will take the five leads, and the rest of the bar knows when to come in on the eight-part harmony for the finale. It'll give you chills. (I am intentionally not including the name of this bar because I don't want to wait in any more lines to get in - but if you ask, I'll tell you.)

That's why, when my wife asked me to see the new Wicked movie, she knew I'd say yes, even though she asked me to go on a Sunday during Fantasy Football season. That is how much I love my wife and appreciate her theatrical upbringing, her tolerance of me singing along loudly when we put on a Broadway playlist on a road trip, and my more common binge of Red Zone on Sundays.

I knew some of the songs from Wicked but having never seen it, didn't fully appreciate the storyline. I grew up loving The Wizard of Oz, but this was a new twist that I thoroughly enjoyed.

As the movie progressed and I more fully understood the power dynamics of the characters in Act One, I couldn't help but think about how many Elphabas there are in the world that remained hidden for far too long because their "green" was a little too much for others.

I have spent a lot of my life with people like that.