I ♥ Cheese

I'm sure I've posted a version of this before (even if Blogger's crummy search won't fess up to that fact), but I haven't posted this one and E-6 got me thinking about it and it's a day when I need it so y'all will get it too. To be in such joy at what one can do. To share that joy. Lucky lucky few, Petra Haden and her Sell Outs (so named, not because of their commercial potential but because she formed them to help her recreate live the a cappella Who Sell Out she recorded all by herself).

And while this performance is fine, it's the oh-so-NYC hip crowd I'd like to smack upside its collective too cool for school head, and I'd do it, too, if I wouldn't get my hand impaled on their retro-nerdy glasses. For they want to laugh at "Don't Stop Believin.'" And while Journey might be worth a chuckle or two, the song sure isn't, especially when it's getting sung like this. That's why pop music moves us so, after all--for as long as you sing it, you can believe it. Don't ever think singing is natural, which is why those folks who can't stand musicals because people suddenly burst out in song miss the point entirely. What else is theater, is something as grand and glorious as film (we are made of light and big!), supposed to be but absolutely unnatural? (Leaving aside all traditions of realism, which are really just an act put on with a paltry budget and I'm not sure if I mean money or imagination). Singing let's us rhyme "thrill" with "fill" and not feel like utter douches. Or, more directly, singing let's us feel.

[Digression even for me, so therefore brackets...Which gets us to Glee that co-opted this take of the song from Petra Haden, and of course it did as the show is pure cheese, the underdog losers we all feel we are finding their home, at last, on the island of misfit boys and girls, even if they don't know it, can only show it when their mouths get wide enough to let their hearts out. Which is why Sue Sylvester is so needed, as the Addison DeWitt/Waldo Lydecker to balance out all that sappy-dopey-sweet on the other side of the otherwise off and up in the air teeter-totter. That they then go and auto-tune everything is a problem, and denies the sheer touching, don't-laugh-at-this humanity of Haden and her far from sell outs, but I guess I wrote myself out of my bracket, didn't I?]

So do it, I dare you. Hold on, for one more day.