the power of madonna

Glee's All Madonna episode is on tonight and once again, the nerd choir girl in my soul is doing backflips! I mean, come on, it's Madonna, she who provided the soundtrack to my 80s childhood. I used to have all of her albums - on cassette. In fact, I think True Blue was the first cassette I actually bought. Who can resist the awesomeness of old school Madonna, like "Borderline" and "Live to Tell" and "Holiday" and "Material Girl" and "Lucky Star"??? And Glee? Is just awesome. Put them both together and you get a veritable explosion of awesomeness. I would listen to Lea Michele and Matthew Morrison singing the alphabet. And when you throw in Jane Lynch Vogue-ing? It's magic, people.

I think I stopped digging Madonna after Evita (when she started taking voice lessons and living in England and making crappy movies). I love Evita (for obvious reasons, which you would know if you've been following me for any period of time. I even used to play out the balcony scene on my front porch when I was a kid) and I saw the movie a few times (for a while there, I would sing along with Che but with an Antonio Banderas inflection) but yeah. It's not very good, is it? It's pretty, and she looks good, but Madonna and Antonio lack the power, the fierce intensity, the just plain scariness of the original broadway cast (I still can't listen to that cast album all the way through in one sitting. They are both just terrifying on it.) and missing that intensity is rather missing the point, yes?

Sidebar here - I have a very vivid memory of talking about the movie in Spanish class and getting into it with a classmate of mine, because she claimed that Eva Peron was half Croatian. And I would have gone along with that, like oh, okay, little known fact, etc - except then she told me that Eva says so in "Rainbow High." Uh, what? First of all, don't question me about the book, chica. I mean, I know they changed a bunch of things for the movie ("She's our new world Madonna with the golden touch..." in "Rainbow Tour", being one of those changes.) Second of all, no. Just...no.

And then the music started getting weird (Don't Cry for Me Argentina dance remix, anyone?), and I stopped being a big fan of Madonna's. But this Glee episode excites me a whole lot. Nostalgia, I guess, for the days of Park View (and who thought I would ever say that?), crimped hair, neon pink everything, bangle bracelets, big bangs, fingerless gloves, layered socks and all of that fun 80s stuff.

Whee!! Can't wait for tonight to get my Glee on!!