If This Really Was a Glee Kind of World

Recently I found myself an unwilling active participant in the “Occupy A Bar Stool Movement” at a local establishment that borders on East Meadow.

After a few rounds of "Rock, Papers, Schism" with the other patrons in regards to politics and those newly elected and re-elected public servants and the lingering candidates lawn signs, I turned my attention to the Plasma screens on the wall in hopes of some lighter fare and bouts of athletic prowess.

However, seeing as how the NBA couldn’t negotiate within time and agree on something as minor as which place to order lunch from for it’s meetings (The owners want Papa Johns, the players want Pizza Hut and the media wants Dominos) making ESPN was about as fresh as Gilligan’s Island repeats, so one of the female mixologists decided to flip through the channels and landed on a program aptly called “Glee.”

Glee is about happy-go-lucky high school students and their teachers, who participate in a glee club singing chorus. They go through their lives constantly breaking into song, like some daily over the top Broadway musical revival.

Talk about a dose of UN-reality TV! Can you imagine an electronics salesman husband coming home to his beautiful, but harried school psychologist wife after a hard day at work and as he arrives home and enters the kitchen to find her slaving over a rump roast that accidentally burned, because she was busy hanging up the laundry and forgot about the meal and he breaks into a rendition of Frankie Valli’s, “Who Loves You...Pretty baby? Who’s gonna help you through the night?”

This would lead into a flashback of the beautiful school psychologist’s start to her day. This would be on the Merrick platform of the LIRR and have her frustrated at the slow way everyone is boarding the 6:06 a.m. train to NYC and breaking into her rendition of Bert’s song from Mary Poppins, ”Step in time...step in time, Never need a reason, never need a rhyme, step in time.”

After the flashback you would see the husband and wife now deciding to abandon the burnt roast and (gleefully) go out to dinner.

He would easily find a spot at Applebees and there would not be the normal 40 minute wait. Instead a young female hostess would snatch up two menus and break into a upbeat rendition of Beauty and the Beast’s, “Be Our Guest (Be our guest, Put our service to the test.)” This would actually have all the rest of waiters, waitresses, bartenders and managers joining in just as they received their succulent main courses less than three minutes later.

Continuing our saga, the couple would finish dinner rapidly and now drive quickly over to Hofstra University to see their son play for East Meadow High School in the varsity lacrosse playoff game on a cool spring evening under the lights. The focus would cut to their shirtless, skinny, senior son in the locker room, who was nervously making comments to his teammates about their Garden City rivals.

At this time, the coach would rally his players and sing them a rendition from West Side Story of, “When You’re A Jet (You’re a Jet all the way.)” And the team would get pumped up and excited and take the field with the feeling of those great men that held the flag upright at Iwo Jima (“We can do THIS!")

This would go on for  a while baring rest periods for station identification and smiley and silly commercial announcements  (“Dirty mouth? Clean it up with Orbit Chewing gum!”)

Now as farfetched (remember, nearfetched is NOT a word) as this is, I find it an amazing concept. If normal everyday people would break into songs in public places like vocal flash mobs, life might be a happier place. Wouldn’t it  be like living in Walt Disney World 24/7?