Fans were pleased to see some of the Wizarding World's queer characters take the spotlight; however, not as many were comfortable with the extraordinarily graphic sex scene in Part IV.

My old brief acquaintance Darren Criss is playing the role in LA right now (alternating with female rock goddess Lena Hall in the titular role). He's always been kind of low-key, and tends to play really chill bro types, but he's become known as the "seething rage Hedwig," which amuses me.

She gets him anyway!

Richard O'Brien is a complicated human being (one of the first "post gender" celebrities, though I think he identifies as "mostly a man" again now), and that's how you get a fabulous, campy, super-queer romp that's also pretty rapey, sex-negative and queer-burying. It's great fun, I've done it live for thirteen years,…

When I did "The Little Mermaid" last month, somebody Googled the original actor to play the part of Prince Eric on Broadway, and found a somewhat disturbing picture of him in hair and makeup. He bears a very small resemblance to me, but in hair and makeup, he looks unpleasantly like I would look in mortuary makeup.

You like Brel?

My group of friends got rid of Auld Lang Syne and substituted All You Need Is Love. As soon as the ball drops, somebody cues up that familiar blast of brass and drumroll for a group sing.

Glass comes in two flavors: minimalist drone, and creeping dread. "Candyman" soundtrack is chilling in its simplicity, and the "Koyaanisqatsi" soundtrack, specifically "Pruitt Igoe and Prophecies" will make you very nervous. It's the sound of the end of the world.

There is no Lura.
There is no Laura either.
They were both you.

"Try to believe one more time/And I try, baby, try, baby, try…"

I can sing high enough and loud enough to play Chief Priest Annas, so just about every Easter I'm booked doing JCS somewhere. It's not Holy Week until I wake up and I'm spitting blood into the sink.

I don't really listen to the Clash much anymore, because every time I do, my little brother tries to fight his way back from that otherworldly nightmare land and it just gets kind of old.

Are you sure you don't mean "when I hear 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame,' I must feed a body into a woodchipper?" Because that could really help me close this cold case I'm working on…

From the first cold day of mid-September to Halloween, I go on a Halloween-music odyssey. There aren't a ton of really essential Halloween albums or compilations, but I've got just about EVERYTHING. From folk song collections like Dean Gitter's "Ghost Ballads," to surreal sound collage/music mashups like Scar Stuff's…

The drive between my house and my high school used to be the exactly length of "Shaft." Like, down to the second given average traffic.

Three and a half- "Merry Wives of WIndsor" was maybe the first genuine spin-off, featuring Falstaff and his band of rogues on a side misadventure between the Henriad events.

"I, Don Quixote" and its adaptation "Man of La Mancha" are my favorite incarnations of the Quixote story, because of the perspective flip on how we see Quixote. An episodic comedy in which a delusional crackpot blunders his way through the world is one thing, but these adaptations take it a step further, using that…

And this time Alan Menken will write the music! And then they'll throw out every song but one, and Elton John will write the rest! And then they'll throw out every song but one, and Lin-Manuel Miranda will write the rest! And then we'll get one song by Paul Simon, because why not? And then when it's all said and done,…

Hamilton is an anomaly. A musical hasn't been famous for its music and its icons since… well, RENT came close in the 90s, but didn't get this far. It's a case of right-time, right-place; the cast album is near-complete, a hip-hop take on the classic "concept album" structure where visuals and live performance are…

I suppose you can read a sort of passive sexism into this; I've read it into other things, sometimes on this show, before. But For Hayley to really ponder or grapple with this particular "grown-up decision" would be significantly out of character for the do-it-on-impulse, go-with-the-flow sort of character Hayley is.…