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Song of the Day #1,068: ‘Songbird’ – Naya Rivera

Top Ten ‘Glee’ Performances – Season 2
#4 – ‘Songbird’ – Santana

‘Glee’ is packed with hot chicks but for my money the hottest of them all is Santana Lopez, played by Naya Rivera. What, you expected Lauren Zizes?

In Season One, Santana wasn’t given much to do other than look good, deliver sarcastic insults and occasionally make out with Brittany. But this season, she realized that those sessions with Brittany were more than just playful experimentation. The character has given show creator Ryan Murphy another avenue to explore the experience of coming out in high school.

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Song of the Day #1,067: ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ – Chris Colfer & Darren Criss

Top Ten ‘Glee’ Performances – Season 2
#5 – ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ – Kurt & Blaine

One of the best and worst things to happen to ‘Glee’ in Season Two was the emergence of a love interest for Kurt.

On the plus side, the bullying storyline that drove Kurt from McKinley High to the Dalton Academy was well handled and poignant.

And Blaine Anderson (played by the super talented Darren Criss) proved a dreamy distraction from the troubles Kurt left behind. The blooming of their relationship was a joy to watch, and how great to imagine all the American households rooting for a couple of gay kids to have their first kiss.

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Song of the Day #1,066: ‘Tomorrow In Her Eyes’ – Ron Sexsmith

The nice thing about theme weekends is that it gives me a chance to revisit the albums of a favorite artist in chronological order, enjoying the evolution. Often an album I’d kind of lost track of over time will reemerge as a favorite.

That has been the case with Retriever, an understated Ron Sexsmith album that followed the more showy Blue Boy and Cobblestone Runway.

I lose this album in a blur of the other material Sexsmith released in later years because it doesn’t have as overt an identity as its predecessors.

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Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen has written and directed 44 feature films over the past 45 years, a streak that would be amazing even if all of those films sucked.

They don’t, of course. I consider five of them flat-out masterpieces (I’ll let you speculate as to which five in the comments). Another dozen or so are various degrees of excellent, and five or ten others are various degrees of good to great.

In a sense, Allen is not just a filmmaker but a genre unto himself. And as genres go, he’s one of my very favorites.

However, the new millennium hasn’t been very kind to Woody Allen. Following a nice one-two punch with 1999’s Sweet and Lowdown and 2000’s Small Time Crooks, he released a string of mediocre, forgettable films — starting off with a duo that represent the nadir of his career to date, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Hollywood Ending.

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Song of the Day #1,065: ‘How On Earth’ – Ron Sexsmith

2004 saw the release of Ron Sexsmith’s seventh studio album, Retriever. This record wasn’t as showily produced as its predecessor, but did maintain the overall polish. Sexsmith was now consistently putting out albums that not only contained great songs but sounded great as well.

I realize that Ron Sexsmith Weekends aren’t exactly setting the world on fire. My meager audience would probably prefer any number of things to these posts. But I have to say, revisiting each of Sexsmith’s albums as I prepare my blog entries, he has grown even more in my estimation.

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