"Rydell is very proud of our extra-curricular activities! So please come out for band tryouts. If you play an instrument, it's better to play with a group than to play with yourself!"

Cut to sniggering T-Birds and Pink Ladies. The line is from Grease Two, one of my favorite movies and one which I’ve got pretty close to memorized, thanks to repeated viewings over the course of two decades and the fact that I typed the script out by hand in the summer of 1994 so that I could put it on at camp, with rollerblades standing in for motorcycles in a move that, looking back, was so fraught with potential liability that I can’t believe they let me do it.

But anyway - the point is, I know the script and I know the jokes and I know the goofy laugh lines (“I wouldn’t fool around with Mother Nature if I were you!” “You fooled around with everyone else, Paulette!”). So that’s why I was floored when, having joyously switched over to it while channel-surfing, I caught the delivery of this line - sans punchline. Bravo had left it as “If you play an instrument, it’s better to play with a group.” Really? That’s what Bravo cut? I had no idea that television had become so puritanical. Do they cut “Sorry, Rizz, sloppy seconds ain’t my style” from the original Grease? (I learned what that meant rather late in life, presumably not unlike CNN’s John Roberts.) Apparenly Bravo also cut “Reproduction,” which is one of the best songs in the movie. If kids can’t learn about sex from a bunch of sixties-styled kids singing musical numbers, where are they gonna learn? Did they cut “Let’s Do It For Our Country?” What do they think the “it” stands for? (Hint: It stands for sex.)

Anyhow - just so you know - Grease Two is an awesome movie with implied dirty parts, high-quality bowling choreography and Michelle Pfeiffer at her very hottest, grinding on top of a stepladder. You’re welcome.

Reproduction: Grease Two [YouTube]

Let’s Do It For Our Country: Grease Two [YouTube]

Update: Oh my God, they are cutting left, right and center. They cut this one, too: Goose: “You got something going with Paulette?” Johnny: “Let’s just say I’m giving her therapy for her disease: Nymphoidmania.” It doesn’t even make SENSE, but they cut Johnny’s line, anyway. Bravo, you suck.

Update #2: Confirmed: They cut “Reproduction.” That song featured TAB HUNTER, a legend of 50s Hollywood screen idols and the original Young Joe from Damn Yankees. (His biography is fantastically interesting - this Wikipedia entry just made me order his book off Amazon.) But that song is not only awesome AND instructive (“Now you’ve seen just how the stamen gets its lusty dust into the stigma/And why this frenzied chlorophyllous orgy starts in spring is no enigma - we call this quest for satisfaction a what, class?/A photo-periodic reaction!”) - and it features a little slice of American his-to-ry. But anyway.

Young Manhattanite, It's Getting Old

youngmanhattanite:

The New and Improved Chartini:

charitini:

Canada. p.s. free publicity, panels. Yay new media!

To the point!

(a) So now mentioning that I’m from Canada is “new”?

(b) What part of “free” in relation to Tumblr is new?

(c) “Publicity?” Tumblr? Really?

(d) I have been on panels before, thanks.

(e) Sorry I’ve slacked on being charitable - I haven’t done ANYTHING since last Tuesday, when I lugged six bags of swag to the ASSME event. Unless you count pushing @eliewieselfdn again at #PDF09, where I moderated a…panel.

Here’s what I’d like to see for the new and improved Young Manhattanite: bylines. Take potshots, fine; just take responsibility. That’s what I do. Yay new media!