This Week's Oz Comic

Okay, yesterday's edition of Heart of the City may not be explicitly Ozzy, but a Kristin Chenoweth namecheck is close enough in my book!

Today's Oz-ish Comic

It looks like the saga of Kristin Chenoweth on a slice of toast ends with this Heart of the City strip. It's probably just as well.

Today's Oz Comics

Good grief, the comics pages are crazy with Oz stuff this week! Okay, here's what we have for today:

• It's not like this is the first ever Oz comic on the theme, but Cowtown asks what happens next. (Hey, Tin Woodman, I don't think you were supposed to hear that comment.)
• Meanwhile, over in Heart of the City, Heart continues obsessing over Kristin Chenoweth.

Today's Oz-Adjacent Comic

Today in Heart of the City, we get a guest appearance from someone extremely well-known and associated with her "Popular" role in Wicked. I wonder if this foretells a few more appearances in the coming days.

Oz at the Tony Awards

I'm going to hold off on the comics overview for a bit so as to present a few highlights from this year's Tony Awards. This year got off to a very Ozzy start, with co-hosts Kristin Chenoweth (the original Galinda on Broadway in Wicked) and Alan Cumming (Glitch in Tin Man). They also gave a little shoutout to the longevity of Wicked:

Another original cast member of Wicked, Joel Grey (who also played the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz in Concert) and his daughter Jennifer introduce the number presented by Best Musical nominee Fun Home, about a girl growing up and coming to terms with not only her own sexual identification, but also her father struggling with his.

No surprise, Fun Home went on to win Best Musical. What I hadn't heard at the time I saw this is that Grey himself recently came out (which would explain the chuckle from the audience while setting this up, cut off in this video). As an aside, keep an eye on Sydney Lucas, who plays Small Alison in the clip above. She could be a huge star.

Chenoweth gets to perform in a number from On the Twentieth Century.

And yes, she was nominated for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical, but lost to Kelli O'Hara in the current revival of The King and I.

Finally, among those remembered in the In Memoriam montage was Geoffrey Holder, who won his two Tonys for designing the costumes and directing The Wiz.

Oz in Jeopardy!

After a flurry of Oz clues in a small number of games in March, Jeopardy! was pretty quiet Oz-wise for a while, until the April 13, 2015 game, which featured two clues of interest, both in the Broadway Debuts category of the Double Jeopardy! round. The very first clue uncovered in the round, for $400:

Alex, the returning champion, rang in first and correctly responded, "Who is Jackman?" (Hugh Jackman, of curse). And while this clue is pretty Ozzy, since the Oz it refers to is Australia, I may not have blogged about it (although Judy Garland is a character in the play, since the titular Boy from Oz did marry Liza Minnelli) by itself. But a few clues later, for $1600, this clue was revealed:

Alex again rang in again, but got a rare wrong answer when he asked, "Who is Menzel?" It was Kathy, the challenger on the right, who then rang in next and correctly responded, "Who is Chenoweth?" Alex (Trebek, the nost, not the defending champion) then helpfully added her first name, Kristin, when confirming that she was correct. (Had I been there, I'm not sure I would have gotten it right if I'd rung in first, although if I'd had more time I probably would have remembered that Idina Menzel was probably in Rent in or before 1997.) Despite his misstep, Alex (the champion, not the host) was such a dominant player that he could not be caught in the end, and defended his championship.

Oz in Jeopardy!

I seem to have hit another bad file — or my video player is on the fritz. Either way, this one didn't work, either. I've got two more, so I may as well just do them without bothering to try screen grabs. So, after four days in a row with Oz (or at least Ozzish) content, they took a few days off. But on the December 17, 2013 show, when they revealed the Double Jeopardy! category:

1939 BEST PICTURE
OSCAR NOMINEES

I told Laura, "We're gonna need this one!" And I was right, because the $800 clue read:

DOROTHY KNOWS THIS TITLE ROLE
WAS WRITTEN FOR W. C. FIELDS,
WHO IS SAID TO HAVE TURNED
IT DOWN OVER MONEY

That's not exactly how it happened, but close enough. Sandy, the challenger at the center lectern, rang in first and correctly responded, "What is the Wizard of Oz?" She did not, however, go on to win.

Two days later, on the December 19, 2013 show, we got this clue for $600 in the Jeopardy! round category Hodgepodge:

THIS SMALL BLONDE
OKLAHOMA-BORN DYNAMO
HAS BEEN "WICKED" ON
STAGE AND FULL OF "GLEE" ON
TELEVISION

This one was a triple stumper, as none of the contestants seemed to know who Kristin Chenoweth is. She originated the role of Galinda in Wicked, for those who may not have already figured that out.

And that's it for Oz clues in 2013. I haven't seen any yet this year, but you know there will be some soon. Maybe I can actually get the screen grabs to work by then!

We May Have a New Elphaba!

Kristin Chenoweth was at the Hollywood Bowl this past weekend, doing her usual concert thing. Apparently, that includes picking a member of the audience to perform "For Good" with her. Friday night, she picks Sarah Horn, and... Oh, here, let's let Sarah show you herself what happened.

(Thanks to Mark Evanier for pointing me in the direction of this great story.)

Today's Wicked parody song

If I weren't already madly head-over-heels in love with Kristin Chenoweth (the original Broadway Galinda in Wicked), this might just push me over the top: It's her take on Anthony Wiener. (Please note, like the news about Wiener himself, this song is not appropriate for young or sensitive Oz fans.)

(Thanks to Mark Evanier for bringing this to my attention.)

(P. S. Kristin: Call me!)

TV Alert!

Hey, everybody, if you can stand the hyperactive jump cuts, you may want to tune into Entertainment Tonight this evening. They've been hyping the first trailer for Oz, the Great and Powerful. Of course, if you're in San Diego for Comic Con this weekend, I suspect there will be a time and place to see it somewhere there, too. (But if you're in San Diego, why are you taking time out to read my little blog???) In other Oz news, yes, it seems that Kristin Chenoweth got badly hurt on the set of The Good Wife (I guess GCB got cancelled). Let's hope she ends up being all right!