to see the wizard

I don't really talk about it much because it makes me feel unbelievably dorky, but I'm completely obsessed with all things Wizard of Oz.

No, seriously. Like, I love Oz more than one might think imaginable. I used to watch the 1939 Judy Garland musical version over and over again until I had nightmares about flying monkeys and could sing every word to every song by heart. I also watched Return to Oz several times but the Wheelers totally creeped me out, so my fascination with it was short-lived.

Then I got a little older and started reading all the books. I'm an avid reader now that I'm an adult, but I was the same way as a kid, for sure. I devoured stories about Oz, even though they didn't all make sense to me.

In high school, my drama department produced "The Wiz" as our spring musical when I was a junior (no one on cast was African-American, but we acted with soul). I student directed the show and played Glinda the Good, the movie-star good-witch sister who shows up in the end to send Dorothy home and sing the amazing reprise of "If You Believe".

When I got to college, I took a children's literature course and we read The Emerald City of Oz and I was amazed at the complicated politics of Oz that I obviously never picked up on when I was seven. Then I read Wicked. Oh, Wicked. I love Wicked because it takes the Oz story and turns it on it's head and gives crazy detailed background about Dorothy and the Wicked Witch and, holy crap, I love that book. (Son of a Witch is pretty good too, not nearly as good as Wicked in my opinion, but still a book about Oz, so I love it).

This long line of Oz-fascination leads me, of course, to the latest in Oz reimaginings - The SciFi channel's Tin Man starring Zooey Deschanel and Alan Cumming. Tin Man has received some pretty brutal reviews, but still achieved the title of most-watched telecast in network history when the first two-hour installment aired on Sunday night. And I love it.

It's brilliant, really, in a totally post-modern, deconstructed kind of way. It alludes to Baum's original story (Deschanel's character is named "DG" and her mother is the former Queen of the O.Z. - the Outer Zone, Glitch is a scarecrow-like character who has had his brain removed by the evil sorceress Azkadellia, Cain is a former police man - or "Tin Man" - who was encased in a tin suit of armor for years as punishment for joining the resistance against Azkadellia), but definitely isn't a retelling. There is plenty of new and reimagined information to keep me glued to the TV for an entire six hours (yeah, it's long) of Oz-induced euphoria. Exactly what I need as this long and painful semester draws to a close.