I'm in a temporary state of euphoria. The reason? Wicked. Yes, the musical. If you know me, you might know that it is my favorite musical and that Idina Menzel, the star, is sort of an idol of mine.

Such talent should be revered!
...But not at $150 a seat to see Wicked in Gershwin theatre.

This is where the wonder of Google helps me out. Someone most talented snuck a camera into the audience, and for your viewing pleasure on Google Video is the 2 1/2 hour performance, in its entirety. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Wicked is the story of the wicked witch of the west (elphaba) and the good witch of the east (galinda) before Dorothy came to Oz. In a nutshell, elphaba isn't evil. She's actually the daughter of the Wizard of Oz (her mother had an affair... I assume to symbolize the wickedness of her mother's deeds elphaba is green.) But neither she nor the Wizard knows that until the very end when he thinks she's dead. Her sister, Nessarose, gets the ruby slippers and once the house lands on her elphaba wants the shoes back as a keepsake to remember her sister by. (in Elphaba's words... "What kind of person steals shoes off a dead woman?!") But she instead is 'foiled' and melts. Actually that's a trick. Elphaba doesn't die. She realizes that she will never be able to live in peace with all of Oz against her (because of false crimes blamed on her by the wizard, who fears her because he is a powerless fraud) so she fakes her own death to be able to run away and live with Fiero, the scarecrow (turned as such by the wizard when he refused to tell of Elphaba's whereabouts. At one point, the husband to Galinda... but obviously that didn't work out). There's a lot of other plot I could get in to... but really I'm lucky that you've read this far.

If you've got 2 1/2 spare hours and a tolerance for pixilated film:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246520634552587712&q=wicked

If you've only got a few minutes:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9152881016649431461&q=wicked