Of love and men's fashion...

My first love was Donny Osmond. It was brief and unrequited. He was tall and toothy, curly-haired, and apparently a little bit rock-and-roll.

I was four.

The one thing I remember vividly from that brief shining time before I moved on to Shaun Cassidy and Jon from CHiPs in quick succession (my tastes hadn't fully formed yet, apparently) was that I loved to watch men sing. This became abundantly clear a bit later when I would watch Sha Na Na and develop instant crushes on anyone singing lead. A tenor line in a fifties ballad, delivered soulfully by Johnny Contardo or Chico Ryan, would send me into paroxysms of delight. It didn't hurt, I suppose, that they performed bare-chested while in gold lamé stretch pants and jackets. I don't suppose I really understood the appeal of that when I was eight - I just thought, "Ooh! Shiny! And they're singing just for me!"

I grew up and studied musical theater myself. I learned that actors on a stage weren't singing for individual audience members - but were trying to draw them in and make each person feel like they were having an intimate experience. And that if performers can make you feel that when they are on television, they're really highly skilled. At one point I remember seeing a televised performance of my four-year-old Dream Date, Donny Osmond, doing selections from 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.'

In 'Joseph,' the audience isn't supposed to fall in love with Donny Osmond. They are supposed to be moved by Joseph's plight and impressed by his resolve and compelled by his reunion with his family. But I was watching Donny Osmond sing 'Any Dream Will Do' in that coat of many colors and all I could think was, "Ooh! Pretty! I wonder where I could get a coat like that!"

Which I guess goes to show you... Donny Osmond is just no Sha Na Na.