♫ "Mister Cellophane" (Chicago: A Musical Vaudeville Original Cast Recording)

Smartphones and social media have inflicted so many changes upon Society that it's easy for many of them to pass by unnoticed. Even one as tectonic as "having parents (and grandparents) whose lives are extremely well-documented."

Those of us in the Millennial and Gen-X camps are stunned and baffled by this concept…maybe even a little horrified by it. We grew up in a world in which you barely had a clue as to what your parents got themselves into and up to before you came to know them. Only Judy Garland's kids got to see pictures and footage of Mom hanging out as a teenager. And maybe the Kennedy kids. Even then, they'd only get to see those photos from that party after they'd been unsealed by the court. Their folks (and attorneys) had plenty of time to prepare them for what they were about to see.

How are these up-and-coming generations going to stand it? The teens who became their parents had Instagrams, Twitters, and TikToks. Which wouldn't be so terrifying, if it weren't for the fact that they also had phone cameras. And brains whose resources for impulse control were still very much Under Development.

Both of my parents left this Earth with my deep respect for them, and by extension, the validity of their imparted wisdom, intact. When a pair of Gen-Z parents sit their kid down for a serious and important chat about Making Good And Safe Choices, and that child has seen HD video of those same people egging each other on to eat an entire two-pound jar of Nutella in less than thirty seconds…well, is there any point in continuing?

I count myself lucky. Physical photos that survive from the Fifties and Sixties have passed through two equally-stern sets of gatekeepers. People flipped through an envelope of developed pictures and they immediately chucked out all but a few keepers. Even the keepers were "keeped" in a shoebox, without any consideration of organization. If the photo was good enough for a frame or a photo album, chances were that the kids would have already seen it a thousand times.

I have just the right number of candid photos of my parents as teens and young adults. These are all thanks to longtime friends of theirs who sent me copies after each of them passed away. These snaps have thus passed through a third filter: "Should I show this to their son? Would he enjoy seeing this?"

My parents (teenage/young adult edition) look like fun, happy people who enjoyed being together. They had some neat hobbies. If these pictures changed my perceptions of them, it was only for the better.

All of this relates to today's track. It's from the original 1975 production of Kander and Ebb's "Chicago," directed by Bob Fosse.

"Mister Cellophane" is a lonely, solo number sung by Amos Hart, the schlubby, put-upon husband of lead character Roxie Hart. Roxie's been arrested for murdering her lover (who is decidedly not Amos). Amos somehow sticks by her while she's in jail awaiting trial. She attracts a level of media attention that flourishes into celebrity. Before long, she's delighted and excited to discover that if she isn't convicted and sent to the electric chair, she'll win stardom as well as freedom.

Somewhere around Act 2, Amos finally realizes that Roxie never really loved him. From the moment they met and through her immediate predicament, she regarded him as an exploitable (and disposable) resource. Roxie couldn't care less about his support and help. She's just sort of cast him as a character in the story she and her shifty lawyer are performing for the newspapers.

Amos takes to the stage, solo, costumed as an exhausted old vaudevillian. He sings this regretful song about how he was never a main character — in Roxie's life, and just in general.

The role of Amos Hart was originated here by Barney Martin. If you don't recognize the name, you're absolutely going to recognize the voice:

"What…? That's Seinfeld's dad!!!"

I love it, love it, love it when this happens. I know it's silly to forget that actors have, you know, careers. A great career in the performing arts isn't a matter of highs and lows…it's about a range of adventures.

Still, every time I learn that a previously-familiar actor's arrival on a hit sitcome came after a killer career on Broadway or elsewhere, it's like coming across that photo of my Dad, young and on skis.

Barney Martin isn't the only "My Dad On Skis" in the "Seinfeld" cast. If you weren't already aware that Jason Alexander originated a role in a Stephen Sondheim musical and also won a freaking Tony award in 1989, well, you do now:

The effect is even stronger when the actor is performing what I regard as an underwritten, stereotyped supporting part in a sitcom that I can take or leave. I grew up with the sitcom "Alice." Once I became a Sophisticated Adult (spits watermelon seed into spittoon, with a CLANG), it floored me to learn that the same actress who, week after week, wasn't asked to do much more than stay out of the way when Polly Holliday said her catchphrase, had also recorded (oh holy cats) this:

And as for Charles "Match Game" Nelson "Match Game PM" Reilly…where to begin, where to end?

I should note that this kind of awareness runs in both directions. When I learned that William Daniels would be appearing at a Fan Expo con where I was moderating a bunch of panels and onstage interviews, I knew that there was no freaking way I wasn't going to get his autograph, regardless of expense or trouble. There was little of the former, but the latter more than made up for it. I could just manage it, if I got into his autograph line at least an hour before his scheduled appearance to guarantee a #1 spot and then zip straight from there to the stage where I was scheduled to…well, not "appear" so much as "facilitate."

(When you're moderating these panels or doing an onstage interview, "Mister Cellophane" isn't mournful…it's actually aspirational.)

Minutes before the arrival of Mr. Daniels and his wife, Bonnie Bartlett, the line to meet him was properly ginormous. The fans were of one cadre or the other: they were there to meet Mr. Feeney of "Boy Meets World," or they carried scale-sized 1982 Pontiac Firebird Trans-Ams and awaited a Moment with the voice of K.I.T.T. from "Knight Rider."

The crowd was large enough that it's not statistically unlikely that I was the only one with "1776" memorabilia. But I had plenty (plenty) of time to observe the crowd and I didn't spot any fellow members of the community.

Back to the song. I'm sure that film/video of Barney Martin's performance of "Mister Cellophane" exists. Alas, nobody's seen fit to illegally upload it to YouTube yet.

Instead, here's Ben Vereen appearing on "The Muppet Show," as the cuckolded husband of a stone-cold murderer who, far from showing any remorse over performing a point-blank revenge killing, is eager to get out of jail so she can begin commercially-exploiting the termination of a human life by her own hand. At this point in the story, the man has just learned that the story she spread in the newspapers about carrying his child was all a lie to gain publicity. She has jettisoned the singer of this song, who can no longer offer her anything she can possibly exploit for her personal gain.

[Insert an appropriate Statler and Waldorf zinger here.] ⓘ

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