Remember back in 2013, when Idina Menzel and Taye Diggs split up? Remember the despair, the sadness upon hearing them sing together everytime since then that you’ve listened to the RENT Cast Recording? Well, the time has come to move on, because Idina certainly has. Last week, the Broadway star, recording artist, and Queen of Arendelle announced her engagement to one Aaron Lohr.

Who is Lohr? Well even if you haven’t seen him onstage in the likes of See What I Wanna See (Menzel was in that, too), you’ve likely encountered his work, even if you don’t realize it. For example, he was in the latter two films of the Mighty Ducks trilogy, and appeared onscreen in RENT (in which Menzel also starred).

Here’s his number in the 2005 film:

Plus, and the man is a bona fide Newsie. He appeared in the 1992 cult film as Mush, a character with limited screen time but more depth in fan fiction, which we do not suggest you actively seek.

And, finally, if none of this impresses you, he was the singing voice of Max in A Goofy Movie.

Iconic.

We can’t figure out if, like Menzel, Lohr is Jewish (he may at least be of some Jewish descent). In any case, mazel tov to the happy couple, and to Idina on her brand new album! What a month she’s been having!

Image via Wikipedia

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Katy Perry’s yarmulke-inspired dress* (the “bramulke,” if you will) won the Super Bowl last night, obliterating all other competitors—including Perry herself, who put on a pretty good show.

But Idina Menzel (AKA Adele Dazeem) was a close second with her stunning rendition of the national anthem, which had just the right amount of theatrical trilling and drama. Love how she punches the air at the end! She knows she’s nailed it. Take that, Alicia!

http://youtu.be/_OM56DiHGUo

Comedian Billy Eichner received an honorable mention for a series of perfectly executed tweets:

At the end of the game they will announce who gets Israel

— billy eichner (@billyeichner) February 2, 2015

What if this whole game is just someone’s bar mitzvah party — billy eichner (@billyeichner) February 2, 2015

My wife and I LOVED that Scientology ad.

— billy eichner (@billyeichner) February 2, 2015

And apparently a bunch of dudes played a football game? I have no idea what the outcome was; sorry. I’m Australian.

This concludes your coverage of Super Bowl XLIX—and your sports news for 2015. See you next year!

(Main image: Timothy A. Clary/Getty)

* Editor’s note: You guys, for real, we know it’s beachball-inspired.

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THE OSCARS. So many memorable/cringeworthy/hilarious/morally fraught moments! Let’s recap, shall we?

The big question in the lead-up to the ceremony was whether Cate Blanchett would thank Woody Allen if she won Best Actress for her performance in Blue Jasmine—as PR expert Howard Bragman pointed out in Slate, Blanchett was going to be “playing for history,” whether she liked it or not.

And play she did, in a speech equal parts sincere and savvy: first she praised her fellow nominees, then she graciously thanked Allen for casting her (cue brief applause), and then she segued into a rousing cry in support of films with female protagonists: “Audiences want to see them, and in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people!”

How could anyone take umbrage with Blanchett’s brief Woody Allen shout-out when she was using the most public platform in the world to advance the visibility of women? Exactly. It was the lean-in to end all lean-ins, and it succeeded brilliantly because it was was strategic, heartfelt, and true.

John Travolta famously fluffed his introduction of Broadway star Idina Menzel, and in half a second the internet was all over it like rash, with a parody account set up for “Adele Dazeem”:

THANK YOU, JORN TROMOLTO!

— Adela Dazeem (@AdelaDazeem) March 3, 2014

Menzel’s performance of “Let It Go” was still amazing, because as Shakespeare presciently noted, a Broadway star by any other name is still as sweet. (Side note: Travolta claims Scientology helped cure his dyslexia. Science!)

Bette Midler, looking stunning in Alaïa, performed “Wind Beneath My Wings” as part of the Academy’s tribute to members who died in the past year. (We don’t have video of the performance, but for old times’ sake, here’s the montage from Beaches.)

And in one of the best gags of the night, host Ellen DeGeneres ordered pizzas for everybody and hit up Harvey Weinstein for the bill: “No pressure, only a billion people watching. Whatever you feel is right,” she deadpanned. She took up a $300 collection in Pharrell’s hat, but no-one knows if the delivery guy actually got the tip. (TMZ is on it, though.)

What else?

Best documentary short went to The Lady in Number 6, which tells the remarkable story of the late Alice Herz-Sommer, a Holocaust survivor and virtuoso pianist.

Lupito Nyong’o was gorgeous and delightful and utterly unaffected and now everyone wants to be her best friend. (Watch out, Jennifer Lawrence?)

There was The Selfie That Broke The Internet.

Bill Murray improvised a lovely tribute to Harold Ramis.

Matthew McConaughey delivered one of the most narcissistic and entertaining acceptance speeches of all time, thanking God, and—in a you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up moment—himself, ten years into the future, for being his hero. (Time is an accordion, amirite or amirite, Detective Cohle?!) But in the paper-scissors-rock hierarchy of Hollywood, Weinstein still trumps the Almighty, so HALLELUJAH for that.

Until the next awards season: just keep living, everybody. Amen.

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Today is a sad day for enthusiasts of musical theater and perfect genetics: Broadway power couple Taye Diggs and Idina Menzel are separating after 10 years of marriage. While the Internet is buzzing with announcements of the talented (attractive, perfect) pair “calling it quits,” let’s all just take a deep breath. For now they’re just separating, not divorcing. I mean, Kris and Bruce Jenner are still married, right? Hanukkah may have passed, but maybe there’s room for another miracle this year— let’s hope the Diggs-Menzel’s have enough oil left for another year. Re-light each other’s candles! No day but today!

Menzel and Diggs, both 42, met while costarring in the original production of Rent on Broadway. (Fun fact: Menzel worked as a bar mitzvah singer while in school at NYU!) They got married in 2003 and had a little boy, Walker, in 2009. But more recently, a rep told People that though the pair is separating, their “primary focus and concern is for their son.”

Earlier this year, Menzel alluded to People that life with Diggs wasn’t perfect. “We work at it,” Menzel said. “I’m not going to glamorize it or glorify it — we go through tough times like everybody else, but we love each other very much. We try not to be away from each other for more than two weeks at a time and we try to find new ways to communicate.”

Well, duh. Between Tony Award winning Menzel’s recurring role on Glee, and other projects like Disney’s Frozen and her upcoming musical If/Then, plus all of Diggs’ projects, like his most recent film, The Best Man Holiday, things get busy.

In December’s InStyle, Diggs was featured as the “Man of Style,” and he dished a bit about how sexy he finds Menzel’s laid-back style. “…When she’s wearing a sweater and it’s falling off one shoulder and she’ll throw on some jeans that fit just right and some chunky heels… it’s so sexy,” Diggs told InStyle. “Man, my wife does that whole look really well.”

So kiss and make up, you two. Puh-puh-puh-please don’t do this to me.

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Noah Puckerman (Mark Salling) is the coolest kid at McKinley High. He’s the guy at the beginning of Season 1 throwing Slushies in the faces of the glee club kids (on Glee, Slushee-thrower equals popular person), roaming the halls in his letter jacket and throwing the Marc Jacobs-clad Kurt (Chris Colfer) into a dumpster. But soon he, like fellow football jock Finn (Cory Monteith), joins the glee club—and the rest is spontaneous-bursting-into-song history.

With his good looks and hunky guitar serenades, Puck is McKinley’s resident womanizer. He starts a pool-cleaning business to try and seduce moms. He impregnates Finn’s girlfriend, Quinn (Dianna Agron) in the first season—she blames wine coolers and her having had “a fat day” for her indiscretion. And then he tries to woo Shelby (Idina Menzel), the adoptive mother of their child and a teacher at their school. But thanks to Glee’s ‘anything goes’ plot structure, by the time he graduates at the end of the third season, he’s become a halfway decent guy.

We learn about Puck’s Semitic upbringing in Season 1, when we are introduced to the Puckerman family’s most memorable (and only, really) tradition: watching Schindler’s List while eating moo shu pork on Simchat Torah. Glee really doesn’t do subtle. His mother asks him why he can’t date a Jewish girl, sparking one of the show’s more remarkable dream sequences. In it, overachieving Jewish glee club star Rachel Berry climbs through his bedroom window wearing a nightgown and a gleaming Star of David around her neck.

Of course, in Puck’s dream Judaism is more a means to an end than anything else. “Rachel was a hot Jew and the good Lord wanted me to get into her pants,” goes his epic mid-dream voiceover. Barring the line’s inherent absurdity, the most incongruous part of the statement is his use of the term “the good Lord.” Jews don’t really say that. Puck’s brand of Judaism is distinct—and in contrast with Rachel’s—in how much it is influenced by his predominately Christian surroundings in Lima, Ohio. His expression of faith feels very New Testament. Later in the episode, Puck chooses to show Rachel his commitment to her (and to Judaism, presumably) with what he calls a “personal tribute to a musical Jewish icon:” a performance of “Sweet Caroline”

Rachel’s Jewishness, frequently referenced on the series, is part of why she is constantly made to seem different (Kate Hudson, playing a vicious college dance teacher in Season 4, refers to her only as “Schwimmer”—you know, the Jewish guy from Friends), while Puck being MOT is much more peripheral to his identity. It does, of course, have its plot-driving elements. In Season 2’s “Born This Way” episode, Rachel suffers a kick to the face during dance practice and is given the option of a nose job. After she decides she wants to do it, Puck confronts her in the women’s bathroom at school and tells her to be proud of her Jewish heritage. And that girls at temple always come back after their 16th birthday looking different and less hot. It might just be his character’s most profound cultural commentary. (Spoiler alert: cheerleader Quinn, who has the nose that Rachel wants, had actually gotten a nose job but nobody knew!)

Later, at the mall, Kurt points out that Rachel’s idol, Barbra Streisand, ended up being pretty successful even with her natural nose, at which point the whole Glee gang breaks into a performance of Duck Sauce’s “Barbra Streisand.” A literal end to an overwhelmingly literal episode (they sing TLC’s “Unpretty“), but it works: Rachel cancels her appointment with the plastic surgeon.

As Puck’s character got more three-dimensional, he also neared the end of his senior year. After a touch-and-go finals week (and one My Fair Lady cover), he graduates and moves to Los Angeles, leaving behind broken hearts and pristine pools at the end of Season 3. This season, we got introduced to Puck’s younger half-brother, Jake, who shares a father with the legendary McKinley High alum and so far seems to have the same pre-glee club bad attitude. But instead of the letter jacket, little Puck wears an even more badass leather jacket. By episode two, Puck is back in town to talk some sense into his little brother, who—you guessed it!—ends up joining the glee club.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a Puckleberry Jr. sweeps-week fling. Until then, feast your eyes on this fan-made tribute to the original Puckleberry:

Previously on Network Jews:

Andy Botwin, the promiscuous playboy on Showtime’s Pot Comedy Weeds

Saul Berneson, the CIA Middle East division chief on Homeland

Cristina Yang, Grey’s Anatomy’s Atheist Jew

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The following is by far the most exciting and important celebrity interview we have ever scored: Grover.  Granted, he is my favorite Sesame Street character, and I am the proud new father of a two-and-a-half month old baby boy, but still – I challenge you to think of a more timeless living subject.  Naturally, I compiled a list of the 300 or so most important questions I have always wanted to ask Grover.  How has he sustained his fame?  How often does he wash his fur?  What did he do for Passover this year?  How come the 1983 LP “The Best of Grover” has seven songs on the first side and eight on the other?  Did he realize how mind boggling that was to someone who was just learning to count when he recorded it?  The list goes on…

When I was informed that I unfortunately would not be able to hang out with Grover for the full week I had requested, I decided to focus on Grover 2011.  Enjoy!

Jacob: Who is your favorite celebrity?

Grover: It is so hard to choose a favorite when I have met so many nice and wonderful people at Sesame Street and Rechov Sumsum.  You know who was really funny? Jake Gyllenhaal.  He hid the Afikomen and then forgot where he hid it. Sounds like something your cute and furry pal Grover would do, no? At least we are both loveable.

Who was the tallest celebrity you met?

I would have to say my new friend Amar’e Stoudemire is the tallest celebrity, maybe even the tallest person I have ever met!  Amar’e and I played some hoops in The Arbor at Sesame Street! I am pretty sure I surprised him with my sweet moves. Look out New York. Here comes Grover, baby!

Were you surprised he/she was so tall?

I was very surprised!  And Amar’e was impressed by my beautiful and luxurious blue fur.  Wouldn’t it be funny if I was his height and he had my color fur?

Speaking of which, how tall are you?

It is not the size of the monster that counts. All that matters is that I am very cute, very furry, and very blue. I am a monster of perfect proportions!

If you could have dinner with any celebrity couple, who it be and why?

I would have dinner with Idina Menzel and Taye Diggs and I would take them to my favorite place, Charlie’s Restaurant. And seeing as how I also happen to be a very talented waiter, I would take the pleasure of serving us myself!  I know they are allergic to chicken and shrimp from when they last visited Sesame Street so I will be sure to keep them away.

Has Super Grover ever met Superman?

Hmmmmm, that is a good question. Super Grover has never met Superman, but I am sure that if we do meet, we will have a lot of super important, super-secret things to talk about.

Do you follow any celebrities on Twitter?

You can check me and my furry and feathered friends out in all our 140 character glory, coming to you live from Hooper’s Store. Being a waiter, a superhero, a global traveler and a loveable monster takes up a lot of my time so I have not had time to peruse other pages yet.

Shalom Sesame is now available on DVD.  Check out awesome new clips on YouTube.

All images used by permission, TM and © 2011 Sesame Workshop. All Rights Reserved.

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