I'm a sucker for award shows. If the American Society of Certified Public Accountants gave out awards, and they televised a handful of celebrities giving out said awards on a big stage with a curtain, I would watch. And in every awards telecast, there's always one transcendently bizarre moment that makes all the tedious thank-yous and bloated production numbers worthwhile.

At last night's Tonys, there were several contenders for this moment. You had a hyperventilating Liza, a number from the tragically underexposed "Mamma Mia" (which didn't even appear on Broadway this season and wasn't performed by the Broadway cast but a touring company), and one award shared by three kids, apparently in an attempt to get around child labor laws.  In the opening number, there was a point where it seemed that either the cast of "West Side Story" or the cast of "Guys And Dolls" missed their cue en masse, as both casts were on stage at the same time in a kind of cage match with show tunes.  But the piece de bizarre happened when Brett Michaels, from the legendary theatre group mediocre 80s band Poison, was punished by the Gods of Theater. 

Now I had always thought a 'deus ex machina' was just a metaphor--a high-brow concept from Theater 101, but no! It really was something dropped literally from the heavens to smite a character on a stage! It was as if the ghosts of all the greatest figures in musical theater history convened backstage and decided "THERE SHALL BE NO MORE MUSICALS BASED ON A BUNCH OF RANDOM SONGS THAT WERE  ON THE RADIO TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO! WE FORBID IT! YOU SHALL WRITE ORIGINAL SHOWS!!!

The Tonys are truly special, as viewers across the country get the chance to celebrate the power and immediacy of live theater by watching  two-minute scenes from shows they will never be able to afford to watch in the theater. But karma is a powerful and beautiful force. Watching this gargantuan piece of scenery become  a living, vengeful being set on beheading the hirsute interlopers made this year's Tony Awards a magical night.