Just got home from the nearly three-hour "So You Think You Can Dance" performance. Jason Glover had a grand time. His smile lit up the Save Mart, and you could tell that he was slightly awed by the roar of the crowd at every mention of his name. It isn't every day that you perform in an arena for thousands of people AND have your very own cheering section complete with five fans spelling out the letters of your first name. (There was also a sign that read "Glover Lovers.")

What did you think of the show? I'll check in tomorrow morning with my own thoughts.

I had a chance to chat in person this afternoon with Fresno's Jason Glover at the Save Mart Center a few hours before he planned to go on as the hometown boy in the tour of "So You Think You Can Dance." He seemed really pumped up about the coming evening. The tour bus from Sacramento arrived in town at 4 this morning, and Jason sat up front by the bus driver as it rolled past such familiar exits as Shaw Avenue. His dad met the bus and took him home. "I kissed my mom, hugged my dad, said hi to my dog and finally got to sleep in my own bed," he says.

Jason, wearing a dark sweater and hip leather jacket, and sporting earrings in each ear, joined five other dancers in the interview room. (It was just me and a KMPH photographer representing the media -- I was a little surprised the other TV stations didn't show up considering the hometown angle, but maybe it's considered too much of a network-related thing.) Jason and the other dancers touched on a number of subjects related to the tour, including:

HANGING OUT AT HOME: More than 40 people -- including all 12 dancers, 15 or so close childhood friends, his parents plus uncles, aunts and grandma -- gathered at Jason's house today for a bountiful buffet lunch. ("My mom made me eggs and potatoes on the side -- special for me," he says.) Caitlin Kinney, Jason's first partner on the show, declared the food "amazing," adding that there were delicious Mexican-themed items on the menu that she didn't even recognize. After lunch, the dancers played a game of HORSE -- "badly," Kinney says -- and just hung out enjoying the sun. Phillip Chbeeb took a nap.

After the jump, more tidbits from Jason and the rest of the crew. Plus, I'll be posting a late review of the show tonight.

I already reminded you yesterday about the national tour of "The Wedding Singer" opening tonight at the Saroyan Theatre. The hometown buzz will be at the Save Mart Center, however, where you'll have the chance to cheer on Fresno's Jason Glover in the "So You Think You Can Dance" live tour. Most of the other contestants have had a chance to play their hometowns already, and now it's Jason's turn. (I wrote about his plans for today, which included inviting all the dancers over to his parents' house for a late breakfast, in the Sunday Spotlight cover story.)

I'm heading over to the Save Mart in an hour or so for the official press interview session and will come back to the office to post a pre-concert blog. Anyone have any questions you want me to ask Jason?

It's what every choral conductor fears most: At the last minute, one of your soloists isn't ready to go on.

That was the situation Friday morning for Fresno Community Chorus conductor Anna Hamre. Her bass soloist for the Mozart Requiem, Anthony Radford, had started feeling ill on Thursday. By Friday, he didn't have a voice at all. And the Sunday concert was just three days away.

That's when a young father of 2 -- a Navy man from Lemoore named Thomas Drew Duncan -- saved the day.

Chris Darling, the chorus manager, writes:

Anna immediately began calling all over the state to try to find a replacement. All the singers we called who could have stepped in were already booked. The part calls for a low "G" and Anna thought to herself, "who do I know locally that can sing a low G?" She remembered a young, Navy man who had auditioned for the choir, had a wonderful voice and could definitely sing the low G. She called him, asked him to take a look at it, he agreed, she drove to Lemoore to rehearse with him, and Voila!

Sarah Palin usually gets more play over on the Bee's Opinion Blog, except when Tina Fey is doing her thing, but there's no denying she's sucking most of the air out of the room when it comes to pop culture this week. There's her book due out tomorrow, her Oprah appearance, her estranged son-in-law posing in the buff, her bashing of the Associated Press, her ticking off former McCain aides, and all sorts of other headline-grabbing endeavors.

What do you think? Are you going to read the book, or at least read about it? Or are you attempting to do the Cone of Silence thing and mighty irked that mention of "Going Rogue: An American Life" even seeped into the Beehive?

UPDATE 5:15 p.m.: And our winners are Debi Goehring, Laura Ramirez and Johnny Missakian. Congratulations!

ORIGINAL ENTRY: The lead item in my Sunday Spotlight column is the national tour of the Broadway musical "The Wedding Singer" based on the film starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. The production opens 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Saroyan Theatre, and I have SIX balcony tickets for opening night to give away to Beehive readers.

I'll give two tickets each to the FIRST, THIRD and SIXTH commenters to this post. You'll need to pick the tickets up Tuesday at The Bee's front lobby. Winners will be notified in an e-mail, so leave a real one. No repeat comments. You're ineligible if you've won something in the past 30 days. We won't post any comments until we have the winners. Complete rules after the jump.

For three years now, I've participated in a delightful tradition: moderating a movie-screening night to raise money for the San Joaquin River Parkway and Conservation Trust. My latest installment of "Parties for the Parkway" came Sunday night at the home of Juan & Clara Touya, which is set up with a killer home theater system. They were joined by co-hosts Mary & Rudy Savala and approximately 30 guests for an evening of dinner, cinema, discussion and lots of impressive homemade flan. The movie: the German film "The Lives of Others," which won the 2007 Oscar for best foreign film.

And what a sharp, layered, moral-center-rattling film it is. Set in East Berlin in the early 1980s, we follow the mission of a zealous agent working for the Stasi, the dreaded secret police. He's spying on a famous playwright who because of his model-socialist ways is beyond suspicion. But the machinations of power in a totalitarian state aren't always rational. The secret agent finds his own unquestioning loyalty to the regime beginning to crumble as he gets deeper into the case. The film touches on issues of voyeurism, relativism and idealism. Just knowing that the Berlin Wall is soon to crumble adds another level of complexity.

I saw the film at the height of its Oscar glory, and I liked it then. But I REALLY liked it the second time around. This is one of the ways I love to watch a film: Catch it when it's hot, and then return to it a couple of years later for another viewing. The short-term-memory specifics have faded enough so the experience isn't numbingly boring, but enough of the broad sweep of the film remains in your consciousness that you're able to look past just the plot and do some deep exploration of characters and themes. The discussion following was great, too.

This is the second Parkway party I've done this year. In May I helped host a downtown mural tour with my Beehive colleagues. There's a whole slew of party options offered, and they're for a wonderful cause. You can check out the remaining four parties for 2009 here. When the 2010 list is announced, I'll try to remember to post it.

It isn't often that a concert pianist from Belgium hops in a plane, flies to Fresno to perform, then turns around and goes back home, but that's Nikolaas Kende's itinerary this weekend. He performs 7 p.m. Sunday at Fresno State's Concert Hall as part of the Philip Lorenz Memorial Keyboard Concerts series. I caught up with him via email to ask him about his Fresno concert.

Question: I understand this will be the second U.S. city in which to play. What was your first?

Answer: The first was Waco, Texas where I performed the first Brahms piano concerto with the Waco Symphony Orchestra led by Steven Heyde.

Do you have any other concerts scheduled during your upcoming trip to California?

No, this is the only concert in America, in fact I have to get back very quickly (monday very early) since I have tuesday a concert in Brussels.

Last-minute reminder: The Fresno Philharmonic is providing a great family-friendly opportunity tonight designed to get kids more comfortable with classical music. Here's our item from today's 7 Things to Do list:

7:30 p.m. Friday / Saroyan Theatre, 700 M St. / (559) 261-0611, fresnophil.org / $15, $10 children

Kids, we'd like you to meet this really cool guy named Tchaikovsky. The Fresno Philharmonic joins with Classical Kids Live! for a theatrical symphony presentation geared toward budding musical lovers ages 6 and up. The story tells of the composer's arrival in New York for the grand opening of Carnegie Hall. Free games and activities will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the lobby.

First off, here are our two winners for the "All in the Timing" ticket giveaway for this weekend: Amy Hance and Kelly Hawthorne. Each wins two tickets. Congrats.

I talked with some of the show's creative team last week and wanted to share some of their answers to give a little more background for people not familiar with the show:

Question: For people who aren't familiar with the Rogue "All in the Timing" productions, fill them in. Are you now presenting the full David Ives script?

Answer: "All In The Timing" is a collection of hilarious short comedies by David Ives, and we are presenting an evening (or afternoon) of our favorites. Think of it as sketch comedy a la "Saturday Night Live", but with an irreverent appreciation of relationships, language, and philosophy rather than politics and pop culture. There are 14 plays in the complete collection, and presenting them all would be too long for a single evening. We selected 8, including 4 we performed at Rogue Festival 2008 and 3 we did at Rogue 2009, plus 1 that is entirely new for us. Each play has humor on all levels as well as light but poignant commentary on the human condition.