Mary Tyler Moore, You Are Ruining My Childhood and Other Things about Broadway Barks

If you were that close to Tveit's pecs, you'd be fistbumping too.

So. Saturday was Broadway Barks 13—the annual fundraiser/adoption drive/dating show that takes place in Shubert Alley, hosted by Bernadette Peters and Mary Tyler Moore.  It was loaded with cute boys, even cuter puppies, and honestly, it was completely crazypants.

In case you couldn’t make it out, here’s what you missed:

• Mary Tyler Moore was looking… plastic.  And between an offhand comment about enjoying watching her dogs ‘breed’ (TRANSLATION: BONE), calling someone a “stupid bitch” and snapping at the audience for giggling at her… she seemed hell bent on ruining my sparkly childhood memories of her fabulous spunkiness in Nick at Nite reruns.  I may never recover.
• By contrast–Sutton Foster! You are rainbows and sunshine all wrapped into one big-singing package and I adore you.  Cuddling abused 4-month-old puppy Owen to your chest, you were honestly the sweetest thing ever.  Like.  Sweeter than sweet.  Sweeter than a tiny baby bunny in a tiny angel costume.  I wanted to adopt you both.
• I maintain that world peace could be achieved if we just held an international summit at which Andrew Rannells cuddled a homeless puppy and pouted his pretty mouth.
• I do not currently have photos, but, rest assured, there is nothing on this earth more panty-droppingly hot than watching John Benjamin Hickey coo at a puppy, then pause to put on his nerd glasses to read. NOTHING.
• Okay. That’s lies.  Because Aaron Tveit was there in shorts. Damn him for being such a fucking perfect physical specimen.  It’s like a speck of dirt has never touched his person.  When he smiles his dazzling smile with his perfectly aligned teeth, a beautiful chink of light glints off them like in cartoons.  When he crouched down with beagle pup Louie, and his shorts rode up to reveal several additional inches of his fucking perfect quadriceps muscles, I almost had an orgasm in public in Shubert Alley. Every striation that… my god.  It’s cruel.  I just want to watch him do squats all day.  You know, while cuddling a tiny puppy.
• By the time the cast of Hair hit the stage, I was in trouble. My defenses were low and I knew it.  When Steel Burkhardt knelt down to cuddle a doofy, floppy, adorable Great Dane puppy named Raven, it was so amazing I almost couldn’t even look.  Like, my ovaries exploded and pieced themselves back together. Repeatedly. Easily six times in the four minutes he was up there. Days later there are still no words.
• Bernadette Peters and Mary Tyler Moore are fucking GENIUSES, y’all!  Geniuses!  Parade some hopelessly cute puppies across a stage with some ridiculously attractive men and women, have said attractive people coo and cuddle and generally lose their minds over hopelessly cute puppies, FIND EVERY SINGLE PUPPY A WONDERFUL HOME.  I’m sure there’s a mathematical equation that explains all this—the chain rule? algebra?—but like, it’s been more than a decade since I took math, so…yeah.  Whatever it is, Ms. Peters and Ms. Moore… I am impressed.  And I will be back next year.

Photo: Walter McBride