What’s in a name? Straight No Chaser sounds like your typical bar order of scotch after you’ve had a long day, right? Well, upon hearing the voices behind Straight No Chaser, you’ll no longer need your scotch habit because these guys will cheer you right up.

Straight No Chaser landed on my desk at work because a friend of mine was producing their music segment. Wait, that’s not true. Let’s just say I stole it from my friend’s desk because I knew she was producing their music segment. You see, I was among the throngs of 8 million downloaders who first saw them on You Tube with their sensationally-arranged “12 Days of Christmas”. I was blessed to come from a high school of musical delicacy, where a choir director by the name of Marty Sirvatka turned his University of Illinois-Urbana’s acapella men’s group “Other Guys” into the teenage swoon-worthy “Nine”. In high school, being the choir geek that I loved, I was always the one doing the swooning. My love of acapella grew from there. But I digress…

Listening to this album while driving home on a particularly challenging day at work, I became engrossed in the arrangement of all the familiar carols that warm the winter heart. “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Santa’s Coming to Town” filled the speakers, as well as reminded me of a time I knew when, in high school, when I hadn’t a care in the world (besides teenage angst and the inevitable question “where do you see yourself in 5 years?…does that ever go away!?) “12 Days of Christmas” is this expertly arranged rendition that is both pleasing to the ear and still brings a smile every time I hear it. And having never heard these songs before, listening to “Christmas Wish” actually made me tear up a bit. I mean, it was a cold evening, but I’m a sucker for romantic lyrics sung from the heart. And I will always be a sucker for a guy that can sing. But again, I digress. As I’m driving home, listening to these tracks, I take the long way so I can listen some more. And right when the smile spreads across my face, it begins to snow. Don’t tell me I’m dramatic. I’m just tellin’ it like it is.

But the greatest thing about this holiday album is not that it is well-produced (with great bass throughout), or well-sung (soloists include Hong Kong’s  ”The Lion King” stage version performer and an ABC-7 reporter), it is the fact that these guys actually love to sing. They have a passion to sing. And they have kismet. I always say that the best stories in life happen because they were a story to begin with.

SNC on C2N

P.S.–They are on right now on World News Tonight with Charles Gibson, on ABC. Go network TV!

P.S.S.–Don’t you think “Kismet” would be an excellent album title!? Call me!

This week has been full of high school weirdness. As in, every where I look, I am running into people I knew from High school, or seeing them on tv, or hearing them on the radio. It’s just weird!

So I watch a lot of tv. Like a lot. An unhealthy amount that I justify by saying I work in TV. But anyway. So I am watching TV and I see Sam Witwer. This guy I went to high school with. Major player in the first season of Battlestar Gallactica. Then he appears on my favorite shows like NCIS, CSI and Bones as the same creepy character-type. He’s awesome. He’s always been awesome…first time I saw him act was in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in high school, and even at 17, he was amazing. And you root for people like him to succeed. And he is. So that’s awesome.

Then I see Katie Cleary invade my CSI: NY. Sure she has one line. Sure I’ve seen her in Playboy, America’s Next Top Model Cycle 1, and that Verizon Wireless commercial where LC tells Brody he’s a pig for staring at Katie Cleary’s ass. But I was watching CSI:NY, and was like, wait, I know this girl. She went to my high school, and here she is, on the TV, in one of my favorite shows. So go her.

And then, just now, I was watching Gossip Girl, and this girl runs into the screen and kisses a boy and says her two lines, and I’m going…oh, my, god, I know this girl! It’s Christina Hogg, now going by Christina Hogue, who I was in high school musicals with. And again. It becomes, I went to high school with you, and here you are invading my Monday guilty pleasure that is Gossip Girl. So go you.

And before now, I would try to compare myself to them, and try to see who has become the most successful of all the people I went to high school with. This might have something to do with the fact that it will be 10 (!) years since high school next year, and I am always curious to see who ends up where in life. Like if the drama kids actually ended up as accountants or something. I would contemplate if I took the wrong road in life, if I should’ve stayed in LA and worked my ass off in film, and sold my soul to the Hollywood devil, would I be rich and famous with no soul in a Malibu condo…I would sit and compare my life and say, yeah, they made it to the TV, but I have an Emmy, yadda, yadda, yadda (btw, I did win an Emmy. Yay me). I would then usually feel bad for myself. Then put them down and say, whatever, at least I own a condo and have a steady paycheck with benefits…

But not now. I mean, sure, I think as humans we all want to be successful, and appreciated, and recognized now and again. But when I see these people that I went to high school with on screen, I can’t help but feel proud for them. Happy for them, even. Cause I know that’s its been 10 years since high school. I know that they have probably worked 10 hours bartending just to make the rent so they could audition for that role that just might be their break. I know they probably have cried a couple times from that business and contemplated if this is what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Who knows, maybe they are a lot stronger than most of us, and have never cared about anything else in the world, have never wanted to be anything else but actors in this world. And you know what, I am geniunely happy for them. Because now I have bragging rights when they are on screen. I get to say, “Hey, that’s so-and-so, I went to high school with them! How about that?” It might have taken them 10 years to be visible on national television, but I am sure that it is 10 years of blood, sweat and tears. Because each of these people, and every actor (who is a real actor) that I have ever met, has had the passion, the desire, the blood, the sweat and the tears to do what they love. To embody what they know. And they have that feeling that this is the one thing they were put on this earth to do. And how could I be bitter over that passion?

So to Sam Witwer, Katie Cleary, and Christina Hogue, I wish you much more success. I can’t wait to see you pop up in my shows again.  And to Scott Burman, Andy Gersh and Kevin Miller…where are you?

And just today, I met a couple friends from high school for lunch in Evanston, and it was like we’d never left. In a good way. In the way that you walk into a restaurant where everyone knows your name, and you don’t have to explain yourself to anyone, and you can just sit and have a conversation and it doesnt matter that you haven’t seen these people in two or six years…it’s that kind of familiarity that I crave these days, and I can’t help but smile. So comfortable am I that I agreed to a Dublin trip in the near future with these two. So we will see what happens.

High School for me was fantastic. I didn’t know anyone the first day of freshman year, and I left knowing just about everyone. I was friends with everyone, I was that girl who everyone knew, I was the freaking homecoming junior attendant for god’s sake. But I feel like in high school, I had too much to prove, I put on too much of a facade, and no one really stopped to get to know the real me. Hell, did anyone know the real them in high school? The point of this rambling is to say that high school for me, has never gone away. I feel like the world is just one big high school. There will always be cliques. There will always be the Prom Queen, the Most Likely to Succeed, and the Loner. But no matter what, whether you went to it, loved it, or just plain loathed it, high school is one of those formative things that never seems to leave your life. At least for me.

I love how seeing people from high school on TV catapultes me to a time I thought I had it all figured out.  Sometimes we learn so much from the past. Sometimes we learn that we have learned nothing at all. And sometimes, the past brings us one step closer to a future trip to Dublin.