You say that just once you'd like your hamburger hot and your lettuce and tomato cool and crisp ALL AT THE SAME TIME?

My mother is worried about me.

I've suddenly developed a recent fascination with Jason Alexander. I want to know why, more often than not, he turns out to be the single most redeeming thing about...well, just about everything he's been involved with.

And you know he's probably had some evil plan all along, too.

He's George. George Can'tStandYa. Believe it or not, George isn't at home. Koko the Monkey, Gammy (but never T-Bone), and, in some cases believed to be...Larry David.

No matter what, he will always be known as George Costanza.

So why can't I stop watching this video on YouTube?

George Costanza is in that commercial. Jason Alexander (a.k.a. Jason Scott Greenspan) is a song-and-dance man, who appeared in Jerome Robbins' Broadway, Forbidden Broadway, and, when he was still in college, the original teenage cast of Merrily We Roll Along. You can actually hear him belting over most of the other youthful cast on that recording. And he still sounds like George at an impressionably young age - even if he does play a kid playing an adult playing a Hollywood record producer.

So what has George been doing since The Greatest Sitcom Ever went off the air? Well, he's built up a pretty impressive body of work, according to that Wikipedia entry. But George Costanza kind of is his "thing," isn't it? You can't watch that video with an open mind towards pop culture and not see it as, "Wait a minute...is that George Costanza? Apparently, he used to be really skinny! And he had a lot of hair!"

My theory about George's Evil Master Plan is, what do you do after "Seinfeld" besides "whatever the fark you want"? And, if I was even half as hugely successful as that obnoxious character, I would do whatever the fark I wanted - as long as it distanced me from him as much as possible: Get married and have kids, direct a production of Sunday in the Park with George, get a magic act together and perform it at the Gothic Castle. That does totally make sense: Given that it really sounds oddly similar to my own pathetic life's aspirations.

So, how did I not know that George Costanza was a big musical theatre guy? It just seemed to elude me. In maybe one or two moments on "Seinfeld," he had a chance to show off his angelic singing voice (and he supposedly lobbied for Jerry to write an all-musical episode) but it's not like he ever did full-on choreography a la that video. Or "Dr. Schechter," for that matter.

I'm not saying it's because he started out on Broadway, which he did, or that he eased into it after he made a name for himself to capitalize on that, which he also did. But what was his deal, anyway? Did he think, if he played this deplorably lovable charater for ten years, the 3 people who saw The Rink would forget about his drag turn in that show? Or what? Did the path just lay itself out for him like that sketch he did on "Muppets Tonight," when, after being doused in flames (don't ask) he went (I'm paraphrasing here): "Now I'm just a short, neurotic bald guy with a New York accent! Where could I possibly fit in?" (Kermit: "A T.V. sitcom?" ba-dump!). Or was it closer to when he hosted "Saturday Night Live," and insisted on singing "I'm Flying" for his opening monologue in a full Peter Pan getup, and everyone said no - for the obvious reasons? Did he just want to become as famous as that crazy-schlubby Rold Gold Pretzels-plugging personality as he could have possibly been to the point where no one could have possibly told him he was too short, fat, bald, and Jewish to play Albert Peterson? Which came first: The Costanza or the egg?

I mean, I guess it does make sense when you weigh him up against some of the other all-time comedic greats. Phil Silvers, Sid Caesar. Nathan Lane started out doing straight dramatic plays like The Film Society when he was younger, and Michael McKean didn't do his first musical until about 20 years after Spinal Tap.

I recently fell in love with Alexander's voice on the cast recording to The Rink. He plays "Good old Lenny," among many other characters that are way too inappropriate for his age range and type. He also sings "Marry Me" to Chita Rivera, which is both beautiful and creepy. But I didn't really know it was him. Discovering that Jason Alexander's voice was the same voice on "Marry Me" was just like another recent discovery that the man who sings "I Sleep with Everyone" on the Forbidden Broadway's Greatest Hits CD really looks like this. Except this was much different. Non-singing, non-Broadway, non-jazz-handing-over-burgers Jason Alexander is very much in the public consciousness. McDLT aside, he has an image to uphold, and that image most definitely ain't named Uncle Fausto.

So, it was really more like eating a sweet chocolate bar and then finding out that liking it is bad for you, because of the calorie count. At least, he's not someone I fundamentally should be obsessed with, but I really can't turn away because he's just so darn enigmatic. Which may or may not explain Jason Alexander's career as a whole; hey, if anything, it definitely explains a particularly vast rift between "Seinfeld" and the McDLT.

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