Flashback Friday: Cicero Edition

The Chicago Gay Men's Chorus allowed me to check off a lot of things that are on every man's bucket list: Sing the National Anthem at a Cubs game, record a CD of beautifully arranged love songs, choreograph a show called The Ten Commandments: The Musical, and rock the six-wived Lipschitz out of Velma Kelly's wig and heels in a reverently faithful re-creation of "The Cell Block Tango." POP!

Flashback Friday: Patriotic Edition

It was my distinct pleasure to sing with the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus for six years when I lived in Chicago. My membership in the chorus afforded me a lifetime of mountaintop experiences I will remember with awe and gratitude forever: repeatedly singing on stage with 100+ gay men (and a few straight women; we didn't discriminate) in proud and pure celebration of the collective experiences of US, recording a CD of love songs arranged in a brilliantly conceptual story arc, spending almost a week in Montréal cheering for and being cheered by gay choruses from around the world, performing in the brand-new 1,500-seat underground Harris Theater in Chicago's Millennium Park, performing in defiance of hate-group protesters on stage in the Frank Gehry-designed Pritzger Pavilion also in Millennium Park, learning and repeatedly performing the forever glorious "In Whatever Time We Have" from Children of Eden, tapping my heart out with a steno pool of other tappers to "Forget About the Boy" from Thoroughly Modern Millie, beveling seductively in little more than a leotard and heels as Velma Kelly in "Cell Block Tango," and singing a stunning, robust eight-part men's arrangement of the National Anthem three times to cheering -- cheering! -- crowds at Wrigley Field, where I fought back choking sobs of pride and experienced emotional chills to the core of everything I've ever thought and felt and believed and loved about myself and our celebratorily diverse chorus as gay men, as singers, as members of a loving, fraternal community and as citizens of America.

Guy Stuff

Cubs game!
So the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus sang the National Anthem at the Cubs game on Tuesday … after more than an hour of delays and false starts as a monsoon worked its way across Chicago. Naturally, the game was against San Francisco. GET IT? And naturally, they had us wait by a Wrigley Field side entrance labeled Gate Q. GET IT?

But once we got the all-clear, we walked onto the field (taking great care not to step on the chalk lines, which are apparently more delicate than the lingering gossamer vestiges of John McCain’s integrity) and then smiled into the crashing waves of cheers when we were introduced. The chorus is now positioning itself as Chicago’s Most Colorful Chorus (don’t get me started) so we all wore black pants and randomly distributed jewel-tone polo shirts as we proudly thundered our way through the National Anthem of a country that still won’t allow us to serve and defend it honestly and openly. But judging by the cheers and whoops and high-fives we got both before and after we sang, the stubborn, irrational bigotry that still dominates the opinions and actions of our public servants will wither, dry up and die when they finally summon the decency to do the same.

Home renovation!
Because of the Cubs game on Tuesday and our tickets to a bloated-but-potentially-charming-if-they-do-some-serious-editing production of Candide at the Goodman Theatre on Wednesday, I’ve made little progress on the bathroom this week. But! I did manage to scrape out all the cracked, discolored floor grout and replace it with fresh, monochromatic grout on Monday (which the domestic partner got flattered into cleaning up when he was home all day on Tuesday):

And if you think living with only one functioning bathroom isn’t enough to make me devote this entire weekend to assembling our fabulous new Art-Nouveau-glam-meets-Craftsman-practical-meets-New-Orleans-shabby-fabulous-meets-French-fin-de-siècle-apothecary master bath, having a living room ripped straight from an episode of Hoarders puts me way over the top:

Gym shoes!
For those of you dying to see more of my new hella-awesome-for-the-gym-and-mega-cool-for-the-office shoe wardrobe, here you go … and you’re welcome:

If there is one benefit to taking a 6:00 bus to the gym every morning, it’s that I can take pictures of my shoes without 1) looking eccentric, 2) causing suspicion, 3) irritating strangers or 4) ruining my composition with errant bus riders in the background. Plus, it allows me to make my blog posts even longer … giving you more value for your blog dollar. It’s the free market at work, and it all starts with a trip to the shoe store.

Oh say, can you see?

I am on your tee vee!

Well, I might be. I'll be singing the National Anthem at tonight's Cubs game (7:05 pm CT) with the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus. We've sung every year, but we've been televised only once. So far. So if you're the type to tune into sports on television—or even go to an actual Cubs game—be sure to tune in/get there early enough to watch us tonight. Can I get a HELL YEAH?

In equally butch news, I've ripped apart the last room in our Two Bedroomed Two Bathroomed One Fireplaced Barbie Dream Condo®. The last of the builder's special monstrosities that came with the condo are about to disappear forever, this time from the master bathroom. For now, though, the stuff we're replacing is currently heaped in our living room in its cheap particleboard and lucite-handled plumbing shame.

So as of now, this is what our bathroom looks like:

Note the disposable paint tray where the toilet usually sits. It's not there because I'm about to paint. It's there because the damn water supply won't completely shut off. And it's leaking at the rate of one oversized plastic souvenir college-logoed drinking cup per hour. (Never mind that it's from the college where I went to ... um ... show choir camp when I was in junior high school. Because that detail would totally undermine the unmistakable machismo of this post.)

Since we're not in the habit of getting up every hour to empty a damn cup, I had to think of a better plan to keep the water from getting all over the floor between now and this weekend when the painting should be done and the classy-fixture installation will commence. Thankfully, I'm a clever man. And thankfully, when I was searching the kitchen for something huge and flat to catch water, I noticed the used paint tray waiting patiently in our recycling bin. And with a crude hole cut out of one corner, it made the perfect bridge-and-funnel between the drippy water supply and the poop chute in the floor that the toilet sits over:

It's held in place by hope and the residual goo from the wax ring around the poop chute. So it should stay in place. It will be hard to work around as we replace the cracked grout between the floor tiles and paint the baseboards, but I guess it's better than waterlogged floor joists and no renovation glitches to bitch about in a blog post.

And stay tuned for the pictures of what I intend to be our Victorian/Art Nouveau/French bistro/Big Easy-inspired bathroom getaway.

Not to drop names, but ...

I stood next to Vince Vaughn while I was on Wrigley Frickin' Field in the middle of the Cubs starting lineup on Monday night.

All of this would be especially cool if I could name one Cubs player or one Vince Vaughan movie (besides Wedding Crashers, which I went to only because I would divorce my husband in a second if Bradley Cooper showed up at my door in a towel and demanded that I kiss him).

But rubbing elbows with famous people you know nothing about is just one of the things you have to endure when you sing the National Anthem at a Cubs game. So I just put up with it and move on.

For the record, Vince (I call him Vince) was there to throw out a pitch and lead the crowd (extremely well!) in "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and I sang the National Anthem with the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus, though singing it solo is totally on my bucket list. I've emailed the Cubs repeatedly to figure out how to get an audition but I've never heard back. I suppose I could call and try to talk to an actual person. Or ask the CGMC general manager for a contact name. Maybe I should make this an official 2010 resolution.

In any case, I've been waiting for people to post decent pictures of us singing on Facebook, but so far nothing has surfaced. (Sheesh! We can find the funding to make a sitcom about show choirs but we can't get one decent picture of a bunch of homos singing at a Cubs game? I blame Joe Wilson. What a douche.)

There's a behind-the-scenes video of us singing on Facebook, but as usual I can't get the damn thing to work on my blog. But I did get a screen grab of Matthew and me singing our patriotic little hearts out. Do not mock me for my weird little-boy haircut or I will hunt you down and cut you. I totally cheated on my regular haircut guy on Friday and I am paying a terrible, terrible price right now. But my regular haircut guy had a waiting list longer than Rush Limbaugh's rehab so I impulsively went with someone else who had no waiting list. And it turns out there was a reason this street mountebank was so available; my simple little haircut takes 10 minutes in the hands of a sober three-year-old, but Signor Pirelli took a whopping 45 minutes to make me look like I'd had a plus-size yarmulke tattooed on my head:

After we sang, Matthew and I changed out of our monkey suits (in the Wrigley Field bathroom, which is about as repulsive as Papa Nazi in a Speedo) and took our seats with Matthew's fiance Craig and our friend Brad, who was my proxy husband while the real one was out of town, for what turned out to be a pretty exciting game ... even though the final score was only 2-0. And the Cubs totally beat the Brewers. SUCK IT, MILWAUKEE! (Did that little outburst make me sound butch? Does the fact that I'm holding a beer in this picture make me look even butcher?)

For the record, I'd rather eat a bucket of goat butts than drink a beer. But I had to hold Brad's beer so he could take our picture. Which gave me tons of street cred as a Cubs fan. Especially since I had such a horrible haircut.

Of course, I lost all street cred when we lined up like the Andrews Sisters for one more picture. But at least I didn't succumb to peer pressure and wear my jaunty Cubs apparel. Which would have looked totally gay.

Like I need another hole in my head

I had my lumps removed yesterday!

Well, two of them. So I'm still kinda lumpy.

See, I've had six pilar cysts on my head since as far back as I can remember. Most common in middle-age women (like me!), pilar cysts are little rubbery growths filled with keratin, the building-block protein that generates hair, nails and skin. So by some stretches of the imagination I've been carrying the inchoate members of my septupletude just under my scalp for 40 years and I just murdered my way down to being quintuplets. Or something like that.

In any case, pilar cysts are benign and harmless (like me! except when I murder!) and amount to little more than curious little bumps to be discovered only by people who playfully tousle your hair. (Of course, people who mess up my hair are also subject to murder, but they at least take some guilt with them to the grave.) In the last year, though, two of my little cysts had started hurting. In a pain–pain–pain rhythm synched to my beating heart. And one of them had a tendency to bleed whenever my discount hair stylist nicked it with his discount clippers. So my dermatologist and I decided they should be removed. Unfortunately, scheduling their removal involved a two-month pas de trois coordinating little pieces of information between my insurance carrier, my dermatologist and the scheduling service my dermatologist uses. But everything finally converged yesterday morning, and at 8:30 sharp I finally found myself lying on an examination table while a nurse injected a local anesthetic all around my two condemned little brethren. Which was actually the most painful part.

While she was doing that and then busying herself setting out scalpels and sutures and all the other accoutrements of outpatient surgery, the doctor left the room and came back with a ... clock radio. Seriously.

Nurse! Hand me a scalpel! Now I need a sponge! Now I need some Digital Digital Get Down ... STAT!

When I gave him a quizzical look that said Dude ... do you realize that your sole contribution to the surgery preparation at hand has been to set a a freakin' clock radio on the hospital gown hamper next to the not-for-pretend surgery stuff your nurse is setting out? he explained that since the surgery was on my head and so close to my ears, the cutting and scraping actions of his scalpel would produce squeaking noises that I could actually hear. HOW COOL IS THAT? He told me he brought in the clock radio to drown out the squeaky noises in case they would freak me out. WHICH OF COURSE THEY WOULDN'T. If I got to actually hear myself going from lumpy to smooth (well, less lumpy), I didn't want to miss a single note of it.

I told him I'd really love to hear the squeaking of his scalpel against my lumpy head, but apparently he'd had enough people seriously freak out about it that he insisted on playing music. Unfortunately, his radio got shitty reception in the examination room, so my distraction music was about 20% Billy Joel and about 80% khhhhhhh!

Once the radio had started soothing me with its dulcet tones, the doctor and I began the awkward process of getting me in a position on the table where he could conveniently stab me on the top left side of my head and the back left side of the base of my skull, where my two condemned little brethren had been residing. The process was made weirder by the fact that the anesthetic was actually making me light-headed as it oozed past my lumps and deep into my hooker-and-porn-addled brain. And also because I was wearing only underwear and a hospital gown that kept falling off every time I rolled over to try a new position.

But we eventually found a workable position with me on my stomach and my arms smooshed up under my chest and neck like a mummy, and the doctor commenced hacking away at my poor condemned little brethren. And I'm sad to report that the acoustics in my head are such that I don't think I would have heard any squeaking even if Neil Sedaka hadn't been crackling on the fire next to me.

Once the doctor had pulled the first little dead brother lump of keratin out of my head, he (jokingly, I presume) asked me if I wanted to see it. Is the pope a boy-raping drag queen? OF COURSE I WANTED TO SEE IT.

On a completely unrelated note here, I've spent the last month relaunching a web site for a well-known client that offers lawn improvement programs including fertilizers, weed killers and the elimination of destructive, unsightly pests like grubs. In fact, just this week I finished writing about grubs. White, wiggly, disgusting, pus-like grubs. Which made it completely ironic—but still apropos of nothing—when I lifted my head from my little mummy pose and saw dangling right in front of me in the doctor's tweezers a lump of bloody, hairy keratin that looked like ... Rush Limbaugh's tiny little penis. Or a grub, now that I think about it.

Which. Was. Totally. Cool. Rush Limbaugh imagery notwithstanding.

Even cooler: The second incision disgorged two grub-like lumps of keratin. It was like I'd won the Disgusting Things Growing Under Your Scalp Jackpot!

By then, the clock radio reception had taken a turn for the worse, so the nurse hit some button and it switched to a talk-radio program. Which was fine until I started paying attention ... and I heard a husky female proclaim that the day's topic of discussion was "embracing your biblical femininity." Which, in combination with just having seen Rush Limbaugh's tiny little penis, was a little too much excitement for one morning.

Fortunately, I was soon sutured up, slathered with a couple protective, nourishing gobs of Polysporin® and sent on my way with strict instructions not to drink alcohol for 24 hours. Even though I'd just been forced to look at Rush Limbaugh's tiny little penis.

And it seemed like I was healing nicely until a couple hours later when the local anesthetic wore off in the middle of a client call and holy shit it felt like bickering monkeys were scaling my slightly less lumpy head with pickaxes.

But thanks to a bottle of OTC pain relievers and some panic-inducing (and therefore suitably distracting) deadlines, I survived the day without harming any monkeys.

After work, some co-workers and I took some clients to a Cubs game. I hadn't counted on it being colder than the pope's dead, black heart by late afternoon and I was woefully underdressed. So I stopped to buy a Wrigley Field shirt on my way in. And by the time I got to our seats I discovered we were sitting in two rows ... and my empty seat was in the front, putting the gooey back of my head directly in the sightlines of one of the clients who make my salary possible. Concerned that the sight of my pulsing wound would make him vomit his pizza rolls all over my professional future, I discreetly sent my colleague (who was sitting next to him) the international symbol for Does it look like I've been shot or stabbed in the base of my skull and my hair is now clotted with blood and brain matter that is in reality just a protective, nourishing gob of Polysporin®? He responded with the international symbol for Dude, can I have some of your nachos? Which I took to be polite-in-front-of-the-client code for No.

Here's the view from our kick-ass seats:

The Cubs won, by the way. Even without my lucky lumps in attendance. And I didn't freeze—or bleed—to death. And my head actually felt better by the end of the game. But it was still oozy. So before I climbed into bed I stuffed my pillow and its 800-thread-count pillowcase in a protective, blood-stain-colored T-shirt. Because a less lumpy head deserves a fancy elitist lifestyle. Which always starts with an unstained pillowcase.

Audio! Images! But not at the same time!

We may not have been broadcast on TV, but one resourceful chorus member managed to capture our National Anthem performance from the radio and post it on YouTube, where the announcer got our name right—as opposed to the live announcer at Wrigley Field who called us the Chicago Gay Men's Choir, even though we're really the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus. There is a huge difference. Don't get me started. Oh, and that roaring sound you hear at the end of the song is not a battalion of club-wielding Republican presidential candidates beating the will to marry out of us—it's a military flyover. Presumably as a show of might and not as a recruitment tool:


Another chorus member who's a professional photographer took some great pictures, the grainy thumbnails of which I'm posting here for your viewing pleasure.

Here's what we looked like marching in in our not-gay-at-all red-and-pink ties. Fellow marathoner Matthew is on the far left. I'm the tiny little head fourth from the left:

On the way in, we passed a Pirate doing pushups. You know, just like every day:

Here's what we looked like waiting to sing in formation around home plate. Some of us need to learn what "stand still with your hands at your sides" means:

And here's our view into the stands as we waited to sing. Or your view of our butts as we waited to sing, depending on what you prefer to look at. Again, some of our members have no concept of standing still and looking professional in performance. These people will never get my extra kidney, no matter how much they need it. My extra kidney is reserved solely for non-fidgety people:

You haven't lived until ...

... you've sung the National Anthem as an out ’n’ proud gay man in front of 40,000 screaming baseball fans. This was the fourth National Anthem at the Cubs for the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus, and our performance this year was even better than the first three because 1) the brand-new seating that cantilevers over the the entrance we always use (labeled "Gate Q," which I mention here for no particular reason) created a nice shady place for us to wait until we were marched onto the field, 2) our artistic director fleshed out his already rockin' arrangement of the National Anthem with some lush new harmonies and some soaring vocal fireworks at the end and 3) our last few notes were drowned out by a roaring MILITARY FLYOVER that sent everyone in the stadium into a patriotic frenzy of screaming, cheering and voter registration renewing. (Unfortunately, there was no patriotic frenzy of televising us, so as far as you know, this whole post is one elaborate lie.)

... you've been personally picketed by Fred "Gay Buttsex" Phelps and his gang of we're-not-gay gay-buttsex-obsessed witnesses for Christ. A sad little contingent of Fred's peeps dragged their discount fashions and their sparkly, rainbow-festooned God Hates Fags signs all the way to the big city to convert the Cubs fans to their cute little religion on Saturday. But the Cubs security detail walled them off on some obscure street corner, so we didn't get a chance to cross paths with their cocksuckery ministry. The CGMC artistic director read part of the group's barely-English ("the abominable, ao (sic) called Chicago Gay Men's Chorus") press release out loud at rehearsal Sunday night. Its third-grader logic and its Ann Coulter vocabulary tempered its underlying hatred for us, but its declaration that we are "appropriately known as Chicago's Anal-Copulating Caterwaulers" drew some whoops and cheers. But not in the way Fred probably hoped—though most likely in the way Fred secretly fantasizes when he's alone with his Jergens and his fishnets.

...you've changed clothes in the Wrigley Field men's room. Matthew and I were not interested in watching the game in our black-and-white monkey suits, so we brought a change of clothes into the stadium with us after we sang. We figured the bathrooms on the ground floor—the fabled trough rooms lined with men peeing elbow-to-elbow in a tribute to urination efficiency—would be a weird place for two guys whose outfits announced to the whole stadium "Hey! We're gay! We just sang for you! In matching outfits!" to strip down to our name-brand underpants. So we climbed to the top tier where we figured the bathrooms would be 1) less populated and 2) less covered in pee. We had to sweet-talk a guard who wasn't about to let us up without top-tier tickets (alliteration runs rampant!), but she agreed that the steerage bathrooms weren't the place for two half-naked gay singers and she scooted us up to the fancy bathrooms so we could complete our transformation in relative privacy. But even the floors in the first-class loo still seemed like they were covered in pee.

... as a person who officially couldn't care less, you've pleaded with an 8-year-old to enjoy watching the Cubs kick butt. My brother-in-law is a Dodgers fan. So my nephew has decided he has to be a Dodgers fan as well. But his little 8-year-old world is still pretty black-and-white, which means he'd be committing a patriarchal betrayal on the magnitude of Greek tragedy if he—just for a moment—made some outward sign of happiness, approval or even basic organic function in the face of the Cubs' 9-5 whopping of the Pirates on Saturday. So sullen he sat (alliteration runs rampant!) while his Cubs-neutral uncle very conspicuously jumped up and cheered and clapped and sang about Cracker Jack for three hours next to him.

...you've killed a man with your bare hands. Or so I hear.

...you've spent a weekend playing provider for the most important people in your world. My folks, my sister, and my niece and nephew came to Chicago to hear me sing and to hang out with Justin and me for the weekend. (My brother-in-law stayed home to tile and grout their new kitchen floor, which sounds like it could be a total Cubs-hating cop-out, but having just finished my own kitchen renovation I totally understand his need to stay on schedule and his burning desire to get the damn thing done.) And when my family wasn't enjoying their day at Wrigley Field on our dime, they were eating our food and sitting on our furniture and using our towels and sleeping safely and soundly in our beds ... and I just can't think of a more satisfying feeling than having everyone I love under our care for a whole weekend.

... you've watched your niece and nephew play happily with your fiancé (and vice versa). I'm getting everything I've ever wanted out of my relationship with Justin: a best friend, a happy home, a life of endless giggles and snuggles and Law & Order reruns ... and now the realization of all my extended-family domestic fantasies. Just as his family and his nieces have embraced me as one of their own, my family and my niece and nephew see him as a part of us. Amid all the meals and conversations and jokes we shared this weekend, we even got a bonus round: Justin's family stopped by so the adults could all meet each other and the kids could all play together and if I hadn't been so busy putting fruit garnishes on dessert options, I might have thought about how happy I was and burst into tears right there in front of everyone. Thank goodness my hand-sliced strawberry fans kept my runaway emotions in check.

I'm singing the National Anthem at the Cubs game this weekend!

OK. Technically, I'm singing the National Anthem with the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus at the Cubs game this weekend. But the title of this post certainly sounds more impressive the way I wrote it, no?

We're scheduled to sing at 12:05 CT this Saturday, September 22. The game will be broadcast on WGN. So get your tickets or set your TiVos or—better yet—whip up some hummus and green tea and set out some fancy napkins (beer, chips and paper towels will do in a pinch) and sit around the TV watching* us lead the Cubs to victory over the Pirates on Saturday! Go team!

* The first year we sang, Fox actually broadcast our performance. The next two years we were pre-empted by commercials for trucks or Snickers or something similarly patriotic. Since I don't have omnipotence over all sports media just yet, I can't promise we'll actually be broadcast again this year. But if we're not, you'll be out 10 minutes of your day, tops. Plus a few scoops of hummus.

The wisdom of the bleachers

Last week, a bunch of people in my office had an after-work drinking binge get-together at a bar down the street. Apparently, they spent a lot of money on liquor, because the bar's owner offered to buy everyone there tickets to today's Cubs game.

Of course, they accepted. And of course, there were last-minute cancelations. And of course, I volunteered to snatch up one of the leftover tickets.

So I spent this afternoon in steerage the left field bleacher seats amid a sea of assholes raucous, drunken fans enjoying a Cubs game roasting in the oppressive heat in the warming glow of the autumn sun. I'd never sat in the bleachers before, and I have to say that the screaming, alcoholic morons fans who sit there are the most loud, obnoxious, juvenile and borderline retarded enthusiastic people I've ever watched a Cubs game with.

And two of them, sitting all shirtless and tattooed and festooned with peanuts dangling from their ears and nipples a row in front of us and about 10 people to our left, were kind of hot in a "the bar's closing in 15 minutes so I guess you'll do" kind of way.

These people -- even before they're drunk -- will yell anything that occurs to them at anyone who happens to be in their line of blurred vision. And whether they're clever or not, they'll often seek congratulations for their outbursts with self-aware guffaws accompanied by the international gesture for "Dude, I'm holding my hand in the air for you to slap it palm-to-palm in a gesture of pathologically unsocialized solidarity. So gimme five!"

Here is a small sampling of the things I learned from these people today:

These seats rock.
These seats suck.
That girl has a nice rack.
Dude, that's my beer.
(Cincinnati Reds Left Fielder Adam) Dunn sucks.
(Cincinnati Reds Left Fielder Adam) Dunn, you suck.
(Chicago Cubs Left Fielder Moises) Alou rocks.
(Chicago Cubs Left Fielder Moises) Alou! Over here! Wave at me!
Right field sucks.
(Unofficial Cubs Troubadour) Ronnie Woo Woo rocks.
(Cincinnati Reds Left Fielder Adam) Dunn sucks.
(Cincinnati Reds Left Fielder Adam) Dunn has herpes.
(Cincinnati Reds Left Fielder Adam) Dunn has a big butt.
Dude, you're scaring me.
Jesus, this game is taking forever.
Eleven fucking innings. And the score is still just 2-2.
You suck.
No, YOU suck.
No, YOU suck.
Asshole.

Sixth face from the left

Count again -- there's a partial face in there just to the left of mine.



The cover of the Windy City Times features this nice picture and a short article about the chorus singing the National Anthem at last Saturday's Cubs game. Notice how the sign behind us has our name wrong.

All-you-can-eat fish and chips tonight at Duke of Perth with Mike, Paul, Rich et al. I don't eat a lot of crappy food, so all that deep-fried fish is sitting in my gut making me feel sick as a dog right now. I think we'll have our next get-together somewhere that serves milk of magnesia.

After dinner I met up with Tim so we could start planning the branding and marketing (and naming) for his new salon. He likes the name Lather. I'll check on its availability tomorrow.

I got home in time to watch the last three innings of tonight's game -- you know: the game where the Cubs got their asses whupped and their World Series dreams killed. And if you think it was ironic that the Cubs were even in the National League Series, consider this: I actually sat at home and watched it.

Bob and Jake and Romeo and Juliet

Bob and I have acquired an expensive little habit: way-too-frequent dinner-and-theater outings. But they're fun! This season's crop of theater started last night with a spectacular Joffrey production of John Cranko's 1962 Romeo & Juliet set to Sergei Prokofiev's lush post-Romantic score.

I'm a huge Joffrey fan, but lately the company has seemed unpolished and downright wobbly in performance. In fact, I switched my ballet-company allegience to the Hubbard Street Dance Company after seeing its mind-blowing spring repertory concert this year, but after last night I'm squarely back in the Joffrey camp.

I had never seen Cranko's setting of R&J (actually, I don't even recall ever hearing Prokofiev's score) -- and I can't remember ever seeing the Joffrey perform in Chicago to a live orchestra -- so the evening was a pretty amazing experience. Cranko's narrative is strong and broad and manifests a deep understanding of both classical ballet's idealism and modern dance's iconoclasm. The Joffery's set for the production is magnificent -- and versatile enough to frame every scene in the ballet with just a few lighting and prop changes. And (I'm going to sound like a big old theater queen here) the sumptuous costumes -- especially at the Capulets' ball -- caused audible gasps in the audience.

And the dancing. Wow. It was exuberant, poignant, thoughtful, moving ... and still fresh and interesting 40 years after it was created. And I would be gravely remiss if I didn't make special mention of the ass on the dancer who played Mercutio. Sigh. It's enough to get me back on the squat rack at the gym.

To counterbalance the overpowering stench of homosexual rapture, the house manager gave Cubs/Marlins scores at both intermissions last night -- and since the Cubs spent their entire game kicking the Marlins' collective ass, everyone in our audience cheered. Quel butch!

Four Fags at Six Flags

Day two of Jake and Dan's Weekend of Fun found us at Six Flags with Matt and Steve. It was Matt's company's private corporate day at the park, so the lines were relatively short, and the day was packed with adventure. Our first adventure was the new Superman–Ultimate Flight—the roller coaster where you get strapped into your seat, the floor drops and you get rotated 90 degrees so you're stomach-down and ready to "fly" through the ride's many twists and turns. The ride is spectacular, but it broke while we were riding it. The breakage didn't affect our flying experience, but when we got back to the loading station we were left hanging (literally) face-down over the staging area for a good 20 minutes until the pokey ride engineers waddled up to fix it. And since it was kind of cold, I had a runny nose. So I left a bit of a puddle by the time we were rescued and able to stand vertically again.

We spent the rest of the day doing the usual amusement park stuff: riding all the cool roller coasters, eating really crappy food, scoping out the small handful of cute guys in the park and playing Whack-a-Mole. And I experienced my first bungee jump. Daredevil Dive, as it's called at Six Flags, isn't your typical bungee experience; you strap yourself into a body bag-type thing before you get hooked to the cord (saving a step later in the process should things go wrong) and—I guess we didn't learn our lesson on the Superman ride—you're suspended face-down before you're hoisted about a million miles in the air. Then you pull your own rip cord, plummet to almost certain death, and swing in the wind whooping and screaming like a big girl. (At least that's how I did it.) And since it was cold and windy and I was strapped to Dan as we jumped, I got major skydiving flashbacks through the whole experience. And now we're all psyched to jump again next year.

We left the park at 4 and raced back to Chicago so Matt and I could make it to rehearsal. We now have all the music for our Christmas show, and I got assigned to choreograph a tap number and a disco number (you know—like they did at the first Christmas). After rehearsal I hit Ping Pong with Shawn and Rich for some fabulous pan-Asian fare.

Then I had the brilliant idea to catch the Red Line home at the Addison stop. You know: The one right by Wrigley Field. On the night the Cubs beat the Braves in their first post-season NL Division Series win since 1908. So I got to cap off my day with a ride on the Drunken Fan Train. Woo-hoo!

Uncle Jake and the 40,000 cheering fans

My sister and her family got here Friday afternoon for our fabulous weekend together, and we hopped right on the train—my four-year-old nephew about shit himself sideways from all the excitement—and headed downtown to my office so I could show him off to my adoring co-workers. Then we went to what I always considered to be a tourist trap of a restaurant at the base of the mighty John Hancock Center—and it was fabulous! The menu puts delicious twists on standard restaurant fare, and the décor has this Goudí-inspired organic vocabulary that creates a fascinating, otherworldly ambience. Our tummies happily engorged, we waddled over to the evil consumerist mother ship down the block for some incredulous gawking before we headed home to chat and pull out the couch so Gunnar could have a sleeping adventure.

Saturday ranks as one of the great mountaintop experiences of my singing career: I sang the National Anthem with with the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus in front of 40,000 rabid Cubs fans right before the Cubs clinched their division victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates in a frenzied double-header.

I couldn't decide what I was more afraid of as we marched onto the field (through a gate fittingly labeled Q): getting booed (or worse) when we were introduced or becoming disoriented by the sound delay sure to ricochet around the stadium when we sang. But neither nightmare happened. Everyone cheered when we were announced, and the sound system made our 90+ voices resonate with a stirring power that sent shivers up and down my spine and tears rolling down my cheeks. People continued waving and cheering as we left the stadium—and when they passed out the chorus' comp tickets for the game, there were miraculously four left over ... so my whole family suddenly got to go to the double-header together. My brother-in-law, the quintessential sports-loving straight man, was like a kid in a candy store all throughout what was a historic (and pretty exciting) first game. Gunnar had enough patience, though, to last only nine innings, so he and my sister and I bought Cubs hats and went shoe shopping while Steve stayed behind to watch the second game with all my gay friends. And when it was all over, the four of us capped off the day with dinner at an Evanston restaurant built in an old firehouse—which all but sent my little firefighter-obsessed nephew over the edge.

This morning, after a breakfast of Mickey Mouse waffles and Ralph Vaughan Williams, we headed to the Chicago Children's Museum for more Gunnar overstimulation and quite a few exhibits that were probably more interesting for us than for him. (And while fascinating and surprisingly clean, this museum appears to be a terrible place for picking up men.)

Now everyone's gone and I'm left with a quiet house to put back together and some pretty amazing memories to keep me company.

Take me out.

We had a company outing this afternoon: a Cubs game and then a barbecue in Anders' back yard, which is just a few blocks from Wrigley Field. The game was fun -- the Cubs are apparently very close to some world series-type achievement, so the stadium was PACKED with rabid fans ... which always jacks up the emotion and excitement.

Our seats were pretty far back in the second tier of the stadium, which offered us a sheltered view of the game -- but it also offered the pigeons a handy place to roost directly over our heads. And in the third inning, one of them dropped a HUGE load on my arm and the front of my shirt. Which sent me -- for the first time in my life -- to the Wrigley Field men's room, the fabled trough farm that approaches mass bladder voiding with assembly-line efficiency. And the place is surreal -- I think I walked past a good 40 yards of pee troughs assembled along the sides of two aisles before I could get to the sinks to clean up.

And once I got back to my seat, the Cubs easily beat the Milwaukee Brewers in a game that ended after the top of the ninth inning. (I've been to two Cubs games this year and they won both times. Coincidence?)

My favorite part of my job has always been my co-workers, and the barbecue after the game only reinforced my happiness with them. They're bright and funny and interesting and fun to talk to, and we sat around laughing and shooting the breeze for a good six hours ... until I realized it was after 11 pm and I was getting pretty damn tired.

Now I'm off to bed so I can get up early and do a ton of laundry and scrubbing and vacuuming and dusting before my folks get here for a weekend visit.