I may not be doing big-city Pride things this weekend, but I can still be plenty gay watching documentaries on my couch

Still here

Happy 48th anniversary to Follies, the glorious, epic, mold-breaking 1971 musical by Stephen Sondheim, James Goldman, Hal Prince and Michael Bennett that ended up being too lavish and probably too jarringly mold-breaking for its own good. The most expensive Broadway production to date when it opened, it drew effusive critical praise but didn't get the musical-theater-pantheon foothold it deserved and closed after 500 performances without recouping any of its investments.

I was unfortunately three when it opened and I couldn't get tickets, but my heart and endless fascination and I were eventually—inevitably—pulled into its magical, inspiring, gorgeous, heartbreaking world when I saw the 1987 London revival, which gave Eartha Kitt a much-needed comeback when she replaced the broken-ankled Delores Gray (just like what happened to her in 42nd Street!) to belt the iconic "I'm Still Here"—which, as coincidences never cease, was the song in the 1971 production that brought Yvonne De Carlo back from the brink of terminal embarrassment after playing Lily Munster on TV.

Thankfully—inevitably—Follies has since then finally achieved the musical-theater-pantheon stature it deserves, and I've been fortunate enough to have seen more productions of it than I can count in New York, D.C., Chicago and beyond. I'm obviously overflowing with fanboy knowledge and trivia and opinions and lyrics (oh boy, am I overflowing with lyrics) about the show, but if I even want to come close to sharing everything about its brilliance that's waiting to burst out of me, I'll have to schedule a six-week subscription-series symposium at a local college to get it all Jakesplained to you.

Fun fact: It opened at the Winter Garden Theater in NYC, which—again with the coincidences—is the theater where I just so happen to have seen my first-ever Broadway show (Cats, the fact of which I am hard-stop-sun-comes-up-coffee-cup not willing to discuss).

Ugh. I do NOT have time to be felled by a damn cold.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been debilitatingly sick, and I’d forgotten how pathetic and helpless it makes me.

BUT! I used the time afforded by my canceled plans tonight to finally finish my second reading of Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical "Follies"—which I’d started on an airplane in April, and I have the dated boarding pass/bookmark to prove it.

And my second reading of the book unquestionably confirms what we’ve all long suspected: I’m still deliriously gay.

Love, Love, Love

I've been reading Everything was Possible--a fascinating insider account of the creation of Steven Sondheim/Michael Bennett/Hal Prince/Jonathan Tunick's magnum opus Follies--over the last month. And at this very moment I'm listening to the cast album with new eyes (or I guess ears) as I hear the performances of the singers and actors--not to mention the voluptuous orchestrations--I've been learning so much about. It's like I'm loving my mind.

I've never really liked "Turkey Lurkey Time"

—mostly because of its toddler-creativity title and Hal David's criminally mind-numbing lyrics. But the gloriously jerky melody and never-gonna-be-boxed-in phrasing are Burt Bacharach at his finest, and I think Michael Bennett defined an encyclopedic choreography vocabulary for the next half-century of show choir competitions in this song alone. Plus I've had a gay-dancer crush on Donna McKechnie—she of the endless legs and beguiling self-awareness and almost poetic extensions—since probably before I was born. Plus HOW THE HELL DO THEY ALL DANCE THIS NUMBER WITHOUT IMPLODING IN CATASTROPHIC EXHAUSTION?

Anyway, it's Thanksgiving, which in some circles means it's Turkey Lurkey Time all day. So please shout the lyrics to anything—ANYTHING!—else to drown out these linguistic burps as you marvel at Donna McKechnie (in red, who first captured my heart as Cassie in A Chorus Line), Baayork Lee (in green, who kinda got shafted when all her great Connie recitative got cut from the original A Chorus Line cast album) and Margo Sappington (in blue, who went on to a life of fame and fortune as the choreographer for the Doonesbury musical) powering through their tipsy steno-pool production number that has absolutely no relevance to the already convoluted, dirty-sexy, nothing-to-do-with-the-holidays story of Promises, Promises.

Happy 47th birthday to Follies

... the glorious, epic, mold-breaking 1971 musical by Stephen Sondheim, James Goldman, Harold Prince and Michael Bennett that ended up being too lavish and probably too jarringly mold-breaking for its own good. The most expensive Broadway production to date when it opened, it drew effusive critical praise but didn't get the musical-theater-pantheon foothold it deserved and closed after 500 performances without recouping any of its investments.

I was unfortunately three when it opened and I couldn't get tickets, but my heart and endless fascination and I were eventually--inevitably--pulled into its magical, inspiring, gorgeous, heartbreaking world when I saw the 1987 London revival, which gave Eartha Kitt a much-needed comeback when she replaced the broken-ankled Delores Gray (just like what happened to her in 42nd Street!) to belt the iconic "I'm Still Here"--which, as coincidences never cease, was the song in the 1971 production that brought Yvonne De Carlo back from the brink of terminal embarrassment after playing Lily Munster on TV.

Thankfully--inevitably--Follies has since then finally achieved the musical-theater-pantheon stature it deserves, and I've been fortunate enough to have seen more productions of it than I can count in New York, D.C., Chicago and beyond. I'm obviously overflowing with fanboy knowledge and trivia and opinions and lyrics (oh boy, am I overflowing with lyrics) about the show, but if I even want to come close to sharing everything about its brilliance that's waiting to burst out of me, I'll have to schedule a six-week subscription-series symposium at a local college to get it all Jakesplained to you.

Fun fact: It opened at the Winter Garden Theater in NYC, where--again with the coincidences--I just so happened to see my first-ever Broadway show (Cats, the fact of which I am hard-stop-sun-comes-up-coffee-cup unwilling to discuss).

I've never really liked "Turkey Lurkey Time"

... mostly because of its toddler-creativity title and Hal David's criminally mind-numbing lyrics. But the gloriously jerky melody and never-gonna-be-boxed-in phrasing are Burt Bacharach at his finest, and I think Michael Bennett defined an encyclopedic choreography vocabulary for the next half-century of show choir competitions in this song alone. Plus I've had a gay-dancer crush on Donna McKechnie -- she of the endless legs and beguiling self-awareness and almost poetic extensions -- since probably before I was born. Plus HOW THE HELL DO THEY ALL DANCE THIS NUMBER WITHOUT IMPLODING IN CATASTROPHIC EXHAUSTION?

Anyway, it's Black Friday, which means it's Turkey Lurkey Time somewhere. So please shout the lyrics to anything -- ANYTHING! -- else to drown out these linguistic burps as you marvel at Donna McKechnie (in red, who first captured my heart as Cassie in A Chorus Line), Baayork Lee (in green, who kinda got shafted when all her great Connie recitative got cut from the original A Chorus Line cast album) and Margo Sappington (in blue, who went on to a life of fame and fortune as the choreographer for the Doonesbury musical) powering through their tipsy steno-pool production number that has absolutely no relevance to the already convoluted, dirty-sexy, nothing-to-do-with-the-holidays story of Promises, Promises: