Our first concert with our Orchestra Iowa season tickets!

And our seats turned out to be pretty freaking awesome.

"Power play" is a hockey word. Look it up.

Last year today I was singing a power-play arrangement of “All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth” sporting authentic hockey gear and two magic-of-theater missing teeth in front of the power-play Orchestra Iowa in my beloved (and, obvs, power-play) Paramount Theatre.

Today today I’ll be tap-dancing with a merry band of bejinglebelled elves in the last of an eminently delightful five-week run of Elf the Musical at the always-eminently-delightful Theatre Cedar Rapids.

The only arguable difference here is I’ll be wearing brand-new work gloves to strike our set tonight.

Our final cast picture from our final performance as a team before we all get drafted into ... um, wherever it is that singing, dancing hockey players get drafted into

We’ve really become a tight-knit family over these last few days of rehearsals and five-minute performances, and it’s sad to say goodbye, my friends. But we've gotta grow. We've got to try. It's hard, so hard. We have to say goodbye.

Oh, nothing

Just wiping the last of the slavish devotion that got all over me during my 2,000-seat standing ovation. How was YOUR night?

And how sweet is this hockey gig? We wait in our lavishly appointed dressing room sipping complimentary RC products and getting unlimited tarot readings until we’re summoned to star in the second-to-last number, catch our breath during the last number, and then soak up cheering applause in my beloved Paramount Theatre as Orchestra Iowa plays a robustly joyful “Sleigh Ride” mere feet behind us. Just getting to stand on the Paramount stage is all I need to brighten my whole week ... but RC PRODUCTS TOO?

Also, how adorable is my mom’s childhood toy Rudolph (or maybe it’s just a charmingly disfigured dog — the jury’s still out) that we recently found buried in a box of stuff and added to our standard under-tree decoration collection? It’s twice as old as I am, but we both still look 28 — which is more like 25 when we’re not in the direct glare of the tree lights.

At least I have a dressing room, I guess

I am an EXPERIENCED PROFESSIONAL singing BASS/BARITONE as a TOOTHLESS HOCKEY PLAYER with a dressing room labeled ... KICKLINE DANCERS.

Thithter Thuthie thittin' on a thithtle!

 

 

 

Sorry to keep posting pix of our star-making performance this afternoon at the Orchestra Iowa holiday concert, but it’s pretty much all I’ve done today besides pay bills and fold laundry. And to maintain an air of intrigue and mystery about myself, I don’t want to show everyone what kind of bills I pay. Plus I really didn’t get that much laundry folded. So these are the only suitable-for-the-public pictures from my day that I have to post. Plus how gorgeous is Orchestra Iowa’s wooden acoustic shell? Plus how gorgeous is the Paramount Theatre? Plus I’m heading back soon to do an evening performance, so how awesome is my Saturday?

I just sang “All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth”

in authentic soccer gear with my teeth blacked out at the stunning Paramount Theatre with the magnificent Orchestra Iowa behind me. Plus I get to do it again tonight. And then again tomorrow. Bliss.

Get your pucks to the Paramount

for your first and undoubtedly last opportunity to watch me (and four other brutes) sing and dance merry holiday tunes IN REAL HOCKEY VESTMENTS. Because it’s not Christmas without the traditional Dance of the Slapshotplum Fairies and Straightpeople. Or something like that.

I am now in the temporary possession of a well-worn hockey stick and a Cedar Rapids RoughRiders jersey -- just like in my senior picture!

If you're wondering exactly WHY I'm now in the temporary possession of a well-worn hockey stick and a Cedar Rapids RoughRiders jersey just like in my senior picture -- because of course you are -- you're just going to have to come see the Orchestra Iowa Holiday Spectacular pops concert at the architecturally extravagant Paramount Theatre this weekend to find out. It's guaranteed to be a Christmas touchdown!

Get your tickets right now this very minute by clicking here.

Brutish

We just had our first music and choreography rehearsals for the Orchestra Iowa holiday pops concert. And we’ve now discovered an interplanetary cosmos of music—holiday or otherwise—that lives in an unexplored dimension far beyond our mortal understanding of the allegro-legato continuum:

Orchestra Iowa intermission in my beloved Paramount Theatre!

We just heard Mozart’s sprightly, nimble (well, they’re all pretty nimble) Piano Concerto No. 21 (from house left row J on the aisle where I don’t think there’s any better vantage point in the city to watch the pianist’s nimble hands) and now we’re about to wallow in the glorious bombast of Beethoven’s mighty Symphony No. 5. And before the concert we both ATE KALE.

It doesn’t get any more Just Can’t Even than this!

It’s beginning to fit a lot like Christmas!

I just got fitted for a custom costume piece for a small-group number I’m singing in the Orchestra Iowa holiday concert.

Halloween? Thanksgiving? You’re just in my way now.