Our first concert with our Orchestra Iowa season tickets!

And our seats turned out to be pretty freaking awesome.

11 years ago today ...

Though I was living in Chicago at the time, I was in Cedar Rapids 11 years ago today to visit my folks for their June 14 anniversary. My boyfriend at the time and I had heard stories of looming flooding, and even though the rains and the swollen rivers diverted us north from highway 30 at Mt. Vernon and sent us into Cedar Rapids on Mt. Vernon Road, we still never believed Cedar Rapids could have serious flooding. I mean, it's CEDAR RAPIDS. I grew up here. How could anything bad happen?

By the time we finally got to my folks' house late on the 13th though, the flooding had become serious enough that the city's last intact water pumping station was in such danger of being breached that the urgent call went out on the news for volunteers to sandbag it. Though we'd had a 5-hour drive we wanted to go out and help, but by the time we had a quick bathroom break before heading for the door, the news announced that they'd already gotten all the sandbaggers they needed. Which was a clear harbinger of the resilience our city would soon show. But at the time it was dark and late and we were 32 blocks from the river so all we could do was go to bed and wait.

The next morning, the footage on the news was devastating. The river had crested at 31.12 feet—19 feet over flood stage—and our entire downtown was drowning, as were 1,300 blocks of the city on either side of the river. Office buildings and banks and stores and my beloved theaters were almost up to the tops of their doors in water. All three bridges that cross May's Island and connect the east and west sides of the city were completely submerged. The Time Check and Czech Village neighborhoods were destroyed, with many houses underwater to their rooflines. The highly elevated I-380 was the only way to get across town, though all of the entrance and exit ramps in the flood zone were submerged. We—like seemingly everyone else in the city—drove slowly along the highway and peered out our windows to survey the devastation as the flood waters rippled mere feet beneath us.

As the water slowly receded, the city reeled over the destruction of homes, the closing of businesses, the undermining of infrastructure ... but never the loss of spirit. The city leaped almost immediately into action to tear down what was unsalvageable, repair what was repairable, clean up what was messy and dangerous, reimagine new life and purpose for what was destroyed, and start to recover and relocate and rebuild ourselves into a newer and better and more thoughtfully redesigned shining city on the river. We now have our vibrant and ever-expanding NewBo district, we've literally picked up and moved an entire museum to higher ground, we've creatively and beautifully incorporated new levees and berms into inviting public spaces, we've used the opportunity to upgrade and restore historic buildings, we've turned our once-desolate-after-5:00 downtown into a destination area bustling with restaurants and entertainment ... and we've salvaged and restored and improved and polished up my beloved Paramount and Iowa (home of Theatre Cedar Rapids) theaters.

The flood was awful and heartwrenching and devastating. Many businesses never recovered. Many homes and families and lives have been forever changed. And our renaissance is far from complete. At any given time there are at least three massive construction/renovation projects happening in the downtown area, and I adjust my travel to and from work to check on them almost daily. Seriously. (Currently: The finishing touches on the towering modern addition to the American Building, the formidable new Skogman building that I still can’t decide if it’s exciting or boring (don't mess this up, Skogman—build something we can all appreciate and be proud of), the expanding Habitrail of skywalks, and the massive condo/apartment building that's covering more than a city block on the east side of I-380 at Diagonal Drive)

Aside from the before-and-after photos of my dad's office, where he thought two levels of concrete blocks would protect his antique roll-top desk from the floodwaters that eventually submerged his entire office past its ceiling, the pictures I'm posting here aren't mine. But they show the depth and breadth of the destruction we all faced and make a great reminder of how amazingly far we have come in the last ten years.

So happy floodiversary, Cedar Rapids! May we keep our recovery and flood-protection development speeding along forevermore. (And don't forget to wish my folks a happy 55th anniversary tomorrow.)

Third Street looking south from First Avenue. You can see the old Theatre Cedar Rapids marquee on the left.

Theatre Cedar Rapids. All the First Avenue storefronts on the left were shut down after the flood, and the space became the awesome new Linge Lounge.

Dad’s office—and beautiful oak roll-top desk—before and after the flood. The desk was in salvageable, and everything in it got ripped out and carried away by the floodwaters.

1,300 blocks on both sides of the river were submerged—some under more than 10 feet of water.

Those ghostly lines in the water are the totally submerged bridges that cross May’s Island as they connect the east and west sides of the city.

That’s high-in-the-sky I-380 snaking through downtown with floodwater submerging its ramps and lapping at its floors.

The massive crown-jewel National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library building on the lower right was actually lifted and relocated to higher ground after the flood.

We parked this string of train cars on this essential train bridge before the flood to weigh it down so the floodwaters wouldn’t wash it away.

Entire neighborhoods. Families’ lives. Wiped out. No words.

The floodwaters floated the Mighty Wurlitzer organ console from the bottom of the Paramount Theater pit to above the stage, where they dumped it like a dirty carcass.

Another performing adventure has ended at my beloved Paramount Theatre, and once again I stopped before I packed up and left to take a picture of this awesome door

It’s literally where a hole was cut high into the side of the gilded, lavishly baroque auditorium (specifically an alcove above the audience-left mezzanine) to link it to the austere new addition with all of its modern dressing rooms and bathrooms and showers and elevators and laundry facilities and its comfortably appointed green room with refrigerators and a wide third-floor window offering a southern view of downtown Cedar Rapids. I love how you can stand where I took this picture right next to a sleek stainless steel elevator surrounded by the clean walls and neutral carpet tiles of the modern addition and peer through this door and see the brilliant reds and golds of the rococo carpeting that hint at the breathtaking, venerable grandeur waiting just around the corner.

I grew up in awe of—and in love with—the Paramount Theatre, and I’m so thrilled and honored and humbled not only to get to perform on its century-old stage and enjoy the distinct privilege of looking out into the vast sea of lustrous golds and merlot velvets of its auditorium on a happily regular basis, but also to see first-hand the backstage additions and upgrades and enrichments to the expanded facility that will take it—as I see through the metaphor of this door—beautifully into its next century.

It’s my 15th Cedar Rapids Follies!

We just had an increments-of-five-years-anniversary-celebrating cast meeting before our final show and I got a nice card and a packet of granulated silica gel. It was in with a star-shaped metal box engraved with my name. Which is nice too.

Now the house lights have dimmed, the audience has hushed, the curtain speech is underway and our final first downbeat is in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

One of us is wearing a plunging V-neck T-shirt. One of us is a bust.

My Paramount Theatre office view for the next week as a Cedar Rapids Follies pit singer:

I’m surrounded by rockstar singers and instrumentalists and singing on-book so I DON’T HAVE TO MEMORIZE ANYTHING. I’m not complaining at all.

One last selfie with THAT VIEW before I abdicate the stage and ditch rehearsal and get home before my exploding headache becomes a major medical concern

I actually found an angle of the Paramount Theatre that I haven’t selfied!

Follies is finally moving into its gorgeous performance home and I’ve already celebrated by doing my little happy dance for being here.

"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.

31.12 feet

Though I was living in Chicago at the time, I was in Cedar Rapids 10 years ago today to visit my folks for their June 14 anniversary. My boyfriend at the time and I had heard stories of looming flooding, and even though the rains and the swollen rivers diverted us north from highway 30 at Mt. Vernon and sent us into Cedar Rapids on Mt. Vernon Road, we still never believed Cedar Rapids could have serious flooding. I mean, it's CEDAR RAPIDS. I grew up here. How could anything bad happen?

By the time we finally got to my folks' house late on the 13th though, the flooding had become serious enough that the city's last intact water pumping station was in such danger of being breached that the urgent call went out on the news for volunteers to sandbag it. Though we'd had a 5-hour drive we wanted to go out and help, but by the time we had a quick bathroom break before heading for the door, the news announced that they'd already gotten all the sandbaggers they needed. Which was a clear harbinger of the resilience our city would soon show. But at the time it was dark and late and we were 32 blocks from the river so all we could do was go to bed and wait.

The next morning, the footage on the news was devastating. The river had crested at 31.12 feet--19 feet over flood stage--and our entire downtown was drowning, as were 1,300 blocks of the city on either side of the river. Office buildings and banks and stores and my beloved theaters were almost up to the tops of their doors in water. All three bridges that cross May's Island and connect the east and west sides of the city were completely submerged. The Time Check and Czech Village neighborhoods were destroyed, with many houses underwater to their rooflines. The highly elevated I-380 was the only way to get across town, though all of the entrance and exit ramps in the flood zone were submerged. We--like seemingly everyone else in the city--drove slowly along the highway and peered out our windows to survey the devastation as the flood waters rippled mere feet beneath us.

As the water slowly receded, the city reeled over the destruction of homes, the closing of businesses, the undermining of infrastructure ... but never the loss of spirit. The city leaped almost immediately into action to tear down what was unsalvageable, repair what was repairable, clean up what was messy and dangerous, reimagine new life and purpose for what was destroyed, and start to recover and relocate and rebuild ourselves into a newer and better and more thoughtfully redesigned shining city on the river. We now have our vibrant and ever-expanding NewBo neighborhood, we've literally picked up and moved an entire museum to higher ground, we've creatively and beautifully incorporated new levees and berms into inviting public spaces, we've used the opportunity to upgrade and restore historic buildings, we've turned our once-desolate-after-5:00 downtown into a destination area bustling with restaurants and entertainment ... and we've salvaged and restored and improved and polished up my beloved Paramount and Iowa (home of Theatre Cedar Rapids) theaters.

The flood was awful and heartwrenching and devastating. Many businesses never recovered. Many homes and families and lives have been forever changed. And our renaissance is far from complete. At any given time there are at least three massive construction/renovation projects happening in the downtown area, and I adjust my travel to and from work to check on them almost daily. Seriously. (Currently: The towering modern addition to the American Building, whatever the hell Skogman is going to build on the just-demolished Bever Building site (don't mess this up, Skogman--build something we can all appreciate and be proud of), the multi-lot demolition on Second Street between Second and Third Avenues, and the massive condo/apartment building that's covering more than a city block on the east side of I-380 at Diagonal Drive)

Aside from the before-and-after photos of my dad's office, where he thought two levels of concrete blocks would protect his antique roll-top desk from the floodwaters that eventually submerged his entire office past its ceiling, the pictures I'm posting here aren't mine. But they show the depth and breadth of the destruction we all faced and make a great reminder of how amazingly far we have come in the last ten years.

So happy floodiversary, Cedar Rapids! May we keep our recovery and flood-protection development speeding along forevermore. (And don't forget to wish my folks a happy 54th anniversary tomorrow.)

Another performing adventure has ended at my beloved Paramount Theatre

And this time I stopped before I packed up and left to take a picture of this awesome door:

It’s literally where a hole was cut high into the side of the gilded, lavishly baroque auditorium (specifically an alcove above the audience-left mezzanine) to link it to the austere new addition with all of its modern dressing rooms and bathrooms and showers and elevators and laundry facilities and its comfortably appointed green room with refrigerators and a wide third-floor window offering a southern view of downtown Cedar Rapids. I love how you can stand where I took this picture right next to a sleek stainless steel elevator surrounded by the clean walls and neutral carpet tiles of the modern addition and peer through this door and see the brilliant reds and golds of the rococo carpeting that hint at the breathtaking, venerable grandeur waiting just around the corner.

I grew up in awe of—and in love with—the Paramount Theatre, and I’m so thrilled and honored and humbled not only to get to perform on its century-old stage and enjoy the distinct privilege of looking out into the vast sea of lustrous golds and merlot velvets of its auditorium on a happily regular basis, but also to see first-hand the backstage additions and upgrades and enrichments to the expanded facility that will take it—as I see through the metaphor of this door—beautifully into its next century.

Come and get it while you can, my dudes

I’m getting heterosexualer and heterosexualer by the hot second in this faux-satin periwinkle leg o’ mutton wing-collar chemise festooned in shimmery tonal sequins.

#FolliesLife, yo.

Bernadette Peters has walked through this door. Kathy Griffin has walked through this door.

I HAVE WALKED THROUGH THIS DOOR.

Find out why at CRFOLLIES.COM

Tap rehearsal!

With pink objets d'art to keep it real, yo.

Come watch me tap "I Can Do That" in Follies on March 24 and 25! Whether I rock it or fall on my face, you'll totally get your money's worth.

Get your tickets HERE!

#CedaRound: Paramount Theatre

Another performing adventure has ended at my beloved Paramount Theatre, and this time I stopped before I packed up and left to find this awesome door and take a picture of it. It’s literally where a hole was cut high into the side of the gilded, lavishly baroque auditorium (specifically an alcove above the audience-left mezzanine) to link it to the austere new addition with all of its modern dressing rooms and bathrooms and showers and elevators and laundry facilities and its comfortably appointed green room with refrigerators and a wide third-floor window offering a southern view of downtown Cedar Rapids. I love how you can stand where I took this picture right next to a sleek stainless steel elevator surrounded by the clean walls and neutral carpet tiles of the modern addition and peer through this door and see the brilliant reds and golds of the rococo carpeting that hint at the breathtaking, venerable grandeur waiting just around the corner.

I grew up in awe of — and in love with — the Paramount Theatre, and I’m so thrilled and honored and humbled not only to get to perform on its century-old stage and enjoy the distinct privilege of looking out into the vast sea of lustrous golds and merlot velvets of its auditorium on a happily regular basis, but also to see first-hand the backstage additions and upgrades and enrichments to the expanded facility that will take it — as I see through the metaphor of this door — beautifully into its next century.

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.

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.