Cats are weird

Why did she just plop down with her back to me and her butthole on my foot? She has all the social subtlety of a passive-aggressive sixth-grader at recess.

Bitch Kitty don’t care that I went on an epic shoe binge

Bitch Kitty has a butt to lick.

Oh, nothing

Just sitting here taking a plain old unremarkable rehearsal selfie.

Move along. Mind your business.

Bridget! Is! Visiting!

Bitch Kitty’s gonna be pissed.

I love how all the Important Nouns (like Butthole) and Noun Phrases (like Prayer Shawl) are in Capital Letters (which is also a Noun Phrase)

I’m working from home today

(because I’m a big chicken about driving on thick ice embedded with chunks of hail and no doubt shards of glass and the wailing souls of long-dead children) and OF ALL THE COZY PLACES IN OUR COZY HOUSE THAT BITCH KITTY COULD CHOOSE TO SIT, she’s chosen to sit on my not-at-all-cozy canvas laptop bag. With her bitch ass aimed directly at me, natch.

#SparksOfJoy: A weekly post about something that makes me happy

Singin' in the Rain: Ridiculously implausible; impeccably danced; gloriously over the top; flawlessly cast; and never doomed to become old, tired or boring, this movie stars some of my favorite triple-threat actors--Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds, with an honorable mention for the delightfully silly Jean Hagen--and fills me with inequitable amounts of giggly joy from the oversaturated colors of the opening credits to the curiously unflattering but undoubtedly loving billboard profiles in the closing shot. Its songs “Moses,” “Good Morning” and, of course, “Singin’ in the Rain” are absolute master classes in tap concept and technique (though not in making sure the actors never show the camera that their shoes have no taps on them as they collapse in the inevitable pile of giggles at the end of a song). And if any actor can completely repurpose and thus save a failing movie via a pep talk and a frankly weird proposal for a lanky, absurdist-conceptual dance sequence, it’s Gene Kelly. (Also: Please notice my epic restraint in never mentioning how the movie’s costumes hugged his perfectly round butt.)

LITANY OF COMPLAINTS:

• My supposed-to-be-awesome new T-shirt has an owl saying WHOM on the chest, but the printing and the shirt are almost the same color so you can’t even see the graphics and I’m too lazy to mail it back so I’m now the proud owner of a $20 new gray T-shirt with a hidden pronornithology pun on it.
• It has an owl! Whom says WHOM!
• Oops.
• WHO says WHOM.
• Stupid owl.
• Our tech-week/opening-weekend marathon is over, and I’m already missing the show and the people and the mysterious drafty feeling I have during the bows.
• But I accidentally called my wife the wrong name today on stage.
• So maybe it’s time for a little break.
• We also had a catcaller in the audience today who yelled something about our “winkies.”
• It was probably one of those stupid owls.
• We have only six more times to bring this wonderful show to life.
• That’s 12 if you count in buttcheeks though.
• When I got home just now, Dad was listening to country gospel music on Alexa.
• Where did I go wrong when I raised him?
• The music was probably sung by owls.
• I unceremoniously and no doubt rudely told Alexa to play classical music instead.
• BECAUSE I’M A HEARTLESS TYRANT.
• WITH GOOD TASTE.
• Not like those damn owls.
• And their damn pronouns.
• CAN I GET A WHOM YEAH!

Opening night pump! Because these show tunes aren’t gonna flex themselves!

It turns out a poorly timed leg day—desperate vanity dictates that I probably should have cycled into a chest day on opening night—is especially unproductive the day after shredding a bacon-size piece of flesh off my shin. But it’s too late now, and my man-fleshy butt is off to the theater for its official show-tune debut.

And to all of you gym members too dumb to notice that I’ve been taking stealth selfies every time I work out: AT LEAST LOOK UP AND NOTICE MY SHIRT!

Come see our big-ass show!

When Theatre Cedar Rapids staged its 2018-2019 season announcement late last winter, I wasn’t able to attend the gala event for some reason. But my drive home that night took me down First Avenue past the theater, where the upcoming shows were excitedly scrolling across the marquee … and my heart almost skipped a beat when I saw The Full Monty flash by.

Those of you who’ve endured my effusive gushing about this show know that I have adored The Full Monty since I first saw the Broadway tour when I lived in Chicago more than 15 years ago. I was dating a guy who knew someone in the cast, and he got us house seats for four performances while it was in town. (Odd fun fact: The castmember played the character who strips at the opening of the show, and the first time we saw the show was on his birthday … so I have the odd distinction of being able to say I’ve eaten cake with a Broadway stripper in his dressing room. Which is not a metaphor for anything.)

Since then I’ve memorized every word and every note and every moment of the cast recording and I’ve fallen in love with the endless creative brilliance of David Yazbek, who has also written music and lyrics for equally awesome musicals based on the movies Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (I got to see the original Broadway production and have equal reverence for its cast recording as well) and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (I was in New York when it opened, but I crappily couldn’t get tickets to see it). And he just won the Tony Award for The Band’s Visit, if you need any more impetus to love his Full Monty score as much as I do.

Being in this show was on an ephemeral bucket list of things I was sure I’d never get the chance to do. Being cast in this show and then rehearsing it over the last two months have put me on a high I’m not even close to coming down from. I’m over the freaking moon (which I guess could be a butt metaphor if you’re so immature that you’d actually go there) to actually get to sing this score with a full orchestra and play one of the goofy, earnest Hot Metal guys along with the five other goofy, earnest actors who eventually strip with me. The six of us have gone from shyly showing our ankles in front of each other at our months-ago photo shoot to walking around butt-ass naked in a fully lit rehearsal room this week as we fine-tuned the timing of our G-string removal. And it’s been a supremely joyous journey to get here.

I can’t remember the last time I was this full-immersive thrilled to be a part of a show and to help bring it to life in front of three weekends of audiences. Aside from the brilliant music and lyrics, the story is funny and sharply written, the characters are nuanced and messy and interesting and fun, and the story is at once joyous and heartbreaking and ridiculous and endlessly entertaining.

And after all the excitement and waiting and rehearsing that started last winter when I first saw The Full Monty scroll across the marquee screen as I sat at a red light on First Avenue, WE’RE FINALLY OPENING TONIGHT. And you have only nine opportunities to see us. So get your tickets now and COME LOOK AT MY BUTT. (That’s also not a metaphor for anything.)

When you’re all psyched up for a killer leg workout

but when you warm up at the squat rack you feel the tiniest hint of a twinge of an old tendon injury deep in your awkward buttish region so in the interest of preserving your ability to walk you have to abruptly pick another body part to work out as you bob and choke in a bewildering sea of whatdoIdonowness so you decide to do chest and triceps but you’ve been thinking about destroying your quads all day so your head just isn’t in it but speaking of my head here’s an artistically composed pec-deck portrait of me and my phrenology shirt.

Are you sitting down?

Because I was WHEN BITCHY KITTY OF HER OWN VOLITION AND YET-TO-BE-ARTICULATED-BECAUSE-SHE-ONLY-KNOWS-HOW-TO-MEOW-AND-WE-HUMANS-DON'T-SPEAK-MEOW-YET AGENDA JUMPED INTO MY CHAIR AND SAT NEXT TO ME PRESSED UP AGAINST MY INCREDULOUS LEG ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT:

It took me 60 hours to post this photo because I'm still processing this lurching plot twist in the soap-opera-frenemies Bitch Kitty Life storyline. Also because Mom didn't send it to me until late yesterday. But still.

Granted, once Bitch Kitty jumped into my chair she sat in an extremely weird position with her face buried in the back cushion and her self-righteous butthole gazing out into the room ... and she growled like an over-torqued automatic-pencil-sharpener motor as I tried to pet her ... and her over-torqued-automatic-pencil-sharpener-motor growling only intensified if my attempts at petting left her ears-and-head area and ventured down toward her tail-and-butt area but then again we did teach her to be a lady who doesn't put out on the first date so I guess we should be proud of her for that ... and I had just emptied her litter box so I was probably dusted in minuscule-but-still-possibly-scented particles of litter-box floaties so perhaps she was just following her nose and her baser instincts when she jumped into the chair with the intention to poop on me and quickly realized her error but was staying there only under a pathetically inept veneer of politeness ... but the fact remains that I now feel obligated to beg for her love every moment of every day until she deigns to jump butthole-out into my chair again one day next year ... and then one day the next year ... and then one day the next year ... until she up and dies on me and breaks my heart because I thought we had a thing going but her yet-to-be-articulated-because-she-only-knows-how-to-meow-and-we-humans-don't-speak-meow-yet agenda all along was to make me think I had a chance with her and she gave me the ultimate dis from beyond her over-torqued-automatic-pencil-sharpener-motor-growling grave. Sigh.

Also: I look like a short, wide squished marshmallow in this photo but I swear it's just the evils of foreshortening and shadows and I'm actually totally swole and ripped for my big stripper reveal in The Full Monty and you should come see it but you should also squint just in case I actually do become a short, wide squished marshmallow before then please pass the doughnuts oops did I say doughnuts I meant celery but I'll totally eat that box of doughnuts if you don't want them because it's a shame to waste perfectly good food.

Also: Mom and Dad hate those plaid chairs (we have two of them because civilized people have sets of matching chairs and we as a family no longer live in a cave) but while I'm not in love-love with the plaid I still love the chairs' clean Mid-century lines and confident geometries so tell Mom and Dad that we should keep their clean Mid-century lines and confident geometries incorporated in our gracious home décor and just re-cover them in something that doesn't look like it came from the textile tumble table at an Eddie Bauer Home Store going-out-of-business liquidation event.

Also: Textile Tumbletable would make a great drag name.

Also: Or not.

Also: I just purged a ton of shoes I haven't been wearing and I rediscovered these blue Chucks and aren't they awesome?

Also: I think that's enough alsos so I'll stop now. Also.

I love to brag, but this is my view tonight

Except there will be people in the seats. And they will smile and clap. And I won’t have my butt facing them. I will instead show them both halves of my face. But otherwise, this is an exact photo of my evening. Please contain your jealousy.

Look! I fixed the binding in my Full Monty sheet music!

And I'm in a show with playoff music called BIG ASS TAG! Things couldn't be better.

I’ll take Things I Won’t Be Buying At The Galena Kitchen Store for $690, Alex ...

Just don't barf on the carpet

How can they see with ... um ... cat ... butt ... in their eyes?

#WeirdStuffICollectOnMyPhone

Weird dogs are the best dogs

Well now I know where I got my fascination for walking around the city taking pictures of architectural geometries and dramatic perspectives and stark contrasts between shadow and light:

I just saw West Side Story on the big screen for the first time, and it is BRILLIANT cinema--and a lush visual poem of color and movement and shape and pattern that I never fully appreciated from my endless viewings on a TV screen. I grew up devouring the movie soundtrack and I’ve known every word and note and phrase and nuance of Leonard Bernstein’s score and Stephen Sondheim’s libretto for as long as I can remember. I’d assumed I’d spend my first big-screen viewing obsessing over Jerome Robbins’ choreography and staging, but instead I kept examining every camera angle and forced perspective and texture and shadowing and gang-specific palette of Robert Wise’s cinematography. And now I have the final piece of the puzzle for my full love of and artistic respect for this movie.

OK, well not the FINAL final piece of the puzzle; the final final piece may or may not (which totally means does) revolve (literally!) around the ... um ... globe-like butts of the dancers, which also can be fully appreciated only on the big screen.

Anyway, here are some non-butt-related examples of the photos I've taken as I've wandered around Cedar Rapids not realizing I was pretending to be Robert Wise:

Ninja level: Expert