Opening night!

The many faces of Jake, the Aurora changeling WHOSE CHARACTERS DON’T HAVE NAMES so I had to fill in some blanks in the captions ...

No-Boundaries Barry, the waiter with the kids-menu social skills

Judge Judgypants, the judge who doesn’t bother tucking in his dress shirt under his robe

Tech-Beat Terry, reporting to you live from what may or may not be the Bureau of Propaganda

Wendall Edmund Anderson the Wesley Enterprises Assistant

Leonard the Lackey who really needs you to come with him

Opening night!

So. Many. Snaps.

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!

Elf the Musical opening night!

This is the nicest my dressing-room station will look for the next five weeks:

These people

You should hear them all sing. No really. YOU SHOULD COME TO OUR SHOW AND HEAR THEM ALL SING. The talent in this show is humbling. And the people in this show are delightful. And I’m being all sappy because I’ve had two Diet Cokes so my guard is down and I’m so embarrassed that I let you all see me this way so I’m going to stop typing now so I don’t embarrass myself any further I could have danced all night on the street where you live wait why am I stringing together random song titles from My Fair Lady oh right it’s because I’m IN My Fair Lady and I’m in it with these lovely people plus a lot more lovely people so GET YOUR BLOOMIN’ TICKETS AND COME SEE US, PEOPLE I think I need another Diet Coke.

Oh, nothing

Just not-fiber-eating at our My Fair Lady opening-night party with the Lady to my Lord Boxington after our STANDING OVATION.

How’s YOUR night?

Ten Ways I Break New Personal Ground And Forge New Experiential Frontiers In Fuddy Meers (in no particular order):

1. I'm used to standing on a flat-fronted stage under a soaring proscenium with the safety of a vast, alarmingly deep orchestra pit separating me from the paying, judging, potentially-tomato-throwing patrons of the arts in the audience. In entirely differently alarming contrast, we're performing Fuddy Meers in a tiny black-box theater surrounded on three sides by paying, judging, potentially-tomato-throwing patrons of the arts. And I CAN SEE THEIR FACES. AND THEIR BASKETS OF TOMATOES. This is not disturbing to me. Not disturbing at all.
2. Most shows with fight scenes in them have fight calls on stage before the house opens to run through the fight choreography and make sure the blocking and swinging and ducking are fresh in the actors' muscle memory so nobody gets hurt in performance. In Fuddy Meers, I have bacon call. And puppet call. Have YOU ever had bacon call or puppet call ... or BOTH? No. No, you have not. I win.
3. Two words: Double D's.
4. Latex + spirit gum + in my hair = I SUFFER EXTREME PAIN FOR YOUR THEATERGOING ENJOYMENT.
5. I do a lot of apologizing backstage for the way I talk to and treat people onstage. I try live my life in a way that I never have to have these apologetic conversations in the real, not-paying-judging-potentially-tomato-throwing-patrons-of-the-arts world. On the plus side, these awkward apologies are almost always met with big hugs.
6. I've made dramatic stage entrances in the past being rolled in on a throne of deep-sea coral, swing-dancing with another dude, tapping in painfully-too-small heels and peeking timidly through the light of a lit candle, but my Fuddy Meers entrance forges new frontiers in the dramatic-stage-entrances experiential canon and adds a line item I didn't even know I wanted on my theatrical-experiences bucket list.
7. I tried to wear contacts for a while in college, but I absolutely couldn't work up the nerve to actually touch my eyeball without blinking and flinching like a total Blinky McEyeflincher--and on the rare occasion where I actually did manage to make contact, the damn lens would turn inside out and grip the tip of my finger like a way too small, unquestionably-destined-to-fail condom. I am bravely re-attempting to conquer this Blinky McEyeflincher Mt. Everest in Fuddy Meers, but so far I've achieved nothing but useless condom fingers so I've nightly had to rely on the kindness of experienced eye sherpas to get my blinding contact to make contact with and stay in my damn eye.
8. Yes. Blinding contact. It turns my eye milky white and is apparently quite startling to behold.
9. Not that I can see it. Because I stumble around directly in front of all our paying, judging, potentially-tomato-throwing patrons of the arts with full sight in only one eye. When it's not partially obscured by a jagged-holed stocking cap, of course.
10. I say a bad word. Many people consider it to be a VERY bad word.

YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS A SINGLE ONE OF THESE GROUNDBREAKING, TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCES, PEOPLE. So click here and join the paying, judging, potentially-tomato-throwing patrons of the arts in our little three-quarter-surrounded black-box theater anytime between tonight's triumphant opening and our triumphant closing on the 17th.

P.S. Double D's!

Nobody ALL DAY noticed my limited-edition one-of-a-kind totally unique "JAKE The Musical!" T-shirt

And I had to take this selfie lying down because my face feels creasy and wrinkly and this is the only way short of surgery or witchcraft to smooth it out. But we had an AWESOME opening night and the audience laughed and cheered and my lovely Guvnors family was ridiculously silly and we had a delightful little cast party to celebrate and now I'm taking my creases and my wrinkles and my tragically overlooked T-shirt and my happy glowy memories of the evening and we're all going to bed. Good night!

Six minutes to curtain!

I'm waiting backstage on a couch shoved under a rack of costumes wearing my pinstripe suit and paisley ascot. Which I'm calling a dickey. Because this a comedy.

One Man, Two Guvnors opens tonight!

But you're going to have to come find out for yourself which of the Two Guvnors I am.