Our seats are so far away that we’re barely even in the room where it happens

But I hope a guy named John stands in front of us so I can tell him to for God’s sake sit down.

Respect

WARNING: If you're too delicate to handle the language I choose to express my white-hot fury at our puerile dotard and the ways he's destroying our country, I don't want to hear about it.

Trump's incessant, braying tweets and Pence's gratuitously manufactured stunt claiming patriotic indignation over American citizens kneeling during the National Anthem are a collective bullshit argument that serves three purposes:

• To redirect the narrative from peaceful protests against America's systemic racism to a "disrespectful" war against the flag, veterans and the soul of America itself -- all of which tacitly propagates the same racism by deliberately ignoring the simple-to-understand purpose of these Constitutionally protected protests
• To serve as a desperate distraction from the sometimes hourly revelations about Dotard's corrupt, psychopathic, imploding clusterfuck administration and what it's already done to our standing around the world
• To inflame the passions of what's left of Dotard's pants-wetting dipshit voter base that's too proudly racist and too defiantly uneducated to do anything but cheer that their racist hatred and toxic ignorance are somehow finally being rewarded and construed as patriotism ... patriotism that they're too too blindly stupid to see is cloaked in a torn, burned, shit-stained American flag

#dotards

Republicans made Kim Davis a hero for voicing her beliefs at work, and because they agreed with those beliefs they pushed or dragged (or both) her into making them into a political statement. 

Now they're whining and cursing filling their diapers because other people are voicing their beliefs at work and making them into a political statement -- and THESE beliefs are ones that Republicans disagree with so hatefully that they're deliberately misinterpreting them into a narrative that other infantile Republicans can rally behind.

I hate Republicans.

We unfortunately have all day for the pain

If you can tear your eyes away even for a second from the compelling irresistibility of my ever-thickening disco-fantasy mustache, you'll see I'm still wearing yesterday's other facial hair and mega-patriotic flag T-shirt. I stayed home from work today partly to keep taking care of Mom but mostly to maximize my wearage of my Independence Day shirt, which I spent five whole dollars on but I won't get to wear again for one whole year. You'll also notice in this photo Mom's new smart TV, which I finally got to work but Mom's asleep so it's off and I'm able to take weird selfies safely shielded from her selfie-questioning gaze. And never you mind the subtext in this post that I potentially haven't showered today. Because it's so none of your business that I won't even bring it up.

Oh -- and Mom is doing remarkably well pain-wise today, after a pretty rough night. She still has moments of gasping shock, but they're fewer and farther between. And my handy little 3-hour timer on my phone is helping me keep her pain meds right on schedule. Progress!

Shit

I was saving this meme to post yesterday and I totally forgot. I call a do-over. Fire up your grills, light up your firecrackers and patriot up your songs right now so this meme is contextual, timely and funny. Go America!

PBS, you really, catastrophically suck.

First of all, do NOT get me started on that sixth-grade Blues Brothers medley that brought an irreparable pall of amateur stupidity to your "A Capitol Fourth" broadcast tonight. Or the fact that you clearly spent the evening devising newer and clumsier ways to sneak up on an unsuspecting John Stamos with your cameras.

But the 1812 Overture? As in Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's formally named "The Year 1812" festival overture composed to commemorate Russia's defense of its motherland against Napoleon's invading Grande Armée in 1812? There is nothing about that piece that is pro-America and everything about it that is pro-Russia. And if we didn't need further proof that our man-boy president or his drooling apologists programmed your music tonight, the fact that you skipped all of Tchaikovsky's early exposition and contextual narrative and went right to the loud parts at the end with all the guns and explosions and big hell-yeah booms tells us everything we need to know about your producers' and your target audience's attention spans, cultural awareness and knowledge of history.

I get more meaningful patriotism from the fireworks exploding meaninglessly all over our neighborhood all night.

At least the flag is still there

Happy early July 4 from me and Bitch Kitty, who hissed at me and scampered off to no doubt make pro-Putin posters and buy more MAGA hats from China before my camera had time to auto-focus for our patriotic selfie portrait. So the key takeaways here are 1) Bitch Kitty is eliminating your insurance before she bites you, 2) my disco-fantasy mustache makes me positively irresistible even when I sit next to the empty spot where my heartless kitty humiliatingly abandoned me for our patriotic selfie portrait, 3) my Snoopy shirt has a red collar and blue sleeves but Bitch Kitty ran away and killed my patriotic spirit before I got my blue sleeves in the frame and we're all gonna die anyway so why bother, 4) isn't our needlepoint flag pillow super-cute? 5) Mom is stuffed full of pain pills and tucked cozily into her blanket-draped recliner for the first night of her predicted eight weeks of shoulder-surgery recovery while I'm climbing under a blanket on the couch next to her so I can re-pill her every three hours and it feels really good that I'm here to take care of her, 6) she's still hoarse from her nerve block so she has one of my marathon cowbells at her side in case she needs to wake me between pills, 7) she might lose a hand if she actually rings that damn bell while I'm sleeping, 8) she's wearing my pajama bottoms for reasons she describes as because they're much too big for her so they're easier to get on and off with one hand but we all know it's because the hospital vending machine was out of Diet Coke today so I had a real Coke, 9) is it bad to hope that everyone setting off fireworks right now plus all the legislators who gave them unfettered access to all those fireworks lose vital organs in incendiary ways tonight? asking for a friend, 10) seriously -- how super-cute is our needlepoint throw pillow?

I! Have! Three! Notifications! At the same time!

That's normally my cumulative total for one week.

Oh -- and as usual, Kellyanne is confirming that she's still too stupid to understand the directions on a box of water.

Flashback Friday: Patriotic Edition

It was my distinct pleasure to sing with the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus for six years when I lived in Chicago. My membership in the chorus afforded me a lifetime of mountaintop experiences I will remember with awe and gratitude forever: repeatedly singing on stage with 100+ gay men (and a few straight women; we didn't discriminate) in proud and pure celebration of the collective experiences of US, recording a CD of love songs arranged in a brilliantly conceptual story arc, spending almost a week in Montréal cheering for and being cheered by gay choruses from around the world, performing in the brand-new 1,500-seat underground Harris Theater in Chicago's Millennium Park, performing in defiance of hate-group protesters on stage in the Frank Gehry-designed Pritzger Pavilion also in Millennium Park, learning and repeatedly performing the forever glorious "In Whatever Time We Have" from Children of Eden, tapping my heart out with a steno pool of other tappers to "Forget About the Boy" from Thoroughly Modern Millie, beveling seductively in little more than a leotard and heels as Velma Kelly in "Cell Block Tango," and singing a stunning, robust eight-part men's arrangement of the National Anthem three times to cheering -- cheering! -- crowds at Wrigley Field, where I fought back choking sobs of pride and experienced emotional chills to the core of everything I've ever thought and felt and believed and loved about myself and our celebratorily diverse chorus as gay men, as singers, as members of a loving, fraternal community and as citizens of America.