Live-blogging the debates

Pete: I don’t feel like you’re getting a fair amount of screen time tonight.

Kamala: I feel like you’re getting even less.

Joe: You stutter and stammer like you’ve spent all of seven seconds preparing for this debate.

Beto: You’re still here?

Elizabeth: I normally love you but you seem a little stabby toward people tonight. It’s beneath you.

Andrew: Decriminalize opioids? I think that’s going to require a little more nuance to sell as a viable policy proposal.

Anderson: CALL ME.

Tulsi: No.

Anderson: WHY HAVEN’T YOU CALLED?

Pete: Your lashing-out at Beto about courage is out of character for you.

Cory: I always agree with you, I always like you ... but I can never find anything interesting to say about you.

Julián: I always agree with you, I always like you ... but I can never find anything interesting to say about you.

Amy: Why did your people just call us in the middle of the debate? Are they not watching you right now?

Everyone: You’re all a little wobbly at directly answering the questions you’re asked.

Bernie: I pretty much always agree with you. But you’re yelly and disconcertingly old and please groom someone younger and less abrasive to carry your torch.

Tom: I’m wary of the personal influence of your personal wealth on your policies, so I’m equally wary of your populist messages. But I’m listening ...

Everyone: Please shut up when your time is up.

Joe: I admire and appreciate your vast political experience, but more and more it feels like it’s creating baggage and distraction.

Tulsi: No.

Andrew: You’re an example of how a REAL businessman knows REAL things and how they can thoughtfully, practically, REALLY work. I have faith in you.

Ron Reagan: Ballsy ad buy.

Elizabeth: I greatly admire your knowledge, intelligence and preparedness. You set the bar high.

Tom: YES! Take on trump and crush the shithole.

Cory: Nice dig at trump’s health. I hope he chokes on his bile and dies.

Marianne: Why aren’t you here tonight? Too weird?

Joe: You meander and stumble like a trump when you talk. I’m concerned.

Kamala: You’re so freaking smart and I love your take-no-bullshit prosecuting-attorneyness. I’d be proud to call you President.

Pete: I’d still be prouder to call YOU President.

Anderson: I DON’T CARE IF YOU’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF MODERATING A DEBATE. YOU OWE ME A CALL. I’M NOT GETTING ANY YOUNGER OR PRETTIER HERE.

Pete: How did I miss your proposal to expand the Supreme Court? I’m skeptical, but I believe in you and your thinking so I’m listening ...

IS IT ME OR DOES PETE KEEP GETTING CUT OFF SOONER THAN EVERYONE ELSE WHEN HE GETS TIME TO SPEAK? IS HE BEING PENALIZED FOR HAVING THE MOST ADORABLE HUSBAND?

Pete: “That’s not how donald trump got within cheating distance of the White House in the first place.” I LOVE YOU.

I have to pee and I’m tired. I may have to cut this short. Tell me if I miss a big splashy production number or something at the end.

Has it really been only two years?

Remember two years ago when KKK Grand Wizard (what the fuck is THAT stupid title about, racists?) David Duke responded expectantly to all your white-supremacist dog whistles when you started your appalling abortion of a presidency, trump? Now your inbred disciples are regularly following your orders to open fire on brown people with small-dicked-incel assault weapons. And you fucking SUCK at pretending you're shocked.

There is not enough piss in the world to properly drench your grave.

My Screamy Headache Man T-Shirt and I are back in the gym for my first time in exactly two weeks

(I didn’t say “the” first time because he may have been here without me in that time. I have more important things to keep track of than the comings and goings of my leisure apparel. Besides, trying to talk to him is a frustrating exercise in unproductivity; as you might surmise from his rather unambiguous name, it’s hard to get anything out of him but blood-curdling screams about his damn headache. Over and over. All over the Internet. And nobody should have to put up with that.)

Anyway, I’d hoped that my energy-chemical-explosion pre-workout shake might have an effect on my headache pain—which is significantly lessened today—but all it’s done is made me have to pee more. I worked out doing things that kept me relatively vertical—mostly back and shoulder stuff—so I’m at least hoping to have crippling workout pain—which is the pain I like—in those areas when I wake up tomorrow. After getting up to pee six times in the night, of course.

When you start to really have to pee during the keynote speaker’s address at your niece’s induction into the Adastra National Honor Society

so you run to the bathroom the moment he’s done talking but then you discover that all the auditorium doors locked behind you and you have to watch your niece walk across the stage—and the rest of the induction ceremony—through the window in the lobby door.

Welp. I’m here.

There’s no time to get to a matinee unless I can get my luggage, score a cab to my hotel in Times Square, stow my luggage, brush my teeth—hoo boy do I feel like I need to brush my teeth—find the theater, get a ticket and get myself comfortably seated in 14 minutes. I’d say it’s not entirely outside the realm of possibilities, BUT I REALLY WANT TO BRUSH MY TEETH.

But!

BUT!

After we got off the plane, I saw Cap’n Assholepants go into the men’s room ... so I decided to follow him—not in a winkie-lookin’ way but in an I-genuinely-needed-to-pee way. He found a bank of empty urinals and took the end one. So I violated centuries of sacred Urinal Distance Bro Code and took the one RIGHT NEXT TO HIM. I peed just fine ... but he was clearly doing the No Tinkling Sounds Sighs Of Frustration And Backed-Up Plumbing Pee Shy Urgency Dance. Because DON’T KICK ME UNDER MY SEAT OR I WILL FLOOD YOUR BLADDER, BACK UP YOUR URETERS AND SYSTEMATICALLY DESTROY YOUR KIDNEYS, BITCH.

Now. If you’ll excuse me, I have a week of merry musicals to enjoy.

Remember how last year my Big Birthday Broadway Bash Blowout! was delayed NINETEEN HOURS

because of bad weather and broken planes and canceled flights and I ended up DRIVING IN A CAR WITH COMPLETE STRANGERS ALL THE WAY TO O’HARE to get on the last possible flight to NYC and I ended up getting there at 2:00 am and I missed my Jimmy Fallon taping and my window for a show the night of my flight in? Remember? REMEMBER?

IT’S. HAPPENING. A. GAI. N. N. Nnnnn.

Our goddamn plane broke between the gate and the O’Hare runway and then officially was declared out of service and we came back to a different gate and got kicked off and the guy seated behind me had already established himself as totally goddamned obnoxious because He Was The Most Important Person On The Plane Who Therefore Will Kick Me Repeatedly In Every Way Possible Even From Under My Seat and Now He Had To Get Off Immediately Because Fuck All You Little People so I made a point of getting in front of him as we got in the aisle and OH NO IT TOOK ME A VERY LONG TIME TO BEND OVER AND PICK UP MY CARRY-ON FROM UNDER THE SEAT IN FRONT OF ME AND THEN OOPS I FORGOT MY BOOK SO I HAD TO SEARCH FOR IT IN THE SEAT POCKET HMMM WHERE DID IT GO OH THERE IT IS so that part was at least kind of awesome but anyway American just happened to have a spare of the almost exact same plane just sitting around—kind of like I do with peanut butter and lack of boyfriends—so our flight wasn’t canceled but we had to move to yet a different gate WHERE THE DAMN GATE AGENT ALSO PRONOUNCED IT CONCI-AIR and now we’re on the plane and we lost our exit row and Cap’ Assholepants has resumed kicking me plus the guy next to him is playing shitty music really loudly because of course he is and I’m doing the math in my head and I’m pretty sure I’ll still get there in time for a matinee but in the mean time look at my selfie and say our new gate number really fast and you’ll know what I think about my Big Birthday Broadway Bash Blowout Bad Breakdown Bummer Bane Bungle Burden Bullshit Boobies.

I might have added boobies at the end just to see if you were still paying attention. Or to complete the rhythmic alliteration. Or because I’m catastrophically immature.

It’s gonna be a bitch getting the Russian hooker pee out of the upholstery when they lose their health insurance and have to sell this

Throwing cheese at baby rapers

R. Kelly first appeared on my radar in the early 2000s as the world was first finding out about his proclivity for videotaping himself having sex with--and peeing on--young girls. I belonged to Crunch Gym in the basement of my Chicago office building at Grand and State (coincidentally across the street from the back entrance to Nordstrom). The Crunch chain of gyms was relatively new and extremely trendy and often populated with celebrities, and R. Kelly and his posse worked out at my Crunch location every day at the same time I did: noon. And by "worked out" I mean "showed up, sat around doing nothing on all the benches in the locker room, sat around doing nothing on all the equipment in the gym, mumbled things to each other that constantly ended with 'You know what I'm sayin'?' and generally pissed (ahem) off everyone at the gym."

But there's more!

The gym was in the basement of the building, spread out below a tiny lobby facing the sidewalk. The neighborhood was the newly booming River North, just (as you might imagine) north of the river and just west of the Mag Mile, which is the high-end-retail section of North Michigan Avenue. Street parking was restricted and very rare. But R. Kelly was above the laws of street parking, and he parked his massive Hummer on the street right in front of the lobby door ... and he parked one poor schmuck from his posse in the lonely little lobby presumably to keep an eye on the Hummer and fend off anyone who might stop to ticket or tow it as R. and the rest of his posse "worked out" in the basement below.

So let's review all the reasons from this story alone that R. Kelly is an entitled piece of shit: Having sex with little girls. Peeing on little girls. Videotaping it. Spreading out all over the gym and preventing people from working out on their lunch hours. Parking his Hummer on a street with no parking. Owning a Hummer. Making one of his posse sit and watch the Hummer to potentially bribe any authorities who might ticket or tow it.

Oh yeah: And everyone who witnessed all of this universally agreed that his Hummer was literally the color of ... wait for it ... pee.

Does anyone else think this snow we're covered in is weird and probably haunted by ghosts?

It's light and fluffy, but solid and not-blow-around-y. And when you shovel it, it falls like sand exactly where you put it. THIS IS NOT NORMAL SNOW, PEOPLE. It's like pie-crust dough before you add the last two tablespoons of ice water. It's the clumping cat litter that sifts through the scooper when you dig out the rocks of calcified cat pee. (For the record, I try my best not to get those two things mixed up when I'm baking.) It's white Play-Doh that you accidentally left the lid off of overnight. It's those tiny freeze-dried marshmallows that you find in packets of shitty powered cocoa mix. It's driveway dandruff mixed with street scabs. IT'S FREAKING ME OUT.

M-ICY!

1. I’ve been kind of smug in my good luck regarding never having run in extreme weather all summer.
2. Well, THAT sure changed this morning.
3. Brrrrrrr.
4. My typing thumb is so cold right now that it’s hard to type with any accuracu.
5. Cheap joke.
6. Anyway.
7. trump is a catastrophic-dumpster-fire piece of shit.
8. Whoops! Where did THAT come from?
9. Anyway.
10. When I bought this Mickey shirt, it hugged my arms and shoulders in manly-man ways.
11. Now it hangs on me like a Mayan burial gown on an immolated corpse.
12. Not that I think the Mayans begowned their dead AFTER they burned them.
13. But I like the imagery and rhythm of line item #11.
14. So I stand by my reporting.
15. Anyway.
16. Deflated showoff muscles and drapey T-shirts are what happens when you stop lifting 3+ times a week and start running 3+ times a week.
17. Poor, poor me.
18. But I have another half marathon looming in five weeks—and I plan to finish this one—so run I must.
19. And shrink I will.
20. Just like this morning.
21. Three miles. 11:32 pace. TINY twinge of knee pain.
22. Not much body-shrinking sweat though.
23. Because it was freezing.
24. Brrrrrrrr.
25. Gratuitous typo jokd.
26. Random mention of running buddies Rob and Scott.
27. I have to pee now.
28. TMI.
29. So you’re getting only 30 line items today.
30. You’re welcome.

#CedaRound: Bever Building

Cedar Rapids’ 1923 Colonial Revival Bever Building is slated for demolition in the coming months in the name of PROGRESS! and I swear on all things good and holy if it’s replaced by a lazy box of drywall I will sneak out in the dead of night and pee on the door handles. Do something bold and thoughtful and imaginative and aesthetically responsible, architects, or spend the rest of your lives carrying Purell in your pockets.

Anyway! Here are some final glimpses of the building and its iconic doorway lions and oops is that a lion selfie for those of us who will miss it on our trips down First Avenue:

Flashback Friday: Ruls Edition

My nephew was a draconian, absolutist, fun-hating child. But at least he left no gray areas in his demands. Or wet areas.

Let the record show, for the record, that this sign was designed and created in response to an (alleged, for the lawyers) infraction of my niece's and not of mine. It now sits charmingly framed on the tank of the downstairs toilet in my sister's house. Please contact me directly for tour times and dates.

Driving around with a burned-out headlight is as embarrassing as walking around with a dribble of pee on your pants

You just hope that if you look straight ahead and keep your eyes only on the road everyone else will do the same and nobody will notice.

Looks like someone had a rough night of arabesqueing dans le rue

I can relate to rough nights. This is the second time I’ve had to get up to pee. But I’m checking my phone with only one eye open so I’m still technically at least half asleep, dans le lit.

1 day until #Hallowmeme

 

(By "1 day" I mean "Halloween doesn't technically start until tonight." I also mean "I counted wrong when I started this countdown and just figured it out now.")

Flashback Friday: Terrifying Halloween Costume Edition

Nothing says "I sit down to pee" quite as efficiently as a bow tie. I taught myself to tie a bow tie when I was in high school, while all the other kids were doing more useful things like—oh, I don't know—hanging out with each other and forming meaningful friendships. I thought my little Madras plaid bow tie made me look so cool that I went out and bought a bunch more bow ties in all kinds of colors and patterns. Which makes this plaid one kind of a gateway bow tie. One reason I was so good at tying bow ties was those glasses. Their lenses were so expansively huge—like the Hubble telescope!—that I barely had to bend my neck to look down and see what I was doing. Big glasses + small bow tie = man who goes to the theater with his mom. Every time.

Fun fact: This is me in my dinner-plate glasses and pleated pants that were wider than the rest of my body in the lobby of the Kennedy Center when my mom and I went to D.C. to see Tyne Daly in Gypsy when I was in college. She got her kids out!

Last-minute tips from me to you for getting the most out of tomorrow's Chicago Marathon:

1. Do your crying up front. You'll be emotional at the starting line as it is, so let your tears flow then. Trust me: You won't have any moisture left in your body at the finish line anyway.
2. Speaking of moisture, PEE BEFORE THE RACE. Then get back in the porta-potty line and pee again.
3. There are very few people in the world who get to be cheered and screamed at by millions of fans for plus-or-minus four hours. You're one of them. Drink it in.
4. That said, don't let all that screaming distract you from the race. It's fun to smile and wave at everyone, but doing so burns precious energy. Find the balance between being a rock star and being a disciplined runner.
5. THAT said, all bets are off in Boystown. The second you turn left from Addison onto Broadway, you will be overcome by megatron levels of cheering and screaming and drag queens and music and pure unbridled joy. It is the BEST mile of the race, so smile and wave and cheer and pump your arms and maybe even cry a little. You won't be able to stop yourself anyway, so dive in and enjoy it.
6. There's no shame in walking if you need to. Your legs will start to stiffen up if you walk too long, though, which will make it harder to resume your running. But you probably already know that by now. :-)
7. That said, suck it up, put on your badass runner face and start running like a world-class athlete whenever you see the marathon photographers. (See photo.) You'll thank me when it comes time to buy your commemorative marathon photos.

8. I'm not gonna lie: Your last few miles running north up Michigan Avenue will suck like you won't believe. The cheering crowds will thin, your feet will hurt all the way up to your neck and you will swear that someone has put the Willis Tower -- your one shining beacon leading you to the finish line -- on wheels and is slowly pushing it farther and farther north just to mess with your mind. Rest assured that's not the case; there seriously isn't time to get all those wheels installed.
9. The route is pretty uniformly, blessedly flat. For the first 26 miles. In a twist that can only be described as cruel and unusual, the route becomes a steep hill once you pass the 26-mile marker and turn right on Roosevelt. To mitigate the situation, though, there will be another massive crowd there to cheer you on. Drink in as much as your body will let you.
10. Check out your skin after you cross the finish line. You will be covered in homemade salt. You're a margarita! So cheers to you for finishing. You've earned it.

Flashback Friday: Where Ya Goin'? Edition

Pee here? Blind people with walking sticks may buy tickets at this window? Please hold the hand rail when you get on the escalator? I don't speak Barcelonan so I could never figure out their signs when I touristed there 15 years ago. But I clearly wasn't afraid to be the obnoxious American tourist who squatted for pictures that tacitly made fun of confusing local signage. And I clearly didn't have sense enough to avoid the turn-of-the-century scoop-neck string-tank-top craze that was apparently jumping the pond and sweeping the Western world. But look! I had no tattoos! And shiny shoes! And whatever that murse thing is. But murse doesn't rhyme so I won't even point it out.

Good morning, I guess

Dear Steve:

Release the pee tapes and we promise to stop Photoshopping extra sores around your mouth.