THREE-DAY WEEKEND!

I hope I don't slip up and accidentally go to work on Monday.

Word to the wise:

There are two dance studios next door to each other on West 45th Street. Only one of them necessitates tap shoes.

And next door to these establishments WAS Kinky Boots, which required ridiculous heels. The show closed last weekend though, and rough-looking guys named Vinny and Dude and Here’s My Number Jake Call Me are currently hauling the remnants of the show out the side doors and across the sidewalk into trucks for what doesn’t look like a promising fate.

Oh—and tap class was the perfect level of challenging, so I therefore deem it awesome. Except the teacher randomly started many of the technique drills and combinations on the left. Which is the dance equivalent of pushing us into pits of lava, but with a compelling beat.

I found this record a couple months too late for us to use in our Full Monty rehearsals

Given its glaring omission of John Cage’s 4’33” though, it seems to be a pretty sloppily curated compilation. To be fair, an LP holds only 22 minutes per side, but that in no way precludes this album from including the condensed 0’12” dance suite.

How to be a theater person:

1. Repeatedly check your score and sing along with the cast recording to memorize your music for a show as you fold and put away three weeks of unfolded laundry.
2. Have three weeks of unfolded laundry because you’ve been in another show.
3. Stumble on your souvenir tearaway thong and souvenir backup tearaway thong from said previous show as you’re folding all that (clean! I swear!) laundry.
4. Instead of figuring out where the hell to put your souvenir tearaway thong and souvenir backup tearaway thong (DAMNIT, AUTOCORRECT! Not once in the last four tries have I intended to type thing!), artfully arrange them with the score of your new show on a bed of unmatched socks to post them dramatically but tastefully on Facebook.
5. Panic that you’ve already forgotten all the music you’ve reviewed and learned as you’ve folded and put away. Because your mind is clearly too busy trying to figure out where to put your souvenir things.

The dimple in my tie is totally on point tonight and I don’t want to ruin it so I won’t be doing any stripping

Also: Have you met my lovely stage wife? Shhh—don’t tell her I’m a feral jungle-beast stripper. I have a rep to protect.

Secrets of theater magic: Strippin’ Stuff!

1. Elastic shoelaces WHICH ARE THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTION OF THE THEATER SINCE STAGE LIGHTING THAT DOESN’T PERIODICALLY EXPLODE AND BURN YOU ALIVE IN FRONT OF A HORRIFIED AUDIENCE

2. Microphone pack hidden in hat BECAUSE LET’S BE SERIOUS WHERE THE HELL ELSE COULD YOU PUT IT?

3. Bright red thong with giant pop-off snaps BUT THAT’S ACTUALLY FROM MY PRIVATE COLLECTION SO IT DOESN’T REALLY COUNT AS *THEATER* MAGIC

Done and hung and ready for fun!

Only five more opportunities to see our awesome little show!

 Get your tickets at theatrecr.org

The bad news:

I've been lying to all our Full Monty audiences. I have not at any time during our rehearsals or run been fully naked; I've been wearing stitches in my head for the last 12 days. I've also had a band-aid on my ripped fingernail since Wednesday, but in comparison that barely qualifies as unsexy so stop whining and demanding refunds on your tickets.

The good news: I JUST GOT MY STITCHES OUT! (Also, the lab results showed the cysts were benign, but they're by nature benign and the lab work was just a precaution in case they were an abomination of nature like those damn gays.) Anyway, my stitches-less scalp and I are finally going MEGA FULL MONTY this weekend!

The bad news: The cute dude in the doctor's waiting room never once said hi or gave me butterfly kisses. Probably because I didn't put any product in my hair this morning because of my stitch-ectomy so my hair is doomed to be man-repellent-level floofy all day.

The good news: The temperatures here have yet to drop to sub-arctic levels, so nobody's cysts or stitches have frozen off for free yet--which would be totally unfair to me. But the snow has drifted a foot above the bottom of my office window (and I'm on the 94th floor, which makes it borderline alarming) and my skin is itchy to the bone, so once the temperatures drop I think it's safe to say that winter is finally here.

Wha? It’s 9:54 pm and I STILL HAVE PANTS ON!

This is very, very weird.

So apparently I’ve consistently been pretty naked on stage every January since time immemorial

because Facebook just gave me THIS memory from seven years ago when I tapped to “Rubber Ducky” in a flesh-colored speedo covered in soap-suds-colored tulle with a bunch of equally almost-naked tappers wearing rubber-duckie butts:

Pro tip: Never tap in the presence of bubbles ... unless you want to put yourself at risk for slipping during your Maxie Fords, breaking every bone in your body and ending up in the ER wearing nothing but soap-suds-colored tulle.

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!

This is the exact spot where I stand on our scorched-earth-industrial-unemployment set when the last of my Salacious Security Guard vestments get thrown to the heavens

The effect is a lot more impressive (or not) with costumes (or not) and lights (or not) and orchestra (DEFINITELY! BECAUSE OUR ORCHESTRA ROCKS!).

YOU HAVE SEVEN MORE OPPORTUNITIES TO SEE MORE (OR NOT) OF ME THAN YOU MIGHT WANT TO SEE, PEOPLE!

Hmmm. Apparently six years ago today I was stripping onstage in a show.

But back then I was a schoolteacher whose clothes got ripped off by a drag queen. Now I’m a security guard who rips off my own clothes. SO IT’S TOTALLY DIFFERENT.

It takes an awful lot of clothing to be a singing stripper

Also: There are grown, functioning adults in our dressing room who just asked each other in a fog of cultural bewilderment if the song “Footloose” was written for the movie Footloose or afterward in some kind of ride-the-post-Footloose-movie-pop-culture-wave frenzy. And I am apparently THE ONLY PERSON IN THE ENTIRE DRESSING ROOM WHO’D LIVED THROUGH THE ‘80s AND FOUGHT IN ITS HARDSCRABBLE BEMOMJEANED TRENCHES AND ACTUALLY SAW FOOTLOOSE IN THE THEATERS WHO COULD UNLOCK THE MYSTERIES OF THE MEDIEVAL PAST AND ANSWER THEIR QUESTION.

(Answer: The song was written for the movie. DUH.)

Also: Kevin Bacon as Ren McCormack. Or just guys named Ren in general. Sigh.

Opening night!

So. Many. Snaps.

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 jam a snap under your fingernail as you grab the sides of your tearaway stripper pants and then shred every inch of flesh from your shin tripping over a heavy wooden chair in a blackout, you at the very least have two solid reasons to involuntarily yell FUCK! onstage

How fitting that the memory of my TCR shirtless debut pops up during production week for my TCR more-than-shirtless debut

Back then, you had to buy tickets in person or over the phone. Now you just go to theatrecr.org

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Whorehouse Edition

What's so funny about this picture? Let me count:
1. I'm playing a football player.
2. I'm playing a football player who utilizes the services of female prostitutes.
3. I'm shirtless on stage for the first time in my life. I know it's hard to believe there was once a time where me taking my shirt off on stage was a novelty, but you have to start somewhere. And I started in 1998, rompin' and stompin' with the Aggie Boys in Theatre Cedar Rapids' The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. This show also predates all my big tattoos, so I look like a pristine little infant in this picture. A pristine little infant who dances around shirtless and goes to whorehouses.

I’m trying to decide if it’s wise to work out right before our production-week rehearsals

On the one hand, I’ll instantly look 97 if I miss just one workout. On the other hand, my pre-workout shake—like ALL pre-workout shakes—can make me what we will politely call did-you-know-that-bathroom-in-Spanish-is-baño?-y.

I’m leaving the gym right now for thong rehearsal (yes—we strippers are literally having a rip-away thong rehearsal in the interest of establishing consistency in our stripping moves) so I’m about to find out how things ... come out.

In the mean time: I wore my NYC shirt today because The Full Monty takes place in Buffalo! Which totally made sense when I was getting dressed this morning!