Bro

I’m man enough to admit that I’m not LIFTING the 95s—the only unoccupied incline bench just happens to be parked in front of them today.

But I AM proud enough to broadcast that I’m back up to incline-dumbbelling 75s after a summer of injury-induced absence from the gym and from the 90s that I’d been incline-dumbbelling last spring.

And yes, incline-dumbbelling is now a valid gerund. I’m a licensed copywriter and I am hereby verbing it so.

Stabby the Cat doesn’t put up with your excuses on back and shoulders day

He does, however, have a benevolent tolerance for your unruly hair.

Guess who’s now parking at the far end of the lot so nobody will ding his precious new baby

Guess who’s now anthropomorphizing his mighty new car as a helpless infant.

Guess who’s been at the gym for half an hour and already fallen in love seven times.

Guess who just took more than 10 gym selfies in an attempt to find one that’s suitable for public display.

Guess whose super-cute Wolverine shirt keeps riding up over his bloated dad belly like he’s a turgid dirigible.

GUESS WHO CLAIMS TURGID DIRIGIBLE AS A BAND NAME.

The set is struck, the Jake twins have parted ways and Dolly’s not coming down those stairs again anytime soon

It was a fun show, but I’m greatly looking forward to washing and putting away all my knee braces and compression sleeves and getting a haircut and going back to the gym without worrying that I’ll get a show-compromising injury. LET THE LAISSEZ-FAIRE-ING BEGIN!

My eyes are up HERE, Miss Money

National Coming Out Day outfit, yo

I mean gurrrl.

Makin’ Norwegian lefse and listenin’ to Irish jigs

We are very dedicated potato people.

Shhhhh! I'm catching guys ...

FACT: My 1890s-gentleman-with-an-excruciatingly-precise-side-part hair is still totally on point two hours after the show.

FACT: My fireworks-and-sailboats shirt is objectively sexy and makes me factually catnip to the ladies.

POSSIBLY: And the dudes.

FACT: I’m watching a National Geographic documentary on the recovery of the Costa Concordia.

FACT: Every diver and salvage engineer in the entire Mediterranean is HAWT.

FACT: That’s Mediterranean for HOT.

FACT: If they could only see me through my TV they could see how irresistibly catnippy my on-point hair and fireworks-and-sailboats shirt are.

FACT: The combination is romantically lethal.

FACT: The documentary is really quite fascinating.

FACT: So I’m too busy to date all those hot Mediterraneans.

THEREFORE: Sorry, fellas. Now shhhhhh!

SURE THING!

This shirt seemed like a versatile, suitable-for-all-occasions chemise when I found it for $5 on an Old Navy tumble table way back when Old Navy was relevant and people actually said “tumble table.”

Now I find it slightly problematic for places like work and public locations in general ... so instead I’m wearing it backstage at a wholesome musical cast with legions of corruptible kids who see me as a plausible role model.

But, hey: FIVE DOLLARS

Also: Don’t judge my floofy, savagely untamed hair here; I was freshly showered and rolling my leg injuries as I took this selfie and I hadn’t yet styled my coiffure for our wholesome musical cast with legions of corruptible kids who see me as a plausible role model. SO DON’T BLAME ME WHEN THEY GROW UP TO BE DAMN COMMIE SOCIALIST HIPPIES.

Also: FIVE DOLLARS

Shirts I have found while excavating:

• Social Climbers team T-shirt for the BEST-NAMED *EVER* Hustle up the Hancock stair-climbing team
• (motto: We like it on top)
• AIDS Marathon team tank top that I personalized with GO JAKE GO
• (Putting GO JAKE GO on the front of your marathon shirt is like giving a handy script to 26.2 miles of people who are ready and willing to cheer you on at the tops of their lungs)
• The back of the T-shirt I wore for my first marathon
• (Putting MY FIRST MARATHON on the back of your first marathon shirt guarantees 26.2 miles of back slaps and atta-boys from every runner who passes you)
• The GO JAKE GO T-shirt I wore for many subsequent Chicago Marathons
• The GO JAKE GO T-shirt I wore for the New York Marathon
• (New Yorkers always wear black)
• (Because they’re all artists and tortured intellectuals who snap when they hear poetry)
• My Pigman Triathlon T-shirt
• (The pig head used to glow in the dark)
• My Forever Plaid T-shirt
• (That’s me on the bottom)
• (Notice it doesn’t say GO JAKE GO)
• (Because the character I played was named Smudge)
• (But that’s the only reason)

Find the dumbass in this selfie who totally forgot to go to his dentist appointment this morning:

You get only one guess.

Wandelprobe (noun)

1. A choreographed rehearsal that merges orchestra, vocals and sometimes body microphones for the first time in the production of a musical; 2. A vaguely naughty-sounding German word that though it may initially seem like it, it doesn't really lend itself to clever sexual innuendo and don't even think you're going to come up with the elusive and brilliantly definitive "probe" joke because millions of very talented and clever and profoundly disturbed actors and singers before you have exhausted every last possibility a thousand times over; 3. THE COOLEST REHEARSAL OF EVERY SHOW OF YOUR LIFE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE; 4. I'm wearing my fake-lifeguard shirt today to make all the bikini models hurl themselves prostrate at my sandy, well-tanned feet; 5. That has nothing to do with Wandelprobe but I didn't have any other place to fit it in today.

Some jetés land you gracefully on your other foot. Some jetés land you in the ER.

You know how sometimes pain can make you flop sweat all over your existing sweat? Yeah.

I’m pretty sure I just have an epic muscle strain in my calf, but the pain has been breathtaking enough that I decided to have it looked at right away. And a nice theater mom took me to the hospital because there’s no way I can drive. Or dance in the show for a while.

Shit.

Did I mention I’m finally back in my own bed with my manly gray sheets and my preternaturally cushy mattress cover?

Because I am.

I wear a lot of hats in Hello, Dolly!

Well, I wear TWO hats. But not at once, despite what this artfully composed self-portraiture might imply.

I also apparently wear lots of chins—even more than the number of hats on the elegant-millinery-shop prop table hiding behind me and my chins on this, our second quad-shredding, knee-crippling, calf-calving five-hour rehearsal day in a row.

So the key takeaway here is everything hurts and I’m dying AND I'M NOT DOING IT FOR MY HEALTH SO GET YOUR TICKETS AND COME SEE US AT THEATRE CEDAR RAPIDS.

Oh, nothing

Just sitting here taking a plain old unremarkable rehearsal selfie.

Move along. Mind your business.

Look, I made a run-on sentence

When you’re taking a rehearsal break and your Hello, Dolly! rehearsal hat that totally doesn’t fit ESPECIALLY totally doesn’t fit when you’re lying on the floor but it’s on the same blue-tone colorway spectrum as your shirt and it’s sitting on your head like you’re a Fosse Pilgrim and that’s coincidentally your band name and you need a photo for your eponymous album cover anyway so here we are.

The N is for Nice Hair

And Nowledge.

We’re switching Hello, Dolly! to Fiddler on the Roof because all our dainty-woman rehearsal hats fit me like yarmulkes

Today’s Vocabulary

DONEGAL: a tweed characterized by bright flecks distributed over a light background

CLOSE ENOUGH: this couch isn’t really donegal but it’s not proper tweed either

KERNING: the spacing between letters or characters in a proportional font

EYE TWITCHES: what graphic designers are experiencing because of my super-cute shirt