Notes on an unexpectedly long visit to New York:

• The bustling, clueless-tourist crowds are exciting and almost amusing for exactly five days. Add two more against your will and they become murderously intolerable.
• You cannot go ten feet on any New York sidewalk without walking through a crowd of marijuana smoke.
• No matter what they’re wearing, New Yorkers just dress cooler than the rest of us. Even when they look ridiculous, they OWN IT.
• Hot, athletic men with perfect lats and well-broken-in T-shirts walk alarmingly fast in Hell’s Kitchen and make it frustratingly difficult to keep up with them and fulfill your creepy-old-stalker obligations.
• THE. ARCHITECTURE.
• I would drive myself to abject bankruptcy if I lived in such a vibrant world overflowing with theater, art, music and museums. But especially theater.
• tiny. bathrooms.
• I’m not much of a foodie and I’m trying to avoid fast food, and there just aren’t enough plain-old, boring diners to suit my proletarian needs.
• Apparently the cabbies are contractually obligated to yell FUCK YOU! at pedestrians and other drivers. But in a sexy Brooklyn accent.
• I love hearing and seeing the melting pot of languages and clothing and cultural indicators that you walk through every ten feet (between the marijuana clouds) everywhere you go.
• People lose their humanity and become mere obstacles on the narrow sidewalks. Nobody looks up to say hi or even meet your eyes. It is what it is, but if I moved there and didn’t know a soul it would make me feel profoundly lonely.
• Thankfully I do know someone there. I’ve known my friend Chris probably since kindergarten, and he and his husband and their futon graciously saved me the cost of a hotel when my flights got canceled.
• THE. ARCHITECTURE.

Tourist. Times Square. Tacky tselfies.

Another day of DC architectural touristing begins!

Trying to take a normal, respectable, youthfully handsome selfie in this town is impossible with all these damn monuments everywhere you look

Alvin Ailey’s work is still electrifying

But I’ve seen more stirring architecture on a mattress store.

#HowToTurn50 #AndYawnAndStretchAndTryToComeToLife

The Met is ... um ... a lot smaller than I’d pictured

Plus that stupid banner is blocking the storied coffee-splash chandeliers. But I’m glad I finally got to see the highlights of Lincoln Center. Except, of course, the damn chandeliers.

#HowToTurn50 #AndWearAShrugToTheMet

Ra, the Egyptian sun god framed in rays of brilliant celestial light ...

or Jake, the shameless tourist who takes selfies with pretty much any damn thing in the background?

#HowToTurn50 #AndMakePropleThinkYoureASunGod

I've finally walked the Brooklyn Bridge!

The damn thing is massive. And old. And breathtaking. (So are the views of Manhattan from halfway across the bridge.) I didn't even know this was on my bucket list until I was on it.

#HowToTurn50 #AndStruggleNotToMakeBridgePuns

So tap class was literally up a steep and very narrow stairway / to the feet like a rhythmically contrapuntal metronome

The front desk guard at the Broadway Dance Center gave me a disapproving smirk when I took this selfie, no doubt because of my dumbass-tourist T-shirt emblazoned with a massive NYC. But I more or less rocked the class, so it gets a big happy, paradiddly bucket-list checkmark.

#HowToTurn50 #AndTapLikeABOSS

One day until my Big Birthday Broadway Binge Bash!

I'm rounding out my four-day overdose of big-gay-show-tunes theater and Jimmy-Fallon-VIP-seats TV tapings with a three-plus-mile run through the always-surprisingly-hilly Central Park, a visit to the Iowa-homeboy Grant Wood exhibit at the big-city-New-York Whitney Museum and a dance-with-the-pros tap class at the where-the-pros-train Broadway Dance Center.

There's still an entire Friday afternoon to fill, possibly at the Frick, possibly at the Cloisters, possibly trekking along the Highline, possibly traversing the Brooklyn Bridge, possibly visiting the brand-spanking-new Nordstrom men's store ... my Friday is full of delicious possibilities!

#HowToTurn50

Flashback Friday: Giant Fiberglass Underpants Edition

The plaza outside Tribune Tower in Chicago used to (and maybe still does?) have a rotating display of massively giant sculptures of stuff. One summer it was the figures from American Gothic, which made sense since the painting hangs in the Chicago Art Institute. And in 2011 it was Marilyn Monroe coquettishly letting her white halter dress blow up over a subway grate in The Seven Year Itch, which made sense since that movie had exactly nothing to do with Chicago. The sculpture was artistically unremarkable -- as are most giant sculptures rendered in fiberglass, to be fair -- and its cantilevered billowing skirt ended up serving the unintended but more useful purpose of sheltering lost tourists and people waiting for the 147 bus during sudden rainstorms.

Plus, no matter where you stood within sight of the statue you couldn't avoid seeing Marilyn's GIANT FIBERGLASS UNDERPANTS. Which I, being a paragon of maturity, of course respectfully refrained from photographing and posting on social media or my blog.

Flashback Friday: Grant Park Music Festival Edition

When I lived in Chicago, this was my view at least two nights a week every summer as I picnicked with friends and enjoyed free music and relished in my good fortune to live in such a magnificent city.

If you're ever in Chicago -- or for goodness' sake if you live IN Chicago -- go to the Grant Park Music Festival website NOW, find a night or two or ten this summer with a free concert that sounds appealing or is even just a good fit for your schedule, pack a picnic, stop by the bean (officially named Cloud Gate) on your way for an obligatory selfie, get to the Pritzker Pavilion lawn early to claim a good spot preferably right in the middle, marvel at Frank Gehry's gloriously messy blooming-flower explosion of a stage that lives in harmonious counterpoint with the graceful latticework of poles that curve over the lawn and -- more importantly -- ingeniously and almost organically hang speakers right over your head without interrupting your view of the city or the sky, and then let the concert wash over you like waves of oasis-in-the-city summertime happiness.

Dear dude who asked me for directions last night,

By now you’ve figured out what a moron I am.

You wanted to go to the Palace Theater. You clearly could tell I’m a big ol’ homo because you singled me out of the entire crowd of people on the sidewalk you could have asked for directions to a big ol’ Versailles-inspired theater.

In my defense, I physically pointed you in the right direction: north and west. But I told you to walk up State and turn left on Roosevelt. It was only when we’d walked a good block away from each other that I realized Roosevelt was so not the street you wanted … because it was actually more than 10 blocks behind you.

So I sprinted back to find you and tell you breathlessly that you wanted to turn left on Lake. North on State and left on Lake.

You thanked me profusely and I headed back to my bus stop to play Words with Friends, my newest obsession on my iPhone.

And when the bus came and I got on it and we started driving north on State, it suddenly hit me. The Palace Theater is actually on Randolph.

It was supposed to rain today, but right now it's just gorgeous out. Which fucks up our plans totally. Arno and I had intended to ride out today's storms amid the treasures of the Art Institute, but now that it's so lovely outside we may have to rethink. It's his last day here, and we've had a great time being Chicago tourists together: We took an architectural boat cruise, visited the top of the Sears Tower, scoped boys all over Boystown, saw a gay-ass musical, ate at every restaurant we've encountered and shopped our well-manicured little butts off. Tonight it's show tunes at Sidetrack. Tomorrow we put him on his plane home and I spend some quality time in the laundry room. Whee.