The Christmas Crap Chronicles

I know that boring old pictures of Christmas trees are both boring and old, but I dragged up a full three generations’ worth of Christmas decorations in jumbles of boxes and bags and bins from the basement last weekend in my one-son crusade to make my poor mother help me figure out what we wanted to keep and what we just needed to get out of our way while it all still had value at Goodwill, and as of tonight, the last of the give-aways are given away, the last of the nicely stackable decoration-storage bins are stacked neatly on the shelves of the newly-far-less-cluttered basement storage room, and we all have a lovely, unobstructed view of our lovely boring old Christmas tree.

(That dime-store-clearance angel at the top is in grave danger of meeting an accidental fiery death when nobody’s looking though. But you didn’t hear that from me.)

#Whamageddon

FUCK. Not only am I unexpectedly forced to endure the surprise hell of an off-the-approved-spring-and-fall-calendar public-radio fund drive, but IPR just played a snippet of this nightmarish unmusical confection as a stealth-attack fade-out from its forced-jovial banter about the best name for the distinctive holiday color of the mug incentive that nobody on this or any other inhabited planet wants to receive.

So I’m out.

Happy birthday to my awesome brother-in-law

and father to my children. Well, technically, they're not MY children but I love them more because I used to buy them candy on the sly when they were much younger because THAT'S WHAT UNCLES DO. Oops ... where was I? Oh, yes: My brother-in-law has helped raise two decent, thoughtful, informed, involved kids (one of whom is co-authoring a play celebrating cultural and human diversities as we speak and the other of whom is in college as we speak studying political science so he can improve our country and world), obsessively power-washed his driveway on every day that ends in y, missed a few big sportsball games on occasion so the rest of us could watch musicals populated with frolicking men in ill-fitting tights as a family, and volunteered to climb the high, scary, pants-wetting ladder so I could stay safely close to the ground on the low, scary, pants-wetting ladder when we painted his house. Most importantly, he has always, without fail or even slightly crumbling resolve, shooed the entire family out of his kitchen so he could do all the dishes -- even after the 14-course state dinner we hosted for Angela Merkel just because we enjoy saying her name -- and thus saved me from having to do dishes, which I hate more than folding laundry or watching Donald Trump do that anus thing with his lips. So everybody call my brother-in-law at work today and sing Happy Birthday in long, fermata-ed whole notes so he can really savor the experience. And buy him gift cards from Michaels because that place gives him hives and I think if he could just buy some dried branches and styrofoam cones without using his own money, it could be like a gateway drug and he could conquer his fears and start making pipe-cleaner snowmen skating merrily on oddly shaped mirrored ponds to give as Christmas gifts or maybe Epiphany gifts for those of you at the end of the alphabet.

#ThursdayThings

One person's decorative items are another person's hideous projectiles. That's why all my decorative items are made of lightweight, non-threatening, not-at-all-gay-sounding papier-mâché.

OMG

I vaped! Or however you spell it

Now I’m going to ride that can-do momentum all the way to installing this TV wall mount that I bought on my way to vote. Or maybe I’ll just take it out of the box and at least make sure it’s compatible with the TV. Or maybe I’ll just post a selfie with the box as a note to myself to remember to maybe start thinking about doing it someday. Or maybe I’ll just look for funny memes on the Internet. I’ve already accomplished a lot today what with all that voting and stuff. I should probably relax and take it easy the rest of the night. Or week. Or until the next time I have to vote. I’m exhausted just from typing all of this. Does anyone have any Oreos?

Unhealthy. Unappetizing. Unnatural. Revolting to everyone with good judgment. Plus covered in mysterious swampy goo.

Chokingly dry office cafeteria dessert or trump administration metaphor?

I’m quittin’ women, that’s fer sher

But I wish the whole world could quit you, Chuck.

The trees are spooky, but at least those crisp pinafores are on point

You know how Dotard McFailureFailureFailureLoser keeps obsessively bleating about “bringing Merry Christmas back” from wherever it never went? A smart person who wanted to make it look like Christmasy stuff was something he was actually capable of thinking of might remember to kinda maybe put Jesus or even Santa in his White House decorations instead of using bleak pagan treesons.

Brutish

We just had our first music and choreography rehearsals for the Orchestra Iowa holiday pops concert. And we’ve now discovered an interplanetary cosmos of music—holiday or otherwise—that lives in an unexplored dimension far beyond our mortal understanding of the allegro-legato continuum:

Kill me now

It’s not every day you get to say adductor and post pelvic images online—much less have a relevant reason to brag about the amount of weight you just squatted—but I just added 10 pounds to my squat weight—I’m up to 215, baby!—and in the middle of my third set I felt a sharp pop in my left rear adductor that all but sent me toppling to the floor. (And if you’re a man who’s ever had an adductor injury, you know that its close physical proximity to your kill-me-now pain zone means that its crippling pain instantly radiates directly to your kill-me-now pain zone, which can literally make you beg to be killed now. Kill me now.)

So until you kill me now, I’m now gingerly hobbling—and lord-knows-how popping the clutch as I drive—through the rest of my evening until I decide how serious this injury—which is not uncommon for me but never at this intensity—is. I apologize in advance for any near-future lateness.

Fun bio-vocabulary fact: An aDductor is a muscle whose contraction moves a limb or other part of the body TOWARD the midline of the body while an aBductor is a muscle whose contraction moves a limb or part AWAY from the midline of the body. Abductor has the same etymology as the concept of abducting a person by taking him or her away from something. Kill me now.

When you have no fireplace but you have a clever gay

And a crooked lampshade.

I’m not interested in your petty jealousies

My grandmother made this. In the nursing home. With a beer bottle. Two decades ago. It's a family heirloom. DO NOT JUDGE.

#SundayShowTunes: Once On This Island

But you will make it through
'Cause I am liking you
And whatever you need
Mama will provide!

Mom just told me she sent a Christmas invitation in Comic Sans

So this is as far as I’m going with the tree.

#WeirdStuffICollectOnMyPhone

Crash!

Why am I still up at 1:46 am watching violent car-crash compilation videos on my phone? Why are there so many car-crash videos in the first place for there to be endless best-of car-crash video compilations? Is having car-crash cams on your dashboard a thing now? And how is it that you can hear all the gruesome car-crash sounds in these videos but you never hear a peep from the drivers and passengers? Not even an oops or an oh, dear. Does nobody scream anymore in the face of flesh-rendering death? THIS is why I’m lying here awake all night.

#WeirdRandomThingsIJustFoundUnderAHugePileOfOldPapersByMyComputer

OMG

Flashback Friday: Beauty Within Edition

Starmites. Probably the stupidest script I've ever slogged through in a show. And the lyrics were just a few circles of hell closer to not totally sucking. But the music. Oh, the music. It was higher than any bro-dude should be biologically capable of singing, but it was catchy and harmonious and soaring and I got the privilege of belting way above my range with two mega-tenor friends as we sang backup to our sexy and hopelessy heterosexual Space Punk on stage for a whole month of holiday performances somewhere in the mid-'90s. Plus with two of my favorite rockstar singers bringing their oh-my-god-those-voices awesomeness to the female leads, I was truly humbled to don my blue superhero leotard and gel my hair to the heavens every show and raise the roof with this mighty chorus.

Despite my complete denunciation of the book and lyrics, if you ever get a chance to see (or be in!) Starmites, I do recommend you do it. The show has a lot of heart. And some fun, silly humor. And a full-company contrapuntal gospel number in Act II called "Reach Right Down" that will blow you against the back wall with its belty, joyful, transcendent powers.