My Attorney’s Getting Arrested. MAGA!

Crenellations and geometries

Urp

When you skip the gym to meet with your tax accountant whose office happens to be right next to a Dunkin’ Donuts, you might as well go full not-workout and buy three dozen delicious piles of carbs, fat and sugar for yourself. I mean for your office.

Going for it

So this afternoon I let myself get talked into auditioning tonight for a show at Theatre Cedar Rapids that I knew virtually nothing about. And after a quick read-through of the Wikipedia synopsis and an obligatory shot of the theater’s gorgeous façade, I went in to give the least-prepared audition of my extremely short non-musical career. I couldn’t fall back on my graceful port de bras or my mad tapping skillz to mask my woeful uncertainties about my plain-old acting skills, so I just dove in and did whatever occurred to me to do in my cold readings ... and I left feeling pretty confident that at the very least I got in some solid auditioning practice. And I’ll know in 12 hours if I got anything more than just practice.

I’m working on my taxes and I want to make sure I don’t overlook anything from the checklist my tax preparer gave me

To your knowledge, did I open a HELOC that was not a campaign contribution to any of you during your joke of a presidential campaign to pay hush money to an enormous-breasted porn star for a well-documented extramarital affair that you unconvincingly deny having you dirty dog and therefore implausibly deny having any need for paying the hush money in the first place? I’ve obviously procrastinated myself down to the wire on the tax deadline, so please get back to me as soon as you finish your golf game. Kthanks.

Faux News pixelated a rubber mask. As though it were a nipple. The Republic is safe!

Why is the hold music at my psychiatrist’s office playing “Send in the Clowns”?

Asking for a friend.

Well, shit

When you get home from an amazingly awesome vacation and you set down your painstakingly-filled-by-your-mother container of bipolar meds divided into an entire week of morning and evening handfuls of pills and it slips and lands face-down on the carpet and pops open and basically her worst nightmare explodes right before your eyes ...

Five not-quite-right-in-the-head gay gays

One completely unstructured weekend in a rented house. Lots of unhealthy snacks. Hours and hours of smeared mascara.

I love everything about our rented weekend house

... except for this hyper-ugly-ass old couch that’s literally been PAINTED and passed off as “upscaled” (who SAYS that?) on the rental site:

It’s ugly, it’s cracked, it’s itchy, it’s somehow also sticky and it farts suspiciously convincingly every time you sit on it. Thankfully, my friend Shane is still cute so he cancels out the couch’s hyper-ugly-assness just by gracing its cushions.

There’s a lot of dramatic architecture in our Galena rental house

There’s also still a lot of Diet Coke and pie.

Our resident Asian made us avocado toast for breakfast and we’re all photographing it before we eat it

I can’t tell if this makes us Millennials or international gourmands.

Gayest. Pie basket. Ever.

You may think you're classy

but you’ll never be hold-the-garage-freezer-door-shut-with-packing-tape-because-the-damn-thing-keeps-swinging-open-no-matter-what-else-you-try classy.

EVERY CALLER EVER TO CALL NPR/WBEZ'S ON POINT:

[audio delay] [extra pause just to set the sage for sounding stupid] Hello! Um ... ah ... thanks for ta ... I love your show and thanks for taking my call ... so I just have one thi ... well, two things so I'll make it quick ... um ... ah ... thanks for taking my call ... so in regards to what the last person just said ... and I'll be real quick about thi ... um ... ah ... I have no idea what I'm talking about ... and I've made no effort to educate myself beyond my own insular experience ... it's a miracle I'm even listening to this show today ... and it's an even bigger miracle that I've taken the initiative to listen for your phone number in the middle of all my not paying attention ... um ... ah ... but I'm going to sound off anyway ... thanks for taking my call ... and I'll be real quick about this ...

Happy 47th birthday to Follies

... the glorious, epic, mold-breaking 1971 musical by Stephen Sondheim, James Goldman, Harold Prince and Michael Bennett that ended up being too lavish and probably too jarringly mold-breaking for its own good. The most expensive Broadway production to date when it opened, it drew effusive critical praise but didn't get the musical-theater-pantheon foothold it deserved and closed after 500 performances without recouping any of its investments.

I was unfortunately three when it opened and I couldn't get tickets, but my heart and endless fascination and I were eventually--inevitably--pulled into its magical, inspiring, gorgeous, heartbreaking world when I saw the 1987 London revival, which gave Eartha Kitt a much-needed comeback when she replaced the broken-ankled Delores Gray (just like what happened to her in 42nd Street!) to belt the iconic "I'm Still Here"--which, as coincidences never cease, was the song in the 1971 production that brought Yvonne De Carlo back from the brink of terminal embarrassment after playing Lily Munster on TV.

Thankfully--inevitably--Follies has since then finally achieved the musical-theater-pantheon stature it deserves, and I've been fortunate enough to have seen more productions of it than I can count in New York, D.C., Chicago and beyond. I'm obviously overflowing with fanboy knowledge and trivia and opinions and lyrics (oh boy, am I overflowing with lyrics) about the show, but if I even want to come close to sharing everything about its brilliance that's waiting to burst out of me, I'll have to schedule a six-week subscription-series symposium at a local college to get it all Jakesplained to you.

Fun fact: It opened at the Winter Garden Theater in NYC, where--again with the coincidences--I just so happened to see my first-ever Broadway show (Cats, the fact of which I am hard-stop-sun-comes-up-coffee-cup unwilling to discuss).

#TrumpsterFire

#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:

And so it's here:

the dawn of my eternal darkness ... the wrinkles in my time ... the hips that creak and the ears that hair and the jowls that droop and go dry ... the show tunes that go flat and the exclamation points that reproduce unchecked and the blush of eternal youth that circles precariously toward the drain ...

It's the month of my 50th birthday.

And here's what I want for my birthday present: Nothing. Less than nothing, actually; I'd really love to have some impartial eyes help me go through the mountains of stuff I have and decide what all I should give to someone who needs it more than I do.

But if you really want to buy something to commemorate my half century, please do this: Buy something for someone who really needs it.

We're all just one degree away from a kid who can't afford school lunches, a person who needs a mattress pad and fresh sheets to cover a bare mattress, or a family who needs a new refrigerator. So I ask for my 50th birthday that you look around you to find a person or a situation in need of financial help you can provide ... or maybe volunteer help you can offer like babysitting in an emergency or painting a room or taking an ill family member to the doctor ... or maybe professional help you can give pro bono like writing a resume and cover letter or fixing an unreliable car or helping a struggling family organize its finances and set up long-term investments.

You decide if it's something you should buy or do quietly or if perhaps you should discuss it in a way that might inspire other people to follow your lead. No matter what you decide, you'll be giving me and someone I don't even know a truly meaningful way to help me celebrate my 50th birthday. And that means more than I could ever thank you for.

#HowToTurn50

Urp.

My sheets are clean, my bills are paid and I’m on the slippery, headachey slope of an epic sugar crash wrought by zero self-control in the face of those awesome-o malted-milk Easter eggs with the crisp candy shells. But I just took a halfway decent selfie so the night’s ending on a high note. Sleep well!