BY AGE 50 YOU WILL ALSO HAVE:

* Bags of plastic bags hanging on the back doorknob

When you work from home on a charmingly snow-covered day, you constantly have to fight the urge to photograph your charmingly snow-covered back deck

I’d love to say that’s a rustic, charming wagon wheel in the corner to play up my all-Iowans-live-on-charming-farms cred, but it’s just our patio table turned on its side and pushed close to the house because we really have no other options for storing it in the winter.

#EnglishMajorHumor

#IambicPentameter4Evah

Note to all the foxy ladies out there: Somehow I’m still single

But you should see my legs.

#SparksOfJoy: A weekly post about something that makes me happy

"Sunday," Sunday in the Park with George, Stephen Sondheim: Never has a song captured me on so many levels and left me with goosebumps every time I hear it. Sunday in the Park with George is one of the first shows I ever saw on Broadway, and "Sunday" finishes Act I by bringing together all the characters we've met as individual people as they stand and relocate and adjust as a growing ensemble and ultimately form a living, singing, haunting, as-close-as-humanly-possible re-creation of Georges Seurat's defining painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The score of the entire show is peppered with quick little notes that evoke the peppered-dot painting style of Pointillism, and the dreamy lyrics meander through the endless combinations of colors Pointillist painters used to create light and shade and depth and movement in their work. And the last sung lyrics--"... on an ordinary Sunday!"--stand in gloriously stark contrast to the shimmering, fortissimo, every-possible-note chording in the orchestra that is powerfully, thrillingly anything but normal.

Good morning! Does this Vogue-does-Disney-princesses art installation in my bedroom make me look gay?

Or does it just make Belle’s hand look like something you’d find on a Gold Lobster sampler platter?

The bows are bowed,

the set is struck, the goodbyes are hugged, the nipples have been recaptured and reincarcerated after their escape, the show socks and underwear and complimentary tearaway thongs are in the wash ... and what is one of my all-time favorite show experiences has finally, bittersweetly, proudly and very-happy-memoriedly come to an end.

Good night!

So this awesome thing just happened from our awesome cast and crew on our awesome final performance of this show I absolutely adore where I may or may not have squeaked out an actual sob in the bows

We’re badger hot in our Michael Jordon hats!

And I’m vagueblogging some Full Monty inside jokes!

THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO SEE US WEAR THESE BLACK NECKTIES AND RED FOUNDATION GARMENTS

The show’s at 2:30. I promise you’ll love the way these ties look on us.

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

Am I a backward-baseball-cap kind of guy? Because I’ve never thought I could pull the look off.

But the choreography at today's 9 to 5 rehearsal has a lot of port de bras (movement of the arms) that keeps knocking it (the cap) off my head (tête) (or cabeza) (or noggin). And I have five-alarm (humanity-endangering) hat hair, so I really have no choice but to keep it (the cap) on in some position.

The entire family is up at the sparkle fingers of dawn to volunteer at MoShow, the epic show choir competition at my (and then my sister’s and eventually then my nephew’s and now my niece’s) high school

Every year I end up volunteering in the kitchen, which is next to the gyms, which are where the trophies and athletic-hall-of-fame pictures are ... and my state-winning gymnastics team photo still hangs in all its glory there, where generations of fully wowed students have paid homage at this fading shrine to my JV-lettering pommel-horse athletic grace and stylings:

That’s right, kids: In addition to my award-winning high-school sparkle-fingering, I’M ALSO A SPORTSY LETTERMAN.

You may all now bow and exalt.

#WhyImStillSingle

I’m working from home today. Bitch Kitty is not.

Dear America,

Sorry about Matt Whitaker.

And, as always, Steve King.

And let's not forget Chuck Grassley.

Sincerely,
Iowa

I’ve been singing choral music for 35+ years

and I STILL get tripped up reading a bass line that’s scored in the treble clef. WHY THE HELL DO YOU DO THAT, MUSIC-WRITER-DOWNER PEOPLE? IT’S STUPID. AND DUMB. AND STUPID.

That said, read this bass line in G-major treble clef—WHERE IT’S STILL WICKED-FREAKING HIGH—and you’ll have my favorite belty four-count phrase in all of 9 to 5. After one week of rehearsals, at least.

Does anyone else think this snow we're covered in is weird and probably haunted by ghosts?

It's light and fluffy, but solid and not-blow-around-y. And when you shovel it, it falls like sand exactly where you put it. THIS IS NOT NORMAL SNOW, PEOPLE. It's like pie-crust dough before you add the last two tablespoons of ice water. It's the clumping cat litter that sifts through the scooper when you dig out the rocks of calcified cat pee. (For the record, I try my best not to get those two things mixed up when I'm baking.) It's white Play-Doh that you accidentally left the lid off of overnight. It's those tiny freeze-dried marshmallows that you find in packets of shitty powered cocoa mix. It's driveway dandruff mixed with street scabs. IT'S FREAKING ME OUT.

I’m working from home today

(because I’m a big chicken about driving on thick ice embedded with chunks of hail and no doubt shards of glass and the wailing souls of long-dead children) and OF ALL THE COZY PLACES IN OUR COZY HOUSE THAT BITCH KITTY COULD CHOOSE TO SIT, she’s chosen to sit on my not-at-all-cozy canvas laptop bag. With her bitch ass aimed directly at me, natch.