I'm seeing The Secret Garden with my parents!

I wore green plaid shorts since the show is purportedly about a garden, but I’m not showing them in this photo because the show is purportedly about secrets.

The fucking little bitch is probably going to fucking block me

It should not take:

* A password change
* A security question change
* A hide-and-seek link on the website
* A sudden requirement to download an app
* A five-minute wait for the app to download an upgrade
* A Digital Security Device activation code sent via text
* A Digital Security Device activation code sent via email
* A message with a little red stop sign saying that my account online activity has been suspended
* A phone call
* A third Digital Security Device activation code sent via text
* A customer service rep named "Dave" who asks me how to pronounce "Iowa"
* A four-business-day wait
* Plus a seven-day wait for my check

To close an untouched-for-eight-years online account with a balance of $107.69.

HSBC: You suck.

Make Aducation Great Again!

Well now I know where I got my fascination for walking around the city taking pictures of architectural geometries and dramatic perspectives and stark contrasts between shadow and light:

I just saw West Side Story on the big screen for the first time, and it is BRILLIANT cinema--and a lush visual poem of color and movement and shape and pattern that I never fully appreciated from my endless viewings on a TV screen. I grew up devouring the movie soundtrack and I’ve known every word and note and phrase and nuance of Leonard Bernstein’s score and Stephen Sondheim’s libretto for as long as I can remember. I’d assumed I’d spend my first big-screen viewing obsessing over Jerome Robbins’ choreography and staging, but instead I kept examining every camera angle and forced perspective and texture and shadowing and gang-specific palette of Robert Wise’s cinematography. And now I have the final piece of the puzzle for my full love of and artistic respect for this movie.

OK, well not the FINAL final piece of the puzzle; the final final piece may or may not (which totally means does) revolve (literally!) around the ... um ... globe-like butts of the dancers, which also can be fully appreciated only on the big screen.

Anyway, here are some non-butt-related examples of the photos I've taken as I've wandered around Cedar Rapids not realizing I was pretending to be Robert Wise:

Flashback Friday: Fuckshit Edition

Has it been only a year? Here's what I wrote a year ago today to the puerile, diaper-shitting man-boy "president" of the party that just demanded "civility" from the thinking public: 

Judging from the comments on these posts, this is the epitome of tone and content that inflames the euphoric passions and defiant allegiances of your desperately subnormal base.

BUT YOU ARE UNFORTUNATELY FOR ALL OF US THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, and your lack of capacity for shame, judgment, maturity, impulse control, intelligence, ability and rudimentary adult behavior has turned our country into an international laughingstock that through what's left of our influence and economy is endangering political, financial and social systems around the world. You have a congress working overtime to strip affordable, vital healthcare from millions of poor sick people simply because it was given to them by a black man. You haven't bothered to fill hundreds of essential governmental positions from your cabinet to our country's global ambassadorships, which became an embarrassing liability when seven of our sailors were recently killed in a ship collision just outside of Japan. Your press secretary has escalated from literally hiding in bushes to escape the press that HE WAS HIRED TO ADDRESS to now banning cameras at the press briefings he manages to bumble through, while your congress has now blocked the press from talking to them in hallways. You keep deflecting the catastrophic failures you precipitate every time you breathe as "I inherited a mess" and you scream FAKE NEWS! like an uncontrollably shitting toddler every time your failures are brought to light. And instead of pulling yourself away from your grueling schedule of completely ignoring your wives and kids to fix any of this to the best of your feeble abilities, you tweet insults and gossip as though doing so were mature, appropriate, relevant, true or apparently in your disease-ravaged mind presidential.

Smart people hate you. Educated people hate you. Aware people hate you. Literate people hate you. Entire international populations hate you. The only people left who love or at best tolerate you are pants-wetting cretins who see their empty, meaningless, ugly, unfathomably stupid lives reflected in you.

Running out of patience

Instead of running three miles this morning AS I SHOULD RIGHTFULLY BE DOING I’m warming up for physical therapy on a recumbent bicycle for my right-fully hip injury. Sigh. But recumbent is a three-dollar word and bicycle is the suspiciously gay bachelor uncle of bike. So I’m a three-dollar suspiciously gay bachelor uncle. Or something.

CedaRound: Iowa coolness on a Thursday evening

Welp

Apparently I’m staying in the basement all day today. Or bleeding out in a pile of eviscerated flesh at the top of the stairs.

#BitchKittyPrisonBitch

The Beatitude of St. Bridget

High on a hill was a lonely goatherd ...

Swear not by the clouds, the inconstant clouds ...

So the moon was shining through this amorphous, stunningly dimensional opening in the clouds tonight while I was pouring a bottle of long-expired store-brand mango-pear-flavored sparkling water in the yew by the garage (because if I poured it directly on the ground it would splash on my shoe by the garage) so I could recycle the bottle to protect the environment but by the time I put the bottle down and got my phone out and turned off the flash because everyone knows you can’t photograph the night sky with your flash on the amorphous opening had morphed into something less stunningly dimensional and less moon-shine-throughy but I had my phone out and my flash turned off anyway because again everyone knows you can’t photograph the night sky with your flash on so I tried to artfully frame the rapidly disappearing amorphous hole of stunning moonlight between some handy nearby treetops and I took the picture anyway and it’s not great or artistic or even remotely as beautiful as the shining, amorphous, stunningly dimensional celestial event I saw in the sky in the first place but despite my rush to get out my phone and turn off my flash because as I’ve said repeatedly now everyone knows you can’t photograph the night sky with your flash on I didn’t get even a drop of long-expired store-brand mango-pear-flavored sparking water splashed on my shoe by the yew so I count the entire sequence of events as both an artistic and an environmental win.

It’s my sister’s birthday

and she’s having her favorite barbecue surrounded by loving family on the back patio to celebrate yawn yawn yawn and LOOK WHO’S JOINING US!

I didn’t really know anybody by the time the first pride parade happened soon after I moved to Chicago

So I went by myself to watch it. And, standing among thousands and thousands of cheering, smiling, happy, proud people who were watching with groups of friends and waving at other friends who squeezed by on the crowded sidewalks, I never felt more alone.

It was actually so devastating in my mind that pride weekend literally filled me with dread for the next 15 years I lived in Chicago.

I did notice that first year that the people dancing and waving on the floats looked very happy—and they didn’t have to be surrounded by friends or even anybody as they enjoyed the parade from their glorified perches. So I made up my mind that I needed to make the connections to get myself on a float by the next pride parade.

As I slowly—finally!—made Chicago friends and watched the next few parades with them, I still harbored an irrational, unshakable dread that I’d lose them—or they’d actually leave me—and I’d be alone all over again in the crowds. So I kept trying to figure out how to get myself on a float.

Then I joined the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus. And we marched in the parade! But not on a float. And I very very stupidly decided to wear my rollerblades and they hurt and I was bad at stopping so I kept running into people and I was so miserable I had to hobble home the moment it was over so I couldn’t hang out and celebrate with anyone afterward so as far as I’m concerned the whole experience didn’t count and I don’t want to talk about it.

Then! Finally! I got on a float! And let me tell you: Though standing in a Speedo sucking in your abs and holding on for dear life on a lurching, frequently stopping vehicle technically sucks all the fun out of it, having hundreds of millions (in my fantasies my math says I have hundreds of millions of adoring fans so shut up) of people screaming and cheering for you is ALMOST as awesome as dancing and waving high on a moving platform where the cooling breezes are plenty, the jostling crowds are penned up on the sidewalks below you and the scenery changes by the second to keep everything interesting.

Plus you get to dance to your favorite disco hits.

I got myself onto many more floats for the rest of my years in Chicago. The weather was always perfect, my cheering, adoring fans swelled into the billions (shut up), and the joy and pride were always plenty. And my irrational dread—though never gone—was always in check.

Today is Chicago’s pride parade. My Facebook and Instagram feeds are filled with joyful, excited, rainbow-colored pictures of my Chicago friends and acquaintances already celebrating, and while I’m thrilled and proud to have (eventually) been a part of those traditions, our dramatically more subdued Cedar Rapids pride festival in two weeks is now WAY more my speed. And not my Speedo.

So I wish all of you celebrating pride in Chicago today—whether on the sidewalks or on a float—an awesome day and an awesome experience both personally and with everyone around you. I’ll be happily cleaning the garage—and no doubt dancing to my favorite disco hits—instead. And we all can’t stop the music.

Well, shit. Again.

We made it a whopping 1.42 miles this morning before SEARING pain set in. I’m so frustrated ... but not yet defeated. Rob wasn’t feeling well and stayed home, so I didn’t waste his time. But Scott joined me for our nice little walk—again in freaking PERFECT running weather. We’ve been running—excuse me, “running”—on a nice paved trail near my house and I took our Daily Commemorative Not Running Very Far Before My Hip Injury Ruins Everything Selfie(R) there to show how Very Relentlessly Straight But At Least Shady(R) it is. And because we were walking by that point anyway So Why Not(R)?

Now onward with my optimistic hope that my hip will be all healed Next Time!(R)

#HowToTurn50 #WellShit

This song may or may not fill me with such joy that I’ve listened to it on repeat for well over two hours as I excavated and organized and cleaned my room:

Things I Have Found While Excavating Boxes Of Music, Scripts, Programs, Headshots, Did I Mention Music Oh So Much Illegally Photocopied Music And Other Theater Crap I Have Saved Since Before Les Misérables Even Existed If You Can Believe Theater History Ever Went Back That Far:

Actions beget consequences, Sarah

And feigned victimhood begets FUCK YOU. You can't deny your cake and eat it too.

Why does the Manly Work Gloves department at Walmart stock only colors and patterns that are anything but Manly?

When it’s 5:00 on a Friday and you’re the last one in the office and THE! MANNEQUINS! ARE! CALLING!

Physical therapy!

I have no idea what that thing over my head is either! But there’s no logo in the waiting room for me to use as a selfie background! So my selfie backgrounds are limited to collages of stuff I’m too lazy to turn around and look at! Also because turning my torso hurts my hip! Which is why I’m here!

It was a PERFECT day for a run

But—DAMNIT! AGAIN!—it wasn’t a perfect hip for a run.

My stupid whateverthehelliswrongwithit lasted a whole mile before it crippled my weird new bowel-function-compromising gait like a race horse whose steroid prescription ran out. But instead of shooting me and turning me into glue, Rob and Scott benevolently stuck with me, helped me hobble home and stood in their proper place as backup singers in my—oops, I mean OUR—album-cover selfie. We tried a leafy tree instead of my garage for our background today. Because we’re runner jocks who also have a passion for artsy shit. And that’s a rare quality in a marriage-eligible man with backup singers.

#HowToTurn50 #AndHaveYourHipTurnOnYou

How many super-redundant superhero shirts (including one that says CAPTAIN AWESOME but sadly no longer fits) does one super-hoardy man-boy need?

I’m sorry ...

but they smelled the best of all the brands and all the scent options at Target and I refuse to apologize for using age- and demographic-inappropriate products to smell irresistibly delicious.

Oh, wait. I might have prefaced that with an apology. Don’t scroll up to check.

It's amazing how universal and versatile the branding elements from trumphotels.com are

Shithole trump and his shithole shitholes were in Cedar Rapids a year ago today

pretending to be Americans, pretending to be patriots, pretending to be informed, pretending to be smart. I just wish they were pretending to be alive as well.

And OF COURSE they're carrying goddamn confederate flags. Because American "patriots" ALWAYS support an anti-American army that was defeated by America.

If we locked guns in cages would we get the same lack of #MAGA anger and uproar?

Inching back to normal one quarter mile at a time

My clumsy myopic-camel-struggling-to-avoid-potholes-on-a-three-wheeled-skateboard new running gait that my PT showed me + two quarter-mile walk breaks + a refreshing rainstorm + the benevolent run-on-my-injured-hip’s-terms patience of Rob and Scott = THREE SAD LITTLE 12:18-MINUTE MILES, BABY! Plus only a bit of hip pain at the very end. Plus some extremely waterlogged clothes. Plus some sexy just-out-of-the-lap-pool-in-a-Speedo hair. Plus a triumphant selfie in front of Rob’s midlife-crisis Ford Edsel. Or whatever.

#HowToTurn50 #Ouch

Three things:

1. I got measured and X-rayed and gross-stuff-teeth-molded this afternoon for a dental device that’s supposed to alleviate my sleep apnea and finally LET ME GET A DAMN NIGHT’S SLEEP. I hate to brag—oh, let’s not kid ourselves ... I TOTALLY love to brag—but one of the measurements the doctor took today was qualified as Class 1. I’m CLASS ONE, PEOPLE.

2. Then I went to physical therapy for my damn hip. The PT videotaped my running gait and then slowed it down to analyze it, and it turns out my running stride defaults to my legs crossing over in front of each other like I’m dominating a Paris runway like an uberfierce supermodel. (That last bit of imagery may or may not have been mine and not the PT’s.) In any case, I apparently now need to focus on running with a And gait that keeps my feet under my shoulders. WHICH FEELS LIKE I’M PLAYING HOPSCOTCH ON THE BED OF A MOVING HAY TRUCK. This is going to take some effort.

3. I’m starting to get the feeling that trump is a lying, delusional, kick-in-the-ballsworthy piece of donkey shit.

Nope.

Nope nope nope.

After making it less than a quarter of a mile last time before the pain flared up and made me go lame, my hip DID last .96 miles—which I pushed through to make it an even 1.00 because I NEVER LEARN—this morning. Then I turned around and lamed an even 1.00 mile home.

Shit.

On the plus side, the rule of thumb for someone my size is to put only 100 miles on a pair of running shoes before replacing them, so these new shoes still have 98.75 miles on them. It’s like cashing in a bonus rebate coupon!

But in the mean time: Shit. Shit shit shit.

#HowToTurn50 #AndSayShitALotOnFacebook