Alexa ...

What are the chunkiest, dumbassiest shoes I could possibly wear to a choreography rehearsal exploding with precision-heeled sauts de basque?

I felt a little unplugged and unproductive at work yesterday, but I went on to have a killer leg workout and 9 to 5 rehearsal

Then I woke up today totally scattered and exhausted, so I took my first sick day in months. It’s hard to discern an off day from the onset of a depressive episode, but I decided today was an onset and I’m glad I called in sick and spent the day sleeping to an Alexa playlist of classical orchestral music. Because I woke up human again. Lingeringly groggy, but human. Onward!

Alexa, LOUDER!

LITANY OF COMPLAINTS:

• My supposed-to-be-awesome new T-shirt has an owl saying WHOM on the chest, but the printing and the shirt are almost the same color so you can’t even see the graphics and I’m too lazy to mail it back so I’m now the proud owner of a $20 new gray T-shirt with a hidden pronornithology pun on it.
• It has an owl! Whom says WHOM!
• Oops.
• WHO says WHOM.
• Stupid owl.
• Our tech-week/opening-weekend marathon is over, and I’m already missing the show and the people and the mysterious drafty feeling I have during the bows.
• But I accidentally called my wife the wrong name today on stage.
• So maybe it’s time for a little break.
• We also had a catcaller in the audience today who yelled something about our “winkies.”
• It was probably one of those stupid owls.
• We have only six more times to bring this wonderful show to life.
• That’s 12 if you count in buttcheeks though.
• When I got home just now, Dad was listening to country gospel music on Alexa.
• Where did I go wrong when I raised him?
• The music was probably sung by owls.
• I unceremoniously and no doubt rudely told Alexa to play classical music instead.
• BECAUSE I’M A HEARTLESS TYRANT.
• WITH GOOD TASTE.
• Not like those damn owls.
• And their damn pronouns.
• CAN I GET A WHOM YEAH!

When the massive injury on your left shin keeps you up all night in pain

PLUS in the middle of the night your right calf decides to get an epic charley horse (WTF? WHAT NON-PREGNANT PERSON GETS A CHARLEY HORSE?) and you’re so tired and sore in the morning that you cancel your lunch plans to try to get some sleep snuggled up on the couch and there’s fluffy snow outside your windows and Alexa is playing Beethoven’s ninth symphony and your mom makes your favorite bran muffins, THAT STILL DOESN’T CHANGE THE FACT THAT YOU’RE MISERABLE WITH A SUGAR HANGOVER FROM EATING A DOZEN CHOCOLATE-CHIP COOKIES AT LAST NIGHT’S CAST PARTY.

Alexa, stop playing 1950s rock

... no matter how pleadingly my dad asks you to.

Oh, SNAP

NPR’s Rachel Martin just spent five minutes trying to get straight, truthful answers about the border/shutdown shit show from White House Director of Strategic Communications (which is a fancy American way of saying Minister of Propaganda) Mercedes Schlapp, who kept greasily trying to change the subject and misrepresent selective truths in an effort to blanket-blame Democrats and RACHEL WASN’T HAVING IT as she quoted facts and played clips contradicting Mercedes’ scripted talking points and interrupted her desperate wandering AND I MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE WHOOPED AND OH-NO-YOU-DI-HINT-ED AT ALEXA MORE THAN ONCE as Mercedes descended into audible flop sweat. She was clearly used to fielding softball questions from the Fox ilk—and I have NO idea what possessed her to attempt to defend the indefensible in a forum like NPR that always does its homework—but it was a very satisfying way to begin my day.

Today in NO!

We got Dad an Echo for his birthday in October, and he’s been delightedly asking it to play every song or musical group that’s ever occurred to him ever since.

Unfortunately, he’s run out of acceptable material to listen to, because he just asked Alexa to play an open-ended run of Ferrante & Teicher, and NO! We might as well install a Formica-paneled elevator in the living room and ride it in endless uncomfortable silence as the dulcet F&T song stylings play unsettlingly on low-fi speakers in the background.

In the time it took me to type this, we’ve endured “The Way You Look Tonight,” a samba-flavored reinterpretation of the theme from “A Summer Place” and, as we speak, something Alexa just informed me is called “African Echoes” on bongos and zithers and endless waves of profound cultural discomfort.

NO!

If it ain't ...

I lost almost the entire day today sleeping off what seems to be a low-grade-but-nonetheless-still-exhausting cold

but I thankfully woke up in time to make it to my niece’s birthday dinner tonight. Then I think I finally got my dad’s birthday Alexa set up, even though I accidentally called it Siri twice and ended up having conversations with two disembodied robot women at once—JUST LIKE MY LOVE LIFE—but even though I couldn’t get Alexa to find 91.7 fm classical radio, it IS somehow playing classical music from somewhere that’s probably costing $7.99 a minute right now, and I’m going to try to knock out one more chapter of this fabulously gay book that I started reading in August because why read a book quickly when you can stretch it out over multiple sessions of Congress?