The set is struck, the Jake twins have parted ways and Dolly’s not coming down those stairs again anytime soon

It was a fun show, but I’m greatly looking forward to washing and putting away all my knee braces and compression sleeves and getting a haircut and going back to the gym without worrying that I’ll get a show-compromising injury. LET THE LAISSEZ-FAIRE-ING BEGIN!

Getting all the waiters together for a photo on the Hello, Dolly! Harmonia Gardens staircase has to happen at intermission when the staircase is assembled and we’re all in our waiter uniforms at the same time

But the “getting all the waiters together” part is insanely complicated given the fact that all the other waiters (but not me!) are distracted LSD-vaping kittens chasing hallucinatory laser dots all over the theater (allegedly) and impossible to get all in one place at one time if there isn’t a downbeat involved.

BUT LAST NIGHT I DID IT!

Unfortunately, the stage curtain prevented our photographer from backing up far enough to get the actual staircase in the photo and the intermission lighting left the back rows in increasingly gradient shadows.

BUT I DID IT!

Maybe I’ll try tonight to get everyone lined up for a shot from one side of the staircase à la the Brady Bunch kids (HINT! HINT!). Or maybe I’ll vape LSD with everyone (allegedly) and demonstrate my super-kitten powers at finally catching the elusive red dot instead.

Note to future historians: The second-to-top row of waiters here is standing on the staircase’s official Jake StepTM. We left an engraved bronze plaque on it to mark the location and commemorate the dedication. Please see that our estate keeps it burnished and respectfully lit in perpetuity.

I! AM! SO! PLAID!

I’m the plaidest Jake in this whole picture.

One of us just cut his own hair with a sewing scissors. The other one is too girthy to button his fancy velvet-lapeled vest.

Tech rehearsal is literally bursting with exhaustive joy.

Hello, Tech Rehearsal!

Meriwether—my severely parted old-timey coiffure is named Meriwether—and I have on our Sunday clothes and we’re ready for our 12-hour Hello, Dolly! tech rehearsal. But it’s the last gasping hours of the Victorian Era and even though the Second Industrial Revolution is in full swing, WHAT IN ALL UNHOLY TARNATION IS THIS RECTANGULAR CONTRAPTION IN MY HANDS?

Also: Mega Plaid Tweed will one day make a most excellent band name once “punk” is invented. And “bands.”

Also: Yes, there is a purportedly heterosexual Jake growing out of my shoulder. He will be surgically excised at the tonsorial parlor forthwith.

Urgent Public Service Announcement:

There are two Jakes in Hello, Dolly! Choose the one for whom you applaud carefully.

I’m so legendary here that they’ve named a closed seafood restaurant after me

BEHOLD MY OMEGAWESOMENESS:

This man named me Jake. Then I totally copied his middle name.

My name is Jake

But my real name is not Jake. Though it’s damn close. And it’s been that way since the LBJ administration.

Since the moment I first step-touch-kick-ball-change-turn-turn-turned my way into this world (jazz hands!), both names have co-existed peacefully on a wide array of legal documents, financial accounts, ID cards and M4M4Découpage online club rosters. And it’s never caused a lick of confusion. In fact, it’s even proven itself to be pretty helpful in weeding out telemarketers who try to act like we’re old friends who don’t know each other’s names and gold diggers who are just after me for my Social Security benefits.

But twice now the whole Jake-not-Jake thing has caused people with inordinate amounts of day-ruining power to ruin my day.

The first time happened about three years ago when I tried to go through security at O'Hare. My ticket said Jake and my driver’s license had my real name. And a power-hungry security person detained me in a private room because of it. Even though I showed her the mix of names on ID cards, credit cards, business cards and everything else in my wallet—and even though her co-workers told her repeatedly she was being a bit of a crazy bitch—she insisted with a straight face that I had no doubt found Jake’s airline ticket on the ground in the airport and decided right then and there to take his flight for him. Because how often do you find yourself wandering aimlessly through an airport with a packed suitcase already checked through to Dulles when you suddenly stumble on a ticket with almost-but-not-quite your exact name on it for the exact same flight you’d already planned to take and you decide well, here’s an opportunity I can’t afford to pass up? Thankfully, her reason-to-detain-me logic was a sound as her reason-to-eventually-let-me-through-security logic, and she soon found whatever she needed to confirm my identity by looking at the socks and shampoo in my carry-on.

My second run-in with security measures designed by partially sober toddlers happened this week. On Friday, I deposited almost $2,000 in expense checks into my checking account via the ATM at my friendly neighborhood bank branch. Like I’ve done about every 10 days for the last seven years. But when I checked my account online yesterday, the checks had been removed from my balance under the transaction description Payee Not On Acct. Which is apparently code for once every seven years, we actually look at the financial documents we process pertaining to your life savings. I cleverly assumed the Jake thing was the reason for the problem, and a 45-minute lunch-hour conversation today with a bank manager confirmed that 1) I was right and 2) the bank has never allowed checks to be deposited into accounts unless the names matched exactly. With the rare exception of every time I have ever deposited a check at this bank over the last seven years because nobody—and I mean nobody—ever uses my real name.

Unfortunately, the resolution to this problem currently lies in the hands of the USPS, who have been entrusted to deliver the checks to my home address so I can start the pointless-checks-and-balances pride parade all over again. In the mean time, I can do nothing but blog and wait. And be $2,000 poorer than I rightfully should be. But the branch manager assures me he’s listed both names in the bank’s system so this won’t happen again when they do their next seven-year security check.

And believe me: If they screw this up again, I’m going to make a big stink about it. Or my name isn't Jake.

Paving the way for Generation Jake

I recently stumbled on a Web site that listed the most popular baby names since 1990. And in the boys' column, Jake—without fail—has been in the top 5 ... often in the #1 spot.

Which means, of course, that I wasn't actually a complete antisocial freak throughout my childhood. I was just ahead of my time.

The other boys in my class had unobtrusive, coolly familiar names like Mike or Scott or Brad or Dave or Eric. (Hi, guys!)

But I was Jake. I was Jake every single day of those all-important formative years when your self-esteem is linked directly to having a plain-old, common name—especially one that doesn't rhyme with everything. When it came time to single out kids for ridicule, everyone else was called either dork or geek. Not me. I got my very own custom-tailored (one might call it high couture) nom de moquerie: Jake the Rake that Baked a Cake and threw it in a Lake.

Yes, it was dumb. No, it wasn't really a specific insult. (Yes, I'm 36 now so I should probably stop dwelling on it.) But the nickname stuck. Probably because it had that rhyming iambic lilt—and enough heft to it that it continued to ring in my ears long after my peers found other kids to tease.

Dad wasn't much help either. He coined his own loving nickname for me: Jakerino Dumb-Dumb. (I know. Dad never was much of a poet.) And my ex—who's been my ex now for more than four years—still calls me Jakerino to this day.

Anyway, I persevered through the '70s, '80s and '90s, blazing a trail of social acceptance and paving the way for Jakes everywhere. I even helped foster in an era of great Jakes in literature—like the ones in Sixteen Candles and Melrose Place. Woof.



Despite all the aforementioned social traumas, the name Jake has served me well. Until it started spreading around the country faster than Rush Limbaugh at an all-you-can-eat buffet, it was unique enough that nobody ever had to ask me, "I'm sorry … what was your name again?"

And that rhyming part helped me learn to read. As soon as I mastered the art of hanging around in front of the refrigerator, my folks bought those brightly colored 2-inch magnetic letters and kept them at kid height on the refrigerator door for me. Once I learned how to spell Jake with them, other useful words, like little rhymed bretheren, were soon to follow. (See that stupid nickname above if you need examples.)

Armed with my powerful slient E vocabulary, I went on to beat my two cousins in the all-important typing event of the family's unofficial—though not unprestigious—Baby Races.

You might say my illustrious writing career was hunt-and-pecked to life with these immortal words on my mom's old Smith-Corona: Cake I like.

I still do. It's the official food of Generation Jake.