Showing posts with label Tonys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tonys. Show all posts
Sunday, June 09, 2019
So I didn’t win a Tony Award. AGAIN.
Even though I wore my super-cute Jake the Musical T-shirt. AGAIN.
I’m beginning to think people might be on to something when they say I need to actually be in a Broadway show to qualify ...
Monday, April 29, 2019
Oops! I took this selfie at the gym today and totally forgot to post it.
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?
Anyway, it was arm day. And Lots Of Inspiration Day. Yowza. So you’re all caught up.
Now I must go to bed because I need to be rested up for the excitement of tomorrow’s Tony nominations. I totally hope they pick you.
Now I must go to bed because I need to be rested up for the excitement of tomorrow’s Tony nominations. I totally hope they pick you.
Thursday, November 22, 2018
I've never really liked "Turkey Lurkey Time"
—mostly because of its toddler-creativity title and Hal David's criminally mind-numbing lyrics. But the gloriously jerky melody and never-gonna-be-boxed-in phrasing are Burt Bacharach at his finest, and I think Michael Bennett defined an encyclopedic choreography vocabulary for the next half-century of show choir competitions in this song alone. Plus I've had a gay-dancer crush on Donna McKechnie—she of the endless legs and beguiling self-awareness and almost poetic extensions—since probably before I was born. Plus HOW THE HELL DO THEY ALL DANCE THIS NUMBER WITHOUT IMPLODING IN CATASTROPHIC EXHAUSTION?
Anyway, it's Thanksgiving, which in some circles means it's Turkey Lurkey Time all day. So please shout the lyrics to anything—ANYTHING!—else to drown out these linguistic burps as you marvel at Donna McKechnie (in red, who first captured my heart as Cassie in A Chorus Line), Baayork Lee (in green, who kinda got shafted when all her great Connie recitative got cut from the original A Chorus Line cast album) and Margo Sappington (in blue, who went on to a life of fame and fortune as the choreographer for the Doonesbury musical) powering through their tipsy steno-pool production number that has absolutely no relevance to the already convoluted, dirty-sexy, nothing-to-do-with-the-holidays story of Promises, Promises.
Anyway, it's Thanksgiving, which in some circles means it's Turkey Lurkey Time all day. So please shout the lyrics to anything—ANYTHING!—else to drown out these linguistic burps as you marvel at Donna McKechnie (in red, who first captured my heart as Cassie in A Chorus Line), Baayork Lee (in green, who kinda got shafted when all her great Connie recitative got cut from the original A Chorus Line cast album) and Margo Sappington (in blue, who went on to a life of fame and fortune as the choreographer for the Doonesbury musical) powering through their tipsy steno-pool production number that has absolutely no relevance to the already convoluted, dirty-sexy, nothing-to-do-with-the-holidays story of Promises, Promises.
Sunday, June 10, 2018
Welp
Another Tony Awards has come and gone and I still haven’t won anything AND I’M NOT GETTING ANY YOUNGER, AMERICAN THEATRE WING but I had an awesome second weekend of Fuddy Meers WHICH YOU HAVE ONLY FOUR MORE CHANCES TO SEE OR BETTER YET TO SEE AGAIN and even though my hip injury prevented me from doing today’s six-mile training run BECAUSE GETTING OLD AND FALLING APART ISN’T FUN PEOPLE YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, I did find a good reason to wear my JAKE The Musical! T-shirt tonight. So there’s that.
What the hell do gay people have to be proud of?
On this, the Gay High Holidays of the Tony Awards, I offer again my annual explanation and celebration of what gay pride means from my own journey and my own experience and my own big-ol’-proud-gay-man perspective:
We’re proud because despite relentless persecution everywhere we turn—when organized religion viciously attacks and censures and vilifies us in the name of selective morality, when our families disown us, when our elected officials bargain away our equality for hate votes they try to disguise as so-called “religious liberty,” when communities and cities and entire states codify our families into second-class citizenship, when small-importance bakers with the backing of the big-money hate industry take their unhinged loathing of us all the way to the Supreme Court, when our employers fire us, when our landlords evict us, when our police harass us, when our neighbors and colleagues and fellow citizens openly insult and condemn and mock and berate and even beat and kill us—we continue to survive.
We’re proud because pride is the opposite of shame—and despite what systemic bigotry and the ugliest sides of organized religion work so hard to make the world believe, there is nothing shameful about being gay. We’re proud because—thanks to the incredible bravery shown by gay people who lived their lives openly sometimes to the point of being defiantly in the decades before us—we can live our lives more and more openly at home, at work, with our families, on social media … and even on national television.
We're proud because we've worked tirelessly to achieve legal equality in marriage, adoption, parental rights and many other ways that make our families recognized as Families in our states and across our country. And though we have much more to accomplish—and though bigotry disguised as morality and religion and the supposed mandates of constituents work and sometimes succeed at eroding our newfound equalities—we have the momentum and intelligence and drive and humanity and ability to keep driving back the hate as we continue to drive forward with both our newfound and future equalities.
We’re proud because through our tireless work and the prevailing powers of common sense and compassion, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and Proposition Hate and the so-called Defense of Marriage Act have collapsed in on their illogical, immoral, meritless foundations—and new legislative attempts to dehumanize us gain little to no traction or visibility and soon die on the trash heap as well.
We’re proud because we are smart enough to overcome the self-loathing that our venomous, mindlessly theocratic society forces on us, and we have the power to stop its destructive cycle by fighting back and by making intelligent choices involving sex and drugs and money and relationships and the way we live our lives—and by using our lives as examples of success and humanity and love that other gay people can see and respect and emulate and achieve more and more easily.
We’re proud because after all we’ve been through, the world increasingly continues to notice and respect us and enthusiastically appropriate the often fabulous culture we’ve assembled from the common struggles and glorious diversity of our disparate lives.
We’re proud because more and more often and in more and more contexts our country and our culture see the fact that we’re gay as frankly boring.
We’re proud because especially this month and always all year we’re celebrating with parties and street fairs and parades overflowing with drag queens, leather queens, muscle queens, dad-bod queens, glitter queens, you’d-never-even-know-they-were-queens queens and even straight-but-honorary-queens-for-a-day queens, and together we can see beyond the pride in the parades of our lives and together celebrate the underlying Pride in the parades of our lives.
Quite simply, we’re proud that we have so incredibly much to be proud of.
We’re proud because despite relentless persecution everywhere we turn—when organized religion viciously attacks and censures and vilifies us in the name of selective morality, when our families disown us, when our elected officials bargain away our equality for hate votes they try to disguise as so-called “religious liberty,” when communities and cities and entire states codify our families into second-class citizenship, when small-importance bakers with the backing of the big-money hate industry take their unhinged loathing of us all the way to the Supreme Court, when our employers fire us, when our landlords evict us, when our police harass us, when our neighbors and colleagues and fellow citizens openly insult and condemn and mock and berate and even beat and kill us—we continue to survive.
We’re proud because pride is the opposite of shame—and despite what systemic bigotry and the ugliest sides of organized religion work so hard to make the world believe, there is nothing shameful about being gay. We’re proud because—thanks to the incredible bravery shown by gay people who lived their lives openly sometimes to the point of being defiantly in the decades before us—we can live our lives more and more openly at home, at work, with our families, on social media … and even on national television.
We're proud because we've worked tirelessly to achieve legal equality in marriage, adoption, parental rights and many other ways that make our families recognized as Families in our states and across our country. And though we have much more to accomplish—and though bigotry disguised as morality and religion and the supposed mandates of constituents work and sometimes succeed at eroding our newfound equalities—we have the momentum and intelligence and drive and humanity and ability to keep driving back the hate as we continue to drive forward with both our newfound and future equalities.
We’re proud because through our tireless work and the prevailing powers of common sense and compassion, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and Proposition Hate and the so-called Defense of Marriage Act have collapsed in on their illogical, immoral, meritless foundations—and new legislative attempts to dehumanize us gain little to no traction or visibility and soon die on the trash heap as well.
We’re proud because we are smart enough to overcome the self-loathing that our venomous, mindlessly theocratic society forces on us, and we have the power to stop its destructive cycle by fighting back and by making intelligent choices involving sex and drugs and money and relationships and the way we live our lives—and by using our lives as examples of success and humanity and love that other gay people can see and respect and emulate and achieve more and more easily.
We’re proud because after all we’ve been through, the world increasingly continues to notice and respect us and enthusiastically appropriate the often fabulous culture we’ve assembled from the common struggles and glorious diversity of our disparate lives.
We’re proud because more and more often and in more and more contexts our country and our culture see the fact that we’re gay as frankly boring.
We’re proud because especially this month and always all year we’re celebrating with parties and street fairs and parades overflowing with drag queens, leather queens, muscle queens, dad-bod queens, glitter queens, you’d-never-even-know-they-were-queens queens and even straight-but-honorary-queens-for-a-day queens, and together we can see beyond the pride in the parades of our lives and together celebrate the underlying Pride in the parades of our lives.
Quite simply, we’re proud that we have so incredibly much to be proud of.
Tuesday, May 01, 2018
Two days until my Big Birthday Broadway Binge Bash!
I'm glad I listened to the buzz, followed my show-tune-loving heart and bought my tickets early, because the Tony nominations came out this morning and I freaking SCORED on tickets that will for the foreseeable show-tune-loving future be impossible to get.
To wit:SpongeBob Squarepants: 12 Tony nominations!
Mean Girls: 12 Tony nominations!
Frozen: 3 Tony nominations!
The Boys in the Band: 0 Tony nominations, but it's about gay people and gay people are gross and besides even though "band" is CLEARLY in the title it's not a musical and why the hell would anyone do a show about gross gay people that isn't a musical?
I still have room for one more show, which I plan on letting the vicissitudes of TKTS decide for me. I'm interested in seeing Lobby Hero (3 Tony nominations!), Hello, Dolly! (Bernadette Peters!), Waitress (Katharine McPhee! Because I have a weird gay crush on her!), Dear Evan Hansen (Better late than never!), The Iceman Cometh (Kidding! Hate that show!), or anything any trusted friend or stranger recommends.
#HowToTurn50
Sunday, June 11, 2017
Closet jokes? Really?
Wink-wink-I-might-be-gay was coy and titillating 20 years ago, but now it just makes you look afraid, ashamed and pathetic.
You are entitled to come out on your own terms and in your own way, obviously, but you insult what we've achieved and you forfeit our look-the-other-way professional courtesy when you repeatedly play wink-wink-I-might-be-gay on national television in 2017. Those of us who are never-look-back out and those of us who are resolutely-in-the-closet not have made our choices and are living our lives the way we decree. But our culture still dictates that you can't have it both ways. And your self-indulgent behavior tonight made you look like a childish coward, Kevin.
You are entitled to come out on your own terms and in your own way, obviously, but you insult what we've achieved and you forfeit our look-the-other-way professional courtesy when you repeatedly play wink-wink-I-might-be-gay on national television in 2017. Those of us who are never-look-back out and those of us who are resolutely-in-the-closet not have made our choices and are living our lives the way we decree. But our culture still dictates that you can't have it both ways. And your self-indulgent behavior tonight made you look like a childish coward, Kevin.
Here's an idea:
If you're nominated for a Tony, prepare a speech and use your celebrated actor skills to memorize and deliver it in an efficient, umm-free manner and you won't get played off.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Ten miles!
Saturday was one of those perfect-for-running days: it was cool, breezy and relatively devoid of snipers shooting at us from the bushes. And we pounded out 10 miles pretty easily Saturday morning … aside from the fact that marathon training has apparently caught on like the macarena (or whatever the kids are dancing to these days) and the running trail was PACKED. It has gotten so bad that as our pace groups have been dispatched each morning, we've been instructed to run in a strict two-abreast formation (unless one of us has more than one breast) and even flatten ourselves to single-file when we encounter another running group. But nothing was said about the convergence of three pace groups heading south and two pace groups heading north with a few clueless walkers thrown in. There were moments on Saturday morning where the trail was no different from a crowded dance floor (except we were all dancing to the rhythm of life and I have yet to encounter an angry biker on a dance floor, but then I don’t get out much so what the hell do I know?).
In any case, here we all are before the race, looking bleary-eyed and hung over at 6:30 on a Saturday morning. Which isn’t such an irony-laced joke anymore—I’d been out drinking the night before with a bunch of people from my old office, and I’d had an entire fruity martini. And now that I’m such a seasoned drinker, I can authoritatively complain about the moron who designed the martini glass to promote maximum spillage of the stickiest drink known to (gay) man.
And here we are squinting into the sun for our post-run, pre-brunch victory photo. Don’t I look like I deserve a big plate of French (unless it's still supposed to be called Freedom) toast?
In other weekend adventures, I’ve been installing tile on our kitchen backsplash, which is taking waaaaaay longer than I’d anticipated. The process has elevated “pain in the ass” to whole new levels—especially since our kitchen walls are as straight as a televangelist and the science of grouting is apparently still in its infancy because everything I’ve read on the topic gives conflicting advice. I’ll post photos and strings of expletives when the project is done. In 2012.
I also saw the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie on Saturday night with the boyfriend, Matthew from my pace group, blogger David visiting from New York (who is even cuter and more charming in person) and his Chicago friend Franklin. While the movie is longer and more bloated than it needs to be, it’s dripping with magical Disney ambience and sumptuous (for a pirate movie) set decoration and scenic design—especially the mountain of wrecked ships in the cleverly named Shipwreck Cove. Jack Sparrow’s expressionistic dream sequences are a bit of an endurance test, but I loved the movie otherwise. I can’t in good conscience report that the boys felt the same way. And we were all more than a little peeved that the bowling alley in the movie theater—where we were going to grab a quick bite before the movie—wouldn’t let us in because I was wearing a tank top and it had a dress code. Seriously. Because nothing ruins a good bowling game like a guy who shows up to have a burger in an outfit that doesn’t show respect for the sport.
The boyfriend and I capped off the weekend watching the Tony Awards with another couple, a table full of Thai takeout and a pitcher of fruity martinis. And even though I still didn’t win a damn Tony, I’d say the evening was just about perfect.
In any case, here we all are before the race, looking bleary-eyed and hung over at 6:30 on a Saturday morning. Which isn’t such an irony-laced joke anymore—I’d been out drinking the night before with a bunch of people from my old office, and I’d had an entire fruity martini. And now that I’m such a seasoned drinker, I can authoritatively complain about the moron who designed the martini glass to promote maximum spillage of the stickiest drink known to (gay) man.
And here we are squinting into the sun for our post-run, pre-brunch victory photo. Don’t I look like I deserve a big plate of French (unless it's still supposed to be called Freedom) toast?
In other weekend adventures, I’ve been installing tile on our kitchen backsplash, which is taking waaaaaay longer than I’d anticipated. The process has elevated “pain in the ass” to whole new levels—especially since our kitchen walls are as straight as a televangelist and the science of grouting is apparently still in its infancy because everything I’ve read on the topic gives conflicting advice. I’ll post photos and strings of expletives when the project is done. In 2012.
I also saw the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie on Saturday night with the boyfriend, Matthew from my pace group, blogger David visiting from New York (who is even cuter and more charming in person) and his Chicago friend Franklin. While the movie is longer and more bloated than it needs to be, it’s dripping with magical Disney ambience and sumptuous (for a pirate movie) set decoration and scenic design—especially the mountain of wrecked ships in the cleverly named Shipwreck Cove. Jack Sparrow’s expressionistic dream sequences are a bit of an endurance test, but I loved the movie otherwise. I can’t in good conscience report that the boys felt the same way. And we were all more than a little peeved that the bowling alley in the movie theater—where we were going to grab a quick bite before the movie—wouldn’t let us in because I was wearing a tank top and it had a dress code. Seriously. Because nothing ruins a good bowling game like a guy who shows up to have a burger in an outfit that doesn’t show respect for the sport.
The boyfriend and I capped off the weekend watching the Tony Awards with another couple, a table full of Thai takeout and a pitcher of fruity martinis. And even though I still didn’t win a damn Tony, I’d say the evening was just about perfect.
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