10 days till #Hallowmeme!

Last week we cleared a mountain of crap off this garage shelf:

Today I cleared a mountain of wine off the garage floor:

And I cleaned out the garage refrigerator. And poured out an entire forgotten 12-pack of carbonationless Sprite that expired in 2016. And scrubbed the weird yellowish liquid that perpetually weeps down the garage walls and no the drywall isn’t peeing and we aren’t aliens or witches so don’t even think any of that or I’ll put a hex on you.

Also: It’s a delicate balance to scrub the grime off the garage-door opener without repeatedly opening and closing the garage door. It’s like Jenga. Or Jengarage. Or Garenga.

Fun fact:

The success of Hello, Dolly! catapulted Carol Channing into an illustrious Broadway career that lasted into the 1970s, culminating in her eponymous one-woman hardscrabble-but-hopeful-dancer docu-sical that won her 17 Tony Awards.

In related news, WE OPEN THIS FRIDAY!

But English is three languages stacked in a trench coat, so who are we to make snarquerie?

Never bring a spife to a knork fight

Follies pit singer sitzprobe!

Or you could say Fpitzprobe. But no, you should really never say Fpitzprobe.

The 9 to 5 dancer guys are known 24/7 for our maturity and photogenic-ity

And this handsome group is only part of our little army of not-goofy hotness. You should come check us out at some 8:00 performance!

We’re badger hot in our Michael Jordon hats!

And I’m vagueblogging some Full Monty inside jokes!

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!

It takes an awful lot of clothing to be a singing stripper

Also: There are grown, functioning adults in our dressing room who just asked each other in a fog of cultural bewilderment if the song “Footloose” was written for the movie Footloose or afterward in some kind of ride-the-post-Footloose-movie-pop-culture-wave frenzy. And I am apparently THE ONLY PERSON IN THE ENTIRE DRESSING ROOM WHO’D LIVED THROUGH THE ‘80s AND FOUGHT IN ITS HARDSCRABBLE BEMOMJEANED TRENCHES AND ACTUALLY SAW FOOTLOOSE IN THE THEATERS WHO COULD UNLOCK THE MYSTERIES OF THE MEDIEVAL PAST AND ANSWER THEIR QUESTION.

(Answer: The song was written for the movie. DUH.)

Also: Kevin Bacon as Ren McCormack. Or just guys named Ren in general. Sigh.

Snowpacolypse!

Leg Day in cheap, ill-fitting track pants is more miserable than Melania on Smocking Hamburder Night

I’d like to think my pants are all bunchy in all my uncomfortabunchy zones because of my mighty man quads and cantilevered cantaloupe calves, but it’s really because I was a big Clearance Clarence who was reeled in by the racing stripes. These stupid pants are tailored for cartoon ostrich legs, and they’re literally compromising my manly squats.

But they have pockets!

In other news, my Graffiti Wonder Woman shirt hasn’t sparked a single conversation about which is the definitive cast recording of Sondheim’s Follies. (It’s a tossup for me between the OBC and the Papermill Playhouse. Any other opinion is invalid.)

Well hello, rakishly asymmetrical gym stealthfie!

It looks like you’re shaking things up on a different lat-pulldown machine. Your initiative and resourcefulness are sure to get you completely unnoticed by an entire gymful of muscular, handsome, manly men. Again.

Well hello, Shoop Shoop song on the gym speakers! In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a gymful of muscular, handsome, manly men. They prefer working out to the genre of music called Not The Shoop Shoop Song. Go back to your retirement-center elevator.

Things that get you beaten up at the gym:

• Rainbows
• Stars
• Pastels
• Failure
• Cutsie-poo shirts
• Saying cutsie-poo
• Stealth selfies
• Calling them stealthfies

In my decapitating-headache haze this morning, I still managed to pack for the gym. Just in case. My mind wasn’t really in the game (as the sportsie-poo dudes say) after work, but a big shaker full of Blue Raspberry C4 Sport Pre-Workout magic re-lit my pilot light quite nicely, and I must say I now have the chest and triceps of a 25-year-old competitive bodybuilder. They’re buried in a shallow grave under the porch, but still.

Speaking of (my workouts, not murder), do you want to know the difference between a pre-50 workout and a post-50 workout? Of course you do: It’s abs. Before I was 50, if I accidentally sneezed I counted it as a week’s worth of abs workouts. Now that I’m 50 (as rumor has it), I have an unhealthy obsession with my waistline and I won’t leave the gym without going all Geneva Convention on my abdominals. Which, coincidentally, makes sneezing extra-super-fun.

But pain is weakness leaving the body. I saw that on a T-shirt once. And it wasn’t pastel.

Ugh redux

In today's early, cruel dawn, last night's debilitating head cold escalated into a decapitating headache that felt like I had a metal band slowly tightened around my head to the point that it was cracking my skull above my eyes. And aside from the allusion to decapitation, that description was barely an exaggeration.

And when I tried to crawl up the stairs this morning to whimper in the early, cruel, pain-exploding sunlight in the hopes of eventually going to work, I saw why my night had been so excruciating: Bitch Kitty had laid a curse--an incatation, if you will--on me in the night. And she was waiting at the top of the stairs to watch her nefarious Grand Guignol play out to its gruesome, wailing conclusion:

But joke's on you, Bitch Kitty! I have to go to work so I can justify going to the gym to get mega-hot so I can go to Full Monty rehearsal so I can mega-sing about being mega-hot SO I FOUGHT THROUGH THE PAIN AND I WIN. This time.

Physical therapy checkup!

Megahellasuperoversize Elveløpet shirt!

It took me five thinks and one sayoutloud to finally get this terrible-but-timely pun

There's laughter calling for you if you figure it out ...

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

BEHOLD MY OMEGAWESOMENESS:

WHEELS DOWN! At the correct airport! Whose name is just NATIONAL, damnit!

The Lusitania is still afloat! My watch is still on Iowa time! Saying WHEELS DOWN just made me sound like a seasoned aviator!

Let the beachhousities begin!

VACCINES KILL

It’s true because it’s on a T-shirt worn by a completely-trustworthy-looking dude wandering Terminal E of Charlotte Douglas International Airport. The shirt is scarlet. As in fever.

Also: Charlotte Douglas International Airport is the size and shape of a charming-Belgian-hamlet-size spider squashed by Bob Fosse.

Also: I’m in the mood for a totally-not-abs-friendly snack, but I’ve trekked the full extent of Charlotte Douglas International Airport’s splayed-and-Fosse-angled spider legs and I haven’t seen a single damn gooeyfrostedcinnamonrollerie.

Also: I just followed a distractingly-latted-and-boyfriend-age-appropriate man in a contour-hugging gray T-shirt all the way from Terminal E to Terminal C on the far end of the Fosse-squashed charming-Belgian-hamlet-size Charlotte Douglas International Airport, but he stopped at Terminal C2 and I depart from Terminal C8.

Also: Stupid Terminal C8.

Also: My supposedly-auto-time-zone-synching running watch is refusing to auto-time-zone synch.

Also: Stupid supposedly-auto-time-zone-synching running watch.

Also: The cashier at Sbarro keeps aggressively demanding that every customer have a great day.

Also: DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO MY WATCH WON’T AUTOMATICALLY CHANGE TIME ZONES AND I ACTUALLY WANTED A GOOEY FROSTED CINNAMON ROLL INSTEAD OF YOUR SUSPICIOUSLY SUSPICIOUS PIZZA AND I JUST HAD TO SIT POINTLESSLY ON A TARMAC FOR 15 MINUTES AND GRAY SHIRT GUY IS FLYING TO DALLAS FORT WORTH YES I LOOKED IT’S TOTALLY NOT CREEPY SHUT UP AND MY PARENTS ARE TRYING TO VACCINATE ME TO DEATH SO IT’S WAAAAY BEYOND POSSIBLE FOR MEET YOUR AGGRESSIVE AND FRANKLY CRUEL GREAT-DAY DEMANDS.