How fitting that the memory of my TCR shirtless debut pops up during production week for my TCR more-than-shirtless debut

Back then, you had to buy tickets in person or over the phone. Now you just go to theatrecr.org

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Whorehouse Edition

What's so funny about this picture? Let me count:
1. I'm playing a football player.
2. I'm playing a football player who utilizes the services of female prostitutes.
3. I'm shirtless on stage for the first time in my life. I know it's hard to believe there was once a time where me taking my shirt off on stage was a novelty, but you have to start somewhere. And I started in 1998, rompin' and stompin' with the Aggie Boys in Theatre Cedar Rapids' The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. This show also predates all my big tattoos, so I look like a pristine little infant in this picture. A pristine little infant who dances around shirtless and goes to whorehouses.

Here’s my formal Doug the Christmas Cop holiday portrait that I’m going to use in this year’s Christmas cards

Speaking of Christmas, you should really come see me and our entire cast of bejinglebelled elves and the people who love them in Elf the Musical at Theatre Cedar Rapids. We open this weekend!

If a super-jazzy, super-jingly, super-challenging musical score about elves doesn't make your holidays brighter ...

if hearing a chorus of otherwise super-manly basses squeak out repeated high A's doesn't dog-whistle you ... if watching my freakishly talented friend D.J. totally ROCK IT as the charming, guileless, fearlessly ridiculous Buddy the Elf doesn't elicit even a wan smile from your stony comportment ... if your cold, dead heart prevents you from understanding my subtly nuanced performance of Doug the Christmas Cop breaking up a sweaty Santa fight ... you AT LEAST owe it to yourself to come see Elf the Musical just to hear the 90-year-old Barton organ fill Theatre Cedar Rapids with glorious Christmas carols before each Friday and Saturday performance.

The organ is a hidden gem in the heart of the city, and it is truly a treat to get to hear it on the occasions that it gets played. And just look at the organ console: IT'S BLACK VELVET! WITH RHINESTONES!

THERE. IS. NOTHING. GAYER.

Don't make me call you out as a cotton-headed ninny-muggins. Get your tickets at https://www.theatrecr.org/event/elf-the-musical/2018-11-16/

We don’t mess around with “Tempo di Boring Old Christmas Carols” in Elf

We also don’t stop at just one Finale.

Be a Buddy and get your tickets now at theatrecr.org

Flashback Friday: Garters and Underpants Edition

Last year at this time I was in a show that obligated me to wear sock garters. And underpants.

I have no such requirements for the show I'm in now. Just sayin'.

Get your tickets at theatrecr.org. DO IT.

My hair is SO! ON! POINT! right now

Oops—I mean SO! POINTY! right now. Sorry. Typo.

And you have three more opportunities to see its relentless verticalness in person. So get your Fuddy Meers tickets NOW!

The Sea is Frozen!

So I came home from work feeling a little bit bipolar-depressed-y and went right to bed ... only to be awakened three hours later by the realization that tomorrow is garbage day and I had to get the damn Bitch Kitty box all scooped and cleaned and shit. Well, technically SHE did the shitting the moment I was done scooping (natch) but my cheap joke here is still funny. Once the garbage was out though, I was sitting and chatting with my folks when 91.7 started playing Debussy’s La Mer (which is French for The Sea Except Without Enough Syllables Or Even Damn Letters To Let You Say It In A Charming I’ve-Been-To-Paris-Once French Accent) just as the skies started making all kinds of diluvian bluster in anticipation of an impending downpour, but Debussy’s churning ocean (which has TWO SYLLABLES and is therefore FAR EASIER to say with a charming accent of any kind and ARE YOU LISTENING, CLAUDE?) and Iowa’s churning skies never synched up so untold volumes of referential and metaphorical poetry were lost to the ages. Anyway, my head’s a lot clearer now as I climb back into bed and leave you with this totally random, totally awesome, totally mesmerizing MIDI of “Let it Go” from Frozen:

The 2018 Follies company

I’m the Evita in the back row.

Get your tickets here!

Tap rehearsal!

With pink objets d'art to keep it real, yo.

Come watch me tap "I Can Do That" in Follies on March 24 and 25! Whether I rock it or fall on my face, you'll totally get your money's worth.

Get your tickets HERE!

Asses, asses and more asses

Read all about these asses and their asses here

I find myself having a difficult time caring about these two self-absorbed asses and what they're about to face, but I am worried that the evangelical American Taliban will blow this story into a rallying cry around this "proof" that all gay people are perverted degenerates who brazenly commit "religious insults" (because -- for the purposes of this one specific news-cycle outrage -- the American Taliban will suddenly become VERY concerned about the cultural sensitivities of foreign religions) and then dotard will opportunistically climb on board to get points for hating gays AND punishing them -- though, as always, he'll have zero influence on anything to do with their punishment or anything else in the world for that matter -- and his shit-drooling minions will be emboldened to exhibit even more hate toward even more people in this pervasively toxic political environment he and his mouth-breathing orbit continue to breed, grope and propagate.

Today in Stupid: Whatever. And fuck off.

Get your full helping of whiny bullshit here

So stop your whiny, pants-wetting, transparently manufactured shock and quit already. If it took you until well after you started working for Fox News to realize that "Fox feels like an extension of the Trump White House" and suddenly get "embarrassed" to work there, you're somehow actually stupider than you look on TV. You know damn well what kind of hyper-partisan lies the Fox crap machine splats all over the globe on an hourly basis, and that's exactly why you started working there in the first place. So why are you GIVING INTERVIEWS TO CNN -- the primary network you and your dotard scream ad nauseam is nothing but "FAKE NEWS!" -- now that your integrity diaper needs changing? Save your amateur I'm-so-shocked dramatics for your toxically ignorant viewers.

Theater fluff

This is the hair of a man who cashed in his semiannual I-don't-want-to-do-a-20-minute-elliptical-warmup-before-my-workout card this morning. Which is why it's fluffy-vertical instead of sweaty-droopy.

This is also the hair of a man who is so selflessly dedicated to his art that he hasn't had a haircut in two months so he looks decade-appropriate for a show he's in, which is set in 1963.

This is also the hair of a man who has TONS OF FRIENDS FLOCKING TO SEE THIS, THE FINAL WEEKEND OF SAID SHOW. Ahem.

Tickets: Giving Tree Theater

Thirsty theater thelfie

I love every aspect of Giving Tree Theater except for the fact that the words on its marquee sign show up only in highly specific, improbably rare 100-year-stars-aligned atmospheric conditions, SO WHY BOTHER?

Fortunately, those stars are aligned -- albeit behind all these sun-filtering clouds, which I'm sure have no influence on the photovisibility of the words on the marquee sign so I won't even bring it up -- right now, so I was able to get a marquee selfie with my bucket of Diet Coke SINCE OUR CAST PARTY LAST NIGHT WENT TO 2:00 AM so we're going to have an awesome, woke matinee. Just as soon as you get here. Because it's really crappy out. So you might as well come to the theater.

More pathological Republican moral hypocrisy

Read about the piece of shit here ... if you even need to

I'm not even going to read this article or google this subhuman filth to check my facts before I state with absolute certainty that this abortion-demanding adulterer has repeatedly barked out his allegiance to the following tiredly predictable, ultimately meaningless party-line positions designed to inflame the passions of his ignorant, uneducated voter base:
* pro-family
* pro-marriage
* pro-sanctity-of-marriage
* pro-"religious liberty" (which we all know is pathetically lazy code for "we hate the gays")
* pro-life (yet pro-assault-weapon)
* pro-ten-commandments
* anti-abortion
* pro-"this is a personal matter, don't ask me any questions, show some respect for my family and personal life"

Whatever your name is, you interchangeable republican moral hypocrite, I hate you. I hope today's comprehensively unsurprising revelations cause you and everyone you love ten times the staggering, crushing pain that you and your words and your votes and your sociopolitical influence have inflicted on every gay person and every terrified pregnant woman and every victim of gun violence in this country.

Come see One Man, Two Guvnors

Or I swear I'll jump off this pretend pier into the not-even-there pretend water below. But I'll have the darting let out on my suit coat first so it's not so bunchy around my middle. Or I'll stop eating pie backstage. Either way, I might as well look presentable when they find me, old chap.

Get your tickets post-haste at GivingTreeTheater.com

Who wore it best?

Tickets: One Man, Two Guvnors

Pretend this is an ascot

Preferably pretend it's an ascot of neatly four-in-handed silk tucked smartly into the '60s Carnaby Street authenticity that is the smartly tailored glen plaid jacket I'm not-pretend wearing in this picture. And then pretend I'm pictured here having high tea at Harrod's or lobbing withering insults at the downstairs help instead of struggling to find not-shadowy selfie light behind a set piece backstage at rehearsal. There! You now have a deeply nuanced understanding of the emotionally layered noblesse oblige my character brings to our show.

Speaking of our show, you should come see it -- if for no other reason than to find out if I pretend to wear pants.

Zip up your tickets here.

Don't yell

Mock and deride the goatfucking man-boy here

The worst thing about this: This pants-wetting, pussy-grabbing, integrity-devoid, bitch-whiny attention whore is somehow our president.

The best thing about this: The delusionally narcissistic, breathlessly self-laudatory "Apprentice is a television smash!" teaser copy on the not-intelligently-designed fake cover of a magazine that he whines ad nauseam is "fake news" but he clearly saw as credible enough to copy for this pathetic self-promotion is critiqued thusly in the withering Washington Post exposé: "And it has two exclamation points. Time headlines don't yell."

Today in Stupid: "Not expecting"?

Pity the whiny little liar here

The laughably manipulative poor-little-professional-victim daughter of "Lock her up!" and "Obama's a Muslim" and "Grab her by the pussy" and "total Muslim ban" man-boy is either catastrophically stupid or she's desperately hoping you are.

So are you, Trump supporters?

One pussy away from the presidency

Whether it's inspired by courtliness or his interpretation of religious prescription for fidelity or lack of trust in his resistance to temptation or perhaps penance for past indiscretions, Mike Pence's revelations this week about his personal policy of keeping himself physically separated from women outside the company of his wife are of course his choice and his parameters for making his marriage work. But now that he's chosen to make this information public in his capacity as a public figure, it's fair game for both thoughtful scrutiny and for the withering ridicule and satire such as this that it's generated all over social and Fourth Estate media. And it raises grave concerns about his attitudes and behaviors and implied condescension toward an entire half of the world population, which could make him fundamentally incapable of presiding over a First World country whether he's conducting day-to-day meetings with legislators and White House staff or brokering trade deals and diplomatic alliances with world leaders.

And even if in professional circumstances such as these he violates his own rules on the issue, he's already contaminated himself with the stink of patronizing, possibly chauvinistic ridiculousness. Which continues to undermine his credibility as a political leader, a social player and even a rational thinker.

Get all the sticky details here