I HAD SHIT TO DO TONIGHT

But this morning’s awesomely brutal Hello, Dolly! choreography rehearsal literally sent me home into to a three-hour coma. AND LOTS OF CREAKY JOINTS. So instead of doing active shit tonight, I passively sent some photos from my phone to be printed at Walgreens as possibilities for the dramatic Jake-stars-in-the-theater wall I’m curating for my bedroom. My verdict: meh. The cropping feature on the app isn’t entirely accurate, and the cropping feature on the app isn’t accurate at all. Neither is the cropping feature:

And did I mention passive? Because I also bought two pints of Ben & Jerry’s when I picked up the photos and headed right home to binge on Lifetime Intimate Portraits of Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, Betty White and Estelle Getty. WHICH. IS. SO. NOT. GAY. NO. NOT. AT. ALL. SHUT. UP. SHEESH.

Rude.

Accouterments of patriotism

We’ve been in Galena four hours and we’ve already been told by the toothless cashier at Walmart that her husband’s best friend got her pregnant and gave her chlamydia

And “gave her chlamydia” is not am impoetic euphemism for “gave her a baby they eventually named Chlamydia once it was born.” I asked to make sure.

But! Our rental house! Is cuuuuuute!

It comes with a Carol-Brady-including collage of wall art over an actual working turntable and a library of suspiciously gay LPs, a curvy scripted self-promoting hashtag painted in shimmery gold by a round mirror reflecting two suspiciously gay kissing husband roommates, a gilded squirrel thing, a fire pit at the end of a rocky walkway, and an actual working bird’s nest with actual working robin eggs that appear to be actually hatching.

Plus I brought pie!

Ice-cold Cherry Bubly? Check.

Two freshly homemade pies? Check. Gay-ass Longaberger pie carrier with gay-ass fruit-print ruffled liner? Check. New thingie I just bought to stick in my cigarette lighter and broadcast show tunes and podcasts from my phone to a radio station? Check. A library of more show tunes and podcasts than one person could listen to in five lifetimes? Check.

Full tank of gas to get me to my Galena weekend reunion vacation without having to stop?

Shit.

Seems legit

I assume he had a separate team of caftan wranglers though; those things are a bitch to fold.

I managed to wear a pair of gym shorts today that are the exact shade of black polyester to spotlight just how pasty-white-Easter-ham-pink my legs are

Plus I’m wearing a shirt that might as well come with a name tag that says “Hello! My Name is Gay Gayerthanyou!”

Fortunately, there’s all but literally nobody here for me to horrify. Unfortunately, I am NOT in the mood to work out, and being surrounded by tons of other people working out usually keeps me focused and accountable.

So here we are.

GREAT MOMENTS IN OSCARS HISTORY:

Allan Carr—the producer who brought us the mega-hit movie Grease in 1978, struggled mightily to keep disco relevant long enough to prevent his 1979 not-at-all-gay-porn-so-stop-giggling movie musical Can’t Stop the Music (featuring the Village People, Bruce Jenner in a wardrobe of distractingly cropped T-shirts, and a “Y.M.C.A.” musical sequence that drove a million ‘70s boys into the filthy homosexual lifestyle) from tanking, and then depleted Broadway’s entire reserves of sequins and taffeta when he made La Cage aux Folles the toast of the town in 1983—sabotaged his entire storied career and everything he’d achieved in life 30 years ago when the “antithesis of tacky” Academy Awards ceremony he produced opened with a now-and-forever-infamous-laughingstock parody of “Proud Mary” sung (extremely poorly) by (I am not making this up) Rob Lowe and (stay with me here) Snow White to celebrate (I said stay with me) “the youth of Hollywood” and (of course) get sued into oblivion by Disney.

Fun fact: He *did* that year change the convention of “And the winner is ...” to “And the Oscar goes to ...”. So there’s that.

#neverforget

Good morning! Does this Vogue-does-Disney-princesses art installation in my bedroom make me look gay?

Or does it just make Belle’s hand look like something you’d find on a Gold Lobster sampler platter?

You know those pop-out glass balconies on the Skydeck of the Willis (née Sears) Tower in Chicago?

Six years ago I went to a fancy-schmancy fundraiser up there with a bunch of fancy-schmancy gay guys I barely knew ... on what ended up being the foggiest evening in perhaps all of Chicago history.

But we wouldn't let the weather ruin our party. As they say: When life gives you fog, make Charlie's Angles poses with your fellow fags.

Or something like that.

Ugh. I do NOT have time to be felled by a damn cold.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been debilitatingly sick, and I’d forgotten how pathetic and helpless it makes me.

BUT! I used the time afforded by my canceled plans tonight to finally finish my second reading of Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical "Follies"—which I’d started on an airplane in April, and I have the dated boarding pass/bookmark to prove it.

And my second reading of the book unquestionably confirms what we’ve all long suspected: I’m still deliriously gay.

It’s amazing how easily a post-Christmas-clearance pewter-rock-glitter placemat can transform a bedside table from boring to boy-that-sure-looks-homosexual

Gay

Gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay.

Only a gay man would artfully arrange his running attire for a night-before photo

I could say I haven’t eagerly to the point of giddiness waited until I could FINALLY pin a racing bib in its designated place of honor on the front of my new Summer Of Running Away From Being 50 shirt since the moment it arrived in the mail over a month ago, but we all know I’d be lying.

I could also say I haven’t eagerly been planning my patriotic little running ensemble since this time last year, but I’d only partly be lying because I didn’t know until today that I’d be wearing brand-new compression shorts to hold the randomly loose parts of my aging, brittle hip in place for tomorrow’s 8K.

Bonus purchase: cushy new running socks! With a pop of neon lime! To tie everything together with my red-and-neon-lime Rocktane(R) Ultra Endurance Gu(R) Energy Gel!

#HowToTurn50 #LetsDOTHIS

High on a hill was a lonely goatherd ...