Oklahoma! key dramatis personæ, from the left:

Cord Elam. The moral and emotional core of the Oklahoma! narrative. Basically the lead. Brags that he could eat a gatepost. No homo.

Will Parker. The clumsy—but alarmingly bendy—one who does his press junket splayed out on the floor like a common hussy. Couldn’t count to $50 if his potential marriage depended on it. Minor character at best.

Curly McLain. Sings about corn. Lies about fringe. Someone runs into his knife. Someone runs into his knife one time.

You can see by our outfits that we are both cowboys

#Oklahoma! #CowboyHats #TheStreetsOfLaredo

We don’t need no stinkin’ musical about dancin’ farmers and cowmen to be basic bitches in boots

But it sure makes a super-cute excuse.

We’re only an hour into our first Oklahoma! rehearsal and after many grueling rounds of auditions and callbacks I’ve already snagged the coveted first chorus solo

WATCH AND LEARN, LESSER CASTMATES. WATCH AND LEARN.

One show closes and another opens

And this one has elephant-eye-high corn. And apparently a severed thumb.

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.

Wandelprobe (noun)

1. A choreographed rehearsal that merges orchestra, vocals and sometimes body microphones for the first time in the production of a musical; 2. A vaguely naughty-sounding German word that though it may initially seem like it, it doesn't really lend itself to clever sexual innuendo and don't even think you're going to come up with the elusive and brilliantly definitive "probe" joke because millions of very talented and clever and profoundly disturbed actors and singers before you have exhausted every last possibility a thousand times over; 3. THE COOLEST REHEARSAL OF EVERY SHOW OF YOUR LIFE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE; 4. I'm wearing my fake-lifeguard shirt today to make all the bikini models hurl themselves prostrate at my sandy, well-tanned feet; 5. That has nothing to do with Wandelprobe but I didn't have any other place to fit it in today.

It’s easier to be in a show if you know your lines

The verdict: Grade II muscle strain in my calf

I have to stay off of it (not that the pain would let me stay on it) for a week. I’ll just be sitting at rehearsals. I have no idea how I’m going to drive my stick shift. Or sleep through the night.

But the big knot in my calf sure gives me a shapely gam.

Some jetés land you gracefully on your other foot. Some jetés land you in the ER.

You know how sometimes pain can make you flop sweat all over your existing sweat? Yeah.

I’m pretty sure I just have an epic muscle strain in my calf, but the pain has been breathtaking enough that I decided to have it looked at right away. And a nice theater mom took me to the hospital because there’s no way I can drive. Or dance in the show for a while.

Shit.

Urgent Public Service Announcement:

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

I wear a lot of hats in Hello, Dolly!

Well, I wear TWO hats. But not at once, despite what this artfully composed self-portraiture might imply.

I also apparently wear lots of chins—even more than the number of hats on the elegant-millinery-shop prop table hiding behind me and my chins on this, our second quad-shredding, knee-crippling, calf-calving five-hour rehearsal day in a row.

So the key takeaway here is everything hurts and I’m dying AND I'M NOT DOING IT FOR MY HEALTH SO GET YOUR TICKETS AND COME SEE US AT THEATRE CEDAR RAPIDS.

Do you know why I’m betophatted and bekneepadded at our five-hour Hello, Dolly! rehearsal?

I’ll tell you why I’m betophatted and bekneepadded at our five-hour Hello, Dolly! rehearsal: Hello, Dolly! the musical is totally proper and elegant and shit, but Hello, Dolly! the choreography is a FULL-CONTACT SPORT.

Hello, five-hour Saturday rehearsal!

Oh, nothing

Just sitting here taking a plain old unremarkable rehearsal selfie.

Move along. Mind your business.

LITANY OF DEMANDS

1. Laundered socks will reunite on their own like Cary Grant and Debra Kerr in An Affair to Remember but sooner and with no off-screen auto accidents or racist music recitals.
2. Smoke alarms with dying batteries will not chirp so randomly that you can’t figure out which ones need rebatterying but will instead shout HEY! OVER HERE! THIS ONE! MARCO ... MARCO ... MARCO ... POLO! YOU FOUND ME! NOW REPLACE MY BATTERY!
3. I will finally master the “bowler brim” verse of “Put On Your Sunday Clothes.”

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.

Well, hello!

There’s something about old-school hand-written musical scores—their indulgently ornamental clefs, their plump flats, their angled text that looks like a note from a friend I’ve known since I did my first musical 35 years ago—that fills me with joy.

And it’s usually joy with a catchy melody.

Well, shit

I was THIS CLOSE to posting that I’d gone all day without having a bandage on my wrist with nobody noticing my still-hideous-but-no-longer-gaping wound UNTIL! someone who will not be named (because she isn’t on Facebook so there’s really no reason to shame her here there or here) noticed as we were leaving rehearsal tonight.

(Apparently I’d at one point very creatively described my wound to her as looking like a vagina because her first observation was that it doesn’t look like a vagina. I’d truly forgotten that I’d ever made that comparison. But I cannot disagree with the poetic imagery.)

So the key takeaways here are:
1. My wound is so much better that I feel safe leaving it unbandaged for a day.
2. It’s still gross enough, though, that I’m politely refraining from posting a photo of it here for fear you’d vomit all over yourself when you innocently scrolled by it.
3. HOLY SHIT DONALD TRUMP IS SO FUCKING BBEEYYOONNDD OFF THE RAILS TODAY WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH HIM OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD