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.

Live-blogging the debates

Pete: I don’t feel like you’re getting a fair amount of screen time tonight.

Kamala: I feel like you’re getting even less.

Joe: You stutter and stammer like you’ve spent all of seven seconds preparing for this debate.

Beto: You’re still here?

Elizabeth: I normally love you but you seem a little stabby toward people tonight. It’s beneath you.

Andrew: Decriminalize opioids? I think that’s going to require a little more nuance to sell as a viable policy proposal.

Anderson: CALL ME.

Tulsi: No.

Anderson: WHY HAVEN’T YOU CALLED?

Pete: Your lashing-out at Beto about courage is out of character for you.

Cory: I always agree with you, I always like you ... but I can never find anything interesting to say about you.

Julián: I always agree with you, I always like you ... but I can never find anything interesting to say about you.

Amy: Why did your people just call us in the middle of the debate? Are they not watching you right now?

Everyone: You’re all a little wobbly at directly answering the questions you’re asked.

Bernie: I pretty much always agree with you. But you’re yelly and disconcertingly old and please groom someone younger and less abrasive to carry your torch.

Tom: I’m wary of the personal influence of your personal wealth on your policies, so I’m equally wary of your populist messages. But I’m listening ...

Everyone: Please shut up when your time is up.

Joe: I admire and appreciate your vast political experience, but more and more it feels like it’s creating baggage and distraction.

Tulsi: No.

Andrew: You’re an example of how a REAL businessman knows REAL things and how they can thoughtfully, practically, REALLY work. I have faith in you.

Ron Reagan: Ballsy ad buy.

Elizabeth: I greatly admire your knowledge, intelligence and preparedness. You set the bar high.

Tom: YES! Take on trump and crush the shithole.

Cory: Nice dig at trump’s health. I hope he chokes on his bile and dies.

Marianne: Why aren’t you here tonight? Too weird?

Joe: You meander and stumble like a trump when you talk. I’m concerned.

Kamala: You’re so freaking smart and I love your take-no-bullshit prosecuting-attorneyness. I’d be proud to call you President.

Pete: I’d still be prouder to call YOU President.

Anderson: I DON’T CARE IF YOU’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF MODERATING A DEBATE. YOU OWE ME A CALL. I’M NOT GETTING ANY YOUNGER OR PRETTIER HERE.

Pete: How did I miss your proposal to expand the Supreme Court? I’m skeptical, but I believe in you and your thinking so I’m listening ...

IS IT ME OR DOES PETE KEEP GETTING CUT OFF SOONER THAN EVERYONE ELSE WHEN HE GETS TIME TO SPEAK? IS HE BEING PENALIZED FOR HAVING THE MOST ADORABLE HUSBAND?

Pete: “That’s not how donald trump got within cheating distance of the White House in the first place.” I LOVE YOU.

I have to pee and I’m tired. I may have to cut this short. Tell me if I miss a big splashy production number or something at the end.

Throwback Thursday: Proto-Gay Edition

Things I had discovered in 1984: The stinky-feet defiance of going sockless in cheap canvas shoes from Target. The gender-bending subversiveness of wearing a hand-braided ankle bracelet. The surfer-wannabe failure of black board shorts decorated with gracefully swirling fish in trendy shades of neon. The glee-club weirdness of fake Ray-Bans with little black music notes all over them. Hair mousse.

Things I had not yet discovered in 1984: Going to a gym. Having the good sense not to wear tank tops in public. Having the good sense not to wear white fake Ray-Bans with little black music notes all over them. Having the good sense to make sure I didn't look like I was in a low-rent Flock of Seagulls cover band before I left the house.

Shhhhh! I'm catching guys ...

FACT: My 1890s-gentleman-with-an-excruciatingly-precise-side-part hair is still totally on point two hours after the show.

FACT: My fireworks-and-sailboats shirt is objectively sexy and makes me factually catnip to the ladies.

POSSIBLY: And the dudes.

FACT: I’m watching a National Geographic documentary on the recovery of the Costa Concordia.

FACT: Every diver and salvage engineer in the entire Mediterranean is HAWT.

FACT: That’s Mediterranean for HOT.

FACT: If they could only see me through my TV they could see how irresistibly catnippy my on-point hair and fireworks-and-sailboats shirt are.

FACT: The combination is romantically lethal.

FACT: The documentary is really quite fascinating.

FACT: So I’m too busy to date all those hot Mediterraneans.

THEREFORE: Sorry, fellas. Now shhhhhh!

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

Today’s Vocabulary

DONEGAL: a tweed characterized by bright flecks distributed over a light background

CLOSE ENOUGH: this couch isn’t really donegal but it’s not proper tweed either

KERNING: the spacing between letters or characters in a proportional font

EYE TWITCHES: what graphic designers are experiencing because of my super-cute shirt

Open letter to the NPR On Point producer who put the Kentucky caller on air who then said nobody ever has bought an assault weapon because of racism and people in Kentucky need them to defeat ISIS (even though trump very recently declared "we have defeated ISIS in Syria") and to sleep better at night:

WHAT. THE. FUCK. IS. WRONG. WITH. YOU. Don't you have a dumbass filter to keep the psycho morons away from the airways?

Yesterday marked an unholy confluence of events that in the mortal world happen only on a frustratingly mismatched timeframe:

I ran out of pre-workout shake mix and post-workout recovery shake mix ON. THE. SAME. DAY.

Fortunately, I've recently purchased two exciting new products that are just waiting for their turn to jump into the rotation ... though never in their wildest dreams did they think they'd do it together. I took a new-family photo* this morning with an artfully tipped shaker bottle for context and an apple because there was one sitting there and it seemed like a healthy (and shiny!) prop.

Anywho, I'm about to chug my first shaker of Beyond Raw LIT Clinically Dosed Pre-Workout in an exciting flavor called Icy Fireworks, which are two words that separately could be horrible ways to die but together I hope taste like Awesome.

Then I'll chug GNC AMP Wheybolic Clinically Proven Performance Protein to recover from my LIT-fueled workout.

THEN I'LL BE HUUUUUUUUGE! Please enlarge your doorways if you want me to visit.

*Slightly bumpy apple and nicked-up shaker bottle sold separately.

Two corners are spackled and caulked and painted and trimmed and edged and touched up and DONE!

I’ve also scrubbed my furniture and drenched it in glossy layers of Liquid Gold before putting it back. And I rehung my freshly painted door on its new classy brushed nickel hinges all by myself. BEHOLD MY MANLY DECORATING POWERS.

synecdoche (sin EK doe key)

noun: a metaphor using part of something to represent the whole of something or vice versa

examples:

FACT: Donald Trump is a belligerent, puerile man-boy who doesn't know anything about anything; arrogantly thinks he can fake his way through everything; and spends his empty, appallingly entitled life sending meaningless, childish tweets, lying about his ongoing treason, ignoring his many wives and children, insulting and repulsing other countries to the point of diplomatic alienation, screaming FAKE NEWS! like an uncontrollably shitting toddler, and destroying America for his own financial gain.

SYNECDOCHE: The current White House is an international embarrassment.

Dear sad little variegated hosta that suddenly couldn’t while all its neighbors very clearly could this spring:

I’ve given you grow lights 
And mineral supplements.
What do you want from me,
BLOOD?

Guess who just scooped the litter box with his throbbing headache?

(Well, actually he used his hands, but his throbbing headache came along as an impediment.)

THIS GUY!

Guess who also forgot to pack a razor for his Galena weekend and then has consistently forgotten to bring a razor into the shower where he shaves all week so now he looks like a scraggly old troll who lives under a Norwegian bridge and challenges hapless but ultimately resourceful children with riddles whose answers often involve dumbass wordplay and/or personal introspection before he lets them cross?

ALSO THIS GUY!

Notes on an unexpectedly long visit to New York:

• The bustling, clueless-tourist crowds are exciting and almost amusing for exactly five days. Add two more against your will and they become murderously intolerable.
• You cannot go ten feet on any New York sidewalk without walking through a crowd of marijuana smoke.
• No matter what they’re wearing, New Yorkers just dress cooler than the rest of us. Even when they look ridiculous, they OWN IT.
• Hot, athletic men with perfect lats and well-broken-in T-shirts walk alarmingly fast in Hell’s Kitchen and make it frustratingly difficult to keep up with them and fulfill your creepy-old-stalker obligations.
• THE. ARCHITECTURE.
• I would drive myself to abject bankruptcy if I lived in such a vibrant world overflowing with theater, art, music and museums. But especially theater.
• tiny. bathrooms.
• I’m not much of a foodie and I’m trying to avoid fast food, and there just aren’t enough plain-old, boring diners to suit my proletarian needs.
• Apparently the cabbies are contractually obligated to yell FUCK YOU! at pedestrians and other drivers. But in a sexy Brooklyn accent.
• I love hearing and seeing the melting pot of languages and clothing and cultural indicators that you walk through every ten feet (between the marijuana clouds) everywhere you go.
• People lose their humanity and become mere obstacles on the narrow sidewalks. Nobody looks up to say hi or even meet your eyes. It is what it is, but if I moved there and didn’t know a soul it would make me feel profoundly lonely.
• Thankfully I do know someone there. I’ve known my friend Chris probably since kindergarten, and he and his husband and their futon graciously saved me the cost of a hotel when my flights got canceled.
• THE. ARCHITECTURE.

Happy 334th birthday, Johann Sebastian Bach!

Fun Bach fact 2: The formal title of every work composed by Bach is followed by a BWV (Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis or Bach-Works-Catalogue) number. First published in 1950 by Wolfgang Schmieder--who was probably very boring at parties--the BWW system assigned a unique number to each of the 1,126 known written works of Bach. Unlike the far-more-useful-in-my-humble-opinion Köchel catalogue that assigns numbers to every known work of Mozart chronologically, the BWW assigns its numbers by genre. Which isn't even a German word.

Happy 334th birthday, Johann Sebastian Bach!

Fun Bach fact 1: Johann Sebastian Bach is considered to be one of the definitive composers of the Baroque Period in music, which lasted from 1600 until Bach's death in 1750. Following the Renaissance Period, which explored independent, interweaving melodic lines in a style known as polyphony, Baroque music introduced the concept of tonality, where music was written in an established key. The highly ornamental and often improvised music of the Baroque followed the key-based chord progressions played by the lower instruments of the basso continuo.

And though all symphonic music from the Baroque Period forward is collectively known as "classical music," the official Classical Period as we define it today directly followed the Baroque, lasting from 1750 to 1825. Its definitive composer was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

I’LL BE BACH WITH ANOTHER FUN FACT SOON!

#SparksOfJoy: A weekly post about something that makes me happy

Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor, Opus 64: A concerto is a musical structure dating to the Baroque period (roughly 1600-1750) that features a solo instrument backed by a full orchestra. It’s traditionally composed in three movements with a fast-slow-fast structure. Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto (composed in 1844, which puts it squarely in the Romantic period) is a lighthearted delight that explores a range of happy, inarguably beautiful and requisitely contemplative musical voices in its first two movements. But its third movement--a bouncy, exuberant celebration of musical virtuosity titled Allegretto non troppo – Allegro molto vivace (starting at 22:06 in this recording)--is completely joyful and captivating and downright triumphant for any violinist who masters it. Part of its joy stems from Mendelssohn’s placement of the violin solo mere moments after the downbeat of the movement instead of letting the orchestra introduce the solo, as had been the convention for 200 years. Romantic music is about emotion--often extreme emotion--and the joyful emotions of this third movement leap at you with no room for impatience or distraction.

Well HERE’S an interesting conspiracy theory

Proof that that IS Melania: She’s clearly had kidney surgery and a genius grant.
Proof that that is NOT Melania: She’s holding his hand.
The real truth: She totally looks like a Melanie.

Leg Day always goes better

when you’re halfway done and you can already barely walk because you timed it just right and snagged the good quad machine that destroys all things good and holy in you except your encyclopedic knowledge of Sondheim trivia and your will to live with under 100 pairs of super-cute shoes.

Also: Pink + Provincetown + muscle-cut + T-shirt is code for gay + gay + gay + T-shirt.

Flashback Friday: Hustle Edition

Fun fact: “Hustle up the Hancock” is a cool name for a race up the almost 100 flights of stairs in Chicago’s John Hancock Center.

Other fun fact: “The Social Climbers” is the coolest Hustle up the Hancock team name ever invented by a team captain named Jake and emblazoned in a custom design on the team’s T-shirts.

Fact: Climbing almost 100 flights of stairs on a freezing February morning is really not all that fun.

Other fact: Though is feels like 700 hours of gasping and quad-screaming, the climb actually lasts only 20ish minutes.

One more fact: John Hancock Insurance removed its name from the John Hancock Center in February 2018, leaving the building with the stirring—and instantly memorable—name 875 North Michigan Avenue ... and this year causing Hustle Up the Hancock to be renamed the less alliterative but more badass Hustle Chicago.

I’ve been singing choral music for 35+ years

and I STILL get tripped up reading a bass line that’s scored in the treble clef. WHY THE HELL DO YOU DO THAT, MUSIC-WRITER-DOWNER PEOPLE? IT’S STUPID. AND DUMB. AND STUPID.

That said, read this bass line in G-major treble clef—WHERE IT’S STILL WICKED-FREAKING HIGH—and you’ll have my favorite belty four-count phrase in all of 9 to 5. After one week of rehearsals, at least.