You say you want a resolution

I guess one of the benefits (?) of writing a blog is the accountability it gives you when you posted your new year’s resolutions a year earlier for everyone to see and keep track. How did I do? Let’s all find out together:

Repair the giant gap where the outside wall of my condo is ripping away from the inside wall. Done. And I even went one better: I repaired the over-expanded expansion joint at that same intersection. It had become an actual hole that made it unavoidable for me to smell my neighbor’s cooking and smoking; see her lights at night; and hear her phone ringing, her conversations with her hard-of-hearing sister, and her revolting screaming orgasms. And I took pictures (of the repair work—not the orgasms):

I filled the crack (crack!) with two kinds of expanding foam, which does not sand well, but it seemed to stop the orgasms. (I also got rid of that poor sun-faded, rippled bas relief world map, which I thought was the coolest thing in the … well … world when I got it for Christmas more than 10 years ago.)

Notice how nice and orgasm-free the wall looks when everything is sanded and painted. Notice how it doesn’t catch on the cheap plastic blinds. Notice the spiffy new valances my mom and dad helped me make last month to hide the cheap plastic tops of the cheap plastic blinds.

Change the HVAC filters. Since I don’t actually have central heat or central air in my condo, this was kind of a stupid resolution to make. My building has heating and air conditioning units (I said units!) built into the outside walls, though. I do know the difference, but blogger must have rewritten my post to make me look gay. In any case, I did take apart the units (I said units!) and wash the filters this summer. So we can consider this resolution achieved as well.

Learn to use a punching bag. There were times this year when I felt like I was a punching bag. Does that count?

Heal from lipo and never do it again. “Healing” is relative, I guess. I have no more pain. I have the remnants of two tiny scars on my hips. But the goo never totally went away, so I don’t count the operation as a complete success—which may or may not be considered “healing.” The never-do-it-again part of the resolution is gonna be pretty easy to keep, though.

Get rid of at least 100 things that are cluttering up my house. I’d estimate I got rid of three or four hundred things this year. And, again, I took pictures:

above: The top caption is supposed to give you a space-saving double read: Invisible jet phone! and Invisible jet clock! I was going for a really clever Wonder Woman reference, but since I had to explain it to you, the joke is lost. So never mind.

above: Shiny coats! Which I bought on purpose within the last five years!

above: Vinyl jeans! Which I bought on purpose within the last three years! (But I never wore two pair of the jeans, so I should get some credit for self-restraint.)

above: I haven’t had to play dress-up with any regularity since the early ’90s. But I obviously didn’t have to tell you that.

above: I really have nothing to say here.

above: De-crapping your life can be so cleansing.

above: Nothing says I kiss my sister. On the mouth. With tongue. faster than a string tank top. Thankfully, I had the presence of mind never to wear it.

above: Yes, that is The Sock you see in the upper right. And those are shorty-short short shorts you see in the upper left. And yes, they would have made a lovely ensemble with the string tank top. And no, I am not still in love with Richard Marx.

Run a 5K in under 8-minute miles. I don’t think I officially ran a 5K this year, but I did do an 8K in 8.5-minute miles. And I did some three-mile (which is about a 5K) sprints this year that I never timed. Chalk this resolution up as a kind-of.

Run the Chicago Marathon in under four hours. I shaved 16 minutes off last year’s time, but I was still 20 minutes short of my completely arbitrary four-hour goal. And I’m gonna keep trying.

Learn enough Web design that I can make a Web site of my own. I taught myself a ton of Photoshop. Does that count?

Get my long-dormant book published and/or my old newspaper column revived and syndicated. Oh, my goodness. Look at the time …

Continue in my personal quest to demonstrate to the world that gay people aren't abstract “threats” to the common good. We haven’t completely succeeded in destroying marriage, defiling the innocents, and filling the world with disgust and despair, but Secret Operative Dubya and Secret Operative Pope are still working on it.

Note to self:

Some things you should never try to get at a discount: Lunch meat. Surgery. Hiking boots. Back waxings.

And you should ESPECIALLY avoid back waxings at cosmetology colleges.

First of all, there's none of that zen atmosphere to give you the illusion that the experence is one of calm and tranquility. No dim lights. No soothing music. No sheets on the bed. In fact, there's really no bed; it's just a padded vinyl chaise that wobbles so much they'll ask you just to sit on the end of it to avoid potential collapse.

Then there's the whole amateur-with-a-pot-of-wax factor. Amateurs are clumsy. They slop wax on your jeans. They miss enough wax that you find yourself surgically attached to your coat when you get home. They miss enough hair that you wonder why you drove clear across town to save a buck when you could have done a more thorough job on your own with nothing more than a can of paint thinner and a match.

And speaking of saving a buck, that whole cosmetology college = deep discounts thing is a myth. They may cut your hair for only five bucks, but they'll end up charging you a dollar more than you'd pay at Nordstrom Spa for a more thorough waxing procedure. And Nordstrom Spa offers all that zen crap you thought you could live without. Hell, Nordstrom Spa even gives you complimentary bottled water.

On the flip side, though, Nordstrom Spa also gives you an immediate case of post-waxing pimples. And so far, the cosmetology college route has given you nothing but (mostly) hairless skin. But maybe the pimples are part of the post-graduate work.

To recap:
Wobbly vinyl chaise + Shania Twain + Clumsy McWaxSlopper = bad
Indirect lighting + fresh sheets + fake bamboo in the lobby = good

Reindeer Games

Canasta. It's a family tradition stretching back almost 10 years. We play it every time we get together. And I still hate to lose.

Deluxe Scrabble. After shamelessly coveting my friends' Deluxe Scrabble games--with their built-in turntables and their little ridges so the tiles don't slide around--for years, I finally got a Deluxe Scrabble of my very own for Christmas. And now I need a new commandment to break I've already gotten my mom and sister hooked. We played for four hours on Monday night, and I even took a picture of our best board to post here, but my folks are on dial-up and I frankly don't have the patience to crop and upload an image on a computer I have to pedal. If I had posted the picture, though, the caption would go something like this: See queen in the top right? I did that. My sister made it queeny (even though that's usually my job) and racked up a ton of points. And see fag down there on the left? That was my mom's handiwork. She got a double-word score for it.

Post-Holiday Sales. The crowds! The gridlock! The tempers! I used to avoid the Iowa post-holiday rush at all costs. But now that I live in Chicago, I think it's kind of cute. People bitch because they have to park ten spots away from the door and because there are six people in line ahead of them and what's wrong with this country if they have to wait more than five minutes to purchase a ceramic teddy bear, damnit?

Wireless Provider Smackdown! My first cell phone service provider (name forgotten) was spotty and unreliable and generally worthless, but that's what cell phones did, and we didn't complain. Then it got bought by Cingular, who made all kinds of promises that just called attention to its shortcomings: I still couldn't use my phone in my home or office, and I dropped more calls than I actually completed on purpose. And Cingular had corporate ties to SBC Ameritech, who treated me so hatefully when I moved to Chicago that I will never do business with them again (and I hate orange anyway). So I switched to T-Mobile, who offered a definite improvement, but I still couldn't use my phone in my home, and there were huge stretches of western Illinois and eastern Iowa that gave me no service when I was driving back and forth to visit my family. So now I'm on Chapter Four: Verizon. And I switched here in Iowa, where I don't have to plan my day around the process. And the verdict: So far, so good--except the phone they sold me has nothing but piercing, irritating ringtones to choose among. I did succomb to the camera-phone craze that all the kids are talking about, though. I'll let you know what develops.

Keeping up with the friendses. So far I've squeezed in holiday reunions with my ex, the girl my sister and I went to Norwegian camp with in junior high, a friend who is fighting admirably to recover from stage 4 ovarian cancer and a high-school friend who was a diver in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics (and who was practically bursting with the news that these hunky twins from our alma mater are doing porn in LA, though he couldn't clarify what kind of porn). Next on the docket: a reunion lunch with the fun people I used to work with.

Back, crack and sack. Well, actually just back, but I like saying "back, crack and sack." Back, crack and sack! I'm getting my wisps of old-man back hair ripped from my body this afternoon at the local cosmetology college. Which should cost about a million dollars less than it does at Nordstrom Spa. Same pain, less money!

Child manipulation. And by "child manipulation" I mean "being manipulated by a child." Example! "Uncle Jake, can I have some candy?" No. "Then can I have a Junior Mint?" Example! "Grandpa, do you want a Hershey's Kiss?" Yes, that sounds good. "Then I think I'll have one with you." Example! "Hey, that's MY toy! You don't get to play with it." "I was just getting it out for YOU to play with."

Eat-like-a-pig rationalization. An entire pizza. 20 cookies. Two cans of Coke. 20 more cookies. I'll ... um ... eat nothing but toothpicks and water when I get back to Chicago.

Merry Sithmas!

So the presents are opened, the food is inhaled responsibly consumed, the Santa myth tradition is preserved for yet another year ... and, once again, my family kept its promise not to get too vulgar with the Christmas consumerism.

I got some socks, a few extra pieces for my new dish set (in case a Clumsy McDishDropper comes for a visit), a deluxe Scrabble game (to replace the ghetto Scrabble I've been so embarrassed to use when my cruelly judgmental friends come over for an evening of Vocabulary Smackdown!), and a nice quilted flannel shirt to match the ones my dad and brother-in-law also got (1, 2, 3: awww!).

The kids, as should be expected, got the best haul again this year, racking up a (modest) pile of toys, books, more toys and even a bunch of mouse crap Disney consumer products to gear them up for the family's upcoming WDW vacation at the end of January.

Most painful toy: My niece's American Idol! karaoke machine. At 4, my niece has yet to master the art of matching tones--and the poor thing has NO grasp of reading lyrics off a TV monitor--so as the rest of us listen to endless loops of "This Old Man" and "I Been Workin' on the Railroad (Dancefloor Mix)," she just kind of moans incoherently into her microphone and creates A Very Yoko Ono Christmas atmosphere for everyone within earshot.

Most retro toy: My nephew's Battleship game. He's 6, and while he can figure out coordinates on the battleship grid (because he's our little genius), he's not so big on things like strategy or accurate peg placement. Which makes the game VERY long.

Least Christmas-like activity: My sister's family got the entire Star Wars DVD set, and we watched Revenge of the Sith this afternoon. All 843 poorly acted hours of it. I'm no science fiction/mythology/religion fan, and I think the last Star Wars movie I saw was the one where Harrison Ford got frozen in a block of stone. And I saw it when it was still in the theaters. Back when Parker Stevenson was steaming up my TV (and my hormone-addled adolescent brain) each shirtless week on The Hardy Boys.

Um ... where was I? Oh, yes: a galaxy far, far away from interesting. A galaxy where people and little puppets say things like "You fool! I have been trained in your Jedi Arts ... by Count Dooku!" and "Hold me, like you did by the lake on Naboo!" and "Into exile I must go. Failed I have." without once looking straight at the camera and mouthing the words "Sorry to have to put you through this, Folks. I took this job just to pay for the implants." A galaxy where the shag haircut never seems to go out of style. A galaxy where nobody has figured out that long opera capes are about as useful as oversized sombreros when you're jumping in and out of tiny space ships and engaging in heated swordplay. A galaxy that has mastered the science of holographic conference calls but seems to have lost the prenatal technology that would alert the wife of a fancy-highrise-dwelling military superstar that the baby she's carrying is actually twins. (If only they'd had the budget to hire Dr. Tom Cruise as her ob/gyn. If only.)

Unbearable Lightness of Being a Sith Lord notwithstanding, it's been a pretty spectacular Christmas. The family's all here, we're all healthy, and we're lucky enough to be able to buy each other's love nice gifts and stuff our tummies with Norwegian recipes that have been made in my family every Christmas for generations.

Plus, I got new socks!

Do I look dry to you? Do I smell?

It’s been A Foo-Foo Skincare Christmas Non-Specific Winter Holiday for me so far this year. To wit:

• Bliss lemon + sage products from the guy I dogsit for
• Bliss lemon + sage products (with bonus vanilla + bergamot products) from a co-worker (with no dogsitter overlap—which means I’m collecting the whole set!)
• Imported! Avène crème pour peaux intolerants products from a French co-worker

Best of all? I LOVE Bliss lemon + sage products! They’re (relatively) manly, they smell awesome and they don’t trigger my skin’s hypersensitive perfume issues. The Avène products are also (relatively) manly, also of the citrus family, and also magically engineered not to make me red, bumpy and itchy.

But … um … when you look at this fruity embarrassment of riches through cynical eyes, you have to wonder if there’s a subtext:

Jake! I got you some of your favorite soaps because your butt stinks when you walk.

You poor thing! You must be so uncomfortable with that dry skin and I swear I will push you down the stairs into the waiting arms of a very lonely sewer worker if a single flake of you drifts off and lands in my salad.

I choose to think, though, the gifts were given in the spirit of Jake Likes Lemon Things.

* * * * *

Speaking of dry, flaky skin, I’m finally back in the gym after two full months of Way Too Busy To Work Out. All the just-for-show muscles I’d been so carefully cultivating over the last few decades didn’t shrink as much as I’d feared during my hiatus, and they’ve actually bounced back pretty well over the last two weeks. But boy howdy (that’s cowboy talk) does my skin feel like it’s cracking and ripping every time I get a good pump going. And all the (relatively) manly lemon + sage essential oils in the world don’t seem to help. But if the Hulk had to rip through his clothes to get jacked, I guess I have to be willing to rip through my own skin.

* * * * *

I’m heading home to do laundry (so I don’t have to schlep it to my folks’ house like some poverty-stricken college student) and then I’m driving off for a week of Christmas Non-Specific Winter Holiday R&R with my family. Be good while I’m gone.

The darkest day

It’s the winter solstice—the day with the least scheduled sunlight all year (though it’s pretty bright and sunny today in Chicago). From this point forward, the sun will start sticking around a little bit more each afternoon, the days will seem longer and longer (in a good way), and eventually spring will save us from all this brutal coldness and dry skin and evening commutes through the inky blackness.

It was just as bright and sunny 17 years ago today in Iowa when my dad came to pick me up from college for the holiday break. I had finished all my tests, bought myself a fancy new Madras plaid watchband as a reward for surviving another semester (hey—it was the ’80s) and enjoyed a nice catch-up in the car on the way home.

And then my world came crashing down.

Mom met us in the driveway when we got home. She was sobbing. Hysterical. Without her coat. She had just undergone a radical mastectomy, and our first instinct was that she’d gotten some bad news from her oncologist.

But the bad news was something entirely different: Miriam’s plane had gone down.

Miriam was a friend of mine who had spent the semester in London studying under the auspices of Syracuse University. I’d been to visit her over the Thanksgiving break, and we’d had a great time seeing the sights, exploring the museums and taking in all the shows we could afford on our college-student budgets.

I’d been so caught up in my own finals and holiday preparations that I’d had no idea Miriam was flying home that day—much less what flight she was on. Neither had my mom. But my friend Jody in Ohio did. And when the initial reports that Pan Am flight 103 had disappeared out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland, started washing over the newswires, Jody had called everyone she could think of.

Mom and Dad and I raced to the family room and crowded around the TV that crisp, sunny Iowa afternoon to see what we could find out about Miriam’s plane. It was the early days of CNN and 24-hour news, so we were able to get (spotty) information right away about the mysterious crash, along with grainy images of the wreckage shining dimly in the emergency lights that were working so hard to pierce the solstice blackness six time zones away.

Over time, of course, the world came to learn about the bomb, the Libyans, the embargoes, the bankruptcies. We cautiously wrapped our brains around the unthinkable efficiencies of global terrorism at the dawn of the Information Age. We started budgeting time for intrusive security searches at airports. We stopped packing forbidden objects in our carry-ons.

Seventeen years ago today, the world learned what a volatile mix misanthropy and religion and blind nationalism can become in a global melting pot.

Seventeen years ago today, Miriam and her fellow passengers and their families and friends learned violently and unwillingly about harsh brutalalities that the rest of the world got the relative luxury of absorbing over time.

Seventeen years ago today, I realized that the distant tragedies that so often happen to “other people” should never be observed as abstractions. I discovered that unspeakable horrors played out on the world stage can be both vulgar and comforting. I learned that life is precious, that there are no guarantees, that people who waste your time are just robbing you, that small gestures can make heroic impressions, that your pain and suffering and anguish and heartbreak do not make you special, that no matter how bad it gets you should find solace in the fact that it will probably get better, or at least easier.

Seventeen years ago today, I became a man.

Big Gay Movie Weekend!

Work and the chorus show and general holiday cheer obligations have taken their toll on my movie-attending social budget, but this weekend I suddenly had some Jake time, where I: 1) finished my damn Christmas letter, 2) bought myself a little something-something (a vase and a tealight holder from the handsome Nate Berkus collection at Linens-n-Things) and 3) actually went to two movies. Two VERY gay movies.

Movie #1: I’ve never been a HUGE fan of Rent. I liked it enough, but it somehow never captured my soul the way other musicals have. (And though I loved “Seasons of Love” the first 525,600 times I heard it, the song has grown more than tiresome.) But I’ll watch almost any movie musical and find something to love in it. And I really liked the movie—waaaay more than I liked the stage version. (Maybe because I saw it on stage from the back row of the top balcony, which was so far away that it looked like the whole show was being acted and sung by trained fleas.)

My favorite part of Rent (the movie): The “Tango Maureen” dream sequence. (Who knew Idina Menzel sould dance so sexy?) My second favorite part: the opening scenes with all the burning paper falling to the street. Pretty! And the fact that they cast the guy from Xanadu to play Roger.

My least favorite part: All that fake steam coming out of people’s mouths to show that it was cold outside. I noticed it right away and then couldn’t tear my eyes away from its fakeness every time they digitally added it to a scene. Which is ALL THE TIME. My second least favorite part: Maureen’s protest. Yawn.

Movie #2: Brokeback Mountain is everything I’d hoped for … and everything I knew was coming, thanks to the endless coverage it’s gotten in the press and the blogosphere. I’d read enough about it that I’d kinda figured out what happens at the end, though the way it all happens was still a surprise to me. Still, the movie is beautifully told and intelligently written, with dialogue as achingly sparse and as rich with beauty as its settings.

There’s really nothing I can say about it that hasn’t already been said, but of course I have a few observations:
• A love story between two men should involve less boobie and more manbutt.
• I’d never seen Jake Gyllenhaal in a movie before. Now I understand what all the fuss is about. (He’s cute enough in still photos, but his charms are exponentially more obvious on the silver screen.)
• Anne Hathaway is hot. I’d do her. But just to get to her husband.
• Um … I guess all my observations are sexually motivated. Except this one: I was expecting it to be earth-shattering cinema, with high-octane emotional jolts and audible sobs. So I wasn’t prepared for its subtlety. For its just-like-real-life untidiness. For the way it stuck with me for hours after we left the theater. It’s a powerful story, but it’s told in whispers and mumbles. And that’s the way it should be told. Go see it.

Got your tickets yet?

There are only two more days until the cows come home ... and by "cows" I mean "fake cowboys" and by "come home" I mean "sing and dance like big gay homos."

A Cowboy Christmas is going to be a hoot, so click on the pretty picture above to order your tickets -- and you'll be able to see people like me and this guy and this guy singing and dancing and acting goofy and generally behaving like little girls do when they're pretending to be princesses (except we're big girls and we're pretending to be cowboys).

Performances:
Friday, December 9, 8:00 pm
Saturday, December 10, 5:00 pm
Saturday, December 10, 8:30 pm

Location:
The Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport

More Info:
Our endlessly clever web site

Copycat:
More gay cowboys

SOBA Alert

I'm back from London. Sorry for the stretch of quiet since my last post; I was exposed to Sudden Onset British Accent while I was there and I've been in quarantine since I got back.

A little-understood—but heartbreakingly familiar—affliction, SOBA can strike at any moment, leaving its victims and their traveling companions trapped in a nightmare of incorrectly lengthened vowels and revoltingly fey articulated consonants.

Even worse, it can transform an ordinary (in the most pejorative sense of the word) American into an insufferable boob.

Fortunately, there IS a cure. But if you get caught punching the living shit out of a freaky little queen just because he started talking extra-funny, you might end up in the hoosegow. Which can totally ruin your vacation.

Anyway, I survived quarantine, and they didn’t find any SOBA antibodies in my system, so I guess I’m clean. Now I’m going to grab my bumbershoot and catch the lift down to the Tube.

Pip-pip!

My final London memories

Straight people here must feel some constitutional obligation to make out in the most public -- and the most vulgar -- ways possible. Especially if they aren't especially porntastic. (We saw one particularely egregious display tonight on a park bench. The man was sitting facing the river, like most people do. But the woman -- I kid you not -- was straddling his lap with her skirt hiked up and her lady business blowing in the breeze. The FREEZING breeze.)

Speaking of hiked-up skirts, there are two unfortunate fashion trends sweeping London at the moment. One is shorty-short skirts and towering heels. Which would be fine in, say, August -- but it's FREEZING here. Put on something warm already, ladies -- you're making my balls shrink up. The other is what can only be desribed as toreador chic: bolero jackets, knee leggings and ballet slippers. Again: not weather-appropriate. And also: rarely flattering.

One more self-righteous, Ameri-centric piece of judgment: "Shag" is never appropriate. Not on your floors (hard to vacuum), not in your sexual overtures (sounds REALLY gay) and ESPECIALLY not on your heads (looks like hell). Trust me on this.

Onward:

I spent the day with my high-school friend Lucy, whom I haven't seen in over 10 years. She lives here now, and amid shopping and National Gallerying and eating and more eating, we got all caught up on long-lost friends and long-overdue gossip. Unfortunately, neither of us had anything particularly juicy to share about anyone.

We saw Mary Poppins (the new musical, not the mythical nanny) last night in what must have been just-returned seats in the front center of the dress circle. The seats could NOT have been better, and we got them just a few hours before curtain. Yay us! The show is delightful, packed to the brim with fabulous costumes and endless special effects and clever, tightly rehearsed choreography and a soaring, animated set that deserves a Pulitzer Prize. The old songs from the movie are almost all there, but they're dragged down by new material that's dark and kind of uninspired and clearly the product of a different (and slightly lesser) creative mind. One observation: There's a point near the end of the show that's nothing short of a technical landmark that's suddenly, conspicuously followed by no more special effects. From that point forward, the cast sings the last few songs on a bare stage with ultra-basic lighting effects, as though the technical budget took the directors only so far and all they had left for the ending were a few gobos left over from a high-school production of Man of La Mancha. The show is still a delight, but after all that buildup you're kind of expecting something a little bigger. I'm just sayin'.

Before the show, our friend Jim from Chicago, who was in town for business, met us for cocoa and then joined us for dinner afterward at the fabulous (and fabulously staffed) Balans. Come for the food, but stay for the waiters. And the other patrons. Woof.

Now it's off to bed and a long flight home tomorrow. Cheerio!

Today's London adventures

Pizza Hut! Which—I know —is tacky and American and grosser than gross, but we thought we should eat something vaguely representative of our culture over Thanksgiving weekend. (Besides, the place was packed.)

Pay toilets! Which—though I didn't personally use them—I was surprised to learn charge 50p for one pee. Which sounds like a pretty bad exchange rate.

Blogger delays! Apparently there's some weird European delay thing with blogger, and my earlier post appeared twice because I posted it again when it didn't appear the first time. The same thing happened in March when I was in Madrid and Paris. And, obviously, I didn't learn.

High tea at Harrods! Where I 1) discovered that scones and clotted cream are MUCH better than I remember and 2) reinforced my opinion that I am NOT a tea person.

Tube riding! Which is fast and efficient and comfortable and convenient no matter where you are or where you're going. Exactly like public transportation is NOT in Chicago.

High Society! Which is at times hard to believe is a professional theatre production. The costumes and wigs are lavish (though a bit threadbare), the voices are pretty darn good, this guy easily steals every scene he's in (once just by taking off his shirt), and the megawatt star power is supplied by ... Jerry Hall's understudy (at least tonight, by a woman who was quite good). But the book is laughable, the staging is worse, the orchestra is grossly electronic, and the choreography is insulting and unrehearsed (except where it's fabulous and over the top (again: this guy) and altogether inappropriate for the characters and time period). We got our tickets half-price at TKTS, though, and the show is playing at the same theatre where I saw Follies 17 years ago with my friend Miriam. So that was a blast from the past.

Tomorrow's adventures: Um ... we don't know yet. Probably more touristy things. And more shopping. Stay tuned ...

Snapshots from London

We made it here safely and without incident. Except when I got £200 out of the ATM at the airport, I promptly dropped all my bills on the ground like a tacky tourist.

Some natives called us "mates" on our elevator lift last night.

The term water closet isn't just an adorable English euphemism. The room with the toilet -- at least in our hotel -- is barely large enough for me and my feet when I try to close the door. My shoes back in Chicago enjoy more closet. (And, presumably, less water.)

Speaking of water, the toilet in our water closet is designed for maximum splashage -- sort of a poor man's bidet. Now with a resonant kerplunking sound!

"Our" water closet is actually a misnomer here; we're staying in a hotel with sinks in the rooms and private toilets/showers in public bathrooms scattered randomly down the halls. You have to call the front desk for a towel and someone to unlock the showers, but the beds are cozy, the room is warm and you can hear construction (or maybe banging pipes) all night long.

Then again, we're paying £56 each—TOTAL—for four nights in a hotel that's mere steps from a Tube stop right in the heart of the theatre district ... which, for those of us still mastering the exchange rate, is roughly 100 dollars. (For some reason, this keyboard doesn't have a dollar sign. Someone notify the queen.)

Only a moron would forget to pack shampoo and deodorant when he went on vacation. Only a moron.

We went to G-A-Y last night, the famed nightclub where Madonna gave a doubtfully live performance off her new album last week. The place is big and smoky (actually, EVERYTHING in London is smoky), and if you look around carefully you can see telltale signs of its former life, which I assume was a lavish, Egyptian-themed theatre.

Either the gay boys in London are frightfully skinny or Americans are big fat louts. Or some combination of the two. Or I'm just making sweeping judgments based on one unrepresentative experience. Which NEVER happens.

On the plus side, the gay aesthetic in London isn't the hyper-worked-out, eating-disorder-inducing look that can ruin any given night out in the States. I feel pretty here!

I love the sexual freedom in the London—there are "licensed sex shops" (which I assume are houses of prostitution) in neon-splashed clusters around the neighborhood, and the gay rags feature endlessly clever (and memorably explicit) ads filled with information and warnings about STIs (which I assume are sexually transmittd infections). And—as far as I can tell—there is none of the retardedly panicked sexual repression the religious wrong spreads like self-righteous butter on the croissants of American discourse. (Pardon the forced metaphor—it's almost noon here and I haven't eaten yet. Blogging is THAT important to me.)

I really hate my leather jacket. It's shapeless and only mildly warm. And it bunches up in the most uncomfortable places. I bought it six years ago for a couple hundred bucks, and now I think I'm ready to sink another hundred bucks into a casual-dressy coat that actually fits. And actually keeps me warm.

I've been to London twice—both over Thanksgiving—so my perceptions may be a bit skewed (see: unrepresentative experience above), but to me this place is nothing but cold and overcast. Which makes all the "fully air-conditioned" restaurant-window signs a little alarming. (What does it say about the food if that's the most important marketing angle a restaurant can find?)

Snarky comments aside, we ate our traditional Thanksgiving dinner last night at a Thai place that was quite delicious. And so were the waiters.

On the docket today: Shopping! And finding theatre tickets! And breakfast!

Away

Away up until now
The new job has been a MASSIVE drain on my free time for the last month—I've billed 75-hour weeks three weeks in a row (except for two vacation days I somehow managed to score), and there doesn't seem to be much letup on the horizon. So that's my excuse for not blogging so much lately.

My other excuse is the obvious corollary: If all I do is work, all I really have to write about is work. And, as glamtastic as advertising can be (see: Bewitched, Melrose Place, Desperate Housewives), I sincerely doubt you want to read about my endless adventures in office scandals, pen-stealing and corporate bloodlust scheduling, proofreading and filing expense reports.

BUT.

I did have one newsworthy work-related adventure last week. See, I'd been rescheduling this dentist appointment over and over because of VITAL client meetings, and I finally found a date and time with no conflicts. So of course the company scheduled a mandatory staff meeting at the same time. I decided my teeth took priority, though, and I traipsed off to the land of tartar scrapers and those sharp-pointed X-ray shields that dig into your soft spots while your're being shot full of radiation—all while the rest of my company assembled on furniture without spit sinks for updates and announcements.

I survived the visit, and—ecstatic over the news that I have no new cavities (though I have three fillings scheduled for replacement in early January)—my mind barely registered the thumbs-up that a colleague gave me through the revolving-door glass as I headed back to the office and he headed out into the night. And I was starting to think my dentist was awfully unprofessional for sharing my dental report with the whole office when three people shouted Congratulations! at me as I got off the elevator.

And then, when I got to my office, there it was: The trophy. The traveling trophy that said I had just won the Buzzie Award.*

*Named after a landmark employee who just retired, the Buzzie is akin to employee of the month. Only it's more like employee of the quarter because it's awarded only 4-6 times a year. And it's peer-generated; you are nominated by a certain number of your colleagues and approved by a peer review board whose recommendations are finalized by the company president. So it's actually pretty cool—the president reads your nominations in front of the whole office and hands you a sizeable little check (which totally paid for my new dishes!) while you get to choke out an unprepared speech about how you couldn't possibly do your job without all the cool people you work with (which is the complete, heartfelt truth). Then again, the award is called a Buzzie and the trophy is this hideous three-foot monstrosity festooned with equally hideous knickknacks and doodads from previous winners. So it totally helps keep everything real, yo.

Away even more
This paucity of posts will extend into the near future as well, only this time it's for a more exciting reason: I leave for a five-day trip to London tomorrow with some friends from the chorus! I'm sure I'll find an Internets cafe or two as I explore the City of Dentists (I think that's what people call it), but I could find myself too busy munching crumpets with the queen to even be bothered. (And that's not a metaphor for anything.)

So be good while I'm gone, always remember to brush and please don't stop visiting here just because I'm not making any damn posts. I'll find more blogging time once this pre-holiday rush is behind me. Promise.

Keeping up appearances

"And the suggestion that’s been made by some U.S. senators that the President of the United States or any member of this Administration purposely misled the American people on pre-war intelligence is one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city."
— Vice President Dick Cheney

"It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. … These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will."
— "President" George W. Bush

Dear Dick and Dubya,
Considering the context, I don't think that putting the words "dishonest," "reprehensible" and "irresponsible" in the public's mind is a very good idea. At least not for you.

Dear America,
See what happens when you think the "threat" of gay marriage and the "science" of a mythology that's had to be repositioned as "intelligent design" so it doesn't alienate every clear-headed thinker in America are legitimate factors in deciding a presidential election? Happy now?

Homos on the range!

The holidays are all about traditions: food, presents, family … and sweaty cowboys.

And the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus holiday show is all about cowboys. Sweaty, singing cowboys. And we’re cleverly calling it A Cowboy Christmas.

Our holiday show has become a required first stop for everyone who wants to get into the holiday spirit, and this year promises to be extra fun because we’ll be yodeling. And wearing hats. And singing songs about elves.

In addition to our general goofiness, we’ll also be singing some powerhouse arrangements of Christmas favorites, including a mighty gospel medley and Dolly Parton’s joyous “With Bells On.”

I’m choreographing and dancing in the opening number (so the painful part will be over before you know it) and, as the new marketing director for the chorus, I’ve also managed all the advertising—from the posters to the programs. And I’m exhausted.

Tickets went on sale this week, so click on the pretty picture below to order yours and make sure you get the best seats.

Hope to see your blog-reading faces in the audience!

Performances:
Friday, December 9, 8:00 pm
Saturday, December 10, 5:00 pm
Saturday, December 10, 8:30 pm
The Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport

Snapshots from Iowa

Getting Wood
My folks and I spent a glorious couple hours exploring Grant Wood at 5 Turner Alley at the always impressive Cedar Rapids Museum of Art on Thursday. This retrospective of works by American Gothic painter and Cedar Rapids native son Grant Wood is (I believe) the first ever collection of so much of his oeuvre in one place at one time. A Cedar Rapids native son myself, I grew up steeped in knowledge and lore about Grant Wood, I attended the grade school named after him and the junior high school where he taught art, I met his sister (who is immortalized in American Gothic (she's the one on the left)) before she died, and I've even been collecting prints of my favorite Grant Wood paintings over the years. And I added to my collection this weekend -- to the tune of almost $200 (including SWEET custom framing).

Not getting wood
My sister and her husband still don't have a headboard on their bed, so we all stopped by a furniture shop this afternoon to browse through some options. My sister found a nice wooden one she really liked, but my brother-in-law told her he "did not want to get wood in (our) bedroom."

Finishing my Christmas shopping
(At least for my parents.) I bought my mom a Grant Wood print and paid to have it framed this weekend. I was still behind on what to get my dad for his October birthday -- much less Christmas -- when their 20+-year-old garbage disposal crashed last night. So I bought them a new one and helped install it today. Which earned me tons of cash back on my credit card, tons of macho points on my gay card and a bad case of frightfully slimy dishpan hands.

The Princess Party
Hot on the heels of being más macho que su mama, I attended my niece's princess party at a local gymnastics emporium. (You know: because princesses use balance beams. And stuff.) The best part: Lots of cake and ice cream. The worst part: LOTS of pink. And screaming children (albeit screaming-because-of-exuberant-happiness children, but screaming children nonetheless).

Pretty, Pretty Princess
This is the name of a game. A game my niece got for her birthday. A game we all played when we got home from the princess party. A game that involves moving a little jewel-toned game piece around a board and slowly donning a matching necklace, bracelet, earrings, ring and even a tiara. A game my niece miraculously won! On her birthday! Leaving her hapless uncle wearing only one earring and his necklace.

What a pretty, pretty loser.

How to entertain yourself in Iowa

I'm home with the family in Iowa for a well-deserved four-day vacation. And I've already packed a lifetime of adventure in the last 48 hours. Here's some of what I've done:

Play with the kids
Yesterday I had lunch with my nephew at his kindergarten, which is in my old grade school. As we walked the halls from his classroom to his cafeteria, I had more flashbacks than Rush Limbaugh discovering a box of OxiClean under his sink. After that I was a mommy helper (OK, assistant mommy helper) with my sister at my niece's preschool. It, too, was in the same building where I had gone to preschool many, many facelifts ago. But the building had undergone so many renovations since then (and I was only four at the time, so what the hell do you people want from me?) that I really had no recollection of being there.

Laugh at the kids
Example! My niece is turning four on Saturday (which is the reason I'm here) and there's a princess party in the works for her and a bunch of her friends. And her gay uncle. But my niece is in a mood. A mood that sometimes prompts her to discipline the adults around her with grave threats of retribution. Today, for instance, she was so upset that she didn't get any candy at the drug store that she declared she was canceling her party. Never one to deny my niece the right to make important decisions, my sister calmly reached for her cell phone and started calling all the guests to tell them not to come. And the frantic panic in my niece's voice -- "I changed my mind! I changed my mind!" -- as the enormity of her hasty threat started to dawn on her would have been funny if it hadn't been so damn hilarious. The more my niece pleaded for her very princess-themed life, the more my sister and I laughed and shook and could NOT look at each other. (The party, you'll be pleased to know, did not get canceled. Fortunately, nobody my sister called was home.)

Example! The day I arrived, my niece and a friend were playing superheroes. My niece had a towel wrapped around her neck and a vast array of superpowers at her fingertips, and she was enjoying to the fullest all the exciting corporate benefits of being Woman Woman! (I have no idea what the Woman Woman! costume looked like in my niece's fertile imagination, but I would hazard a guess it involved something with ruffles, a Bob the Builder hat and perhaps a set of Barbie earrings. And definitely some sparkly lip gloss.)

Notice the gays
The gays, they're a-teachin' our kids, they are. I counted at least one gay at each school I visited yesterday. Unfortunately, neither had much of a sense of style, so my niece and nephew are being deprived of a positive sartorial influence at their respective places of education. Which is both a damn shame and a national tragedy. Why hasn't Pat Robertson spoken out about this? Oh, yeah. Maybe he's too busy kickin' godless, monkey-shaped Pennsylvania butt.

Shop
Two words: Ample parking! Two more words: Manageable crowds!

We hit the pre-holiday sales with a bunch of storewide coupons in hand, and I must say we've made a killing. In addition to getting a bunch of holiday shopping crossed off my list, I've also bought myself an entire new set of Big Boy Dishes at almost 75% off (I'll post before-and-after pix when I get home so you can see how profoundly sad juvenile my old dishes looked), a ton of foo-foo gay knickknacks to replace the ghetto gay knickknacks that are currently taking up valuable display space at Shoebox Manor (also at 75% off), some of my favorite Old Navy ringer tees on sale for 50% off and a warm, delicious dinner at Taco Bell. God BLESS Taco Bell. (Just don't stand behind me for a couple more weeks. I haven't eaten at Taco Bell in at least a couple years, and my plumbing is still getting used to its beany goodness.)

And more!
I have much more to tell you, but I have to go throw some children in the air. Stay tuned ...

My weird little obsession

There's this thing I do. Almost compulsively. Fortunately, it costs nothing (well, there are no incremental costs over my initial investment) and the mess it makes is no bigger than a few square inches. It doesn't hurt anybody except all those hookers I've killed in the basement and it's actually proven to be pretty educational.

But it's hard to describe in one sentence. Here goes, though: I visit my four favorite cartoon web sites every day (see sidebar to your right) and save my favorite cartoons in a folder on my computer. If a cartoon isn't funny all the way through but one of the little panels (or even a part of one of the little panels) is, I chop it up in my Photoshop and save the good parts in a separate sub-folder. (Two sentences. See?)

And do I ever look at these little cartoonlets again once I've filed them away? Yes, but only if I get a little browsy when I'm adding new clippings to the folder. Do I have a purpose for them? Theoretically, I plan to use them as clever little sign-offs to my clever little emails. Theoretically.

But there really is an educational part: It's helped me become quite the little Photoshop autodidact—especially when the tiny little funny part of a cartoon needs to be surgically removed from its non-funny surroundings and I have to fill in the resulting holes so as not to confuse the women and children.

And since my fabulous new job (technically, it's the same job I already had but now with an awesome new team and a cool new client base and exciting new challenges) has sucked away all my blogging time over the last few weeks (I billed 72 hours last week!) I'll just leave you with some of the disjointed evidence of my goofy little obsession:

Look what I did!

It's true. Jake + rudimentary Photoshop skills = very plain-looking banner ads on the chorus web site.

But I'm learning a ton as I go. And I designed the Lipstick & Lyrics logo ALL. BY. MYSELF.

And now it's your turn to have some fun. Click on the banner ads above and you'll open up a world of magical surprises. (Please have your credit cards handy.)

I’m having trouble peeing.

It’s only Tuesday, and there have already been four times this week that I’ve had a hard time taking a simple leak.

I’m drinking plenty of fluids. I’m trying to get up from my desk to slosh my innards around at least once an hour. I know where the bathrooms are. So the problem can’t be with my plumbing.

But it might stem from this video game I’m living in. Every time I get up to head to the bathroom, people come careening down the hallways and darting out from between the cubes at me with papers they want me to look at. Or they stand three deep outside my door with endless rounds of questions.

If I weren’t at work with a very clear list of job responsibilities hanging over my head, I might look at all this attention as proof that I’m wildly popular.

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I might interpret all this as a guerilla marketing tactic staged by the Buy New Underwear Foundation.

And if I could just squeeze through the throngs and be able to take a freakin’ piss once in a while, I might be able to focus long enough to write a blog post that was perhaps a wee (HA! WEE!) bit more clever.