Today's Moment Of Pure Ridiculous Joy: Tony Bennett singing "Snowfall"

10-Day #ChristmasCountdown

So I recently started subscribing (if that’s the cool-kids-approved verb) to Amazon Music

and I’ve been letting it suggest new music for me based on my paltry selection of declared favorites and it’s been opening up wondrous new sonic worlds for me and HOW COME NOBODY’S TOLD ME ABOUT IMAGINE DRAGONS?

Happelosi Holidays!

Are you sitting down?

Because I was WHEN BITCHY KITTY OF HER OWN VOLITION AND YET-TO-BE-ARTICULATED-BECAUSE-SHE-ONLY-KNOWS-HOW-TO-MEOW-AND-WE-HUMANS-DON'T-SPEAK-MEOW-YET AGENDA JUMPED INTO MY CHAIR AND SAT NEXT TO ME PRESSED UP AGAINST MY INCREDULOUS LEG ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT:

It took me 60 hours to post this photo because I'm still processing this lurching plot twist in the soap-opera-frenemies Bitch Kitty Life storyline. Also because Mom didn't send it to me until late yesterday. But still.

Granted, once Bitch Kitty jumped into my chair she sat in an extremely weird position with her face buried in the back cushion and her self-righteous butthole gazing out into the room ... and she growled like an over-torqued automatic-pencil-sharpener motor as I tried to pet her ... and her over-torqued-automatic-pencil-sharpener-motor growling only intensified if my attempts at petting left her ears-and-head area and ventured down toward her tail-and-butt area but then again we did teach her to be a lady who doesn't put out on the first date so I guess we should be proud of her for that ... and I had just emptied her litter box so I was probably dusted in minuscule-but-still-possibly-scented particles of litter-box floaties so perhaps she was just following her nose and her baser instincts when she jumped into the chair with the intention to poop on me and quickly realized her error but was staying there only under a pathetically inept veneer of politeness ... but the fact remains that I now feel obligated to beg for her love every moment of every day until she deigns to jump butthole-out into my chair again one day next year ... and then one day the next year ... and then one day the next year ... until she up and dies on me and breaks my heart because I thought we had a thing going but her yet-to-be-articulated-because-she-only-knows-how-to-meow-and-we-humans-don't-speak-meow-yet agenda all along was to make me think I had a chance with her and she gave me the ultimate dis from beyond her over-torqued-automatic-pencil-sharpener-motor-growling grave. Sigh.

Also: I look like a short, wide squished marshmallow in this photo but I swear it's just the evils of foreshortening and shadows and I'm actually totally swole and ripped for my big stripper reveal in The Full Monty and you should come see it but you should also squint just in case I actually do become a short, wide squished marshmallow before then please pass the doughnuts oops did I say doughnuts I meant celery but I'll totally eat that box of doughnuts if you don't want them because it's a shame to waste perfectly good food.

Also: Mom and Dad hate those plaid chairs (we have two of them because civilized people have sets of matching chairs and we as a family no longer live in a cave) but while I'm not in love-love with the plaid I still love the chairs' clean Mid-century lines and confident geometries so tell Mom and Dad that we should keep their clean Mid-century lines and confident geometries incorporated in our gracious home décor and just re-cover them in something that doesn't look like it came from the textile tumble table at an Eddie Bauer Home Store going-out-of-business liquidation event.

Also: Textile Tumbletable would make a great drag name.

Also: Or not.

Also: I just purged a ton of shoes I haven't been wearing and I rediscovered these blue Chucks and aren't they awesome?

Also: I think that's enough alsos so I'll stop now. Also.

Today's Moment Of Pure Ridiculous Joy

We’re all stocked up for our last weekend of Elf!

This haul should at least get us through tonight’s intermission:

Remember a year ago when Derp Fuhrer couldn't spell the media he whines 25/8 about?

He's been absolutely smockin' on his spelling tests since then.

Throwback Thursday: Mally Holiday Edition

Here is a rare, valuable and unquestionably alluring photo of me tinkling the imitation ivories with the McKinley Junior High School orchestra at our gala holiday concert in front of the JCPenney at Cedar Rapids' relentlessly beige Westdale Mall:

You can tell I'm totally into the music because my eyes are closed and my hair is floofing dramatically with every arpeggio I summon from the depths of my artistic soul. You can tell it's a winter concert because of our coats piled haphazardly like broken Christmas dreams in the background. Right in front of the picket fence surrounding the dented-but-still-dancing Santa display that exuded all the holiday magic and wonder of the Midas carburetor aisle. And by the Hawkeye Rose Bowl pin dwarfing my chest. A quick google search tells me the Hawkeyes went to the Rose Bowl in January 1981, which would have put me in seventh grade. A quick reality check says that a giant macho football pin doesn't cancel out the fact that I'm gaily playing "Suzy Snowflake" on a partially tuned, poorly voiced mall piano.

It's Migraining Men

I spent last night dancing to "It's Raining Men" like a shameless, wanton stripper with five half-naked cop guys in a massive photography studio filled with smoke, disco lights, towering Palladian windows, a stripper pole within pants-throwing distance, and multiple photographers and videographers. Which is nothing new, really. I mean it WAS a Tuesday.

Then I spent the early morning practically grunting in pain with the first migraine I've had in probably 15 years. I'd forgotten how the pain can be so breathtaking it almost chokes you. It was so bad and I was so near-delirious that even though I knew I needed to get out of bed and find any pain medication I could get my hands on, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to stand up and I'd collapse on the floor, which would be measurably worse. Or I'd get lost in the dark, because I knew from experience that the last thing I wanted to do was turn on any lights.

Now I'm at work exhausted, groggy, still in lingering pain, overdosed on acetaminophen because I can't take Ibuprofen with my psychotropics, and ingesting caffeine all but intravenously. So hello, Wednesday!

Doug the Christmas Cop on Sunday, Harold the Stripper Cop on Tuesday.

Our Full Monty photo shoot is giving my theater adventures a very coppy throughline.

OMG

WHEW.

White Christmas is the dumbest, plot-hole-iest, staggeringly-implausible-storyline-iest movie ever made--and I adore every second of it

I used to host a party every year in Chicago and invite only the friends I knew were able to shut up for 120 minutes so we could all enjoy its ridiculous awesomeness together in peace. And then I usually watched it again on my own. And maybe one more time. But now my DVD is buried in a box in my storage unit, and I’m not able to see any of the big-screen showings this month so I'm just gonna mock it here. Lovingly, of course.

So let's get started ...

First of all, it drives me NUTS that Rosemary Clooney runs (well, clomps in four-inch stilettos) away from Bing Crosby in a self-righteous fit over a laughably stupid misunderstanding that she could easily clear up with a simple question and then boards a train with a little satchel in which she's packed all her clothes, wigs, makeup, gowns, those white sequined oven mitts she wears in "Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me" plus four of the Vermont dancer boys. And then she happily--yes: happily, despite the loathing she had for Bing's appearance on TV that was so toxic it prompted her to sneak away from Vermont in secret--watches Bing's appearance on TV, suddenly has a mis-misunderstanding revelation, sneaks back to Vermont in the dead of night with her sensible orthopedic Army-issue oxfords in tow and somehow absorbs all the "Gee, I Wish I Was Back in the Army" choreography out of thin air from some secret backstage rehearsal room in that drafty barn that apparently a cast of 1,000 people had mysteriously never even known about because she surprised the hell out of all of them when she suddenly appeared onstage in the middle of the number with the woman who was presumably going to replace her tied up and gagged in a corner by the flylines.

But those gowns!

And don't get me started on that stupid "Sisters" number--it sure gets a LOT of mileage in the Haynes' sisters' apparently only-one-song act despite having only one verse and an enormous dance break where Rosemary and Vera basically just stand on stage and smile dewily at Bing and Doofusface while presumably the rest of the audiences watches and thinks they're being somehow entertained by all that standing around. AND WHAT THE HELL IS THAT "SNOW" SONG? "I want to wash my hands, my face and hair with snow"? SERIOUSLY?

But those gowns!

And Bing Crosby sings “Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep” after chugging a quart of buttermilk and Rosemary Clooney’s and Vera-Ellen’s “ugly” brother is actually totally cute when they show Bing and Doofusface his picture and WHAT THE HELL IS THAT “MR. BONES” SONG?

But those gowns!

And then Vera-Ellen--who does the entire movie in funnel-collared outfits tailored to hide whatever the hell is wrong with her neck--descends from the sky in her tearaway Ostrich Barbie outfit and executes some wicked nerve taps WITHOUT EVEN WEARING TAPS.

But those gowns!

And the general is clearly on a laudanum binge in the attic of his hotel-theater as he somehow doesn't notice that every U.S. war soldier past, present and future is swarming all over the entire property and filling every hotel room not already taken by the swarm of singers, dancers, directors, and costume and tech crew members, and when they all finally surprise him with their--frankly underwhelming--show, they seat him at the table of honor behind a three-foot-tall cake that completely blocks his view of the--frankly underwhelming--show that they put together ESPECIALLY FOR HIM TO SEE.

But those gowns!

CedaRound: Greene Square Holiday Coolness!

Smocking. Gun. Smocking Gun.

Onstage Officey Cubey Hidey During A Livey Matineey Of Elfy Selfie Report:

What do the stage-left onstage-officey-cubey-hidey-during-a-livey-matineey-of-Elfy-selfie people have in common with the stage-right onstage-officey-cubey-hidey-during-a-livey-matineey-of-Elfy-selfie people?

That’s right: handy, inventive racks for hanging our officey-bindery props!

Also: ME!

John Wilkes called ...

When you’re taking a selection of selfies in front of the telecommunications museum in the upstairs lobby of the theater as you wait to make your (surprise!) balcony entrance in Act II and a totally handsome and totally age-appropriate man comes out of the bathroom and catches you and you try to play it cool as he says hi and you I-would-NEVER-take-a-selection-of-selfies-in-front-of-the-telecommunications-museum-in-the-upstairs-lobby-say-hi back to him and as you pretend you’re being totally cool and normal you notice that he’s looking over his shoulder at you as he walks up the stairs to the balcony doors and you can’t decide if it’s because he thinks you’re weird or he wants your name so he can call you to ask you on a date and I’M IN THE PROGRAM UNDER DOUG THE CHRISTMAS COP AND YOU CAN FIND ME ON FACEBOOK!

This is the Evil Dressing Room Holy Shit I Look Fat Mirror, which has nothing to do with irrelevant sugary snacks or drinks that may or may not sit resplendent in their spectrums of crimson deliciousness on its premises

Never look at this mirror or engage in its childish, manipulative games.

If it ain't ...