Pride 101: LGBTQ+ survival

Cisgender heterosexuals—how many times have you:

• Gathered with other straight cisgender friends while people with bullhorns held giant signs and screamed at you that they hope you die of AIDS
• Gotten egged and insulted by people screaming out of a car as you waited in line to enter a straight bar
• Pretended to be someone you’re not out of fear that your mechanic or doctor or waiter or accountant or employer or family would do something bad to you, yell at you to leave or eject you from their lives
• Walked down the street holding hands with your spouse or partner and been accosted by a stranger calling you filthy and disgusting and declaring that he or she shouldn’t be “forced” to see your affection
• Been told that other people's manufactured discomfort about who your are is more important than you being authentically who you are
• Been silenced about even casually mentioning who you and your family are by a "don't say straight" law
• Watched your rights being used as a bargaining chip in national political machinations
• Had your inequality dismissed as a "social issue" and cemented into law by a public vote over a state propositionHad your inequality cemented into law by a public vote over a state proposition
• Watched people fight so hard to discriminate against you that they take their hatred all the way to the Supreme Court
• Joined a church that condemns you to hell
• Been consumed by your own white-hot hatred that you don’t want and you don’t need and you don’t deserve because the above hostilities constantly bombard you while you have almost no recourse

Probably every LGBTQ+ person you know has been called a faggot. Or worse. I have. More times than I can remember.

Probably every LGBTQ+ person you know has had something thrown at them with the intention to hurt or humiliate them. I have. It was a barrage of eggs thrown from a car as some friends and I stood on a sidewalk in Chicago's Boystown … where we'd assumed we were safe from such bullshit. The cowards who threw the eggs missed all of us and raced away cackling like they were big men who somehow mattered.

Many LGBTQ+ people you know have been physically, violently assaulted. I never have, but I have friends who've been assaulted so violently that they've been hospitalized.

It's 2025. The homophobic violence that our forebears endured may have lessened, but it hasn't stopped. And while straight cisgender people probably barely even think about what we endure, we all still get up, walk out the door every day, and live our lives as openly as we dare and as comfortably as we can.

THIS IS WHY WE CALL IT PRIDE.

Dramaturgy: Something Rotten!

In the interest of squeezing SOME value out of my B.A. in Renaissance literature, I appointed myself the unofficial dramaturg of Theatre Cedar Rapids' 2024 production of Something Rotten!, the narrative of which occurs toward the end of the English Renaissance. I posted occasional bits of historical/contextual information on our cast/crew Facebook page, but since I put all that damn work into researching and writing I decided it would be nice to have it all seen by more than 42 people. So I'm posting the entirety of my musings here. They often reference inside jokes and details from the script and score, so if anything here confuses you you’ll just have to get tickets to the nearest production of the brilliant Something Rotten! you can find. You won't be disappointed.

GOD, I LOVE CONTEXT!

To start off our adventures in learning, here’s a brief(ish) timeline of events and lives relevant to the Something Rotten! narrative:

500ish–1450ish: The Middle Ages in Europe (also called the Dark Ages or the Medieval period)

1347–1351: The first wave of the Black Death in Europe (also called the Plague, the Pestilence or the Great Mortality)

1360–1667: Many, many recurring (but far less destructive) waves of the Black Death in Europe

1436: Johannes Gutenberg invents the printing press

1450ish–1650ish: The European Renaissance

1492: Christopher Columbus lands in what is now San Salvador in the Bahamas

1503–1566: The life of Nostradamus (born Michel de Nostredame)

1533–1630: The Puritan movement in England

1558–1603: The reign of Queen Elizabeth I

1564–1616: The life of William Shakespeare (born Gulielmus Shakspere)

1595: Nick Bottom writes Omelette

1599ish: William Shakespeare writes Hamlet

1925: Grant Wood (yes, that Grant Wood) produces a play called Cardboard Moon in his 5 Turner Alley studio in Cedar Rapids and launches what will eventually become Theatre Cedar Rapids

2015: Something Rotten! gets ten Tony nominations (and wins only one: Christian Borle [Shakespeare] for Best Featured Actor in a Musical)

2024: We put on some snazzy pants, do some jazzy hands and make a star-lit, won’t-quit, big hit musicaaaaaal!


THAT PESKY LITTLE PESTILENCE THAT’S KILLING HALF OF EUROPE

The Black Death (also called the Plague, the Pestilence or the Great Mortality) made its first recorded appearance in Europe in October 1347, when 12 ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. Italian dockworkers entered the ships to begin unloading but were met with a horrifying surprise: Most sailors aboard the ships were dead, and those still alive were gravely ill and covered in black boils that oozed blood and pus.

Their mysterious, terrifying disease spread through the local population at alarming speed and soon spread farther along trade routes that ran both inland and along the coasts. It also followed people to neighboring cities as they tried to escape but unknowingly brought the disease with them.

Modern epidemiologists have traced Black Death outbreaks to regions of China as far back as 600 BCE. The Medieval outbreak appears to have started in the same regions and traveled northwest across Asia to ports in Constantinople and then through the Mediterranean Sea to its first European appearance in Messina (which is right where the Italian boot makes contact with the Sicilian football, for those of you who visualize shapes in land masses). From there it spread roughly clockwise along the Mediterranean border and up the continental interior until it hit England in June 1348. (247 years later, Nick Bottom wrote a merry little Black Death showtune with a derivative medley and frankly it was TOO SOON.)

From England, the Black Death spread further north into Scandinavia, where it hit water, had nowhere else to go and finally died out in 1351, after a four-year European rampage that killed an estimated 25 million people—which was somewhere between 40% and 60% of the total European population.

Fun fact: Ports along the Mediterranean started making trade ships wait 40 days offshore before docking to help prevent the Black Death from reaching land. The Latin word for 40 is “quadraginta,” which eventually evolved to the modern word “quarantine.”

One more fun fact: The “Ring Around the Rosie” nursery rhyme may or may not (depending on your school of etymological thought) trace back to the details of the Black Death: Rosie rings represented bubonic lumps on the body, people carried posies and other flowers to mask the smell of rotting corpses, bodies were burned to ashes in an attempt to kill off the mysterious illness, and falling down was because people were really clumsy back then. Or they were dropping dead from the plague. It was probably the latter, but I wasn’t there and I hate to make assumptions.


WHAT’S THAT COMING UP THE SILK ROAD?

The Silk Road (a name that wasn’t coined until the 19th century) was a collection of trade routes linking Medieval China and the Mediterranean between the 3rd and 16th centuries. Named (obvs) for the transport of Chinese silks and other textiles, the Silk Road also saw the transport of spices, salt (which at the time was most importantly a preservative and often a form of currency), precious metals, gunpowder, cultural artifacts, ideas and education, missionaries of many religions, and—the least lucrative from an economics standpoint—the Black Death.

Look for it on a map. It was VERY LONG. And there were very few hotels with complimentary shampoos and continental breakfasts along the way. But there were plenty of bandits along its 4,000-mile route to help you lighten your load.

Did you catch that 4,000-mile part? People traveled the Silk Road in camelpower caravans, and a full-length one-way trip could last an entire year.

Trade and transportation along the Silk Road lasted until 1453—a full century after the first Black Death outbreak in Europe—when the Ottoman Empire (which at the height of its power and territorial control engulfed everything around the Mediterranean Sea except modern Italy and the northernmost coasts) boycotted trade with China and closed the route. (142 years later, Nick Bottom wrote a merry little Black Death showtune with a derivative medley and frankly it was TOO SOON.)

Remnants of the Silk Road survive today in the form of a paved highway connecting Pakistan and the Xinjiang region of China. The Silk Road also survives as a metaphor for the exchange of sketchy goods and services on the Dark Web, which is something that hack Nostradamus clearly didn’t see in humanity’s economic future.


WELCOME TO THE RENAISSANCE!

Now that we have our Middle Ages backstory out of the way, let’s join the historical narrative of our merry little play. (And my advance apologies: I totally geeked out researching and writing this so it’s way longer than I intended. I promise to be less overwhelming in the future.)

Renaissance—as our opening number helpfully explains—means “rebirth.” The Black Death had killed roughly a third of the entire European population, which—among mega-many other consequences—gave serfs (the lower working class) bargaining power for their agricultural labor. It decimated the longstanding feudal system, caused a seismic redistribution of wealth, and spawned the rise of a middle-ish merchant class that had newfound money, leisure and upward mobility through commerce and education.

It was against this socioeconomic upheaval that a confluence of events across the continent stirred and boiled over into the aforementioned rebirth that underpins two full centuries of cultural development, artistic exploration, scientific discovery, social restructuring and political reform:

GEOPOLITICAL: The 1453 fall of Constantinople (now Istanbul) (not Constantinople) (this is a joke for the They Might Be Giants fans among us) brought a brutal end to the Byzantine Empire. Byzantine scholars fled mostly to Italy with their collections of Greek and Roman books and manuscripts, which inspired a widespread revival in the studies of philosophy, science and art.

EDUCATION: These Classical Greek and Roman texts fostered a more rational, scientific approach to theology, the natural world and the arts. Human beings and nature became subjects worthy of study.

PHILOSOPHY: The texts also shifted the philosophical zeitgeist from the longstanding Medieval philosophy of scholasticism—which demanded a strict adherence to religious theology, doctrine and dogma—to a newfound exploration of humanism, a rational outlook that emphasized the potential value, goodness and morality of humans and looked for rational ways to solve human problems. This transition sent our very own Brother Jeremiah through paroxysms of existential crises, and Paroxysms of Existential Crises would make an objectively terrible band name. Which is exactly why we mock him.

SCIENCE: Humanism’s emphasis on rationality, empirical observations and mathematical knowledge challenged generally accepted scientific theories and led to what we now call the Scientific Revolution. In 1534, Polish mathematician and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), which placed the sun—not the Earth—at the center of the solar system. It upended centuries of scientific thinking and inspired scientists across Europe to approach the natural world from a multitude of innovative perspectives. (Of course, that one guy on YouTube has since proven that the earth is flat, so we know today that all that Copernicus stuff is just silly.)

ART: Artists adopted the rational elements of Classical learning—such as anatomy and aerial perspective—and strove to achieve newfound levels of perfection in their representations of humans, animals and nature. (Once that perfection ideal had been achieved, however, artists had nowhere else upward to go and over the centuries started to deconstruct the content and representation in their work to eventually bring about movements like Abstraction, Impressionism, Cubism and the sad little stick figures I’m barely able to draw because I have zero artistic talent.)

PATRONAGE: Most of the Renaissance’s rich artistic achievements would not have been possible without the funding of wealthy patrons. Perhaps the most famous of these patrons were the Medicis, an art-loving family of bankers (and three popes) who commissioned enormous quantities of paintings, sculptures and architecture for their palaces and family tomb. Their most immediate legacy, of course, was the lofty ambitions of our very own dyspeptic Lord Clapham and awkwardly earnest Shylock as they struggled to usher Nick Bottom to the literary pantheon of fame and glory.

LITERATURE: The artistic achievements of the Renaissance also extended from the visual arts to the worlds of literature and theater (otherwise we wouldn’t be rehearsing all these songs and tap numbers). Inspired by humanism’s emphasis on emotions and morality, the literature of the Renaissance broke free from stringent religious dogma and began exploring the struggles and triumphs of human protagonists from history, folktales, Biblical narratives and other familiar sources. In addition to dramatic comedies like Omelette and dramatic tragedies like Hamlet, the Renaissance also saw a flourishing of the poetry that brings our very own star-crossed Nigel and Portia together in awkwardly adorkable love.

I think we can all agree, though, the the most important aftermath of this dramatic rebirth in literary thinking and writing was the day in the late 1980s that a befuddled Iowa college student realized he was NOT cut out for a career in engineering, biology, music, dance or journalism and finally declared his sixth major: English, with an emphasis on Renaissance literature—which he accomplished in three short but overwhelming semesters. And then he waited 33 damn years for this opportunity to use it. He deserves an omelette.


THIS BOTTOM’S GONNA BE TOPPED WITH A DONKEY HEAD

Many characters in our merry little play get their names from characters in Shakespeare’s plays.

Nick Bottom, for example, is a buffoon who alternates between being a character in and a narrator of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He’s a member of a mediocre acting troupe (sound familiar?) who, in the middle of rehearsing a play for the amusement of Oberon, the King of the Fairies, gets transformed by the mischievous Puck, a minion of Oberon, to have the head of a donkey. (Are you still with me?) But it gets weirder. (If you can believe it.) You see, the Fairy Queen Titania, wife of Oberon, gets put under a spell that makes her fall in love (and totally make out) with the donkey-headed Nick Bottom (as one does). Other stuff happens, and long story short Titania eventually gets unspelled and Nick Bottom gets his human head back and ends up thinking the whole thing has been a dream in the night in the middle of summer (hence the title).

But there’s more! The mediocre acting troupe eventually (and very poorly) performs for Oberon a rife-with-subtext play called Pyramus and Thisbe (which are objectively cool pet names), which ends with Nick Bottom performing a melodramatic death scene that’s cringier than the entirety of the Cats movie.

And, scene.

It’s worth noting that Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream after the narrative of our merry little play, implying by our authors that he continued mocking his rival after poor Nick Bottom got exiled to America. Because Shakespeare is kind of a dick.


THE MAN WHO PUT THE "I AM" IN IAMBIC PENTAMETER!

The above lyric kinda flies by as Shakespeare gets introduced at the beginning of "Will Power." But it’s actually a pretty important and defining aspect of the way he wrote.

Iambic pentameter—for those of you who slept through British Lit as we nerds took fascinated and copious notes—is a type of metric line built on standardized syllables and patterns.

It’s broken into iambic feet of two syllables with the emphasis on the second syllable (“da DUM”) strung together in sets of five (“penta-”), like so:

Da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

And Shakespeare—being a total word nerd—almost exclusively followed this pattern for a whopping 884,647 words in 118,406 lines of plays and sonnets. No wonder the other kids kept beating him up on the playground and taking his lunch money.

But it ended up bringing a unifying lilt to everything he wrote:

But SOFT! What LIGHT through YONder WINDow BREAKS?

If MUsic BE the FRUIT of LOVE, play ON.

Two HOUSEholds, BOTH aLIKE in DIGniTY.

Of course, Shakespeare—being the talentless, no-future hack that he was—didn’t always nail it. Some lines ended up with extra syllables:

To BE, or NOT to BE: that IS the QUES(tion)

And some ended up playing fast and loose with standard cadences and speech patterns:

Friends, ROmans, COUNtry MEN, lend ME your EARS.

But it’s the occasional fast-and-loose line that prevents his dialogue from getting sing-songy and that gives his actors room to breathe and bring natural inflections and interpretations to their lines.

For those of you looking to pad your trivia-night knowledge base, iambic pentameter is part of a wide and diverse meter family. Here are just a few of its siblings and their weird feet:

FEET:

Iambic: da DUM
Trochaic: DA dum
Anapestic: da da DUM

METERS:

Trimeter: three iambic/trochaic/etc feet
Tetrameter: four iambic/trochaic/etc feet
Pentameter: five iambic/trochaic/etc feet

Now pair them up any way you like and write poetry like a sixteenth-century badass. Or don’t. This won’t be on the test.


INTELLECTUAL ICONS IN PUFFY PANTS AND POINTY LEATHER BOOTS

Here are some CV basics about every local celebrity mentioned in our opening number, in the order their appear:

Francis Bacon (1561–1626): English philosopher, statesman (under the name Lord Verulam) and scientist. Considered the father of empiricism—a scientific philosophy that emphasizes sensory experience and evidence (often derived from experiments) over intuition, skepticism or rational thinking—he became a martyr to his own scientific method when he stuffed a dead chicken with snow to see if freezing temperatures could preserve the meat and in the process he developed fatal pneumonia from his prolonged exposure to the cold.

Sir Walter Raleigh (c. 1552–1618): English statesman, soldier, writer and explorer. With Queen Elizabeth’s patronage, he commissioned and financed expeditions to what is now North America and helped establish the Roanoke colony that soon disappeared under mysterious—and still not definitively resolved—circumstances. Raleigh never personally set foot on the continent, but he did bring potatoes and tobacco to England from what is now South America. In 1617, Raleigh violated a Spanish peace treaty in his search for the mythical “City of Gold” riches of the mythical city of El Dorado in present-day Venezuela, for which he was imprisoned and eventually beheaded by King James.

Thomas Dekker (1572–1632): English writer, dramatist and pamphleteer. He was known primarily for the lively descriptions of English life he published in pamphlets, which were unbound booklets circulated to spread humor, op-ed commentary and political propaganda. While he was also a prolific playwright, he was not regarded as worthy of the pantheon of masters like Shakespeare, Johnson, Marlowe and Middleton. Heck—he wasn’t even regarded as worthy of getting a first name in our lyrics.

John Webster (c. 1578–c. 1632): English dramatist. While he collaborated with many leading playwrights, he is best known for his intricate, subtle, brooding tragedies. The two most famous of these tragedies—The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi—are still studied, revered and performed to this day.

Ben Johnson (1572–1637): English playwright, satirist and poet. Generally regarded as the second most important dramatist after William Shakespeare, he popularized the character-driven comedy-of-humors genre that directly combatted Shakespeare’s signature emotion-, adventure- and fate-driven romantic-comedy genre. Though intellectual rivals in writing style and worldview, Johnson and Shakespeare had great respect for each other and Johnson called Shakespeare the “Sweet Swan of Avon” in tribute of the publication of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays seven years after his death.

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593): Arguably the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights and poets outside of Shakespeare. The first English author to receive critical fame using blank verse—unrhymed poetry written in a consistent meter and thought to more closely mimic natural human speech and inflections—Marlowe had a profound influence on Shakespeare, who quoted his work and referenced his existence in Antony and Cleopatra, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Macbeth and many other plays. Marlowe died relatively young (age 39) under mysterious circumstances variously attributed to a violent bar fight, blasphemous libel against the church, homosexual intrigue, betrayal by another playwright and assassination due to espionage.

Thomas Kyd (1558–1594): English playwright. His play The Spanish Tragedy (along with a Hamlet precursor often attributed to him) created the Elizabethan revenge-play genre. The genre established tropes like the vengeful ghost and the play-within-a-play used to trap a murderer, both of which drive narratives in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and some of his later works.

Thomas Middleton (1580–1627): English poet and one of the most successful and prolific playwrights of the Jacobean period, which immediately followed the Renaissance. Named for King James I and marked by intense conflicts and threats of civil wars between Protestant and Catholic states, the Jacobean era saw a literary focus on tragedy, revenge, cynicism, satire and human evil. Though Middleton was skilled in writing across all genres, he wrote something literally called The Revenger’s Tragedy and he may have collaborated with Shakespeare on Timon of Athens, Macbeth and All’s Well that Ends Well.

Thomas Moore (1478–1535): English author, lawyer, judge, philosopher, statesman and humanist. Eventually declared the patron saint of statesmen and politicians, his staunch Catholicism made him a vociferous opponent of the Protestant Reformation, the theology of Martin Luther and Henry VII’s separation from the church to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. After refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy to Henry VIII—which was required of everyone taking public or church office—he was executed for treason.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616): Hack “writer” and total nobody who’s completely lost to the ages. If he even existed, he’d probably be one of those obsessive fans of Cats. It’s silly to even include him in this list. God, let’s hate him.


IT’S HARD TO BE THE BARD

But it’s easy to tell you what a bard is. Or was.

Outside of Shakespeare hogging the bardness title to himself for all eternity, a bard in the traditional Renaissance sense was one or any combination of the following:

• A poet
• Someone who recites poetry to an audience (poetry readings were a popular form of entertainment back in the days before Golden Girls reruns)
• A writer, composer, singer or orator who recounts epic tales or impassioned narratives using lyrical, poetic language

“Bard” isn’t a formal title; it’s more of a descriptor for an avocation, like pianist or painter or gymnast or cat lady. It comes from a pre-Renaissance Celtic tradition where a wealthy patron would hire someone to tell stories, compose music and lyrics, act as an oral historian and genealogist, and generally shower the patron with praise for his sophistication and benevolence.

By the late English Renaissance, a bard did what Shakespeare and Nick and Nigel Bottom were doing: writing poetry and epic narratives about kings and supernatural beings and good-cholesterol breakfast comestibles.

But Shakespeare wasn’t called The Bard—at least not in a way that took in the public vernacular—until 150 years after his death. The designation is attributed to David Garrick, an English actor, playwright, poet and theater owner, in a 1769 poem he wrote about Shakespeare.

So when Nick Bottom complains about Shakespeare being called The Bard in our merry little play, it’s a bit of an anachronism—but thankfully it’s the only anachronistic cultural reference in our entire show.


A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME

Many—but not all—characters in the Somethingrottenverse share names with characters in Shakespeare’s plays. Here’s some background (or not) on the more prominent folks:

Bea: A feisty, sharp-witted protofeminist (full name: Beatrice) in Much Ado About Nothing. Beatrice is tricked into falling in love with a soldier named Benedick, with whom she has a will-they-or-won’t-they “merry war.” (Spoiler alert: they do.)

Nigel: The only principal character in Something Rotten! not based on a character from a Shakespeare play. To add insult to injury, Nigel had a brilliant song called “I Suck” that was cut from the show before it got to Broadway.

Portia: A wealthy heiress in The Merchant of Venice. Written as a wise woman ostensibly modeled after Queen Elizabeth I, Portia disguises herself as a lawyer to circumvent the lottery her father established in his will to find her a husband.

Shylock: A greedy Jewish moneylender in The Merchant of Venice. Characterized with rather appalling stereotypes from our modern perspective, he contractually establishes—and tries to literally collect—”a pound of flesh” as payment on a defaulted loan to a Christian. Even more appallingly, his “redemption” arc ends with his conversion to Christianity at the end of the play.

Lord Clapham: The only prominent supporting character in Something Rotten! not based on a character from a Shakespeare play. But he’s happy and he knows it, so clap your hams.

Toby Belch: The pseudonym Shakespeare uses when he infiltrates Nick Bottom’s acting troupe, Sir Toby Belch is originally ingénue Olivia’s boisterous drunk uncle in Twelfth Night. Though he mostly provides comic relief and a few insightful observations throughout the narrative of the play, he also exhibits a cruel streak toward some of the more vulnerable characters.


AWW, SHE’S BEDAZZLED!

Shakespeare isn’t kidding at his party when he brags about making up words. Of the 20,000 words in his plays and poems, he invented more than 1,700 that are still in use today. Here’s an alphabetical sample, except for a sample for X because Elon Musk hadn’t been invented yet:

Alligator: Romeo and Juliet, Act 5 Scene 1

Bedroom:  A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 2 Scene 2

Critic: Love's Labour's Lost, Act 3 Scene 1

Downstairs: Henry IV Part 1, Act 2 Scene 4

Eyeball: Henry VI Part 1, Act 4 Scene 7

Fashionable: Troilus and Cressida, Act 3 Scene 3

Gossip: The Comedy of Errors, Act 5 Scene 1

Hurry: The Comedy of Errors, Act 5 Scene 1

Inaudible: All's Well That Ends Well, Act 5 Scene 3

Jaded: Henry VI Part 2, Act 4 Scene 1

Kissing: Love's Labour's Lost, Act 5 Scene 2

Lonely: Coriolanus, Act 4 Scene 1

Manager: Love's Labour's Lost, Act 1 Scene 2

Nervy: Coriolanus, Act 2 Scene 1

Obscene: Love's Labour's Lost, Act 1 Scene 1

Puppy dog: King John, Act 2 Scene 1

Questioning: As You Like It, Act 5 Scene 4

Rant: Hamlet, Act 5 Scene 1

Skim milk: Henry IV Part 1, Act 2 Scene 3

Traditional: Richard III, Act 3 Scene 1

Undress: The Taming of the Shrew, Induction Scene 2

Varied: Titus Andronicus, Act 3 Scene 1

Worthless: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 4 Scene 2

Yelping: Henry VI Part 1, Act 4 Scene 2

Zany: Love's Labour's Lost, Act 5 Scene 2

THOMAS NOSTRADAMUS? I PROMISE!

Michel de Nostredame (1503–1566), usually Latinized as Nostradamus, was a French astrologer, apothecary and reputed soothsayer who is best known for his 1555 book Les Prophéties, a collection of 942 poetic quatrains—none of which involved the discussion of gyrating one’s ass—allegedly predicting future events.

Les Prophéties was by no definition a work of scholarly merit; it was filled with anagrams and references to mythology and astrology, and it very vaguely predicted (inevitable) natural disasters (Beware! It will rain someday in the future!). And Nostradamus wrote it in his own hybrid of French, Greek and Latin—most likely to stay vague enough to avoid being persecuted for heresy during the Holy Inquisition.

Soothsayers, seers and oracles—a list that is objectively more fun to say than “lions, tigers and bears”—were people (or sometimes just things) revered for their ability (?) not only to predict the future but to provide insight and counsel to everyone from royalty to lazy playwrights with giggly last names. Their powers (?) were said to come from both deities and the occult. And they were almost never named Greg.

You’ve probably already figured this out, but since the real Nostradamus died 29 years before the events of our merry little play, the Something Rotten! writers invented his ass-gyrating nephew Thomas to help drive our narrative. You might say they tapped him for the job. But please don’t. Nobody should ever say that.


THE MOST LAMENTABLE COMEDY

The men in Nick Bottom’s terrible acting troupe are named for the men in a terrible acting troupe made up of menial laborers from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In Midsummer, the troupe barely holds it together enough to very poorly perform a version of a Greek tragedy they call The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe at a wedding celebration. Here’s a bit about each of them:

Francis Flute: A young, over-excited actor and a bellows-mender by trade, Francis Flute is forced to play the female role of Thisbe, who talks to her lover Pyramus (played by Nick Bottom) through a gap in a wall.

Tom Snout: A tinker (a name for a tinsmith) by trade, Tom Snout plays the aforementioned wall, holding two fingers of one hand open to be the aforementioned gap. He even has two lines as The Wall.

Peter Quince: An amateur playwright, Peter Quince is the author of The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe. He and the troupe perform it at a wedding celebration for Theseus (the Duke of Athens) and Hyppolyta (the Queen of the Amazons).

Snug: A joiner who literally joins wood for a living, Snug plays a lion who indirectly causes the deaths of Pyramus and Thisbe. Though The Lion was only supposed to roar, Snug was worried he’d forget his lines. In the end, Peter Quince gave The Lion a few lines explaining that he’s not a real lion so the audience shouldn’t be scared of him.

Robin Starveling: A tailor by trade, Robin Starveling plays the role of Moonshine in the play. He makes a fool of himself using a lantern to create moonlight, and he’s thoroughly derided by the audience for it.

BONUS CHARACTER!
Sir John Falstaff: In our play, Shakespeare calls the Master of the Justice “Lord Falstaff.” It’s not a withering insult, but it’s not necessarily a compliment either. Falstaff was actually a recurring character in three of Shakespeare’s plays: Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2 and The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Shakespeare eventually killed him off with casual mention in Henry V. (All four plays were written after the events of our narrative, so it could be said that Shakespeare invented the character in our courtroom.)

Falstaff was mostly a comic figure: a vain, boastful drinker who hung out with petty criminals and lived off of stolen money. While he certainly led people into trouble, he’s generally regarded as being a jolly, debauched figure, and he’s lived on in other works by Giuseppi Verdi, Ralph Vaughn Williams, Edward Elgar (whom you know for writing Pomp and Circumstance) and even Kenneth Branagh.


THE STUPIDEST THING THAT I HAVE EVER HEARD!

The characters in our merry little play break into song in two separate worlds: the one they live in and the one they create onstage.

And there’s a very cool—and rarely useful—word for the world-they-live-in singing: diegesis (say it: die a JEE sis)

Diegetic (say it: die a JET ik) songs are songs sung between characters who in the backs of their minds keep wondering WHY AREN’T THEY TALKING? The songs in almost all musicals are diegetic—or, more specifically, the songs that characters sing to each other are diegetic. The songs that characters sing to themselves or about themselves to the audience are diegetic-adjacent, which is objectively a terrible name for a puppy.

On the flip side, songs in a show that are sung as performances by the characters in the show are mimetic (say it: meh MET ik).

Memesis (say it: meh MEE sis) has a number of contextual meanings in theater—and a bunch more in the various disciplines of science—but for the sake of this already-too-long explanation, they’re play-within-a-play or stage-upon-a-stage songs performed for a scripted audience.

So in our merry little play, “God, I Hate Shakespeare” and “A Musical” are diegetic because the characters sing them to each other instead of talking like normal people. And “The Black Death” and “Omelette” are memetic because they’re being intentionally performed.

“Bottom’s Gonna Be on Top” and “Hard to Be the Bard” are the aforementioned diegetic-adjacent soliloquies that the characters sing to themselves or directly to the audience. And “To Thine Own Self be True” and “We See the Light” muddy the diegetic-adjacent waters even further because it’s not always 100% clear to whom they’re specifically being sung.

Finally: If your cholesterol’s high, you’re probably diegetic. Or not. In either case, you should definitely get it checked out.


NOTHING RHYMES WITH AMERICA!

What did the Bottom brothers and their merry band of misfits encounter when they reached the New World?

Our narrative takes place entirely in 1595 and the average transatlantic travel at the time took two months, so it’s safe to assume Nick et al. had arrived on the first ship to the New World by 1596.

But Hamlet was written between 1599 and 1601 and transatlantic travel wasn’t a terribly regular occurrence at the time, so let’s assume word of the play’s success wouldn’t have reached the New World until 1602.

Sir Walter Raleigh had founded the Roanoke Colony in what is now North Carolina in 1585. Virginia Dare, the first known English child born on the North American continent, was born in 1587. But the Roanoke Colony disappeared under mysterious and never yet fully resolved circumstances in 1590. So it’s safe to say there wasn’t much of an English-expat welcoming party—or even an audience—for the brothers and their epic tale of leaving Cornwall when they arrived.

Kinda-lost-to-history explorer and privateer Bartholomew Gosnold was the first Englishman to land on the New England coast—exploring and naming Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard—in 1602. But if he was the first person (and potential audience member) in the area, it’s unlikely that the Bottoms were in their dressing rooms waiting for anyone to call places as soon as their New England house was full.

Another Bartholomew—Bartholomew Gilbert—landed in the Chesapeake Bay in 1603, but he was killed by Native Americans as soon as he came ashore. And his season tickets were probably non-refundable, so his seats sat empty during any possible performances.

BUT! The American social landscape wasn’t completely barren. There were Native American settlements all along the Atlantic coast—though their insatiable hunger for ponderous, derivative musicals about British perseverance in the Renaissance was debatable.

BUT AGAIN! All was not lost. The Pilgrims arrived in what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620. An offshoot of the Puritans—their main difference involved the Pilgrims’ belief in some degree of separation between church and state—the Pilgrims’ hunger for bawdy musical theater was also dubious. But I wasn’t there, so I can’t say for sure.

A pilgrim is just a person who journeys—and the Mayflower Pilgrims arrived two decades after the Bottoms—so history is very unclear about who might have been on Shylock’s Pilgrim Productions Board of Directors.

In any case, our adventures at Theatre Cedar Rapids come to a close today, just as the Bottoms’ adventures in England eventually came to a close in 1595. And I’m gonna put a stake in the ground and say we had waaaay better—and more attractive—American audiences.

Land of opportunity indeed!

Spilling some British Airways tea

1. Remember how I joked that the British Airways cabin steward would avoid me at all costs because of my weird hat?
2. I was obviously kidding
3. KIDDING!
4. But
5. BUT!
6. He LITERALLY did exactly that
7. For over eight hours
8. And he made sure I clearly saw what he was up to
9. I was in the window seat of an exit row
10. A rather vulgar, messy, entitled couple had the seats next to mine
11. The cabin steward's jump seat faced us
12. He talked to them at length
13. About everything and nothing
14. But when I tried to join the conversation ...
15. He literally gave me a withering stare and went back to learning fascinating things about the vulgar, messy, entitled couple
16. They ignored me the entire flight as well
17. Except the woman offered me a mint when I sat down
18. I had a mask on
19. So I didn't take this as a hint that my breath made my whole person repellent
20. Then
21. THEN!
22. Cabin Satan started bringing them drinks
23. Without them asking
24. Without him asking
25. We were in steerage where drinks weren't free
26. What's more ...
27. He brought each of them TWO of everything
28. In the course of the first few hours he brought the man two beers, two cans of Coke with two bottles of what I assume were vodka, a red wine and a white wine
29. The woman's alcoholic windfall was very similar
30. And aside from the required distribution of meals, guess the sum total of what he brought me
31. Guess
32. GUESS
33. OK, I'll tell you:
34. ONE SMALL GLASS OF WATER
35. But there's more
36. Because OF COURSE THERE'S MORE
37. The captain and many signs CLEARLY stated that it was the law that we all wear masks the entire time we're on the plane
38. Guess who almost never wore masks
39. JUST GUESS
40. Right: the vulgar, messy entitled couple
41. And guess who never said anything to them about it
42. JUST GUESS
43. Right: Cabin Satan
43. Who was literally face-to-face with them as he sat in his jump seat
44. But there's more
45. Because OF COURSE THERE'S MORE
46. I couldn't figure out how to release the fold-out table from my armrest
47. (There was a well-hidden button, and it turned out that mine was stubbornly stuck)
48. I tried to flag down Cabin Satan for help
49. But he was too busy noticing lint on the ceiling
50. I tried to flag down two other cabin stewards for help
51. Again with that nasty ceiling lint
52. I'd hoped my seatmates with their successfully opened tray tables might notice my confusion and volunteer to help me
53. But at this point I was fully repulsed by them and had no interest in striking up any kind of conversation for any kind of reason
54. All this time, my prepackaged dinner WAS SITTING IN MY LAP
55. And when I finally got my tray table released from its armrest prison and opened it up
56. Guess what happened
57. (This is a hard one)
58. OK, I'll tell you:
59. It wouldn't lie flat
60. It actually tilted toward me
61. And the angle was so steep that my food kept sliding toward my lap and I had to hold it and my bottle of water (which came with the meal and wasn't a benevolent bonus from Cabin Satan) in place with one hand while I tried to eat with the other
62. (It's the same lap where my meal had been sitting while I struggled to open my tray table in the first place)
63. Remember that Carol Burnett airplane sketch where Tim Conway is in no-frills coach where he's hit over and over by small and large indignities while everyone in regular seats is having a great time and nobody notices his struggles or tries to help him and he eventually gets sucked out the window?
64. It was like that
65. But with British accents and vulgar people
66. Then the man took his shoes and socks off
67. Because OF COURSE he did
68. Let's not discuss his toes
69. You're welcome
70. Then a few hours later a different cabin steward came down the aisles
72. He was passing out what sounded like "dusty pretzels"
73. The vulgar, messy, entitled people asked for some and he gave two packages of dusty pretzels to each of them
74. I asked for some and OF COURSE HE GAVE ME JUST ONE
75. It was then that I noticed his barn door was open
76. Because when you're strapped in an airplane seat, your eyes are pretty much at barn-door level
77. So even if you don't want to look, there's no way any barn door--open or closed--will escape your attention
78. Sacred Bro Code requires one bro to notify another bro with the utmost discretion if his barn door is open
79. I always honor this bro code
80. With utmost discretion
81. But guess what I didn't do this time
82. Just guess
83. Right: I DIDN'T TELL HIM
84. TAKE THAT, DUSTY PRETZEL TWINK!
85. I hope you mortified yourself all the way from English soil to Colonial soil
86. I did get lots of reading done though
87. It's not like I had anyone to engage with
88. And I desperately wanted to avert my gaze from Cap'n Vulgartoes
89. Moving on ...
90. My first condo in Chicago was on Sheridan just north of Foster
91. Foster Avenue--I soon found out--was the ground path that incoming planes followed on their way to O'Hare
92. Since it was a lovely, sunny day yesterday and we approached O'Hare rather low, I could totally see my old condo out my window
93. Which gave me a strange thrill
94. Though--let us not forget--I had nobody anywhere near me I could tell
95. I'd left my phone on airplane mode the entire trip so I could purge tons of photos and apps without being tempted to spend 75 hours on TikTok
96. My phone was literally in my lap as we flew over my old condo
97. (The lap that had previously been a food vortex)
98. But I didn't think to take a photo
99. Which would have been kinda cool
100. Though--again, let us not forget--I'd have nobody on the plane to show it to
101. Then
102. THEN!
102. After we landed
103. And we were instructed UNAMBIGUOUSLY to stay in our seats until our section was called
104. The vulgar, messy, entitled couple stood right up and began fishing their things out of the overhead bins
105. Because OF COURSE they did
106. Cap'n Vulgartoes at least finally put his socks and shoes back on though
107. And guess who didn't stop them
108. JUST GUESS
109. Right: Cabin Satan
110. You're getting good at this
111. Apparently they had a fast connection to make
112. They'd never been to O'Hare--or even America--before
113. And even though Cabin Satan assured them they'd make their connection, I knew there was no way on earth they would
114. They had to go through customs
115. Then pick up their luggage
116. Then go through the second half of customs
117. Then find the secret hidden train and take it from international Terminal 5 to any of the domestic terminals
118. The ones that are poorly labeled and confusing to figure out even if you know where you're going
119. (See my 3/29 rant about the horribleness of O'Hare for more examples)
120. Then go through domestic security
121. Which is a bit pain-in-the-buttier than UK security
122. Then invariably walk 72 miles to their gate, which is invariably in Ohio
123. As I said: There was zero chance they'd make their connection
124. But did I at least prepare them for any of this?
125. Maybe offer some general description of the process just to give them a sense of what was ahead of them?
126. And show maturity and compassion since they were vulgar, messy and entitled so they know not what they do?
127 HELL.
128. NO.
130. Cabin Satan tried to say goodbye and thank you to me as I walked past him on my way out
131. But there was lint on the ceiling

Adventures in boarding our plane

1. It’s parked super-way-far-away on the tarmac so we all took alarmingly long bus rides to get to it
2. As my fellow bus passengers and I were waiting to climb the steps from the tarmac to the plane, three occupants of the plane were being all but DRAGGED down the stairs and off the plane amid much shouting and concern to the rest of us.
2. Even if the problem was a mere misunderstanding, it didn’t make for good optics.
3. Yikes.
4. I bought this jaunty tropical-toile bucket hat in Scotland, much to the consternation of my fashion-backward niece.
5. Kids these days.
6. They have no taste.
7. But
8. BUT!
9. The nice desk agent I was so polite to yesterday not only booked me in a posh hotel BUT ALSO PUT ME IN AN EXIT ROW.
10. Which may or may not be that big of a plus.
11. There’s no easy-access place to store my bag of books and goodies.
12. So the bag is stowed above my head and my books are in my lap.
13. And I’ll have a clear view of everyone going to the bathroom.
14. CLARIFICATION: I’ll have a clear view of everyone ENTERING the bathrooms.
15. Not actually USING them.
16. It seemed important to make sure you all understand that.
17. See the disembodied feet and ankles in that second picture?
18. They’re the cabin steward’s.
19. I’ve already managed to ask enough dumb questions that I guarantee he’ll avoid talking to me the rest of the flight.
20. Crazy Americans.
21. When we’re tired, we’re EXTRA befuddled, amirite?
22. That should be printed on our passports.
23. In case it isn’t obvious.
24. The captain just said we’re about to pull away.
25. But from what?
26. WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TARMAC.
27. And nothing’s been explained about the forcibly ejected passengers.
29. I’m sure there are HIPAA-ish (HIPPISH?) laws about not telling us information about other passengers.
30. But still: Bad optics = awkward discomfort
31. Anyway.
32. We’re about to pull away from our square of tarmac paint and hit the skies.
33. I HOPE.
34. Peace out.
35. Oh—I accidentally made two 2’s.
36. And I somehow skipped 28.
37. When we’re tired, we’re EXTRA befuddled, amirite?

Heathrow redux

1. Is it possible for a bed to be TOO comfortable?
2. Because I slept in the softness of a mother-kitty hug last night
3. But BLERG am I exhausted
4. It could’ve been the pillows though
5. They were so plump they practically had me sleeping vertically
6. The hotel breakfast was good
7. I gorged myself because I didn’t eat dinner
8. Local customs and regional cuisines may come and go, but watery hotel scrambled eggs transcend all boundaries
8. I also managed to spill a lake of honey on my leg
9. My jeans were already into questionable-cleanliness territory
10. Now there’s no question
11. But there’s totally a dark, sticky stain
12. Not even copious amounts of water can make it go away
13. I might have to launder them in a different country
14. I’m also down to my emergency mask stash
15. The ones that smell like the soap didn’t quite get to them in the wash
16. I have one last N95 mask though
17. But I’m saving it for the plane
18. Where paper masks are required
19. The airports here frustratingly refuse to tell you where your gate is until 60 minutes before boarding
20. And they conveniently leave you waiting in the middle of a giant duty-free mall
21. No Balenciaga earrings for me, thank you
22. I’m not falling for your underhanded retail tricks, Heathrow
23. Oh, look: Armani wingtips!
24. Only £700!
25. I’ll take some in every color, please
26. And I’ll need this £900 HUGO suitcase to carry them on the plane, please
27. I’m clearly too big for London
28. I violently banged my elbows on both sides of the shower this morning when I reached up to shampoo my hair
29. I had to awkwardly tuck my knees under my ample bosom to fit in the seat on the airport shuttle
30. But my shampoo-laundered socks and underwear were dry this morning
31. Dry enough
32. I may complain about chafing later
33. If I can stay awake
34. Because my bed was too comfortable
35. I was kidding about wearing Balenciaga
36. I’m a total Fendi girl
37. Maybe Burberry
38. But only on days where I know I won’t run into anyone important
39. Like the middle of the Heathrow duty-free holding cell
40. Did I mention I’m tired?
41. And that I feel less than fresh?
42. I miss my kitties.
43. Oh look!
44. Gate A10
45. FINALLY
46. I’ll head there just as soon as I buy this Ferragamo scarf
47. KIDDING!
48. I’m Fendi all the way, baby
49. I’m also on my way to Gate A10
50. Just as soon as I point out that I accidentally made two 8’s

The Day That Did Not Go As Planned: A Recap

1. I passed my covid test
2. I’ve had only one before this
3. At the very dawn of the pandemic
4. But look—I’m already off the today-recap track
5. The mandatory covid app wouldn’t upload my test results
6. Because why would it?
7. The electronic signs at Edinburgh Airport, in my experience, do everything in their power to be unhelpful to the point of making you miss your flights
8. I spent a lot of time there today
9. More time than my entire transatlantic flight was supposed to take
10. Yet I’m still on this side of the pond
11. As I previously alluded to
12. (You might not have even noticed I mentioned it)
13. I missed my connecting flight to Chicago
14. And then stood in line at Heathrow for literally two hours waiting to get rebooked
15. But I was clearly a breath of fresh air wafting above the cranky, demanding weeds
16. Because I told the woman at the counter that my schedule was extremely flexible and she could get me home in whatever way was easiest
17. (I’d already told my boss there’s no way I’d make it to work tomorrow anyway, so I was clear to take on whatever the fates dealt me)
18. Plus I promised the rebooking agent a tray of scotcharoos and then flashed a bit of man-boob
18. And not only did she book me to fly out tomorrow morning at a respectable, unrushed time …
19. But I got put up at a swanky, tastefully-foo-foo-gay hotel for the night
20. Seriously
21. It’s so nice I just can’t even
22. It’s the Radisson Blu Edwardian:

23. They’ve clearly invested in its handsomeness using the money they saved by spelling it Blu

24. And I’ve always been an Edwardian guy
25. The Victorians were far too vulgar for me
26. With the wanton hedonism of their hourglass silhouettes and saucy, immodest ankles
27. No, sir
28. Not in THIS household
29. I was raised better than that
30. We were far more chaste and tasteful with our pillowy S-curve bosoms, Evelyn Nesbit virtues, and Gilded Age hubris steaming straight toward the iceberg of obscene divisions of wealth and class and the callous insouciance that unceremoniously condemned the Titanic to a grave at the bottom of the North Atlantic
31. As I said: pure Edwardian class
32. (At least the Titanic got closer to North America than I did today)
33. (too soon?)
34. The lobby here looks like a gentlemen’s hunting lodge that has a fairy godmother
35. Burled walnut paneling
36. Handsome portraits of old-money scions
37. Russet-hued marble burnished to a crisp polish
38. And a massive chandelier of crystal beads that doubles as a drag queen’s tiara on weekends:

39. The lady who rebooked me also got the covid thing figured out and documented

40. She didn’t even look at my test results
41. She just trusted me to tell the truth
42. I’m glad she didn’t ask about my syphilis and consumption tests though
43. That would have gotten awkward
44. It still took me until 7:00 to get in my room
45. We’d landed at 3:30
46. Which adds up to 3 1/2 hours of standing at the rebooking counter and then standing waiting for a shuttle to the hotel and then standing in the hotel check-in line dedicated solely to serving the unwashed airline-delayed masses
47. But I’m HERE
48. There’s a lovely dining room in the lobby
49. It’s the kind that 100% has umlauts and cedillas on its menu
50. I have a dinner voucher
51. But I’m tired
52. And lazy
53. And dressed for the pajama-party comfort I was expecting on my Chicago flight
54. And typing stuff on Facebook feels like all I’m capable of doing at the moment
55. Plus the hotel is MASSIVE
56. It would take another three hours to find my way back to the lobby
57. Plus I’ve been eating like an appalling American all week
58. And I have a breakfast voucher for the morning
59. I mean bręakfäst
60. ’Cause it’s fancy
61. I’d timed my socks and underwear down to the day on this trip
62. Meaning I didn’t account for an additional overnight
63. So a shampoo-laundered pair of socks and a shampoo-laundered pair of underwear are (hopefully by morning) currently drying in the bathroom
64. Of my swanky Edwardian hotel
65. I had to give the help the night off to gather coal to heat their meager Edwardian hovels
66. So I faced the indignity of laundering my unmentionables myself
67. Thankfully nobody knows
68. Nobody
70. One other thing:
71. Our shuttle bus pulled up next to a car at a stoplight on the way to the hotel
72. (The swanky Edwardian hotel)
73. There was a kid in a car seat in the back of the car
74. He started waving to everyone on the bus
75. We all waved back
76. At every stoplight until we went our separate ways
77. It melted the cockles of my cold, black heart
78. Plus it was a welcome antidote to the screaming-banshee airport children I’d spent my day with
79. The little kid giggled
80. We all did too
81. It was nice
82. Last thing:
83. I accidentally made two 18’s on this list
84. And I don’t love you enough to go back and fix it
95. I’m also not going to fix the fact that I just jumped to 95
96. But it’s important that I end on 100
97. It makes me look organized
98. And prolific
99. So good night
100. That’s an even 100
101. Oops

1. We’re running out of interesting things to put in our post-run selfies.

2. Like, REALLY running out.
3.
4.
5. Meet ... our recycling bin.
6. It’s blue.
7. It’s full of recyclables.
8. It’s by the curb because today is recycling day.
9. Which nicely dovetails into the fact that today is also garbage day.
10. It’s like a two-for-one.
11. Except the bins get emptied and their contents are never seen again. So it’s more like a two-for-none.
12.
13.
14. Usually the things in our weird selfies give me a launching-off point for my weird-ass ramblings that have at least some semblance of conversational value.
15.
16.
17. I just made stupid-dumb jokes about our garbage day instead.
18. Which is also our recycling day.
19. Sigh.
20.
21.
22. It was all-ass FREEZING this morning.
23. And the trail we run on is relentlessly straight.
24. Which makes it a brutally efficient wind tunnel.
25. My fingers are almost throbbing.
26. And I think I ingested a quart of runny-nose snot on our windy-ass, freezing-ass run.
27. Rob and I (but not our absent and probably imaginary friend Scott) joked about turning around at the one-mile mark.
28. I bet we would have done it if one of us had joked just a LITTLE bit harder.
29. But we didn’t.
30. I’m officially glad we ran our planned three-mile distance.
31. I’m also glad I got out of bed and stuck to our commitment to run in the first place.
32.
33.
34. But not really.
35. I JUST POSTED A PICTURE OF OUR DAMN RECYCLING BIN, PEOPLE.
36. It’s blue.
37. Sigh.
38.
39.
40. So.
41. Three miles.
42. 10:55 pace.
43. Half of which was running into an icy wind.
44. Did I mention that quart of runny-nose snot?
45. And people wonder why I’m single.
46. I could really use a nap.
47. And it’s not even 8:00 am yet.
48. But it will be by the time I turn off this word faucet, proofread my unhinged ramblings and post it all.
49. So hello to future-proofreading me!
50. I’m going to leave 51. open for me to say hello back from the future.
51.
52. Shit.

So apparently we have a new recliner

My family buys nothing—NOTHING!—more important than a package of socks without first going through the Ten Steps of Painfully Indecisive Covetousness:

1. Oh, look! There’s the thing I’m actively looking to buy and it’s right here in front of me right now so my search is over and I’m going to buy it.
1a. or: Oh, look! There’s something I just stumbled on in a store that two seconds ago I didn’t know existed and now I desperately want it so I’m going to buy it.

2. But am I sure about this? 

3. Maybe I can find a cheaper and/or better version of it somewhere else.

4. But first let me take 72 pictures of it on my phone so I can remind myself in perpetuity that I don’t have it every time I scroll through my photos. 

5. It’s totally worth it to drive to five similar stores scattered across town and then to spend 30 minutes researching it online if I can save five dollars when I inevitably buy it.

6. It goes without saying that it’s also totally worth it to go back to visit it nine or fifteen times at the store where I first saw it, just to be sure I really want it or to see if it goes on sale.

7. But I’m not obsessing about buying it or needlessly delaying this inevitable purchase or anything.

8. OK, two weeks have gone by and my life is empty and chokingly meaningless without it so I’m just going to go buy it.

9. Well, shit. It’s gone.
9a. or: Now that I have it home, I’ve decided I really don’t like it so I’m going to return it.

10. I’m just going to run in to Target for a few quick things.

SO! Imagine my surprise when—mere hours after we realized that we’d probably need to buy an easy-to-use recliner with a tall back for my dad because he’ll have problems sleeping in a flat bed when he comes home from the hospital so we were going to split up and start multiple Step Ones at all the recliner stores in town this afternoon—Mom sent me an urgent text telling me to come to the first recliner store she’d visited because she’d found the perfect recliner and she’d put a hold on it and wanted me to come test it before she bought it. 

Which I did. And then which SHE did. 

Let me type this slowly for you so you can comprehend its tectonic shiftiness: My mother, the High Priestess of the Ten Steps of Painfully Indecisive Covetousness, BOUGHT AN EASY-TO-USE-RECLINER WITH A TALL BACK ON JUST THE FIRST STEP. Without even blinking.

Behold its new-reclinerness:

I’ll give you a moment to lift your jaws up from the shifting tectonic plates beneath you. 

What’s more, our awesome, truck-having neighbor Dan just happened to be free and willing to transport the recliner home for us ... and within 90 minutes start-to-finish we became the proud owners of a new easy-to-use recliner with a tall back. WITH NINE UNUSED STEPS JUST HANGING OUT IN SPACE IN A FOG OF ABANDONMENT AND CONFUSION. But maybe I can sell them individually on Etsy. 

Anyway! I had to do some major furniture shuffling to fit our new easy-to-use recliner with a tall back into our living room, but I think it’s now in a primo spot where Dad can be comfortable and not feeling like he’s jutting out into the room as he entertains visitors. And he has a bunch of medical stuff—in addition to his boombox for his books on tape—that he’ll need to keep near him, so I repurposed some decorative chests to become decorative side tables for him. Plus I cleaned them all with Liquid Gold, which those of us who like our wooden antiques to be alarmingly shiny know takes 17 days to dry. So that’s why I’m posting this artfully composed, judiciously-cropped-so-you-can’t-see-what-a-mess-the-rest-of-the-room-is photo at 7:42 instead of 4:00. 

But doesn’t my dad’s new man-corner look handsome? 

(It’d look mega-more handsome without that butt-ugly quilt and that why-the-hell-do-we-have-a-genuine-oil-painting-of-a-stranger-holding-a-gun-in-our-living-room painting. But rectifying those situations opens a whole new Ten Stages Of Painfully Indecisive Purging process. So let’s all just admire my alarmingly shiny wooden side tables for now.)

1. 3.01 miles!

2. Or as they say in Allcapsland, THREE POINT OH ONE MILES!
3. I’m quite proud of this.
4. You know what else I’m proud of?
5. I’ll tell you.
6. Because it’s MY blog.
7. And I’m feeling braggy.
8. And I’m padding this list.
9. So I can get to 52.
10. Like my new age.
11. Anyway ...
12. This is what else I’m proud of:
13. I figured out how to make a map thingie of my running route!
14. Just like all the cool kids!
15. Finding the map view on my running app isn’t very intuitive though.
16. It’s not even in the menu on the help page.
17. This is stupid.
18. I’m talking to you, Garmin interface designers.
19. Ahem.
20. Anyway ...
21. You know what ELSE I’m proud of?
22. I’ll tell you that too.
23. Just as soon as I pad this list some more.
24. Almost ...
25. There ...
26. BAM! Halfway to 52!
27. Where was I?
28. (Though you and I both know I know exactly where I was.)
28. (Because I’m bragging about myself.)
29. (Who gets lost bragging?)
30. (Nobody, that’s who.)
31. (Plus I’m padding this list.)
32. (Plus I’m being all meta and telling you I’m padding this list.)
32. (And other parenthetical things.)
33. So I found this free meme-making/photo-editing app called piZap.
34. I highly recommend it.
35. If making memes and messing around with photos is your thing.
35. And I’m getting really proficient with it.
36. Because LOOK AT THE COOL COLLAGE I MADE WITH IT.
37. Because memes and rudimentary photo hacking are totally my thing.
38. In case you hadn’t noticed.
39. (Padding.)
40. (Padding.)
41. (Padding.)
42. (Because the Rule of Three.)
43. ((It’s a writer thing.))
44. Wanna know what I’m not proud of?
45. That 13:46 pace.
46. I might as well have been walking.
47. Backwards.
48. On my knees.
49. But still:
50. THREE POINT OH ONE MILES!
51. And also:
52. FIFTY TWO!

Litany of Complaints

• Our Disney vacation is over
• I didn’t win the marathon
• Perhaps because there was only a half marathon
• Perhaps not
• But now we’ll never know
• Will we?
• No, we won’t
• Anyway ...
• Disney water
• It tastes like History and Safety First
• Turning it into ice and putting it in Diet Coke doesn’t help
• And it CERTAINLY doesn’t help the Diet Coke
• Speaking of ...
• A large cup of Disney History And Safety First ice with a splash of a Diet Coke costs less than $6
• But not much less
• Disney has stopped using lids on its fountain sodas
• Which is awesome from an environmental standpoint
• And I assume from a cost-overhead standpoint
• Plus an ordering-supplies-and-dealing with-invoices-and-delivering-stuff-to-all-the-restaurants standpoint
• But definitely not from a don’t-spill-your-tiny-splash-of-Diet-Coke-on-yourself-when-you-get-jostled-in-the-crowds standpoint
• Safety First!
• Anyway ...
• Runner dudes with muscularly lean, distractingly shapely calves
• Who didn’t ask me on dates
• Probably because they didn’t want to make things weird in front of their wives and kids
• BECAUSE ALL OF THE RUNNER DUDES WITH MUSCULARLY LEAN, DISTRACTINGLY SHAPELY CALVES HAD WIVES AND KIDS
• I am developing a healthy animosity toward wives and kids
• People who wore their race medals to the parks
• Three days after their races
• Really?
• Was a full day of wearing a rigid, itchy ribbon around your neck with a heavy, clangy medal bouncing against your chest a productive enhancement to your sweaty Disney joy?
• Asking for a friend
• Also:
• Also!
• People who stopped in the middle of a crowd of moving people to do something vitally important like take a selfie or scratch an elbow or clap on 1 and 3 or whatever other pressing needs really stupid, rude people face in their center-of-the-universe days
• Grrrrrr
• I bought three race shirts and zero other souvenirs but I somehow couldn’t get my suitcase closed this morning
• My cargo shorts are out to get me
• Or perhaps they wanted to stay a few more days
• And I broke their eminently-practical-and-yet-appropriate-as-always-multiple-pocketed hearts
• Now I’M the bad guy
• Speaking of my eminently-practical-and-yet-appropriate-as-always-multiple-pocketed cargo shorts ...
• I finally stopped having little panic attacks every time I realized I couldn’t feel my car keys in my front right pocket
• When I get home tonight, I’m going to start having an unsightly key bulge in my front right pocket again
• And it might be uncomfortable since I’m not used to it anymore
• WHEN
• WILL
• MY
• SUFFERING
• END
• ?
• We got our bills from our Magic Bands that we wore all week to buy food and charge it to our room ...
• Ouch
• Not OUCH
• But still ouch
• (I’m talking about the final tally of charges and not the bands themselves; the bands were actually quite comfortable)
• Remember our fancy, four-princess dinner in Cinderella’s castle where we got to see the fireworks show outside the quatrefoil-gothic castle windows?
• We were told our dinner was vaguely “already taken care of” at the end
• We assumed that meant it had been automatically charged to our Magic Bands, so we blithely went on our merry way
• But ...
• There was no fancy-four-princess-dinner-in-Cinderella’s-quatrefoil-gothic-window-castle charge on our bills this morning
• Was it an oversight?
• A surprise Summer Of Running Away From Being 50 birthday gift?
• A random act of Disney benevolence?
• Pre-emptive compensation for not winning the marathon?
• Do we need to contact them to see which option it was?
• THIS SITUATION IS NOT COVERED IN THE DISNEY PROTOCOL HANDBOOK
• Not a complaint: Our entire Disney stay was a beautifully immersive experience of colors and ethnicities and accents and physical abilities and sexualities and gender fluidities and ages and family sizes
• Especially on It’s a Small World
• ESPECIALLY on It’s a Small World
• That ride gives me hives
• On my runner-chafed unmentionable locations
• Anyway ...
• We never encountered an instance of racism or xenophobia or hostility or even poorly hidden frustration over our differences
• During the entire week of our stay
• In fact, we all seemed to celebrate each other and gladly accommodate people in wheelchairs and families with excited kids so we could all enjoy our collective Disney experience together
• For a whole week
• Except, of course, for the people who stopped in the middle of a crowd of moving people to do something vitally important like take a selfie or scratch an elbow or clap on 1 and 3 or whatever other pressing needs really stupid, rude people face in their center-of-the-universe days
• MAJOR. PET. PEEVE.
• Anyway ...
• We’re re-entering the ugly, not-Disney-égalité-fraternité world of our shithole president and his shithole orbit today
• I don’t know how all of you survived it over the last week
• But re-enter we must
• In a cloud of voter optimism and hope
• And three new race shirts that make my suitcase uncloseable
• My flight home is at 5:14 tonight
• Erik’s is at 2:31
• So we took the early Disney bus to the airport for him to catch his flight and for me to chill with a couple of books and a fully charged phone for a while
• I’m currently typing this as I sit in a comfy chair in front of the airport Chick-fil-A
• Speaking of non-Disney-égalité-fraternité
• My browser app keeps crashing on me, so I’m obsessively select-all-ing and copying this post after every other bullet I write
• Just so I don’t lose this freaking endless list of rambling, mostly pointless litany-of-complaints line items
• Freezing and crashing apps are many-times-a-day occurrences on my iPhone X
• I am SOOOOOOO not impressed with the iPhone X
• Save your money and get an abacus and two cans with a string
• Much more reliable
• And affordable
• Anyway ...
• I had an awesome vacation with an awesome friend and an awesome surprise finish of a half marathon I’d fully expected to choke on and possibly even have to quit
• And now I’m chilling in a bustling airport seated near two hip and cool teenagers who are using hip-and-cool-teenager patois like “brah” to talk to each other and “my boy” to talk about their (presumably male) friends
• It’s both charming and amusing
• And I’m in a happy place, both in my head and in this airport
• Except the airport’s escalators look like they were installed in a columbarium
• Brah

1. Last training run of the season!

2. My second and last half marathon is in eight days.
3. And no, I won’t be training any more for it.
4. Because after my summer of chronic injuries and my aborted NewBo half marathon, I’ve kind of given up.
5. But I’ll start next weekend’s half marathon with optimism and see what happens.
6. I’ll also start with a super-cute outfit.
7. So there’s that.
8. Rob and Scott joined me this morning for our last hurrah of 2018.
9. They’ve been awesome running buddies and all-around friends all summer.
10. Now that training season is over, I’m sure we’ll revert to our usual state of evil, backstabbing nemesises.
11. Those poopyheads.
12. See? It’s already started.
13. It’s impossible to say nemesises without sounding gay.
14. Same with cilantro citrus salad.
15. Sssssssssssssss.
16. David also ran with us.
17. But he’s either an overachiever or a showoff because he kept running when we stopped so he could do more miles.
18. So he didn’t get to be in the selfie.
19. The poopyhead.
20. Nemesises.
21. I’m sweaty.
22. And sleepy.
23. And sworn to secrecy about my cilantro citrus salad recipe.
24. So shhhhhhhhhh!
25. I saw a show long ago that took place on a gay ship named the SS Sibilant S.
26. I don’t remember where I saw it, but it was silly.
27. Anyway.
28. We chose a pretty tree as the background for our final selfie today.
29. Which is so low-concept that it forced me to wander off on a whistley-lisp tangent here.
30. Whistley lisp.
31. Cilantro Nemesis and the Whistley Lisps.
32. I’ll take Polka-Punk Bands I Would Never Listen To for ssssssix hundred, Alex.
33. Sssssssso sssssssleepy.
34. My knee injury is apparently NOT as healed as it had led me to believe.
35. I don’t see it causing me any problems for the Disney races, but it will certainly make its presence known.
36. I may have a goofknee, but at least I don’t have a plutoe.
37. I just made that up.
38. You owe me sssseven dollars if you found it amusing.
39. Good jokes don’t write themselves.
40. And a GOOD joke would cost you a whole lot more.
41. Mom made a peach pie while we were out running.
42. I bought my folks some fancy pie fillings when I was in Galena.
43. And my dad’s birthday is Tuesday.
44. Which is more than enough reason to spontaneously bake a pie.
45. So is the fact that the jars of pie filling were still sitting on the counter where they couldn’t be ignored.
46. Since he’s blind, we’re getting him an Alexa (or one of her smart-speaker sisteren, I forget which) in the hopes that she’ll make it easier for him to listen to the news or play music or bake a pie or whatever else it is that those things do.
47. Since he’s blind, he also can’t read Facebook so I can say what his gift is here and he’ll never know.
48. AND YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BLAB TO HIM.
49. Because Alexa will find out and hunt you down and make you listen to Polka Punk.
50. Smart speaker sisteren.
51. You thought I was gonna let that one slide, didn’t you?
52. Ssssslide.
53. To review:
54. Nemesises.
55. Cilantro citrus salad.
56. Sweaty.
57. Sleepy.
58. Sworn to secrecy.
59. Cilantro citrus salad recipe.
60. SS Sibilant S.
61. Silly.
62. Whistley lisp.
63. Cilantro Nemesis and the Whistley Lisps.
64. Smart-speaker sisteren.
65. Ssssslide.
66. Sixty-six.
67. Well THAT was a surprising coincidence.
68. Surprising coincidence.
69. Sssssssso sssssssleepy.
70. See ya!

1. I finally ran the Nordic Fest Elveløpet 15K

2. But not really.

3. There were probably 100 15K runners overall.
4. I was clearly dead last of the runners by mile 4.
5. Seriously. Just me and the very lonely road.
6. And the nagging worry that I’d end up running the wrong direction for miles and miles without knowing it.
7. In writing, we call this foreshadowing.
8. So there are lots of hills in Decorah.
9. OH MY ODIN THERE ARE HILLS.
10. But they’re nothing compared to the all-but-literal MOUNTAIN that started about mile 5 1/2.
11. MOU. NTAN.
12. Just hills and hills and trees and the road and me.
13. And at one point two startled deer.
14. Plus my irrational worry that I’d encounter a marauding band of feral gnomes who’d abduct me and I’d never be seen again except for occasional sightings of me in a chin beard and gnomey hat under a bridge.
15. Irrational.
16. Except it WAS Nordic Fest so the gnomes might have been emboldened and hungry.
17. But let’s not think about that.
18. Because there’s no such marauding bands of feral gnomes, right?
19. Anyway ...
20. The mountain kept going up and up and up.
21. And then you’d go around a bend and there’d be even more up.
22. But finally there was a plateau.
23. With a rough-hewn rock that had been mowed around in a figure 8.
24. Again: foreshadowing.
25. So the road started going downhill.
26. Finally.
27. FINALLY.
28. The road eventually came to a fork.
29. The official Elveløpet directional arrow sign that had been stuck in the ground at this fork CLEARLY said to go left.
30. Which felt wrong, but I was so turned around that I had no faith in my sense of direction.
31. Foreshadowing.
32. There’s that word again.
33. So I went left.
34. And the road started getting uphilly again.
35. Let me interrupt this gripping narrative to mention that I’d been maintaining an 11:30 pace through my entire Alpine adventure to this point.
36. I’d expected to run a 12:00 pace, so 11:30 was both an awesome surprise and a genuine motivator to maintain my sprightly clip.
37. Though it was clearly epically slower than the collective pace of the other 99 Elveløpet 15K runners.
38. Because they were so far ahead of me that I was ALL ALONE on this winding, forest-of-trees mountain.
39. That was surely crawling with marauding bands of feral gnomes.
40. But back to our story ...
41. So I’m going up and up the mountain of hills, thinking it’s awfully odd that I’ve run a good two miles almost entirely uphill and it’s already mile 7 and I’d better get downhill soon so I can get all the way back to the finish line, which doesn’t seem at all like it’s only 2 miles away.
42. Oh, yay! I seem to finally reached a plateau.
43. Look at that interesting rough-hewn rock that’s been mowed around in a figure 8.
44. Hey—wait a minute ...
45. FUCK.
46. Yup.
47. That left-pointing arrow just sent me on mile-and-a-half repeat loop.
48. So I am no longer running the 15K course that had been mapped out.
49. So I am officially no longer running the race.
50. And now I’m so behind that the finish line may be dismantled and abandoned by the time I get there.
51. Again with the damn foreshadowing.
52. But at least it’s new and different foreshadowing.
53. In the mean time, I have no other option but to keep running and hoping I circle back to that FUCKING WRONG left arrow and see what happens if I go right.
54. Which I did.
55. Still having no clue if it would get me back on course or get me totally lost.
56. In the land of marauding bands of feral gnomes.
57. It’s amazing what a volatile mix frustration, uncertainty and mounting anger can be when you need extra power to fuel a long run.
58. Long story short: Turning right got me back on track.
59. For a whole mile.
60. Then the arrows just disappeared entirely.
61. But I had no way of knowing that.
62. Until a dude on a bike saw me and told me I’d run way past the turn to the finish line.
63. I had to trudge through a hay field to get to the trail I needed to be on to get back on track.
64. A FUCKING HAY FIELD.
65. By then I’d on-good-faith run 10.3 miles of a 9.3-mile race.
66. I was exhausted.
67. And hot.
68. Because I was finally out in the sun.
69. And pissed.
70. Because through no fault of my own I technically hadn’t run the race I’d been dreaming about running for 20+ years.
71. So FUCK IT.
72. I walked the rest of the way back.
73. Which ended up being a whopping 1.5 miles.
74. Which almost adds up to a 12-mile journey.
75. Remember that foreshadowing about the finish line?
76. Well, it hadn’t been dismantled and abandoned, as I worried it would have been.
77. But it HAD been pulled off the street onto the grass so the street could be reopened to traffic.
78. Some dude was fucking still standing there with a fucking bullhorn and he fucking announced to fucking NOBODY that I crossed the finish line.
79. At this point I was furious.
80. Plus I was far enough from the long-abandoned starting line that I had no idea where I was.
81. But after I finished my Gatorade—I always run with a Gatorade in my hand—and found a bathroom, I calmed down a bit.
82. Because my half-marathon training schedule had me supposed to be running 10 miles this weekend.
83. Which I totally did in today’s 9.3-mile race.
84. And by the transitive power of holy shit when will these hills ever end, that number is more like 13.1.
85. Which—coincidentally—is the exact distance of a half marathon.
86. So I’m totally on track for rocking the half I’m running over Labor Day.
87. Eyes. On. The. Prize.
88. So I’ve decided to look at all of this as I ran the Elveløpet ... plus a lot more.
89. I’m sorry I don’t have an actual finishing time.
90. Because this race was ROUGH and BRUTAL and OTHER ROUGH AND BRUTAL WORDS so it’s totally a one-and-done.
91. But the shirts are awesome.
92. And I know I conquered some killer terrain at a better-than-expected pace for a good 7 miles.
93. Which I’m really thrilled about.
94. And also a little proud of.
95. Plus I rewarded myself with gluttonous amounts of sweet rømmegrøt pudding afterward, which was my only other goal of the trip.
96. Plus the Nordic Fest parade was more delightful and fun and even stirring than I had any idea it would be.
97. I love my cool-fun-proud-and-sometimes-goofy Norwegian heritage.
98. Except for its inability to point simple arrow signs in the right direction.
99. And ALL THOSE HILLS.
100. And it goes without saying its penchant for stirring up marauding bands of feral gnomes.