Why Sondheim is Single

There is that specific moment in every gay boy's life when he knows his emotions are getting the best of him...

when he's listening to the Wicked soundtrack.

Not only is he listening, he's belting along. He's probably crying too, but he can't tell because he's in the shower washing his feelings down the drain.

The old saying has always been "it's lonely  at the top" but SHIT I'm not even close to the middle and I'm already wondering what the hell is going on. Listen America, I'm not trying to be emo here, but I think you can all agree

men suck. Hell, I'm not even going to call them men, these are boys. And do you know which boys are the worst?

The actors.

How do I know? BECAUSE I AM ONE, and I'm no peach either. The difference is: when I give you a ring and we move across the country from each other, my "I love you" BBMs are MEANINGFUL. The least you could do is clue me in when you're dating somebody else because that's just common Facebook etiquette. I bet you carried his bags (btw if he tipped you well all is forgiven. Baby's gotta pay the bills).

 Listen readers, I'm not trying to blast anybody on the internet here...that's tacky...and I consider myself more ostentatious than tacky. Still, I've been told 5 times in my life "you're the kind of guy I want to spend the rest of my life with". I guess I should have been tipped off when I heard kind of guy.

Do you know what the scariest part is? It is incredibly easy to delete somebody from your life. A few untags, a block, an unfollow, an ignore-future-invites plus the willpower to un-memorize a cell number and you're free.

Yeah, free to find another asshole.

It's like holding a mirror up to a mirror.

But hey, I'm the one sitting at my parents house.

George Washington better be a babe.

COMING MOM! JESUS,

TJB: Making It

Chicago: Open Bars and Broken Dreams

I was feeling quite guilty about tricking Chicago into thinking I would actually move there and allow my career to take such a hit...so I decided to stop by on a sort of "goodwill tour".

OK really I was kind of miserable and needed to see my best friends before I embarked on a 3 month journey with 5 kids I've never met before. You see, I tried to go to summer camp once and I cried and begged my parents to take me home after 90 minutes. It was band camp...there were mosquitoes...and my bunk mate was fat...

Somehow I don't think my parents will be as willing to drive me home from NYC when I find out Ben Franklin is a lil' portly. However, my parents were dolls and drove me to Chicago to remind the windy city of what could have been.

I wish I could convey to you how amazing all of my friends are and talk about how successful they are so young life but

1. I do not promote other people.
2. Somebody I leave out is going to get pissed because either
3. I forgot I saw them or
4. They're just not successful...

I mostly just did the usual Chicago things like lunchtime at the Playboy Headquarters, but anywhere I go there is of course a VIP event to attend. This week was a celebration of TimeOut Chicago (which is funny because just two weeks ago I pretended to be a journalist from that very publication in NYC writing a story on gay bars as a successful ploy for free drinks and no cover).

I attended the event along with Chicago bro-extraordinaires SMQ and JWeb. They're like super business savvy and look really good standing on either side of me.

I'll be honest and tell you none of us really had a clue what the event was supposed to be celebrating, but we did know there was an open bar from 6-8PM and we intended to use every second of it. So we waltzed in at 5:59 and stumbled out at 8:01. Between those times we double-fisted the most delicious drinks you've ever tasted while enjoying free food and making friends with the entire staff and every lonely looking Asian we could find.

Only CLASS for these bros.

I did learn one very important tip: GET BUSINESS CARDS!

Every single person I met handed me their card (obviously in the hopes I would call them and/or sleep with them) and since I didn't have business cards, I just did what I do best...

I pretended that they of course knew who I was and didn't want to embarrass them by handing them my card since they probably already knew where to find me.

This worked like a charm...meaning everybody was too drunk to process what I was saying anyway...8PM couldn't have come at a better time.

There was a bittersweet feeling of visiting Chicago. Sure I now have jazz sneakers signed by the incomparable JLDubs, but I also spent 12 hours doing manual labor. Sure I got to see all of my beautiful blonde best friends, but I also spent 12 hours doing manual labor. Sure I got to watch Jon Harrison dripping in sweat, but I also...ok maybe that one was worth the 12 hours...

I dunno world. While I was in Chicago I had this sent to me from a fellow NU alumn:

"I stumbled upon your blog and am obsessed with it. So are all of my friends I sent it to. Seriously it is hilarious and well-written and resonates even with us non-showbizy folks seeking gainful employment."

Do you know what I say?
I wish you had more important friends.
Then I'd be on Bravo.

Until then, the only gainful employment I'll be seeing is in a big white van dressed as Thomas Jefferson traveling America.

Yes turning tricks,

TJB: Making It

From Tyler J to Tommy J: a chronicle of chaos

To get what you want, simply plan your life down to the smallest detail so that getting what you want actually makes your life as complicated as possible.

That's how I work anyway.

I was out in the yard mowing the family estate (how masculine) sipping a Diet Coke (just took it down a notch) listening to In the Heights (we lost it) when I noticed I had received a voice mail from a New York number. Something in my gut told me I was about to get the shits...not THE shits, but you get it.

The voice: young, peppy, ringing with a terribly mislead optimism about the world...it was TheatreworksUSA alright. There they were to put a fist in my birthday cake and offer me the role of a lifetime...uh...the role of the week.

Thomas Jefferson. My favorite President. This was the man who coined the phrase "Once you go black" and I was being offered the chance to portray him for countless schoolchildren across the U.S...uh...across 6 states. BUT HEY! No rent for 4 months? I'll take it. And yes, you may pay me 10 extra dollars a week to sign up for a driving shifts, how very generous of you.

I spent the next few hours cancelling my life which included:

1. Backing out of the apartment I had almost agreed to take from a poor couple in a bind. Sorry you're poor, so am I.
2. Calling the agent in Chicago that seemed more than eager to sign me so that I could fulfill my dream of a children's theatre tour. I decided not to tell them this was better blogging material.
3. Cancel the multiple auditions I had scheduled for next week in Chicago including one I had already spent three hours memorizing piano music for.
4. Attempting to sell off my furniture at a moment's notice to my best friend so I can know somebody attractive is sleeping in my bed.

This is approximately the third time in the last 2 months that my life has packed up, turned a 180, and booked it out of town. Are you laughing yet God? Are your adult diapers saturated with divine urine because you've made my life such a clusterfuck?

I hope you chafe.

So there it is folks. Countless blog posts wasted trying to convince myself I could become famous in Chicago and now I just have to convince myself I can become famous after touring as a rockstar version of Thomas Jefferson.

IF THOSE LITTLE BRATS DON'T ASK FOR MY AUTOGRAPH, I QUIT!

Oh bee-tee-dubz I get my equity card. You non-theatre mudbloods are all "HUH?WHAT?" but you BFA sluts are all "OMGZ!NOWAYZ!"

George Washington better be a stud (and single)[and gay]{won't matter},

TJB: Making It

You Can Always Come Homo

I believe it's always important for successful people to remember where they came from. My goal as a celebrity is to always stay true to my roots. That's why I felt it was important to make a pit stop to my childhood home before moving on to take over Chicago.

While I was waiting for my flight home from NYC trying not to sob in front of strangers, I decided to do some research on which of my blast-from-the-past friends would be around good ol' Frankenmuth. I remembered a notable evening from last summer (the summer when I almost died) when I got completely hammered with my good friends Mole and Matt. Lucky for me, they were both coincidentally in town for the same Wednesday evening of Bavarian boredom.

We planned to meet at Tiffany's.

SIDE NOTE: in my town, we grew up thinking that song about breakfast at Tiffany's was in fact a song about having breakfast at the hole in the wall restaurant in the middle of our town. You see, we were all very confused because Tiffany's of Frankenmuth does not actually serve breakfast...

As I walked into a cloud of nostalgia, I noticed my two friends had become four. Here was the breakdown.

Mole: we'd been friends since forever. She has gifted me approximately 5 stuffed animals for various birthdays. They're all still on my bed. I still consider her to be 4'11" and a virgin, but she's really a 5'6" hooch (at least in my story).

Matt: we were birthday party friends in middle school. He's a ginger. He lost a lot of weight sometime in high school and became rather athletic and studly. Cutting humor and quick witted. Great talks. My kind of people.

Jenny: I just call her the heiress. She's beautiful and everything you want to be. Prom queen. So of course she's dating...

Zach: The athlete that was also the nice guy. We were best friends in kindergarten. He had a rat-tail then and is therefore the definition of "grew up".

So there we all were throwing back beers as I'm trying to remind myself of where I came from.


and boy oh boy was I reminded where I came from.

You know that moment when you're sitting in a bar just drinkin a beer and suddenly you hear someone at the bar yell "faggot" as if he'd just said "hello".

Now, calm down! Of course he didn't shout the term at me or else chairs would have been flying and authorities (more authoritative than myself) would have been called. But it was that interesting moment when my table of friends fell silent as we all decided how best to navigate the outburst when I thought

"How the HELL did I grow up here and decide to pursue musical theatre?"

We remedied the situation by ordering more $2 drinks...$2 drinks...no wonder these small town people become alcoholics. I was in heaven.

We decided to bar hop to the Main Street Tavern. Those of you from the larger city spectrum can probably imagine exactly the type of bar this is. There's a boy who looks 17 serving drinks, a portly hammered woman in a dirdl, a few 25 year olds who just finished their shifts at various hotels, and a man with a very odd haircut playing the piano and belting out every Billy Joel song he knows.

and he was good. He was REAL good.

But you know what readers? These people were genuinely happy. I had no clue what the hell they had to do Thursday morning, but here they were drinking themselves blind on a Wednesday night and they were thrilled to be doing it...and I was right there with them singing...

but singing in key.

So that's where I'm from America. I'm from a small town full of Wednesday drinking, dirndl wearing, faggot haters.

and I'm proud of it.

Get me the hell out,

TJB: Making It

Pissing On My Degree

I was just congratulated on being offered a job that would pay me $8/hr for being a door man/bell hop at a self-declared "anti-hip and therefore hip" new hotel in Chicago.

Oh, don't worry, it's a tipped position.

**channel sassy-black-woman persona to address head of HR**

But since your hotel doesn't even start "previews" until the middle of September and you're already selling your rooms on Groupon, trying to make luxury affordable for all walks of life, I can IMAGINE just how luxurious those tips are going to be from the people who didn't want to pay for a convenient location near ANYTHING.

Oh, you want this hotel to be popular among the neighbors? So every time I open the door for the old man that lives next door to come have his daily scotch in the bar, I'm sure he'll consistently hand me a George Washington (the role that still stings).

So if you could just re-read my resume and remind yourself that I have a pretty stellar GPA from one of the top universities in the United States and then think about the 2 iced coffees a week I'll be living off of because of your generous offer

and then stare into the eyes of headshot that I attached to my original e-mail and APOLOGIZE.

When you asked for young and attractive actors/models to submit for the position, you should have specified "desperate young and attractive actors/models who live at home with mom and dad" because you can't afford to pay for THIS.

My uniform better be slimming,

TJB: Making It

If I Can Make It There...oh wait...

If you're not careful, people will start to write your life for you. When I mentioned that I was thinking about leaving New York, I mostly heard one thing:

"You're giving up already?"

Let me tell you one thing kids:

Every single move I make is meticulously calculated to take me one step closer to a life you've only dreamed of. I am the most resilient son-of-a-bitch (jk Mom) you've ever met and nothing (except for maybe a free mani/pedi and a haircut at this point) will make me "give up". Ain't a single strong- black-woman out there got shit on me (but I respect you all...Sonya).

I wish you could've seen how stupid you looked when you asked me though...

"You're giving up already?"

Bitch, please.

So I called in my big guns and we're ready to roll. The windy-city party scene is going to BLOW.UP. to make this swagger the talk of the town.

I'm about to put Chicago on the map.

Well...it's already on the map but...it'll be in like a really edgy and cool, bold font now...

I'll be back NYC, but it's time for Season 2. I think Autumn in Chicago will be better for the TV show and probably be cheaper to film. See Bravo? I'm budget conscious. PICK ME UP ALREADY.

So keep reading kids. I've only got 4 days left in NYC and they're going to count.

My mom stopped reading out of shame,

TJB: Making It

I Can Haz Broadway?!

As I continuously sit in the 8th row center at every Broadway show, I look around at the people who no doubt paid upwards of my week's salary just to see Harry Potter sing and dance like the over-emoting monkey he is.

I think, "Gee...what if one day I have to sit in the mezzanine." And then I think, "Ha. I would never sit in the mezzanine."

Spoiled? Maybe. Good looking? Definitely.

Let's be honest, theatres should be paying me to sit amongst the ladies-who-lunch and 14 yr. olds whose bleached-out mother's bought them tickets so they'd stop crying in the lottery line. And don't even get me started on the boy next to me who bought every piece of merchandise Catch Me If You Can had to offer and then whined for 5 minutes about the fact that they ran out of show posters. I'm sure Aaron Tveit will be happy sign just your cast album.

Norbert Leo Butz will only sign boobs.

But it was my time at How to Succeed as I leaned forward to tell the bitch in front of me "TURN OFF YOUR G**D*MN PHONE!" that I really began to question what the theatre has become. Souvenir cups being sloshed around during Act II? Attendants peddling goods from the aisles like it's a hockey game? Jean shorts and tank tops paired with kitten heel flip-flops (ladies, they're disgusting, I'll cut off your feet)?

Daniel Radcliffe is on stage getting paid thousands and thousands of dollars per show and the best middle-class America can give him is an American Eagle graphic T?!

For shame, America. For shame. Thespians have struggled for years to maintain the least amount of dignity in a dying art form. The least you could do is chug your drink in the lobby like the greedy little TKTS swine you are.

So here I am wondering:

Is this the life I want to live? Singing and dancing my heart out on stage because it's the only thing that makes me heart happy while straight overweight bald men come with their wives to goggle at some low-cut sequins on some slut from Carnegie Melon (or arguably the pecs on some UMich beefy twink)?

Yes. Yes it is America. GOGGLE AT ME.

Dear Satan: my soul is free,

TJB: Making It