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This week’s Friday Five, which all involve signing off of one kind or another:

1. What does it say in the signature line of your e-mails?
My name, e-mail address, and URL. How boring. But as some of you know, I don’t even use it anyway. In college, for a while after I first discovered Rent, I’d sign off with “No day but today.”

2. Did you have a senior quote in your high-school yearbook? What was it? If you haven’t graduated yet, what would you like your quote to be?
My quote was “I will play the swan / And die in music,” which is from Shakespeare’s Othello (V.ii). Yeah, I was a drama queen-in-training. I also quoted from Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along in my valedictory speech. (Thom says, “And they didn’t know you were gay?!”)

3. If you had vanity plates on your car, what would they read? If you already have them, what do they say?
Well, I don’t have a car to begin with, but since this is hypothetical-land, I’ll play along. I’d probably try to get a plate approximating “Rebel Prince,” but unfortunately truncating it to seven or fewer characters is awkward, to say the least. RBLPRNC? RPRINCE? REBELP? (Make your own license-plate graphic at ACME, also the place to make personalized candy hearts and Dymo-type labels. Remember those? My dad had a Dymo labelmaker that I used to play with as a kid. No doubt part of my childhood fascination with, I don’t know, office and library supplies?)

4. Have you received any gifts with messages engraved upon them? What did the inscription say?
No, I don’t think I have. Well, I suppose I’ve received pens with my name on them. (Watch, I’m going to get flooded with e-mails along the lines of, “How could you forget that desk clock which I had lovingly engraved?!”) When I give gifts of books, I do like to write an inscription when possible, at least our names and the date and place of the gift-giving. I think it makes a nice memento.

5. What would you like your epitaph to be?
Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a line or two of Walt Whitman or A. E. Housman. Heck, why not my senior quote (see number 2, above)? It works.

Check out some of the finalists in Design Within Reach’s Holiday Champagne Chair Contest, in which entrants had to design a chair, no more than four inches in height, using the materials from no more than two champagne corks. Amazing. The chair with little wings pictured here is by Lucie Panis-Jones. (Link via The Frosty Mug Revolution.)

While on the topic of chairs, designboom has a number of illustrated histories, tracking the evolution of easy chairs, folding chairs, and other species (click on the images on each page to see more examples). The folding-chair history is also available as a wall poster. (Link via The Morning News.)

It’s Restaurant Week again in D.C. Why don’t I find out about these things sooner? Anyway, it’s a pretty good deal, and ends Sunday, Jan. 18. Here are the details:

D.C. Restaurant Week is back! Enjoy 3-course prix-fixe $20.04 lunches and $30.04 dinners at many of Washington, D.C.’s best restaurants for one week only: Monday, Jan. 12-Sunday, Jan. 18, 2004. Presented by the Washington, D.C. Convention and Tourism Corporation and the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington. Weekend Brunch not included. Book your tables online and insert yourself directly into the restaurants’ live computer Reservation Books, the same ones the maitre d’s use. Bon appetit!

Check out OpenTable for the complete list of participating restaurants and online reservations, and for selected restaurant reviews peruse the Post or the Washingtonian.

This morning I received a supportive and amusing e-mail from my parents in response to yesterday’s entry. My mom tells me to relax a bit and realize that while we do have a lot of control in our lives, there are going to be twists and turns. She writes, “Do I sound like Dr. Phil? I hope not. We do not want to watch his show.” Ha. She can be such a card without even knowing it.¹

She goes on, “We hope you’re back to your normal self, brave and confident.” Yay. My parents are great. Moving away from home three years ago was a big step for all of us, but in some ways, I think it has helped our relationship develop. They see me as an adult–most of the time–and we interact accordingly. (The gay thing is still an issue, but recently we’ve started talking about it again, which is great.) Sure, every time we talk on the phone, my mom still tells me to eat on time and drink plenty of water, but that’s what moms do. I’d miss all that if she stopped.

Thanks to everyone for being there for me.

¹ Speaking of her truth-is-funny style, I’m reminded of a comment she left on my blog a while ago, regarding Martha Stewart: “Before the scandal, I was one of her fans, and now I quietly avoid watching her. You know, how you avoid looking face-to-face a former buddy at a party. No hatred, but something like disappointment.” Now in my head I have this picture of my mom and Martha Stewart at a party, avoiding each other’s glance. Hilarious.

Without getting into all the details, last night I had sort of a breakdown. A handful of different anxieties were coming together, and bam! My composure, which had already been slowly crumbling on the Metro, fell apart, and I barely made it out of the station and into the car before I just started bawling in front of Thom, who came to pick me up. I couldn’t explain why I had such an intense reaction to my issues, which taken individually are actually rather benign and manageable. I guess I had been turning them all over in my head all day and this was how my system decided to deal with it. A big ol’ cry. Thom helped me talk things through, for which I’m grateful. I’m much better now.

This morning I get in the car and wonder aloud, are there no positive songs about Mondays? “Monday Monday.” “Manic Monday.” “Rainy Days and Mondays.” It’s a miracle we get out of bed at all.

Okay, so it’s not that bad. It just feels like it. I’m still in my pre-coffee and bagel daze. I arrive at the Metro, and put on my headphones. The CD in my discman is Wicked, the new Stephen Schwartz musical based on Gregory McGuire’s Wizard of Oz prequel. It’s great. Idina Menzel, what a set of pipes on that girl. I’ve listened to the CD just maybe two times through, but my only quibble is that some of the music is a little flashy. Beautiful and soaring, but a little overwrought or clichéd (“generically impassioned,” says the Times), maybe?

Still, it’s powerful stuff. I surface in Bethesda, at the office building connected to the Metro exit, and open the door to the cold, biting air. The rush of life hits my face, and I hear on my headphones, as if intentionally timed, the climax of the song “Defying Gravity”:

So if you care to find me, look to the western sky
As someone told me lately, everyone deserves a chance to fly
And if I’m flying solo, at least I’m flying free
To those who ground me, take a message back from me
Tell them how I am defying gravity
I’m flying high, defying gravity
And soon I’ll match them in renown
And nobody in all of Oz
No wizard that there is or was
Is ever gonna bring me down

Wow. I can’t help it: I’m walking faster. Am I running now? No, it just feels like it. Woosh! The song ends, and I finally get to my office, seven floors up in the sky, but somehow my feet are back on the ground.

I can’t wait to see this show.

There’s a great new article about Rufus in yesterday’s Chronicle. (And some pictures too; check out those pants!) He sure has come a long way in the past few years. Remember when he was “our” darling, when you thought only “we” knew about him, and then you started going to his shows and looking at the growing number of fans, and thinking, oh my god, who are all these people and where did they come from? Ah, our boy’s hittin’ the big time.

Many of his artistic idols have also since taken notice. Good for him. Take for instance this delicious exchange following his show at the Warfield last month:

At the after-party to the after-party, held at the Tonga Room, author Armistead Maupin sips an umbrella-adorned cocktail and sings Wainwright’s praises. “We met for the first time today, although I’ve been stalking him for years,” he chuckles. “And I told him I really, really want him to work with me on a musical of Tales of the City. I’ll do whatever it takes to get him to do it. I’m in love.”

Wainwright, surrounded by friends and family, blushes when he hears this. “I am enormously honored that Armistead wants to work with me,” he says, slowly and carefully. “And I’m seriously considering it. But I have so much on my plate this year. I’ll just have to see.”

I admit to some cluelessness regarding the slew of Democratic presidential nominee hopefuls. I guess I have some homework to do. I’ve been reading an interesting New Yorker profile of Howard Dean (“Running on Instinct“). Are there any candidates you are leaning towards (or away from)?

Speaking of the presidential race, the Washington, D.C., primary is this Tuesday, Jan. 13. That’s like, really soon. It was moved to early January, ahead of the rest of the country, in order to raise awareness of D.C.’s lack of equal congressional representation. The date change was made under the condition that the results be non-binding on delegates. At least that’s how I understand it. I’ll leave it to the links to spell it out.

Gee, I need a “Schoolhouse Rock”-like presentation to refresh me on the American presidential election process. A primary primer? Oh, wait. I just now looked up information about the anniversary edition DVD of “Schoolhouse Rock,” and lo and behold, there is a new song about the Electoral College called “I’m Gonna Send Your Vote to College.” Heh.