You may know him from “How I Met Your Mother” or “School of Rock,” from his popular YouTube channel, or from his critically acclaimed, extended-run show at Hollywood’s Celebration Theater. Or you may know his sidekick, Lucas Coatney, from season 3 of Idol! He’s Ryan O’Connor, a self-described “big fat gay singing Kathy Griffin, and his big fat gay singing show, “Ryan O’Connor Eats His Feelings,” is coming soon — very soon — to a cabaret near you.

The show tells O’Connor’s life story through song and gab, covering his childhood and adolescence in conservative Arizona, his relationship with a Mormon ex-college-football star from Salt Lake City, and his lusts for everything from food to theater.

Our own Amy K. caught up with Ryan as he was preparing for his national tour’s June 7 launch in San Francisco (that’s Monday night!):

AK: Are gay breakups different from straight breakups?
RO: The truth is, gay breakups just tend to be more dramatic. But I’ve also noticed that the transition from boyfriend to friend is more prevalent in the gay community than the straight community. My boyfriend and I are always going out with exes of mine or exes of his. Truth be told, they’re usually his — I’m not as good at it. My breakups tend to be more abrupt. Besides, it’s not my favorite thing, if I’m going to be completely honest. I feel like if you’ve cut it out, really cut it out. That’s part of the magic of crossing that line — knowing that once you cross it, you can’t go back. If I’ve been naked with you, I can’t un-see you naked. And with my boyfriend’s partners? I try to be the bigger person, but I can’t help but be like, “you slept with it?”

AK: I know what you mean! I have my husband’s ex-wife to contend with!
RO: Oh, that’s even worse! Not only did you sleep with it or live with it — you married it! That’s one of the blessings of not having gay marriage — not having ex-husbands to deal with.

AK: Well, speaking of — what did you think of the Prop 8 experience here in California?
RO: It was so surprising, when the Supreme Court even made that ruling in the first place, and it came as a total shock to most of us. I was single at the time, and suddenly there was this right we didn’t know what to do with. We were all aware there was this tiny window of time when we could get married and have it be legal, and it felt like there was tremendous pressure to partner up — now! It was like a giant game of emotional dodgeball.

Then when Prop 8 went through, it was such a letdown. It all happened at once. I was at Obama’s headquarters in Century City here in LA, and it was this huge ballroom where all these giant TVs were showing the announcement that an African-American had been elected president. And on this tiny TV in the corner with about 15 gay and lesbian men and women huddled around it, and that’s where I found out Prop 8 had gone through. So there was all this hope on one side, and disappointment on the other. But never fear. A lot of people have had their consciousness raised by this. I think California will have gay marriage by 2011.

AK: I’ll take that bet. You talk a lot in your act about being a compulsive overeater. What’s that like on a date?
I’ll tell you, I’m so fortunate because my boyfriend is what you might call a chubby-chaser. Though that has its own complications: if someone loves me for the thing I hate most about myself, could I lose the man I love just by getting skinny? I’ve learned to love myself in a whole new way because he loves my body the way it is. And I have to, too: because if I can love myself at any weight, dropping pounds is just icing on the cake — no pun intended!

AK: What’s the show like?
It’s called cabaret, but I’m going out of my way to make it accessible to people who’ve never been to cabaret in their life. Even though it’s very specific, it’s completely relatable — it’s called Ryan O’Connor Eats his Feelings, but it could just as easily be called John Doe Drinks his Feelings or  Tiger Woods Fucks his Feelings. Because it’s about learning to feel your feelings through music and laughter rather than whatever addiction you have.

To me, it doesn’t make sense that cabaret is not as popular as standup. They’re both storytelling. Cabaret should be as mainstream as Kathy Griffin or Dane Cook. It just takes a few people getting out there and starting it.

Click here for Ryan O’Connor’s full tour schedule!

Male marrieds: When your wife shot you that “Perhaps no sevenths on the pumpkin pie, yo,” glance, or suggested lite mayo for your next-day turkey sammich, then was the time to give thanks. Science says her health-centric concerns could help keep you from a premature date with that big, fluffy bowl of mashed potatoes in the sky.

A recent study by the Swedes finds that the more educated and intelligent the wife, the longer-living the hubs — regardless of his I.Q. or schooling. Why? Hypothetically: (her) higher education leads to increased enlightenment about nutritious, healthful eating, which she passes along to him. Let’s just hope most wives, Ivy League or no, are educated as to this: candied yam casserole, once a year, totally won’t kill you. (Rather, it makes you happy to be alive.)

friends, more than friends, and family. Especially Adam Lambert’s mom. Have a lovely, restful, sweet-potato-casserole-with-marshmallows-ful holiday!

Further reading: Breakup Girl’s Thanksgiving files.

With the exception of the Iron Chef shows, I readily admit that I do not watch a lot of reality cooking programs. I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to be getting from these shows that pit big city chefs against each other and force them to concoct 12-course meals without using flour, sugar, water and milk and instead focusing all their food on lavender-infused soy milk. And I supposed I’ve worked in to many kitchens to care about the heightened drama TV tries to lend to those places.

That said, I am addicted to $12 Challenge. It’s a dating and food competition all rolled into one. The tag line for the Web-based series on Food2.com is: “2 Love-Hungry Cooks. 1 Hot Date. 1 Ticking Clock and $12. Oh, and the City is their only kitchen.”

The competitors are regular people — not real chefs — and they have $12 and two hours to buy and cook a meal of the datee’s choice. And they have to use their creativity to figure out how to cook these meals. In the most recent Webisode, for example, Chanell and Athena are competing for a date with Larry who wants steak and eggs (and is, “Hungry for everything — love, food…” Such a player!). Chanell cooks her meal at a dry cleaners using an iron (it turns out that you CAN cook eggs with an iron if you have to) and Athena uses a blowtorch at a body shop for hers. Other wannabe lovers have talked their way into deli’s and restaurants and used real kitchens, but it’s much more entertaining to watch the girls wielding their improvised searing implements to get their food done.

Best of all, the episodes are about five minutes long. Perfect for procrastinating work without demanding too much of a commitment.

We already know that yogurt is the official food of women. (Dessert: Fling Bar.) And that real men don’t eat the savory egg tart that dare not speak its name. A.K. Whitney over at Siren (via The Frisky) has even been told — by the waiter she just ordered from — that Beef Stroganoff was “a man’s dish.” So tell: have those stereotypes — steeped in lame, undercooked notions of masculinity and femininity — made their way onto your plates? Are you a guy who gets a look for ordering salad? A gal who asks for regular…and gets served Diet?

OK, now I’m hungry. And not, it should be noted, for a rice cake.

BG has long maintained that breakups are the messy stuff of life, not the sloppy kiss of death. For one thing, most relationships really do leave us enriched in some way that may outlive the romance: we get to know a new neighborhood, acquire a hobby, finally understand — when our squeeze subjects us to a Buffy marathon conversion process — what all the fuss is about. Why, from one old flame BG learned to snowboard and to change a tire (using a jack, not super-strength); from another, I got art history, and rage. I KID.

But what about those of us lucky (and smart) enough to have swooned for a good cook? (Or, in other news, cooked for a good swoon?) The honeymoon may have ended, but his/her honey-glazed salmon lives on … in your repertoire. Enter (via a friendly tipster) The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook: They Came, They Cooked, They Left (But We Ended Up with Some Great Recipes),
which, yes, is a cookbook, but not of the To Serve Man variety. The authors: “‘God,’ we’d find ourselves saying, ‘he made the most incredible vinaigrette….”. It’s a couple of years old, but I’m sure it, and Ezra’s Sticky Chicken, will stand the recipe-test of time.

And while we’re at it, dish: Have any of your relationships, even the less savory ones, yielded delicious results like these?

Really, you can both pinch pennies and feed your squeeze! Visualize whirled peas with Clara Cannucciari, 91, host of Great Depression Cooking with Clara, who offers thrifty recipes — those her mother made in the extra-lean 30s — along with salty way-back-when anecdotes. Dig this one about her friendly neighborhood whisky bootleggers. (Sorry, no recipe for that.)

Via BoingBoing.

For some, music is the food of love. For BG, food is the food of love. Which is why she knows she’ll dig FOBG Giulia Melucci’s I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti.

From today’s NY Times: “Her romantic adventures are interspersed with recipes like “Morning After Pumpkin Bread” and “Ineffectual Eggplant Parmigiana” (“Serves the two of you plus the three people you wish were there to keep the conversation going”).

Not exactly sure what I’m s’posed to do with this maple-bacon-flavored lollipop, courtesy of artisanal treats purveyor Das Foods, suggestively dubbed “Man Bait.”

Is the point that if I lick away at one, I’m giving off a seductive visual — kinda like when you’re in a cartoon and your friend is really hungry, and suddenly you look like a pork chop?

Or do the lolly’s “real smoky bacon bits” unleash an irresistible aroma which, with humanlike fingers, lures the object of my confection by the nose toward my swine-scented pucker?

Or or, is it he who is meant to ingest the pop in the first place? (And then I guess he gets the hint, so we go out for pancakes start making out?)

A final conundrum (why must I overcomplicate candy?): Just what kind of man am I baiting here? Because it seems a maple-bacon lollipop’s targeted demographic, as of late, is a manorexic hipster who somehow manages to spend an afternoon sampling bacon while still fitting into his skinny jeans.

From a crispy-in-milk tipster: “Most guys can talk about cereal the way most women can talk about shoes. Jimmy what-nows? I don’t know, but let me tell you about what happened when Honeycomb changed its formula….”.

Right-o. (Or should I say Urkel-O?) (No. No one should ever say Urkel-O.)

So: study this exhaustive tribute to discontinued cereals in order to solve (or add to) a bit of gender mystery about the King Vitaman in your life.