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April 2015

Outside of upstate New York circles, I have to clarify when I claim to be from Amsterdam. Apparently my little hometown is not on the international map, while some sex-and-pot-riddled place in the Netherlands has made a name for itself under the same moniker. Visiting the real-deal has always been a dream of mine, but until that day arrives I’ll have to do with the city that stood home for a single windmill (until it burned down a while ago.)

On a recent weekend, I traveled back to Amsterdam, NY to work on a new project. My brother’s been renting out a space in the Clock Tower, once the center of the busy carpet mills that put the place on the map. Those mills closed, leaving a shell of an industry in their wake. Now, it seems the city is trying to revitalize the spot with some trendy industrial loft-style spaces. Sky-high ceilings and enormous windows make for the perfect backdrop for an artsy-fartsy photo shoot.

It’s for a top-secret project which I’ve been working on rather loosely for the past few months, and it kicks into high gear now that spring has reinvigorated my drive. Let’s just say it’s a final lesson in delusional grandeur.

To that end, I’ll be busy with photo shoots and writing and editing and compiling, so this site will be on auto-pilot. (Not that anyone will notice, as I’ll program posts as I’ve always done, and there won’t be a blip in the Hunk of the Day parade.)

Behind the scenes, however, this bee will be busy flitting from inspirational flower to inspirational flower, as I work to create the final piece of a puzzle that’s been in the making for twenty years.

The year, after all, is 2015. A lot of shit went down twenty years ago.

Karma Chameleon, baby… and remember: karma is a bitch.

“Nothing he did or said was unpremeditated. He saw through everybody, but he saw through them precisely because the first thing he looked for in people was the very thing he had seen in himself and may not have wished others to see.” ~ André Aciman, ‘Call Me By Your Name’

How could anyone intuit the manner of someone’s thinking unless he himself was already familiar with this same mode of thinking? How could he perceive so many devious turns in others unless he had practiced them himself?

What struck me was not just his amazing gift for reading people, for rummaging inside them and digging out the precise configuration of their personality, but his ability to intuit things in exactly the way I myself might have intuited them. This, in the end, was what drew me to him with a compulsion that overrode desire or friendship or the allurements of a common religion.

~ André Aciman, ‘Call Me By Your Name’

 Did his heart jolt when he saw me walk into a room?

I doubted it.

Did he ignore me the way I ignored him that morning: on purpose, to draw me out, to protect himself, to show I was nothing to him? Or was he oblivious, the way sometimes the most perceptive individuals fail to pick up the most obvious cues because they’re simply not paying attention, not tempted, not interested?

~ André Aciman, ‘Call Me By Your Name’

I’d never traveled in this world. But I loved this world. And I would love it even more once I learned how to speak its language – for it was my language, a form of address where our deepest longings are smuggled in banter, not because it is safer to put a smile on what we fear may shock, but because the inflections of desire, of all desire in this new world I’d stepped into, could only be conveyed in play.

~ André Aciman, ‘Call Me By Your Name’

Across the street from where I slurped a bowl of pho, I watched this gentleman step outside for a smoke. I was struck by his apron of bright yellow, and while it was more than likely a piece of utilitarian garb, for me it was the perfect spot of spring color. Like some striking canary in a sea of gray-backed robins, he shone like the sun, resplendent in a world of uninspired surroundings.

The wind blew his smoke down the street, and soon his quick break was over. Hunched over a bit, he shuffled back inside, while others hurried by ignoring his colorful outfit. My eyes followed until the door closed behind him.

The weather of April is so variable that it’s risky to put up any ‘warm and sunny’ post in advance of it actually happening. Oh well, no risk, no glory, so on with the story. As our Northeastern spring struggles to catch up with the rest of the world, April is wild and unpredictable, not unlike the last week on this blog.

The most pressing matter of the moment is the question of how I’m going to procure a pair of these sneakers. Ideas and donations are equally welcome.

I’m hoping to return to the brilliance of Boston very soon, preferaby with skies like these. And flowers like these.

Madonna performed a scorching rendition of ‘Bitch, I’m Madonna’ on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, but I was much more enchanted by her ‘Ghosttown’ song and video.

Along those lines, Terrence Howard made his debut as Hunk of the Day thanks in part to his co-starring role in the above-referenced Madonna video.

Slowly but surely, it’s on the way.

Stupid is as stupid says.

In the question of who’s hotter in their underwear, Justin Bieber is hardly giving David Beckham a run for his budgie-smuggling money.

When Kira’s around, things get saucy and Saulty.

Adam Lambert got ripped.

No matter what nastiness was going on outside, the Hunks of the Day kept things nice and toasty. This week’s honorees included Chris Nogiec, Filip Sjunnesson, Jussie Smollett, Ming Tsai, and, one of my favorites in a long time, Luke Watson.