Monthly Archives:

October 2015

Snapshot

This is one of my favorite photos from my recent trip to Seattle. I don’t know anyone in it, I don’t know what street it’s on, and I don’t even think there’s all that much going on, but for some reason it speaks to me more than any picture-perfect composition of the Space Needle ever could. There are a multitude of stories that could be told here, in a single instant in the lives of several people.

There’s a violin, a messenger bag, a back-pack and a baby.

There’s a leather jacket, a Zara, and a Rack.

There is motion and stillness, movement and pause.

Above all else, there is humanity – waking and walking, wandering and wondering.

It is a beautiful, heartbreaking world, and while not always sure of my place in it, I’m grateful to be part of it.

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Shirtless Nick Jonas: Fit For A (Scream) Queen

Ryan Murphy can always be counted on for piquing interest in a tired television idea, such as he did with his latest ‘Scream Queens.’ Enlisting some of the hottest young stars of the moment (and horror-movie matriarch Jamie Lee Curtis) he manages to do it again (hey Arianna Grande!), but like many of Murphy’s endeavors, (‘Glee’, ‘Nip/Tuck’, the second and fourth season of ‘American Horror Story’) this one looks inconsistent at best.

It has, however, already made its mark in the superficial hunk-obsessed landscape of this blog, with the following GIFs of Nick Jonas flexing and posing and showing off his shirtless body because that’s what you do when there’s a murderer on the loose and you’re a hot guy. No stranger to on-screen shirtlessness, or magazine almost-nudity, or sweaty sex scenes, Mr. Jonas pumps his biceps gamely for this one. Of course, in the second episode he is nowhere to be found, and that sort of strip-bait-and-tease is why I don’t watch much television anymore.

(It’s so much easier to wait for the shirtless screen grabs, and it saves an inordinate amount of time to booty.)

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True Blue, Baby

‘Hey!’

‘What?’

Listen…’

When you’re 40, sometimes you have to do something to jolt your complacent, if contented, life into an exciting new realm. Or, in the case of coloring my hair, an old realm, from long ago (the 90’s to be exact).

Once upon a time, I was big on the hair dye. In a single summer, I went from purple to red to blonde to brown to orange and back to black, so I’ve never been afraid to try a new do. In fact, changing up my hair has been an easy way to reinvigorate my spirit when things start to feel too stagnant. So when the merman craze began sweeping the nation this summer, I was both captivated and challenged by the notion that I might return to such a colorful carriage. Since I’ve never been blue, or aqua, I decided that might be the route to go. No, I decided that it was the ONLY way to go.

The plan went into motion as summer was at its zenith. That meant pool play was at its wettest too, and chlorine and sun are not the friends of freshly-dyed hair, so I made plans for the tail end of the season. I also got in touch with Mike at Complexions, who helped design the color, the cut, and the appointment to make it all happen.

There was only one moment of hesitation on my part: after dying the top of my hair light blond, Mike had to dry it before applying the blue, and as it puffed up like the silken top of a corn cob, I wondered what on earth I had done. But like all moments that have simultaneously thrilled and terrified me, I bristled with the excitement of a new adventure, the wonderful sensation of still being able to surprise and scare myself, even at this mid-to-late stage of the game.

Fortunately, I was in good hands with Mike, and after the blue went on, and then the aqua, my merman dream was soon realized. I looked in the mirror, still myself, but with a tinge of blue, a tinge of new, a tinge of something that reminded me of the guy once mistaken for a clown at Ponderosa. But no more tears.

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