Yearly Archives:

2015

I Should Be Tarred & Feathered For This…

Preferably with ostrich feathers to restore some of the luster to my badly-tarnished crown. I just purchased something I swore I would never purchase: a pair of L.L. Bean rubber boots. Oh the shame. Oh the sorrow. Oh for the love of God… This is the ultimate sign of growing up and giving in, and I hate every moment of it. It was not a joyful shopping experience. The creaky wooden environs of the L.L. Bean store have always made me ill at ease, and up until tonight I’ve only used the space as a short-cut from the parking lot to the mall. Kayaks and customers in sweatshirts closed in on me, and I fought with a few racks of fleece before finding my way to the “footwear” section. Once there, the dismal palette of grays and hunter greens and every shade of shit imaginable stared forlornly from their wooden perches. So this then was hell.

Let’s back up a bit, though, to the snowy day my Ice Blue Show Queen (a.k.a. the Mini Cooper) stood in the parking lot outside my office building. By the time I made it out a little after 5 PM, she was covered in snow, and the parking lot was buried in a few inches of cold fluffy ice crystals. My black wingtips crunched and groaned beneath my feet, and snow fell across my ankles and snuck beneath the arch of my feet. It was awful. The 100-foot walk was brief, but in half a foot of snow it felt like forever. When I finally finished brushing the white stuff off my car all by myself (co-workers had scattered when I ordered them to help me) my feet were frozen and wet and my shoes were cursing me out for daring to treat them with such disdain. I told them to pipe down and suck it up. (Yes, I talk to my shoes. They’re that nice.) I thought briefly of doing what I never thought I’d do, but put it from my mind. Not that. Not yet.

A week later, I was walking into work and daintily trying to navigate the slushy mess another winter storm had left behind. Burgundy leather recoiled at the contact with white and gray salt, practically squealing and begging me to stop. When I entered the building they cried out, spattered in white salt and gasping for breath and fresh water. This couldn’t go on much longer. There were shoes at stake. My babies. My precious…

So tonight I did it. I took the plunge and bought a pair of L.L. Bean rubber boots, just for walking through the mess this winter has so brutally dumped upon us. They were handcrafted for me “at L.L. Bean Manufacturing in Brunswick, Maine by Holly and the Bean Boot Team.” Holly signed her first name, but didn’t dare leave her last because she knew I’d hunt her down and make her pay for this. Well, someone has to pay dearly for making me break such a solemn vow.

They don’t go with much of what I’d normally wear (being that I don’t typically carry an ax or favor plaid flannel) but I will make them work. This will be my greatest challenge – and my biggest defeat. Winter, you win. For now…

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Painted with Words, Brought to Life with Imagination

I have told you that I was reluctant to describe him as an artist pure and simple, and indeed that he declined this title with a modesty touched with aristocratic reserve. I might perhaps call him a dandy, and I should have several good reasons for that; for the word ‘dandy’ implies a quintessence of character and a subtle understanding of the entire moral mechanism of this world; with another part of his nature, however, the dandy aspires to insensitivity…

The dandy is blasé, or pretends to be so, for reasons of policy and caste. He is a master of that only too difficult art – sensitive spirits will understand – of being sincere without being absurd.

To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world – such are a few of the slightest pleasures of those independent, passionate, impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito. The lover of life makes the whole world his family, just like the lover of the fair sex who builds up his family from all the beautiful women that he has ever found, or that are – or are not – to be found; or the lover of pictures who lives in a magical society of dreams painted on canvas. Thus the lover of universal life enters into the crowd as though it were an immense reservoir of electrical energy. Or we might liken him to a mirror as vast as the crowd itself; or to a kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness, responding to each one of its movements and reproducing the multiplicity of life and the flickering grace of all the elements of life…

And the external world is reborn upon his paper, natural and more than natural, beautiful and more than beautiful, strange and endowed with an impulsive life like the soul of its creator. The phantasmagoria has been distilled from nature. All the raw materials with which the memory has loaded itself are put in order, ranged and harmonized, and undergo that forced idealization which is the result of a childlike perceptiveness – that is to say, a perceptiveness acute and magical by reason of its innocence!

~ Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life

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With a Flash of Booty, and a Breathtaking Performance, Madonna Ruled the Grammys

“This will be a revolution of inquiring further, of not worrying about winning other people’s approval, of not wishing we were someone else but perfectly content to be who you are, someone unique and rare and fearless. I want to start a revolution of love.” ~ Madonna

 

A swirling vortex of minotaur horns forms itself into a marching line leading to the stage of the Grammy Awards, while Madonna’s disembodied voice rings deeply over the majestic intro to the Offer Nissim Living for Drama mix of ‘Living For Love.’ A blood-red curtain disappears into the sky revealing our Queen, standing there in a toreador cape, which she quickly throws off in one powerful gesture (and with such force that one of her epaulets comes partially off.) She’s had wardrobe malfunctions before, but unlike some whose careers have derailed because of them, Madonna just shirks them off and carries on, this time strutting around in that giddiness-inducing ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ prance. 

What’s notable about the performance is her enduring and endearing willingness to bust her ass out there in front of the whole world. She admittedly had butterflies in her stomach, and performing at the Grammys has never been her strongest bit, but she delivered the most electrifying performance of the evening. Annie Lennox may have musically brought the house down, but it was Madonna who got the crowd to its feet and audibly cheering. (Industry crowds aren’t necessarily the most fun.)
She was lifted, twirled and spun by her menacing minotaurs, but it was clear there was but one bull-wrangler here, and she was in supreme charge. She removed her problematic jacket halfway through the show, lied down on a riser for a second, and made a quick nod to her rolling-on-the-floor ‘Like A Virgin’ performance on the inaugural MTV Music Awards, before a choir joined her to get everyone on their feet and clapping along. She disappeared but for a second behind her sea of bulls, and then rose literally to the rafters, lifted by love (and a couple of wires.) All in all, it was a grand return to form from the woman whose own revolution started over three decades ago. 
Now, let’s talk about her entrance to the show, because the red carpet get-up is just as integral a part of the evening as the performance itself. Madonna is nothing if not a living work of art, and her corseted toreador-triumph by Givenchy was a thrilling moment in itself. Better still was her cheeky fuck-off to reporters and press, as she lifted her tiny dress and exposed her fishnets and thong-bound ass while her publicist grinned in the background. That takes balls ~ and that’s Madonna. 
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Snowy (Re)Cap

Let’s not discuss the snow, ok? Only because I’m trying to cut down on the word ‘fuck’ here. And ‘bullshit.’ So please, no snow talk. Instead, let’s go back to the days immediately following all the SuperBowl glory, and one Sebastian Vollmer. Besides, I’m still coming down off the Madonna high of last night. I need a moment…

Ricardo Veia showed the magic of black and white, and he did it all in his underwear.

For those of you who missed Ben Cohen on the blog of late, you’re not alone, so here you go.

Dance, dance, cry.

It’s all about The MoMo.

Only a few special guys get a second crowning as Hunk of the Day. Chris Salvatore is pretty damn special.

When in doubt, quote Baudelaire and post a mustache.

Getting your Krit off ~ Krit McLean.

Sometimes you just have to Thai one on.

The Special Guest Blog spot this Sunday was delectably filled by Carl Franco, who put a culinary spin on things.

Channing Tatum’s naked ass.

Finally, the highlight of the week was easily the return of Madonna to the pop scene. Not that she ever really left, but she’s back in full-force thanks to this brilliant video that elevates the lead single from her forthcoming album ‘Rebel Heart’ to a whole new level. Things are about to get damn good. Ole!

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Channing Tatum Gets Butt Naked

Much ado has been made of Channing Tatum’s new poster for the sequel to ‘Magic Mike’ ~ ‘Magic Mike XXL‘ ~ and its full-frontal ‘Coming’ tease, but it’s his ass that features here. (By the way, does one need to have seen the original to get much more out of the sequel? Am I the only one who’s only seen GIFs of the movie?) Anyway, this is Channing Tatum’s naked butt. It’s been on display here before (particularly in this booty-throwdown with fellow hunk Joe Manganiello), but I find such things deserve a second look, especially when it wiggles like that.

An alternate, but more succinct and powerful take on ‘Magic Mike XXL’ was given by my hero Louis Virtel, who had this to say:

“When the hell do we get what we deserve? When do we get the frontal nudity? It’s 2015, I’m watching a trailer for ‘Magic Mike XXL’ and I’m pretending to be scandalized by humping motions. I’ve got news for you: I see at least one penis every day of my life. Sometimes more! The idea that we’re about to watch another ‘Magic Mike’ movie that congratulates itself for being edgy without even offering up a well-lit frame of a single dick is stupid and annoying. Do the cool thing, Channing! Wink and whip it out. Done! You’re done! Just do it. The title ‘XXL’ is promising, but I’m hoping it’s a response to our very, very reasonable demand for an actual damn johnson in this lacquered-up smutfest. Amen and praise be.”

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Ritorna, Ritorna Madonna!

Madonna heralds her official return to the pop frontline this evening on the Grammy Awards (she’s been middle-of-the-pack for the last few years). This time the hunger is back, the sparkle in full effect, and the music easily her best in a decade. New album ‘Rebel Heart’ drops in a few weeks (unless the most recent leak impels her to surprise us a little early). The video for lead single ‘Living For Love’ was discussed in a post before this. All in all, it feels like a very exciting moment. That’s always been the case for us die-hard fans, but this time I think the whole world is going to join in the celebration.

It feels similar to the excitement and electricity in the air before the releases of ‘Erotica‘, ‘Ray of Light‘, and ‘Confessions on a Dance Floor.’ In other words, the magic of Madonna is about to take hold. In my life, it turns out I could actually count on very little, but the one woman who has always been there for me still stands tall, and gives me strength. The rebel heart beats faster, the blood pumps harder, and the world rattles with anticipation.

Picked up my crown, put it back on my head,

I can forgive, but I will never forget…

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Cooking with Carl: Special Guest Blog

{Today’s Special Guest Blog is written by my pal Carl, a FaceBook/Twitter friend who has broken through the computer screen with very real gifts and correspondence to both Andy and myself. Many times I have salivated over the food photos he posts of meals he’s made that seem like second nature to him, but that would take an unaccomplished novice like me two days and two thousand dirty dishes to conjure (along with some heated expletives from the kitchen-clean-up crew). As I expected when I asked him to write a post, this is wonderful and witty and makes me feel like I’m in the kitchen with Carl, sharing a glass of wine and laughing at this hapless world. It’s a grand and cozy feeling. Like friendship.}

Special Guest Blog by Carl Franco:

I love writing, yet oddly I never write. To me, the written word holds great respect, while for others it’s merely a way to locate the nearest restroom. That being said, when Alan prompted me to write for his blog, I honestly did not know what I was going to write. But if I ever have to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) I can usually conjure up something somewhat creative. In addition, anyone who follows me on Twitter/Facebook or is privy to my annual ‘Christmas Letter’ knows that I have a quick, dry, sarcastic wit that I’m not afraid to use. But still, when Alan hinted that I be one of his guest blog writers, I felt stumped. So I fell back to that old adage, write what you know.

Some people shop (well, I’m gay, so I do that too), some people play sports, some people paint, some work out constantly, some people drink, but I cook. If I’m happy I cook, if I’m sad I cook, if I’m pissed off I cook, if I’ve had a good day at work I cook, if I’ve had a bad day at work I cook. So if I have not made this abundantly clear, I cook.

Working in the retail wine business adds another layer to all of this. My family has maintained the same wine shop since the day after prohibition in 1933 (FrancosWine.com if you care to visit) and so naturally this goes hand in hand with my love of food. Whatever you do though, don’t call me a ‘foodie’ or you’ll feel the stinging slap of wire mesh from kitchen spider across your face.

However, while I like to cook, I hate recipes. I have no patience to read them. Give me a list of ingredients and a picture of the finished product and I’m good to go. Our host, Alan Ilagan knows this, when he posts pictures of his food I will often message him and ask one or two quick questions and that’s all I need to know in order to recreate a dish.

Maybe it’s an internal sense, but I’ve always had a knack for what flavors/foods/ingredients will pair well, and which ones won’t. The man at my local produce store, unbeknownst to me, was fascinated by my method of shopping. One day he said to me in passing “I love how you shop, you never have a list, but yet you always seem to know what you are looking for.” Truth is, plenty of times I just walk around the market until that one ingredient catches my eye, and I build the recipe from there. I could tell you something obnoxious like ‘I let the ingredients speak to me’, but frankly if I ever hear leeks start talking to me, I’ll be forced to adjust my alcohol intake. All I do is find that one ingredient on which to build, and more than not the results are partially serendipitous.

However, don’t ever ask me for a recipe, I will be the first to admit that I am terrible at giving out recipes. While I do give them out (in good faith) chances are that I probably won’t remember exactly how I made the dish. So when people ask me for recipes, more often than not, they turn out wrong. When they tell me of their culinary disaster, I often have them walk me through the recipe. Sooner or later I will see the problem and will say something like, “Well, that’s when you add the white wine or chicken broth” to which they replied, “But you didn’t say that!” My sister has often been the recipient of answers like this, and she gets angry when my reply is, “Well, I don’t bother with instructions that are obvious” – to which she turns and walks away muttering odious names for me under her breath. Instances like this eventually led my friend Bill to do a mockup of a cookbook for me.

Yet it’s not always me, some people are just hopeless when it comes to cooking. About 25 years ago I lived with a friend of mine in Boston and his fiancé would come over and see some fabulous meal I made and say to me, “You have to stop this!!! You can’t be making meals like this on a Tuesday night. This is a Sunday night meal! Stop this at once or Kevin is going to expect food like this once we are married.” So, after they were wed, I tried to coach her, but it was a rough start, there were many mistakes including one instance where she used “six cans of anchovies” instead of “six filets of anchovies.” I asked her husband about the meal and he said, “I was starving, I just ate it.” She also once cooked a pie for three hours because she didn’t think it looked done. But eventually she improved and surprisingly their marriage survived all the food beta-testing.

One year I included the below recipe in my annual Christmas letter and you would not believe the number of people who filed it away without reading it only to realize months and in one instance two years later, when they discovered it was a fake.

Carl’s Kahlua Christmas Cookies

 

2 cups unbleached flour

½ cup granulated sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 vanilla bean (crushed)

2 cups Kahlua, plus one shot

¼ cup whole milk

½ cup crushed ice

½ cup chopped walnuts (optional)

 

Reserve 1 cup of the Kahlua and set aside for later.

Measure out all the dry ingredients and sift together.

Pour one shot of Kahlua and taste for freshness.

Tell your family you are busy cooking and barricade the kitchen door and turn on the electric mixer. Combine remaining Kahlua and milk – Pour over the crushed ice and drink.

Use the ‘reserve’ cup of Kahlua if relatives are staying overnight. If hunger strikes, eat the nuts.

So, in closing, I invite you all to my house, there will always be something cooking, and there will always be an open bottle of wine – and being Italian, there is always room for one more…

~ Carl Franco

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Thai To-Die-For

Here are a few photos from a Thai lunch I had in Washington a number of months ago. I found them on my drive, and while I’ve forgotten the name of the place, the memory of how good it was lingers. Rather than go into the recipes and descriptions and a whole lot of hoo-ha, allow me to let the images speak for themselves. (In other words, you told me to shut up, so sit down and enjoy it.)

Tomorrow we are featuring a Special Guest Blog whose focus is on food, so let this be a mouth-watering preamble to that. Someone set the table, because this is going to be good.

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Commercial Break

This one’s worth a look, and it’s certainly better than anything I saw during the Superbowl.

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Living for This Video

The last few videos Madonna has made have largely been, gasp, lackluster – and for the woman who practically invented the music video, this was simply unacceptable. Don’t get me wrong, fluffy escapist trifles like ‘Turn Up the Radio‘ and ‘Give Me All Your Luvin‘ provided passing interest, and were devoured by a Madonna-hungry public because of the piss-poor promotional efforts for her last record, MDNA, but they paled in comparison to former glories like ‘Like A Prayer‘ or ‘Bad Girl.’

Her latest video for ‘Living For Love’ doesn’t quite return her to the apex of video artistry, but it comes damn close, and carries with it enough powerful imagery to turn a relatively standard song into something more meaningful, something more galvanizing, something more, well, Madonna. As noted, I found the ‘Living For Love’ song nice enough, but wasn’t convinced it was lead-off single material. Yes, it brought her back to those 90’s-nostalgic house beats and piano chords, and the injection of gospel elements lifted it to a higher ground, but it still felt a bit like a filler track, a throw-away song that could be taken away without leaving a hole in my heart. The video changes things a bit, more succinctly bringing the song into focus as a self-empowerment anthem, as Madonna vanquishes a circle of encroaching minotaurs like so many fallen chess pieces.

As someone who’s been under his fair share of attacks, both deserved and unfounded, I like the metaphors and the dazzling imagery. Most of all, I like the classic Madonna theme of exorcising the ghosts of those who have wronged her in such a cathartic and spellbinding way. We go to battle with our demons every day, be they family or foe (or any combination of the two), ex-lovers or longstanding-obsessions, former flames or future fucks – but rather than indulging in the bitter she exults in the sweet, rising above and leaving the past behind. It’s what Madonna has always done best: never looked back. There’s a cost to it, but you’re not about to see her emotional bank account.

The video is notable for the impossible way it manages to reinvent Madonna for the bazillionth time, repositioning her as toreador, and showing off several camera moves and angles and dance moves that she’s never tried out before – that in itself is a pretty substantial accomplishment for a woman who’s done practically everything on video by this point (witness the incredible fall and rise close-up that begins at 0:41 and the stunning jump at 1:48.)

Most thrilling for those of us die-hard fans who notice every subtle nuance, intended or not, are the references that Madonna makes to her own body of work. The matador outfit brings back the days of ‘You Can Dance‘, and the bolero might even have been reclaimed from 1987 itself. She steps into the male bull-fighter role she so elegantly paired off with in ‘Take A Bow’ and ‘You’ll See‘ – and executes a snippet of the ‘Papa Don’t Preach‘ strut that originally ended with the first sanctioned peek-a-boo of nipple back in 1986.

Madonna’s come a long way since that epochal decade in which she rose to the pinnacle of the pop heap. She still hovers in that rarefied air, and really, no one else can quite touch her when it comes to history and legacy and modern-day currency. If she isn’t as pervasive as she once was, she still holds incredible sway and power, and the readily-admitted worship of almost every current pop star, and quite a few who have come and gone over the incredible ongoing span of her career.

“Man is the cruelest animal. At tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions he has so far felt best on earth; and when he invented hell for himself, behold, that was his very heaven.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

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The Artist, Man of the World, Man of the Crowd, and Child

Today I want to discourse to the public about a strange man, a man of so powerful and so decided an originality that it is sufficient unto itself and does not even seek approval…

His interest is the whole world; he wants to know understand and appreciate everything that happens on the surface of our globe. The artist lives very little, it at all, in the world of morals and politics.

Let us go back, if we can, by a retrospective effort of the imagination, towards our most youthful, our earliest, impressions, and we will recognize that they had a strange kinship with those brightly coloured impressions which we were later to receive in the aftermath of a physical illness, always provided that that illness had left our spiritual capacities pure and unharmed. The child sees everything in a state of newness; he is always drunk. Nothing more resembles what we call inspiration than the delight with which a child absorbs form and colour. I am prepared to go even further and assert that inspiration has something in common with a convulsion, and that every sublime thought is accompanied by a more or less violent nervous shock which has its repercussion in the very core of the brain. The man of genius has sound nerves, while those of the child are weak. With the one, Reason has taken up a considerable position; with the other, Sensibility is almost the whole being. But genius is nothing more or less than childhood recovered at will – a childhood now equipped for self-expression with manhood’s capacities and a power of analysis which enables it to order the mass of raw material which it has involuntarily accumulated. It is by this deep and joyful curiosity that we may explain the fixed and animally ecstatic gaze of a child confronted with something new, whatever it be, whether a face or a landscape, gilding, colours, shimmering stuffs, or the magic of physical beauty assisted by the cosmetic art…

~ Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life

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The Magic of MoMo

In spite of the fact that Andy gave him Pop Rocks on New Year’s Eve and he vomited shortly thereafter, Suzie’s little tyke MoMo returned to our home for several dinners since then. For MoMo, I think, the best part of any visit is a freeze-pop, and Uncle Andy had them at the ready. There’s nothing more satisfying than sending your friend’s children home on a sugar high. It just lifts the spirits.

(Of course, if you let him out of your sight for one quick moment, you may have to clean up turquoise stickiness from hidden parts of the hardwood floor. Word to the wise, from the wise.)

At this frigid time of the year we find solace in our friends, who have indeed become family. The sound of little kids running around our home can muffle the coldest winds.

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Crying Out Your Name

Please add dance troupes – well, amazing dance troupes – to flash mobs on the list of unlikely things that make me cry. Maybe it was the morning on which I watched this, or the way the winter so desolately peeked in through the front door, but seeing this performance by Cookies just brought tears to my eyes. Now, as the wind whips through the dead fronds of a fern on the front porch, and the sun glistens on the ridges of an icicle, I once again marvel at the beauty of the world. The heartbreaking, tender beauty of the world.

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It’s Ben Cohen, Baby…

And it’s been far too long since we’ve featured Mr. Cohen on this website. (I don’t like to go much longer than a month between Ben features.) Apologies about that, but here’s a video of his StandUp Foundation calendar shoot. It’s always a joy to see the finished product of Ben Cohen underwear shots in perfectly lighted magnificence, but occasionally the road to get such shots is littered with sexy moments too. Such is the case when you check out this quick little making-of video. Helping matters out considerably are the generous smiles Mr. Cohen flashes throughout, even when getting sprayed in the face. Yes, it’s captured on video. Just watch…

(And in the event that you think there’s nothing behind the hotness, visit the StandUp Foundation’s website and read about all the noble efforts Mr. Cohen has made to combat bullying. Pretty impressive package all around.)

 

Then there are these GIFs from an Attitude photo shoot where, if you use your imagination in just the right (or wrong) way you can picture Ben Cohen naked. You are welcome.

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Buried in the White Night

“First Snow”

By Mary Oliver

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles, nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain — not a single
answer has been found —
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.

 

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