May 2016
Making a splash for the summer season, this is Rob Gronkowski‘s new GQ spread, in which he poses like a peacock in a Speedo and just a towel. It certainly plays up his bad-boy/frat-boy/party-boy image (eventually I had to give up on cropping out all the gratuitous bikini gals) and re-establishes his status as football-fun-guy. He’s been a little more naked here before, and has no problem with doffing his clothes for photos, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
A wisteria can be wonderful and wicked, blooming beautifully while wrecking structures with its unwieldly branches and gnarly trunk. There are only two ways to keep such wildness in check: a ruthless pair of pruning shears and a lack of hesitancy in cutting everything back. It’s the only way I’ve kept our single wisteria under control. One has to be willing to destroy.
This has been a topsy-turvy year for the lilacs in our yard. Last summer I coddled and pampered our small stand of them, amending their home with fertilizer and some lime to keep the soil on the basic side. I watered them through the dry spells, careful not to wet the leaves or encourage mildew, and this winter their buds swelled and enlarged with the promise of bountiful blooms. They were just turning that dark purple to signify they were on the way when we had a night or two of deep-freeze weather. We wrapped them in plastic for the worst of it, but it was still not enough – the majority of buds were killed in the late hard frost. Strangely enough, the old-fashioned version that I’d pampered was the variety that suffered most of the kill-back, while the newer double ‘Miss Kim’ hybrid’s buds remained intact. I guess hybrids are sometimes hardier.
The lilacs seen here were the first of the season, and they appeared in Boston a few weeks ago. I pulled the branch on which they floated down to my face and breathed in the familiar, comforting scent of spring. The scent of hope and happiness, and all the returning good of the sun.
This summer I’ll pamper them again, because another spring will be back before we know it, and I’m hell-bent on bringing the blooms. Another lesson in gardening is in not giving up, no matter what. There are good years, and bad years, and everything in-between.
Rustic elegance.
Woodsy sophistication.
If you’re looking for something couture and personally customized for your home, look no further than Dead Wood Field & Furniture. (Damn, I should do this for a living.) This is a promotional post for my brother, because in addition to hooking him up with a magnificent webmaster and taking some decent photos of his goods and wares, I’m now pimping out prime space here to direct you to his new website. (Most of which is populated by my photos.) I’m still waiting for him to me help out with some brick work, but I digress… (And I’m not actually waiting anymore as I finally had to do it myself. He can owe me another time.)
As for Dead Wood Field & Furniture, it’s a pretty impressive endeavor, and based on the early popularity of his pieces, my brother can craft and sell an item that places like Restoration Hardware could only dream of. Since much of his work is customized, it has an artisanal slant that’s all the rage right now. If you’re looking for something specific, or something out of the ordinary that you envision (or have seen elsewhere), get in touch with him.
He’s done pieces as small as miniature coat racks for kids all the way to dining room tables that could fit about a dozen. His style is rustic and wood-heavy, substantial and unpretentious. It’s not my style, but it has its own sort of beauty. (My style has never been popular with the mainstream anyway.)
In addition to the furniture work, he offers a number of fun “field†accessories to accent the forest-inspired motif, and they’re available at his Ballston Spa location. Rustic metallic fixtures, leather-bound books, and even baseball caps with the Dead Wood logo come together to create an atmosphere of kindred coziness. His store on Front Street brackets a bustling little bit of Ballston Spa that was a revelation to me when I first visited. Stores and restaurants lined the throwback-to-another-era, and there was even a spa and hotel nearby. Definitely worth a weekend trip to check it out.
{Dead Wood Field & Furniture has its own website as well as a FaceBook page. The store is open most weekends, but call ahead to confirm hours – (518) 605-1276.}
A rainbow of macarons sweetly but quietly shouts its delicious presence in all manners of flavor and color. It is the perfect break for the middle of the day, and a gentle reminder that we need to take a moment to savor the small things. If you’ll excuse me…
An old-school Barneys classic, Route du Thé: Homme is a cologne based on a slightly spicy green tea platform with the very slightest tinge of musky undertow. It’s unobtrusive enough to wear in any season, though I’m partial to it in the late spring and summer, when heavier scents tend to overwhelm. For some reason it reminds me of New York, when the city empties out for summer weekends, and places once stocked with crowds of people ease up and become pleasantly inhabitable.
Hot sidewalks open up, loosening the tightness of their usual hold like the businessmen loosen their ties on the subway. A hint of citrus enlivens the languid proceedings when the murky humidity threatens to overcome with its stranglehold. This scent manages to cut through that sultry air, while maintaining its integrity for a surprisingly decent length of time. Summer is not so kind to most colognes, which makes this all the more refreshing.
This is the first strong contender for a Summer Anthem – something I’ve largely missed the past couple of summers. The last one I can think of was ‘Starships’ by Nicki Minaj. This time around it’s an instant-classic by Justin Timberlake, ‘Cant Stop The Feeling!’ Only in a summer song are exclamation points allowed, and encouraged!
The season of the sun works in tandem with certain songs to imprint them in our memories, conjuring happier moments of hope and light, and when you listen to them again a few months later, you can almost hear the splashing of pool water and the buzzing cicadas. May and music go hand in hand, as instanced by some of the more memorable songs that came out at this time of the year: ‘Hold On’, ‘It Must have Been Love’, and ‘Turn Up the Radio.’
In this case, the big JT himself is providing a summer anthem that will be hard to top. Infectiously catchy, buoyantly uplighting, and timelessly carefree, ‘Can’t Stop the Feeling!’ is effervescent pop genius, designed for pool-side jams and top-down driving. It is the sonic personification of the summer to come. We need that now.
“I GOT THAT SUNSHINE IN MY POCKET…”
The fire that burns the brightest leaves the biggest hole.
In the sky, they dangle like pom-poms, pendulous and heavy compared to their single brothers and sisters. Some consider them garish and overblown. I can’t find fault with that – I mean, I understand the backlash against such hybridization. It’s unnatural, it’s unwieldy, and the end result is out of place in certain spaces, but I can also appreciate its very over-the-top aspect. More is sometimes more. I also enjoy its late blooming period, one that allowed me to catch this show before it was over.
This is the bold and bodacious Kwanzan cherry.
Locally, our cherries suffered a few late-season hard-freezes that zapped several beloved flowering sessions – the cherries and the lilacs included. This reduced the magnificent showing they usually put on, but there’s always next year. Sometimes even trees need a year off now and then.
The ones here suffered no such hardships, and thus were royally resplendent. They waved their pink puffs proudly in the air, holding them high against a deep blue sky, as if aware of how to present to their best advantage. Yet such arrogance must come to an end, and the life cycle of a cherry blossom is a lesson in the preciously short life of certain beauty.
In the end we all fall down, and not all beauty is everlasting.
The memory, however, may be kept as long as we want it.
I’ll hold this one until the next spring.
It was a mother of a week that kicked off with Madonna’s mammary appearance at the Met Gala. As bold and brazen as that was, it was nothing compared to the beauty that was Alex Libby, Alvaro Francisco, Sean O’Pry and these bodacious Broadway boys.
Washington was alive in shades of pink, yellow and green – and everything in-between.
Do the Jockstrap Hump.
Our sixth wedding anniversary.
Happy World Naked Gardening Day!
Signs, signs, everywhere signs.
A turning point in the Tour Book.
An invitation… for today… and forever.
Last but not least, taking his bow as Hunk of the Day was Zayn Malik.
Our usual Monday recap will be up later today, but before we get back into it, I’d like to offer you a seat. If you’re here on a Monday morning, chances are you’ve been here before. Allow me to welcome you back. Let’s settle in for a little chat – one-sided as per usual, but I’m not big on blog comments so this will have to do.
I just want to thank you for visiting. Not one for visitors in real life, I appreciate the virtual ones much more, and as such want to make this an enjoyable and comfortable experience. While I can’t actually offer you much more than words and visages, I’d recommend getting comfortable and turning this into an experience.
Grab a cup of coffee or tea, or maybe later come back with a cocktail. We’ll raise a glass or mug to our health, to our shared moment, to the fact that in some small way we are connected here.
Pull up that fancy chair (courtesy of the Hotel Monaco in Washington, as I don’t live anywhere near as fancy as the environs pictured – because I love a Washington Kimpton.) Inhale the perfume of that majestic lily. Stretch your legs and relax. This is a place of peace. We can be quiet and content here.
Maybe you’d like some music. A delicate French piano piece, perhaps, or maybe some minimalist jazz – slow-going, lazy, mesmerizing and gentle. Pick something soothing, something slightly ambient. We won’t do anything so taxing as singing along, and it should rise only to the level of background noise. Peaceful, fuzzy, tranquilizing white noise that hums unobtrusively like some misty woodland backdrop.
There is beauty to be found among these pages, archived posts that speak of flowers and nature and handsome things that never ask for engagement beyond a glance or a pause. Peruse at your own speed, slowing when you want to rest, advancing when you’d like to move ahead. You design your experience here.
In my virtual living room, I sit beside you, and you are a treasured and welcomed guest. Come, let us take the day together…
A late-in-the-day post dedicated to my Mom on this special day. We’ll be belatedly celebrating on our semi-somewhat-annual Broadway trip to New York in a couple of weeks, but for now a bookmark of thanks for being such a great Mom and grandmother.
In many ways, I am who I am today because of her. She’s the one who first taught me how to put together an outfit, the one who showed me the fun and joy in shopping, and the one who instilled a love of traveling, with her impeccably-planned summer vacations. She kept the family together when three men were consistently at odds with one another, and formed the pillar of our home when my brother’s and my growing pains threatened to tear it all down. Because of her, our family remains a family to this day. Throughout it all, she maintained a sense of style and class that inspired me to carry myself a certain way, no matter how I might be feeling on the inside, a grace that is a continual reminder to keep going whenever I feel like giving up.
Happy Mother’s Day to the greatest Mom in the world – and to all the Moms out there. It’s the hardest job anyone can do, but it’s never gone unnoticed.
When the world goes dark, and the shit gets real, the only thing to do is go delusional.
These pretty things, these gorgeous scents, these flights of olfactory fantasy – they help me escape. They help us all escape.
The devil lurks in the scarlet details, in the blood moon and the blood-shot eye. He tempts with strange fruit and awaits his prey. Red as the pomegranate seed and metallic as the rust, the air is acrid and thick with smoke.
There are ways to hide, such as in a disguise – the prettier the better – of an orange coat, a fuchsia scarf and a plaid wool bag woven in shades of rose fire.
There are ways to blend in – a smoky match to the heavy air, in amber and musk – where you can envelop yourself in a fragrance that mirrors the autumn and burns into the air its own beauty.
Reclining on tufted velvet, in sensuous delight, he raises a starfruit onto his tongue while more forbidden fruit, sweet and soothing to the mouth, waits in tempting anticipation.
Pulling silk around his neck, he feels like dying a little, but the fragrance of the Amalfi shore reminds him of the beauty in this world, bringing him to a place that he’s never even been.
Maybe that’s the point of these silly scented trinkets.
Maybe they mask the sad futility of it all.
Maybe they are Absolutely Vital.
“If it’s going to stress you out to have a sense of style, don’t do it. The important thing is to be comfortable so you can get on with your life. But I do feel people miss a lot, if that’s how they approach style. They miss out on this whole creative experience.” ~ Iris Apfel
We have arrived at the start of the long, final bend of the tour book. The demons have been vanquished, but vestiges linger. Memories haunt the mind and litter the mental landscape in ways that last beyond their actual existence. Altered and changed, the world is clearer but dimmer. While the imagery is lighter and more seemingly frivolous, the message cuts a little deeper. Without the metaphoric hyperbole of such extremes, things feel more real. More sad, too, because the honest and true look at how things really are can’t help but be imbued with melancholy. Only simpletons maintain happiness in the face of fact.
Some of us – myself included – indulge in merriment and material highs to get us through this world’s darker moments. I splurge on fragrances from Tom Ford, Hermès, Prada and Diana Vreeland to act as a buffer against the deadening sprawl of mundaneness.
Decadent delights, and treats so delicate and sweet they melt in your mouth – these pass the time and cheer the mind. It is impossible to trudge in shoes this pretty – and so we float. It may merely be fantasy, but more exists solely in our heads than could ever be conjured in our sordid air.
THE DELUSIONAL GRANDEUR TOUR: LAST STAND OF A ROCK STAR
01) Intro/Curtain – Part One, Part Two, Part Three
02) Sunset Pool – Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five
03) On The Road Hotel – Part One, Part Two, Part Three
04) Rock Star Addict – Part One, Part Two, Part Three
05) Animal Demons – Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five
06) Steam Punk Birdcage – Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four
07) Red Riding Wood - Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five
08) Winter Top Hat - Part One, Part Two
09) Warrior Retribution - Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight
There are so many signs in this world that tell us what not to do, where not to go, how not to behave, that anything light-hearted, whimsical and fun is always appreciated in these parts. Here we have some pop art and love, two things of which I just can’t get enough. Go look for serious signs elsewhere; you’ll only find bright colors and affection here. Also, remember: art can be found anywhere. Look and you will find it.
The first Saturday in May has been dubbed ‘World Naked Gardening Day‘ and this year it couldn’t have fallen on a better date. The merits of gardening without clothing are questionable at best, dangerous at worst, but so highly entertaining it seems the powers-that-be have made an unofficial holiday of it. Though it’s been far too cold and dreary to take any new shots (and my winter body fat has yet to be shed) I’ve been naked in the garden before, so go here for a look back at my backside. For this post, let’s have a gander at some other asses.
And in case anyone still thinks it’s just a nude pose, check out these gardening links:
Don’t cry for me, Larix decidua.
