Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

Ahh, the apple. Fine fruit of the forest, or at least the carefully cultivated orchard. Fruit production is largely a messy scientific battle against pests and disease, and the apple trees of my youth – as sour and bitter as they were so sweetly forbidden – did not translate into any love for growing them as an adult. Leave that to the experts and the ones who can afford to keep the villainous insects at bay.

These days I’m happy just picking up a basket and having them on hand to snack on or put into a tart or crumble. If it’s an especially good day Andy might make an apple pie from scratch – a wonder of culinary execution, as he turns a buttery dough into a flaky crust, and the apples melt magically into their sweet sauce. (I’ve never had much success with cooking apples – they’re either hopelessly mushy in overdone overkill or quite crunchy and raw, entirely at odds with the soft slide of a properly-executed dessert confection.)

Their scent reminds me of fall afternoons after school, when we’d return to the garage and smell the white bag of them perfuming the dusty air as the sun slanted into the space and lit up the floating particles like magic. It was one of the happier memories of fall – all coziness and warmth – and though this likely never actually happened, it set to mind scenes of nibbling on a Macintosh while lazily reading a book beneath a brilliantly-hued tree. There were a few such places that might have afforded the opportunity – but if indeed it happened, it was only to eat the apple in a place of beauty – not to juggle the reading of a book along with it. I remember a patch of high field grass near a small grove of pine trees, where the pine needles dropped and dried in the warm afternoon sun, and a collection of pine cones littered the ground. I did stop there once or twice, but only to collect a few of the pine cones. How the space related to the apples, I cannot accurately recall. Memory fades…

This coat was a find from a trip to Seattle, in a funky store in the Market. It’s more spring-like, with its soft cream color and delicate floral accents, but it can work in fall too, especially when the days still cling to summer’s lingering warmth. That’s the magic of October. Some of the best days of the year are to be found here. (It’s no coincidence that my husband was born in this month.)

This will also serve as a programming notice for regular readers of this blog. I’m about to switch into self-promotion mode (you won’t even be able to discern the difference) in support of a brand-new project. It’s the first since 2015’s ‘The Delusional Grandeur Tour‘ and it’s going to get a big promotional push because that’s what I do best. This has been one of the longer breaks between my creative projects and, truth be told even unto its innermost parts, I missed the creative process. My mind is able to rest better when it finds such an outlet. Anyone close to me can tell you that. Now that the project is done, I can work on the promotional stuff, which, if done properly, is an art form unto itself.

This year the squirrels have been going mad over the dogwood trees in our yard. At any given time over the past few weeks you could find at least three perched in the branches, reaching out and nibbling on the pretty fruit that’s all but been devoured by this point. Personally I’ve never found the dogwood fruit appealing as far as taste and texture go (and I’ve tried it in a cocktail – if it doesn’t work there, it won’t work anywhere). The squirrels, on the other hand, are loving it. 

There you are, October. 

You always show up sooner than we seem to expect, perhaps sooner than we’d like. 

You with your time trickery (not that I’ve ever minded an extra hour of anything) and the gradual descent into deep fall. I see you and your burning maple leaves, I see your pumpkin insanity and gourd gore, and for the most part I enjoy every last bit of it. Before we get to the meat of the month, let’s do our usual Monday morning recap of everything that happened in the first full fall week of posts on ALANILAGAN.com. Here we go.

It began, as most things have, with the cosmos. 

Tuesdays always meant fucking religion class. (Guess it sort of backfired.)

How are you liking the #TinyThreads posts? Is it worth linking each of them here? 

(I don’t think it is.)

Boys and girls and freaks in the middle. 

You know I’m right. It’s there in black and white. 

(Yeah, I like the feature, but not these little links.)

Here’s what makes me beautiful. 

(Then again, maybe this bears reposting.) 

Our ‘Naked Male Celebrities‘ category got a jolt from John Krasinski, who bared his naked ass in this shower scene. 

September doesn’t fade, it flares. 

(I mean, isn’t this too much?)

Sunday in September. 

(From here on out, I’ll post one #TinyThreads link and let you follow them all back on your own. We’re all adults here.)

The Hunk of the Day feature – probably the most popular part of this website, returned in fine form with Henry Golding. Fellow hunks followed out-of-suit, including Chris Hughes, Ammar Campa-Najjar, Tim Bish and Brandy Martignago.

A fiery close to the flaming month of September! This is the month we returned to resume the 15^thyear of ALANILAGAN.com, and it feels like everything’s as if we never said goodbye. It remains to be seen whether that’s a good or bad thing, but I feel we’re leaning toward the good. During the summer, I found that I missed writing. The project in which I was immersed was mainly focused on photography, but I was longing for the opportunity and impetus to work with words again. At its heart, that’s what this space has been for me, and I’m grateful for such an outlet.

As for the end of September, what more is there to be said? It’s never been a favorite month of mine, coming as it did with the arrival of school, and the slow die-off of the gardens. I’ve not been kind to it in turn, writing it off as one of those purgatorial waiting periods when you’re waiting for the real snap of autumn to arrive. It’s never wise to rush the summer off the stage, but sometimes the push and pull of teasingly lovely weather wreaks a greater havoc with the heart than a simple clean-cut cleaving. There’s nothing more maddening than a blurry line of demarcation.