Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

… except when it is. 

Every once in a while I’ll miss the carefree days of my retail career, when I first started working at the Faneuil Hall Structure (before it became Express Men or whatever it is these days), and the thrill of earning my own paycheck while doing something I loved was novel and inspiring. By the time the holiday season rolled around, I had made a name for myself in my home store, and the crew we had working then was a good group. I genuinely liked them all, to a person, and they accepted and liked me in return. It took a retail job to finally feel like I belonged somewhere, and that sort of realization cannot and should not be undervalued. It changed my life. But this post will not be going that deep – holidays bring back enough of those memories. No, this post is just a light-hearted memory of what it was like to work in retail during these hectic shopping weeks.

It started on black Friday – and the first time I worked it I stood by the entrance door eagerly awaiting the crush of people. One of the first customers through the door was Nancy Kerrigan. Starstruck (this was only one year after the whole Tonya Harding ordeal), I asked her if she needed help looking for anything. She gave me major stink-eye and attitude, causing me to wonder whether I was Team Tonya after all. I left her alone after that.

There was no mad rush then, not at the start of the day. It came in waves, slowly building until a line snaked through the store and we were just frantically ringing sales instead of trying to sell anything on the floor. For break time, I would go downstairs and into Quincy Market and the long double row of food vendors that was crowded even in non-holiday times. The crush now was even more maddening, but my Structure name badge, indicating that I was working, seemed to give me extra berth. Or maybe it was the annoyed-to-the-point-of-breaking countenance I wore as soon as I exited the sales floor. Whatever the case, I navigated my way through the sea of tourists, picked up a bread bowl of clam chowder, and somehow found a seat in the center atrium section.

The decorations blinked and sparkled, hanging above us and lending light to the darkened reaches of the room. I sat there, alone in a sea of people, perfectly content and happy to be taking it all in from a distance, and this was a change from my usually-anxious appearance. I watched as parents herded their children ahead of them, and husbands wearily followed their wives or vice versa. I listened to their worries and their laughter and their insignificant stories – the stuff we say to those who mean the most to us but who have already heard all the important things. In the maelstrom of this holiday madness, I sat happily dipping into my bread bowl and witnessing the scene around me. It was finally ok. They didn’t bother or annoy me with their holiday sweaters, they didn’t agitate or irk with their petty disagreements – it was all all right because I belonged somewhere, even if it was on the sixth floor of the Limited Building shelling out ties and khakis, and three pairs of socks for ten dollars. That’s the thing about feeling like you belonged somewhere: suddenly you belonged everywhere.

I saw these posted on FaceBook the other day, which is about the only thing that FaceBook is good for these days. These are translations of typical office email phrases, and I am completely guilty of using these all the time. (I may also have been guilty of using their translations at various points in my state career, but I digress.) Some days I think that working in Human Resources is just one big exercise in not-so-veiled passive-aggression. Emails like these are spot on, and I imagine it’s not only in the realm of HR. 

On a serious note, in case anyone is stumbling upon this looking for real-world advice on how to write an office email, I have a system that works wonders for me. If ever I’m in doubt that one of my messages is too harsh or might be misconstrued (like, all of them) I write everything I want to say in a draft, then minimize it and get up and walk away from the computer. By the time I return, I will re-read it in the most negative way I can muster, and chances are I’ll have to severely edit that shit down into something that won’t result in tears. And I do. That’s how you don’t get fired. Anyway, enjoy these and see if you can relate. 

What a week!

This year’s Holiday Stroll should have concluded last night, but since I write this well in advance, who knows? Mercury is still scheduled to be in retrograde and there’s no telling what went down with Kira. This past week was a doozy – considering it included the release of this year’s incendiary Holiday Card. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back first…

One mean meme.

Finding joy at the utterly inept JoAnn’s Fabric Store.

A Clockwork Cactus.

Hold on for the holidays.

Madonna in motion.

Portal of sunlight, into the past.

Joan Crawford gives us entertaining advice, and I suppose she should know.

November went bye-bye-bye.

A two-part look at Holiday cards from the past: Part One and Part Two.

The Holiday Card 2018.

In the words of songstress Paula Abdul…

A few #TinyThreads as we delve into the holiday season.

Hunks of the Day included Omari Hardwick, Arno Diem and KJ Apa.

When the rhododendron leaves disappear, curling into themselves for warmth, you know the day is a cold one. The shrubs you see here are actually a miniature version of their more common broader-leafed relative. We used to have one in front of our house, and whenever the temperature dropped well below freezing, this was their disgusted stance. It must be their way of survival, because being a broad-leafed evergreen in this climate zone is no mean feat.

We dug our rhodie out years ago; it simply got too big and unwieldy for its space. I rather naively planted a wedding cake viburnum in its place, which outgrew the area in a few years. Currently there’s a slow-growing umbrella pine in that spot, which looks to remain for the foreseeable future. It’s airy enough to allow for sightlines beyond its elegant whorls, and it too remains evergreen the year round. The neighbors across the street still have a few rhododendron shrubs, so if we need a quick gauge of how cold it is we have only to look up the road and see whether the leaves are in hiding.

I’m not going to explain this year’s Holiday Card. It is, quite simply, a reflection of our country and our world at a dim moment in our history. It is no longer enough to pretend that life is beautiful. It is time to bring the ugly things into the light, to examine and try to understand how we got here. We share this burden, and I hope we share a way out from under it. Let these images remind us of where we came from, of what we once allowed to happen, of what might possibly happen again. In this holiday season, may we find kindness and compassion and a desire to promote good in the world. May we treat each other a little better, may we find common ground, and may we reach an acceptance and reconciliation of our differences. We are all in this together.

“Those who are cannot remember the past…

Are condemned to repeat it.”

~ George Santayana

{The complete ‘PVRTD’ project may be found online on The Projects page.}

Thirty days hath September, April, June and November…

We’ve reached the last of the latter, so let’s look back at some of the highlights of this past month. It will be remembered in these parts mostly for the PVRTD Project – my first official project in three years, and one which has me hankering to get started on the next. That’s a very good thing. Anyway, the bulk of the PVRTD Promo posts are encapsulated here, so give it a whirl.

Actually, I’m not going to do all that work. Here are the recaps for the month – do your own homework! I have holiday preparations on the agenda…

The first recap included the tail end of October, which is fitting since some of my behind was included in this post as well. 

The second recap consisted of a mask-bound photo and all the requisite perversion one might expect.

For our third recap, we entered the week of Thanksgiving. No going back now.  

Finally, if it seems like we just had a recap, you’re right. Here it is. And another one is on the way in just a few short days. 

I wouldn’t advise taking parenting tips from Joan Crawford, but when it comes to throwing an adult party (or cleaning a bathroom, I suppose) you could do worse than by following her standards. Now that holiday party season is upon us, we need her wisdom more than ever. (The emphasis is everything.)

Joan Crawford on entertaining at home:

 “The best parties are a wild mixture of people. Take some actresses, a bearded painter, your visiting friends from Brussels, a politician, a hairdresser, and then toss them all together. It’s especially important to have all age groups. Of course I wouldn’t want to have hippies come crawling in with unwashed feet, but all the younger people I know are bright and attractive and have something to say and they dress like human beings. Another important party secret is I always add a splash of vodka to everything. Nobody knows and everyone ends up having a wonderful time.”