Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

Here we go! The next time I post it will be Thanksgiving Day. How did we get here so quickly? I think the warmer weather lingered so long that suddenly it seems the holidays are upon without the usual weeks of build-up and dreary weather. Not sure how I feel about that. Here’s what happened when you weren’t looking.

Climbing the brick.

Wait, who is the Sexiest Man Alive?

Sowing these oats.

A brief break for beauty.

Giving thanks for the past… and the future. 

Draining the pigment.

When the oaks are stubborn.

Summer bunny.

Holiday sparkle.

Hunks of the Day included Shawn Mendes, Gleb Savchenko, Dan Amboyer, Cody Christian, & Fabrizio ‘Fab’ Santino. 

This is the week we head directly into the holiday season. Are you ready for it? I most certainly am not. With the greatest of intentions, I’d planned on being closer to finishing with my holiday shopping, and like most years I’m not quite there. To get myself in the mood, a little sparkle always helps, as does the promise of some heartwarming holiday traditions. 

Whether on scarf or robe, jacket or sock, a splash of sequins works wonders for the soul. It’s the little things that matter most when the holidays turn to high. 

Yes, I know, it’s too soon to miss summer. There’s nothing but heartache in that kind of wishful thinking. But on a November Sunday, when a chill is in the air, I’m indulging in this view of a summer visitor. He or she made the most of the clover in the backyard, returning to it as a regular feast. Andy and I would recognize the white spot on its forehead, and watch as it filled its mouth with a steady diet of greens and clover blooms. We will see it in the winter too, just not as much. 

Caught between the early morning light of a car’s back end and the already-passed descent of winter temperatures, this was our Judas tree right before the world went cold and the leaves froze to a chlorophyll-drained brown. It’s a ghostly picture, made more-so by the fact that it no longer exists.

People Magazine, long past its pop-culture relevance expiration date, just named Blake Shelton as the Sexiest Man Alive. I guess it’s reflective of the world in which we live. Not that I find Mr. Shelton all that objective on the physical front, I just think I’d be able to find a gazillion guys who are far sexier. (And I guess it’s ok since Adam Levine already won that title a while back. David Beckham too.)

Climbing up the brick with the first burst of chartreuse freshness as its spring wardrobe was only the start of this ivy’s show. It ripened from that into a deeper green as the summer progressed, waiting out the heat that brick likes to collect in that season. Here we see it finishing out 2017 with a flourish of fall color. Soon, only its spindly structure will remain, the spidery tentacle-like suction cups that so ruefully deface whatever they touch will hold the skeletal branches up through the winter until, if the winds haven’t been too harsh and the temperatures to cold, it was sprout again, picking up where it left off, rising higher than it ever did before. It will run on and on like these sentences, not bothering to see whether it’s a nuisance or not, whether it will bring ants into the interior or cracks to the exterior. Bounding ever upward, to the sky, not knowing that there is a limit to how far it can go, that there is always a limit.

It’s better not to know.

The temperatures have turned frightful, but the sky is still blue. Thus far, November has skirted the usual somber tones of gray and brown. Soon, though, the color will drain from the season, and we will have only the holidays to keep our spirits warm. Until then, a look back at the last week. 

It began with a perch in Boston. 

Bright flaming pink!

Stranger light. 

Four hunks vied for the second Triple-Time Hunk of the Day…

…But only one HOD could be victorious: Nick Adams. 

It’s that time of the year: a new Ben Cohen calendar. 

The dog at the end of the rainbow. 

Shameless!

Drink up. 

A Gold Rim Dinner Party. 

A very Goodfellow (in a Speedo). 

Hunks of the Day included Lars Slind, Dolf Dietrich, & Eric Balfour.