A favorite Hunk in these parts, Harry Judd has endeared himself to readers/viewers here with naked spreads in magazines and shirtless posing as part of McFly. Here, he takes it all off in ‘The Full Monty’- the musical in which he’s currently appearing. It may be worth a trip across the pond… (check out more GIFs here).
As befitting a place called ‘Monkey Bar’, this candy dish was a whimsical ending to a recent dinner in New York. I love balls, especially when tinged with mint and chocolate. They offer similar treats at the candy shop in Ogunquit, Maine, which has me wistful for a visit there. We missed out earlier in the season, but shall return later in the summer.
Until then, these balls will have to suffice.
This gorgeous hue is usually the stuff of late spring, fading quickly before the high heat of summer. Creeping Jenny retains this lovely shade for the duration of the season, echoing the sweet potato vines and their lime-like lightness. It’s one of my favorite colors in the garden, partly because it doesn’t often last. There is beauty in the fleeting, that tantalizing temporal limit that makes certain colors seem to matter more.
Here, Ms. Jenny softens the concrete surrounds of the pool, complementing the aqua of the water in thrilling fashion. The bottom stalks of a papyrus complete the rest of her pot; both enjoy exceedingly wet environs. To achieve this, I line the bottom of their home with a plastic garbage bag with just a few tiny holes in it. There’s drainage, but not much. The wetter the better.
The title of this post says it all.
The pictures say even more.
See more of Tom Daley in his Speedo here, here, here, here, here, here, here… well, you get the idea. Search the archives.
It’s once again time for the only thing ESPN has ever been good for: the Body Issue, in which various athletes disrobe and pose for pics in the buff. This year’s crop may bring the hottest of them all, in the form of Julian Edelman, from the New England Patriots. The mere notion of a naked Julian Edelman sends shivers down the spine. Here he is in a few teasers of the nude Edelman photo shoot.
The battle for blue hydrangeas has been the bane of my gardening existence since I first planted a pair of ‘Endless Summer’ beauties in the front yard a decade and a half ago. Back then, before I knew any better, I envisioned billowing bunches of blue blooms, echoing the sky or some pool of the bluest water. When they finally deigned to bloom (after a season or two of bloom-killing winters and too-short summers) they were a light purple, which veered into pink territory in the right (or wrong) light. A far cry from the magnificently over-saturated vibrant hues of the ones that seemed to grow with such easy abandon on Cape Cod.
Undaunted, I offered them endless coffee grounds from Andy’s unending supply, stuck their soil with rusty nails and screws and every bit of rotting metal I could find, and watered them with an acidifier all in an effort to bring the pH to a level that turned the flowers blue. It worked, but only a little, and only for a season or two. I didn’t have the resilience to keep up such a front. They’ve largely reverted to pink, with the occasional purple stalk coming through.
This lace-cap hydrangea is actually called ‘Blue Billow’ – and it too requires soil far more acidic than ours to live up to its name, hence the pink hue we have here. I’m not unhappy about this – it’s perfectly pretty – but I may start saving coffee grounds. They make for a scented mulch and compost additive.
It’s rare for me to cry.
It’s rarer for me to cry in public.
Yet there I sat, in the third row of the Palace Theatre on Broadway for ‘Sunset Boulevard‘, tears streaming down my face and no tissues to wipe them away, as Glenn Close took her final ‘Perfect Year’ waltz as Norma Desmond. I don’t know what came over me – well, I know, but I am still incredulous that it all happened like that. As they started the scene, the heft of two decades of living with my adulation and adoration of Norma came crashing into overwhelming relief, and the tears just started rolling.
I thought back to the first time my Mom and I saw the show in 1995 – it was so popular that we could only get tickets for the last row in the gargantuan Minskoff Theatre. It didn’t matter. Ms. Close had a presence to fill the grandest space, and her take on Ms. Desmond was so intense it electrified everything up to the rafters. I was not quite twenty years old then. I knew little to nothing of life, and while I thought I understood what it was to have a broken heart, the truth is that I simply didn’t know what love was. That didn’t mean I didn’t want it, or do everything in my power to capture it. It also didn’t mean I couldn’t think I was love in someone just because they didn’t treat me like shit or ignore me.
It was ‘The Perfect Year‘ that touched me the most then. The moment that Norma Desmond, the faded yet glamourous star, believes she is in love with Joe Gillis, who doesn’t quite love her back, moved me immensely. I knew what it was like to want someone that badly, to believe so fervently and ferociously that this one person was the one, and that you could make them happier than they had ever been if you were only given the chance. I knew the hopefulness of that place. I knew the futility of it too. I wept for all those times I began that dance.
As time went on, my relationship with Norma shifted. What was first an obsession with her campy persona, extravagant costumes, and unrequited love became something more. I got older. I felt the ticking of time. I could begin to relate to her desperation. I also recognized the desire to recapture the best parts of one’s youth, and the attempts to go back and revisit the glory. An indulgence in nostalgia, as much as I tried to fight it, was a comfort.
It was a chance to start over again. It was as if we were given another shot. It was… as if we never said goodbye. The second round of tears were about to let loose. The spotlight found her on stage again – Norma and Glenn and the second act show-stopper that elicited wild applause before it even began. With one look, she stunned the audience into rapt wonder and joyous rapture. It was her last goodbye, and this second-bloom, always more delicate and precious than the first, was a gift. Starting over again at this stage of her career, she still retained the exuberant optimism of youth. Always, the hope of something better. The grand return. And, as much as she may have disliked the term, the triumphant comeback. As she finished the last note of ‘As If We Never Said Goodbye‘, we erupted into a thunderous standing ovation. She let the love wash over her – it was the kind of ovation usually reserved for the final curtain call – and we were both crying.
By the time the last scene arrived, I was ready to bid Norma farewell. Ms. Close took her bows, overcome with emotion, and through her tears told the story of how she auditioned for Andrew Lloyd Webber over two decades ago. (He also made a surprise appearance on stage to deliver an enormous bouquet of red roses.) She recalled sitting on the edge of her bed, wearing her grandmother’s ring, and realizing that she was at a juncture where her life was going to go one way or another. She thanked him for giving her the chance, and I was very grateful it went the way it did, for her portrayal of Norma Desmond is one of the greatest theatrical feats I’ve ever witnessed.
She went on to extol one of the underlying reasons for my love of Ms. Desmond over all these years, explaining how she was one of those characters who forces us to check in with how we treat others. Norma, from her youngest years as a star to her last days as an eccentric recluse, would always be different. She would always be ‘other’, someone whom most people would view as strange or demented or grotesque. That’s missing everything that makes her human. That’s losing her to the caricatured gargoyle of glitter and turbans and histrionics that masks all the frailty and delicacy beneath the surface. It’s a way of ignoring what she might actually feel.
Ms. Close eloquently reminded me that we aren’t as careful as we should be with each other. We don’t take the time to look behind the smoke and the sunglasses to see whether a person is hurting or happy or lost. We lose ourselves in the glamour and the facade of someone like Norma Desmond and assume that she has everything she could ever want. We see people who are different or unconventional and shrink away from them, even as we watch their every move.
How strange to come to such a realization this late in the game, but how wonderful too. I’ve finished the first act of my life. Norma Desmond saw me through every step of it. It’s silly and it’s grand, it’s tender and it’s touching, and perhaps it’s just a little bit mad. Yet for all of it, I wouldn’t change a thing. Hand-in-bejeweled-hand, we walked down that boulevard one final time.
I’LL BE BACK WHERE I WAS BORN TO BE…
WITH ONE LOOK, I’LL BE ME!
The traditional lavender gets a make-over in this pink version of the venerable perennial. In our slightly sandy soil, lavender tends to do well, and in the midst of all the purple these pink blooms are a charming departure. I think it may be time for some lavender martinis. (That recipe can be found here, and you will thank me if you’ve never tried it before.)
Lavender is usually an easy crop – they like sun and sandy soil, and I’ve never fertilized or amended their site with anything. The most I do is cut them back to the ground to keep them compact and tidy. (You may leave them alone and they’ll sprout from whatever growth remains intact after winter – in warmer climates they can get larger and woodier – neither of which appeals to me in the front of the border, where they are located. I also find they don’t put out as vigorous growth when you let them build on top of what has already had its season. You have to know when to let things go.
The hot and sticky morning received no respite from the previous night. The heat and humidity lingered, refusing to let up even in the pre-dawn hours. In that heavy air, a light perfume sweetly scented the floating molecules. The climbing hydrangea, whose blooms don’t often get the recognition for their fragrance, was the source of the sweetness.
Known more for its form and foliage, as well as the lace-cap elegance of its blooms, not much is written about the perfume it emits. It’s nothing all that special or spectacular, but it’s the perfect summer scent – sweet and light, and irresistible to bees and butterflies.
This particular specimen is at least a decade old, and finally coming into its own. It follows the growing pattern of so many vines: the first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, the third year it leaps.
I love a good leap year.
Nyle DiMarco has made a couple of splashes here before, and he’s here to do it again with two simple but scintillating shots. The best ones can do a lot with a little. Mr. DiMarco can also be seen in even less here.
Sweet fragrance, wafting along on a summer breeze, this is the mockorange. With its exquisite perfume as its main draw, this is a favorite shrub – worth growing for its brief but magnificent bloom period. The foliage is unremarkable, but stays green and largely intact throughout the season. Its form is slightly sprawling and unrefined, but manageable with severe pruning every few years. (You will sacrifice some blooms, as it flowers most prolifically on older wood.)
We have just returned from a wonderful weekend in New York, so this will have to suffice for an evening post. It’s a peacock mural. That’s all.
Summer is here, arriving in glorious fashion with the longest day of the year. Things have been a little quiet of late on the blog front, and that’s appropriate for the season of taking it easy. On with the last week’s events…
The Hunk of the Day feature has been absent for a few days now, but it’s coming back in a major way tonight. Before that, however, here is a look at some former hunks who are making splashes in various stats of undress. It begins with these naked GIFs of Steve Grand doing his part for Broadway Bares. Mr. Grand has been here a number of times, thanks to hot shots like these and naked teases like those.
Richard Hadfield and his hairy chest made a splash in his Hunk of the Day crowning here.
Ricky Martin brings his heat to the new Versace murder story (which also brought us Darren Criss in a Speedo). Here, Martin takes his own spin in a Speedo, which he also did here.
The other side of the spectrum, for many reasons, brings us Cameron Dallas. He represents the teenybopper crowd, which is a scene to which I find myself rating less and less. (His Hunk of the Day feature is coming up in the near future.)
Derek Yates was a part of the elite two-time Hunk of the Day club, having been honored not once but twice.
Simon Dunn strikes his own Speedo pose, though many would prefer that he lose the shorts entirely as he did here and here and here.
Favored ginger Greg Rutherford matches Dunn in Olympic glory and shirtless wonder.
A trio of nude rears brings up the back-end of this post, starting with Rob ‘The Gronk’ Gronkowski, who was also naked here, and Chris Salvatore, who dropped his pants here.
Finally, feast your eyes upon Matthew Camp. Also seen sans clothing here. Come back tonight for the next Hunk of the Day crowning…
MAY I SAY A FEW WORDS, MR. DEMILLE?
I CAN’T TELL YOU HOW WONDERFUL IT IS TO BE BACK IN THE STUDIO MAKING A PICTURE!
I PROMISE YOU, I’LL NEVER DESERT YOU AGAIN.
THIS IS MY LIFE, IT ALWAYS WILL BE… THERE’S NOTHING ELSE!
AND THE CAMERAS…
Today we are making our last visit to the mansion on Sunset Boulevard to witness Norma’s final descent down that legendary staircase. It was a last-minute splurge, but it also seems like this is the only way to honor the end of something that once, and still does, mean so much to me. It also marks Andy’s first time seeing this show done properly on a Broadway stage, which makes it all the more exciting (in addition to it being the final show of this run).
I’m not sure what I’ll feel at this last performance. To be honest, I never thought I’d see it back on Broadway, much less with its original luminous star, and it was a bonus bit that dovetailed perfectly with The Delusional Grandeur Tour. After all, Ms. Desmond was the original mistress of delusional grandeur; the rest of us merely followed in her staircase-bounding heel-prints. Anyone can die for what they want; it takes a different kind of soul to kill for it.
The great thing about Norma is that she has a tendency to haunt and linger long after one departs the boulevard. She has an indefatigable spirit in that regard, a powerful presence that lasts long after her shadow has left a room. The greatest stars have that effect on the world. A few charismatic people do too. They’re the ones everyone watches when they enter a space, and the ones who remain on the lips of the watchers after they’ve gone. They elicit a discernible shift in atmosphere with their absence, so larger-than-life do their characters loom.
In spite of this, or more likely because of it, they have a harder time connecting to any one person. The only love they know how to manage is the larger collective love of the masses – they know nothing of how to be loved by a single person, and by the time they realize that it’s always too late. When you’ve been loved and adored by millions, it’s difficult to appreciate the love of one. To her tragic credit, Norma does the best she can, attempting and partly succeeding in a seduction of Joe Gillis to fit into her starry-eyed hopes of a romance and return to former glory.
AND NOW, MR. DEMILLE, I’M READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP.
Today, at the Palace Theatre, Norma Desmond will get her final close-up. She’s been with me through twenty-two years of heartache, heartbreak, and heart-bursting love. She’s seen me through break-ups and break-downs, and the brutality of several unrequited love affairs. In all that time she’s retained a hopeful nobility, a perpetual belief in the promise of a ‘Perfect Year’, forever twirling in a waltz no matter how many times she may have fallen down. I relied on her belief in herself when I couldn’t believe in mine. We soared on our glamour, we rode on our illusions, and we survived on a dream.
THIS TIME I’M STAYING,
I’M STAYING FOR GOOD.
I’LL BE BACK WHERE I WAS BORN TO BE.
