A double-decade of indelible performances has made Taraji Penda Henson into Hollywood royalty, and her upcoming turn as Shug Avery in the upcoming movie version of ‘The Color Purple’ musical (a movie that became a musical that is now becoming a movie again) will surely be one of the more dazzling star-turns of the year. She’s been nominated for just about every acting award that exists, and for such a rich body of work she earns this Dazzler of the Day.
The last official day of winter is here at last, which is cause enough for celebration. It’s also a good pause to look back over some of the more notable posts that went up over this past season, and as this marked the 20th anniversary of this website, there were quite a few.
It began with the same vantage point as this post: the Winter Solstice. Attempts to embrace the arrival of winter were mostly successful.
The first ring of fire was blue. The second was gold. Both appeared on the Year in Review for 2022, Part one and Part two.
A new calendar year begins just as winter gets underway.
Bitter Peach by Tom Ford provided an unlikely scent for the snowy season.
Bringing the twins to Boston required not just one, but two posts.
Madonna is going on tour again, and of course I have to go.
Feeling my years now more than ever.
This website first opened in January of 2003, and for the ensuing twenty years a lot has happened.
The Amsterdam Mall has turned to crap, so getting kicked out of it is more a badge of pride than shame.
A lavender haze by Taylor and Tom.
Gazing into the aging that a mirror reveals.
At tea time everybody agrees, so let’s put the kettle on and get into it.
Exploring mindfulness in a dishrag.
Coaxing a mystery orchid back into bloom.
Madonna’s greatest album ever turned 25.
Two decades of ALANILAGAN.com feels like a terribly long time. But it’s still where I get nakedly raw, providing a diary and map of my life, even when I don’t always want to remember everything.
What’s your definition of dirty, baby? What do you consider pornography?
Twenty years after it premiered, this website is as messy and meandering as ever. (And the typical wardrobe of underwear hasn’t changed so much as shifted a couple of waist sizes up.)
And so we end the winter season 22/23. We made it through the wilderness… somehow we made it through… up next is spring, and I’m going to enter it with gratitude and mindfulness, and maybe just a little sparkle.
Time for a celebratory moment in honor of an amazing organization. In Our Own Voices, Inc. is commemorating 25 years of providing programs and services to LGBTQAI+ Black, Indigenous, and People of Color! That’s 25 years of building our own tables, strengthening our own voices, and empowering our communities to live authentically.
This is a monumental milestone and we hope to see you at the celebration! Join us at 8pm on Saturday, March 25, 2023, the official anniversary of our founding, for a cocktail party at The State Room in Downtown Albany.
Featuring:
Friends and family, we’ll bring the hors d’oeuvres, drinks, and DJs, all that’s missing is YOU.
While gleefully perusing the FaceBook photos of Lynn Beaumont, it suddenly struck me how difficult it was to find one of her solo, where she was not pictured with another friend or family member – a telling testimony to her popularity and well-deserved belovedness. With her equally-beloved partner Bam Lynch, she has turned Cheesecake Machismo into a national treasure; people come from miles around to try out the magical selection of traditional and wildly non-traditional varieties on hand each day (get there early as they often sell out for the day). Having opened the very first Bomber’s Burritos with Matt Baumgartner, she’s been a jewel of the Albany scene for decades, and can often be found around some of my most favorite local luminaries (see Kevin Bruce and Tess Collins). Today it tickles me to offer what little honor I can with this Dazzler of the Day crowning (and it’s my way of paying her back for driving me to a party after a First Friday gallery night many years ago, something she probably doesn’t even remember because she does such kind things all the time).
“I’m made of cruel passions, my Lord… and when the time is right we’ll so act on them as to astonish the world…” ~ ‘Elizabeth I’ as portrayed by Helen Mirren
This sounds like something Winter would be saying right about now, before she relinquishes her temporal hold on the northern hemisphere. Unwilling to let it go until the last possible moment (and, let’s just acknowledge it, likely beyond that) the weather will be wild in the weeks to come, no matter what our feeble calendar demarcations may indicate. Mother Nature is never held to human bounds – that’s why I love her so.
After our recent humdinger of a snowstorm, the reward came the following day, when the sun came out, the sky turned blue, and all the snow and ice glistened and sparkled like the winter wonderland a certain song promised us all those months ago.
“I have love and compassion too.” ~ ‘Elizabeth I’ as portrayed by Helen Mirren
March likes to remind us that she is still mostly winter, ready and able to attack with lion-like stealth and determination. Such was the storm scene this week when the season’s first true Nor’easter tore through our state, dumping a foot of snow in a 24-hour period (and a lot more in other less-lucky areas). After juggling my in-office schedule, I was able to work from home for the entire duration of this nasty weather event, and enjoy the whirling maelstrom from the comfy coziness of a warm interior.
My parents lost power briefly, but for the most part we escaped unscathed. There are whisperings of another storm, and such is to be expected through April. This is the way it goes at such a tumultuous time of the year. March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, then April showers bring May flowers, but the truth is we can have blizzards until mid-May, so I’m not banking on silly childhood rhymes, any more than I trust the weather prediction by a groundhog (even if it seems to be holding true)…
Fresh off her multi-award-nominated performance in ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ (an absolutely devious jewel of a film, and one of my favorites from last year), Kerry Condon lights up whatever screen or stage she is on, and for such talent she earns her first Dazzler of the Day crowning. Her turn in ‘Banshees’ provides the beating heart in a tense world of darkness and strange beauty.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all who celebrate! Not gonna lie, I have no idea what we are celebrating, and I’ve long since lapsed in practice and memory to the point where I simply cannot recall who St. Patrick was. Regardless, today is their day, so kudos to all of that. My own hat tip will have to be done in the shades of green seen here. Fronted by a trio of Hermes fragrances, spring will come with its own olfactory soundtrack – fresh and bright and verdant.
May the luck of the Irish be with each of you today! [Launching the leprechaun kick-line now…] PS – Say hello to these gingers.
There would only be one good afternoon of sunny, almost-spring weather in my quick weekend visit to Boston, so I made the most of it and walked leisurely through the Southwest Corridor Park. The gardens were just beginning to come alive, and I found this grand swath of snowdrops to herald the upcoming season.
Given the lack of perspective in these photos, it should be noted that their stature is diminutive, but they make for that in their multitudes, while also demanding closer inspection. Greater pleasure is always gleaned when you have to work for the beauty you find in the world.
Happy harbingers of spring, the snowdrops here are accustomed to wintry weather, though I’m not sure what this recent storm has done to them. If it’s a quick dusting, they usually bounce back in a day or two; prolonged snow cover or freezing temperatures will take them out until the next year. Mother Nature isn’t always compassionate. I’m grateful to have found and appreciated these when I did.
Going make-up free as a woman today is a bold and revolutionary act unto itself, given the patriarchal nonsense and pressure society exerts on women. Going make-up free in a beauty pageant is one giant leap beyond that, but it’s exactly what Melisa Raouf did during the Miss England pageant, and such boldness has secured her a spot as Dazzler of the Day.
Usually I enter our Boston place from the front – walking along the main street from a visitor’s parking space that’s hopefully-close and doing the sensible thing of sticking to the sidewalk. Once in a while I’ll find parking a street or two over, and find myself closer by going through the back alley behind our condo. These little alleys are the secret side of Boston. They’re not through-ways so the only people driving into the dead-end spaces are residents, or garbage pick-up, so it’s rare to see regular traffic there.
This is where the real lives of Bostonians play out – the balcony dinner parties, the bedroom window peeks, the precious outdoor lots and parking spaces that only some select units can utilize. It was also where I chose to enter for a quick weekend visit to survey the place for spring.
Treading the gravel-lined driveway, I looked up at our condo from a vantage point I rarely use. It was the back-end of business in Boston, the behind-the-scenes machinations of those beautiful brick and brownstone buildings that line our historical streets. It felt hushed there, like I’d stumbled upon some reverential sacred spot where secrets were revealed and kept, and hints of spring in the afternoon sunlight added to the enchantment.
A magnolia tree behind our building provided support for a few vines of ivy, still evergreen in this relatively-mild winter Boston has had, and I made an internal promise to come back more when the trees started blooming. In the brown gardens nearby, a friend from the past rested in the sun, perhaps as grateful as me for the promise of spring in the air.
With a new EP ‘Filling In/Falling Out’ currently raging in fiery fabulousness, Zolita handily earns this Dazzler of the Day crowning – and you’re now on notice to watch for her upcoming show in Boston this May. Check out her website here for further brilliance.
When I first moved away to Chicago to start a new life with a relatively new boyfriend (both of which clearly didn’t work out to last) my Mom gave me a cookbook of recipes that were supposed to be quick and easy. One of them was titled ‘Chicken Curry in a Hurry‘ and it was decidedly misnomered, as that recipe took my about five hours to make. New to cutting, prepping, measuring, and cooking, it was a trial by fire, and while the end result was decent enough, the time and effort it took to create that one dish was not worth it.
Years later, after honing a bit of my kitchen skills, I can take a recipe that the New York Times published (their chickpea, coconut milk and curry dish) and roughly make it my own. In this instance, I diced up an onion and some carrots, then cooked those down in a bit of olive oil and generous helpings of curry and turmeric. Once soft enough to my liking, I added a can of coconut milk and two cans of chick peas, rinsed well.
Once the garbanzos were warmed, I modified the salt and pepper (lots of both) and piled the pot high with kale and spinach. A whole bag will wilt down into the manageable mix you see here.
Finally, I added some chopped fresh cilantro and a sprinkling of fresh lime juice, and the meal was ready in a matter of minutes. It’s a wonderful centerpiece for a meat-free Friday dinner, for those of us guilty Catholics who are still hedging our bets on making it into heaven.
Back when I was on the cusp of becoming a teenager, this cheeky song by Samantha Fox battled Madonna’s ‘Crazy For You’ on the Top Ten at Ten on our local radio station. I’m not sure how that happened, as they were released at such different times, but things worked differently in the 80’s. I was very much an 80’s child, for better and mostly worse, and I was just coming into my own, waking to the world around me and my place and presence in it. On the radio every other song was about sex, and while I had no idea what sex was, what a virgin might be, and how love did and didn’t always fit into the equation, I was fascinated by the forbidden aspect of it, the way it made the adults squirm whenever I would bring it up.
The rainy month of March when this song first came out was filled with the usual paradoxes of this time of the year. Easter and Lent collided with the coming of spring, and all the birds and bees and dirty deeds that the less-spiritual part of the world got up into whenever spring arrived. On the windows of my bedroom, or the windows of the backseat of the car, I watched water droplets shape and warp the world. This song spoke to me with its over-the-top cheesiness, appealing to my love of the dramatic and histrionic, with more than a touch of sleaze. If Madonna’s ‘Crazy For You’ was the sweet little sister, innocently opining about a kiss and no more, ‘Touch Me’ was the sexier, raunchier cousin leading me into the night. Just a tween, I had no idea what any of it meant, nor any desire to learn. Instead, I felt the pangs of longing and yearning, the ache of a first crush on a boy who lived several streets away, and I had no idea why.
When Samantha Fox sang this song, and whispers of her topless poses in certain scandalous magazines reached the boys, they felt something I simply didn’t. Immune to the charms of her ample cleavage, I had no desire to get into her ripped jeans either, but I watched other boys as they watched her, and I envied her transfixing hold on them. How could I cast such a spell? How to craft and conjure such rapt enchantment?
Later, years later, I would re-listen to this song and be horrified at the thought of me blaring it in the car while my parents gamely alternated between this and ‘Crazy For You’. It was just music and melody to me – the words meant nothing – but there was something primal and raw in it that appealed to my barely-burgeoning nature. As a tween, it wasn’t in any way sexual to me, just a bop on the radio that elicited thrills because I could see the reaction to it, not because I felt anything myself.
As a young gay man, that certainly changed over the years, but that’s another story for another song and blog post. This is just a quaint memory of S-S-S-S-Samantha Fox… because naughty girls need love (DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH) too.
Every now and then I miss having a bathtub. Not very often – I’m a shower guy through and through – but on cold, damp nights when the air can’t decide whether to rain, sleet, ice or snow, and the chill soaks into the bones, I would love to slide into a hot bath with some soothing lavender salts and a layer of bubbles.
Lacking that dream bathroom scenario, we must make do with another bath – this one of light, and it’s just as soul-sustaining, especially coming at the tail-end of winter when a snowstorm is the last thing anyone wants. A candle glowing of three wicks, gently warming and perfuming the air, bathes the room in light, calmly flickering and letting its shadows dance across the ceiling and walls. It gives off a different kind of warmth, emanating a different sort of glow. When you stop and still the scene, pausing for a moment of mindfulness and serenity, it can be just as powerful as a more traditional bath.
Sounds baths, I imagine (as I’ve never tried one), may be similar in their calming power. It’s the same idea: a bath in something soothing – whether water, light, or sound – is a way of immersing the senses in a single sensory experience, allowing the mind to focus on one thing, and let go of all other concerns.
