Actor, DJ and singer Scotty Dynamo handily earns this Dazzler of the Day thanks to a spellbinding career. He crested on social media outlets while maintaining a talent and drive that sets him apart from other social media stars. Engaging with a genuine and honest accessibility, Dynamo connects with his fans thanks to a sparkling personality and earnest desire to entertain.
Last year’s dearth of bumblebees is but a memory, as they swarm and buzz around the lace-cap hydrangea, alighting on the purple and pink blooms. Back in full, floating effect, they are the first of my companions on a summer day bathed in sun, basking in the sweet perfume and pollen of the flowers at hand.
The fragrance of the lace-cap hydrangeas is one of the secrets they keep. Their broad-flowered cousins carry no scent whatsoever, and in exchange for the showiness of those blooms the lace-caps come with a sweet fragrance that is a lighter version of a privet flower. It must be incredibly appealing to bees, as they are happily rummaging through the fields of pollen and nectar. The climbing hydrangea has an even more sweetly pungent bloom, one that drifts throughout the backyard. This relatively smaller specimen still pacs a punch, wafting over the pool as I take a moment to enjoy this summer day.
My arms slung over a rubber pool float, I let my body dangle weightlessly in the water – the instant relief of gravity suddenly lifted, replaced by the pressure of cool liquid. Summer came with pleasures that seemed unthinkable just half a year ago. It carried its own meditative moments, and as I let the current of the pool swirl me around I caught the sparkle of a dragonfly out of the corner of my eye. It darted closer, then hovered right in front of me, its saucer-like eyes both scary and awe-inspiring. So many creatures saw so much more than we humans ever could. How foolish to think we could ever see it all.
The dragonfly circled, coming back to hover before me again, then did it a third time, as if to say hello, to make a connection, to dance a little dance across the water. Summer enchantments…
She gave ‘Sex & the City’ its spark and sizzle, and now she’s lending her heat to the current ‘Glamorous’, which Boy Culture, my go-to site for all things gay and fabulous, recently and glowingly reviewed. Kim Cattrall is one of those stars with whom some of us have grown up and now affectionately consider a friend despite having never met her. Personally, I recommend the under-appreciated gem ‘Live Nude Girls’ for a career highlight, which I saw at a Boston Film Festival and absolutely adored. She seemed to be sewing the seeds of Samantha Jones there, and ever since then she’s been proving to be so much more than that, as witnessed by theatrical turns on stage and musical turns as a jazzy chanteuse. She’s earned this Dazzler of the Day thanks to the sheer determination, guts, grit and glamour that it takes to survive in show business all these years.
With an anniversary coming up, I’m putting this little Tom Ford wish out into the universe, and the timing is ideal as a re-release from Ford’s original Private Blends line is bringing us back. For me, it goes back in more ways than one, making this a sign from the universe, and a connection from one uncle to another.
Back in the 80’s, my favorite Uncle was visiting us around the holidays, and my brother and I had to find a gift for him. The Amsterdam Mall had a men’s department store – Mortan’s – which sprawled out with tan decor and carpet, and the generally dull but classic trappings of stuffy men’s fashion. At the register was a small tray of cologne with the very basic of offerings. My nose knew nothing then, so one was just as good as another. There was one that came redolent of limes, and since citrus reminded me as much of the holidays as it did summer, that seemed the natural choice. Packaged in what looked like a wicker-wrapped bottle, it was St. John’s West Indian Lime Cologne to the best of what I can remember and discover online now. The red banner of ‘Imported’ across some of the bottle photos looks comfortingly familiar. As for the scent, it was a traditional citrus scent for men, one that has lasted through the decades.
We gave the bottle to my Uncle for Christmas, and he set it on the wooden desk of my bedroom, where he and my Aunt were staying for their visit. Some spilled onto the wood, and after they left – after Christmas and New Year’s were done, after the emptiness and quiet seeped back into our winter world, I leaned into the desk, bringing my nose close to the wood, and inhaling the scent of lime, remembering my favorite Uncle. It was a balm that brought his memory back to me when I was missing him the most.
As for ‘Azure Lime’ by Tom Ford, I remember trying it years ago, but I wasn’t quite ready for its classic structure and traditional musky dry-down. Being older now, I’ve grown into such a masculine scent where it no longer feels too mature. I’ve also always loved a citrus scent, but for some reason I’ve always been fighting it. The time has come to embrace what we love. Maybe one day when I’m gone, my godson will remember ‘Azure Lime’ when a whiff of citrus comes his way, not knowing why it rekindles the summer of his first birthday…
Summer roads open up before us, a brilliant blue sky dropping a background to ignite white puffy clouds hanging low in the distance. Having just returned from a whirlwind trip to New York with Suzie and Chris, I’m spent and offering this weekly recap without further explanation.
The place with the yellow flowers.
Things my 47-year-old body can no longer handle.
My Top Twenty Madonna timelines.
All these Junes on the first of July.
Striking summer poses of the past.
Dazzlers of the Day included Sandra Bernhard, J. Harrison Ghee, Dan Amboyer, Sidharth Malhotra, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Neil Patrick Harris.
Someone posted this quote on social media the other day, and for a Monday morning that kicks off a holiday work-week, it’s a worthy reminder of priorities. My Saturday was spent seeing lifelong friends in New York, and it was a recollection of what our youthful passions and goals were, juxtaposed with the ailments and complaints and survival stories of what the past two decades have wrought. It was also soul-enriching, and a pleasant reprioritization of what feeds our mental health. In my case, that’s not rushing to get every single done as soon as it comes up.
Most of us who take pride in our work and career try to excel and please, in as quick and urgent a way as possible. That’s not a way to make for a lasting sense of fulfillment in a working environment, and I’ve slowly come to see that over the past few years. There are many instances when there is a serious need for immediate action. We like to pretend there is, but that state of frantic rushing when anyone in charge wants something is a false urgency – a contrived and self-created mode of working that more often than not ends up with more errors and mis-steps than if we slowed down to analyze and take our time and care in executing things properly, and working within calm conditions.
A lot of us do the same thing in our personal lives, and in our relationships and friendships, wanting to rush and immediately fix or solve or address things the minute they come up. We tend to make decisions and take action in the heat of the moment rather than pause and consider what’s really going on. In my youth, I made my fair share of those urgent decisions, of rushing to get something resolved or finished at the expense of letting it evolve or improve, and perhaps losing out on things that might have ripened into much more.
Summer feels like a good time to slow things down, to re-learn and refine the way we’ve been hurrying through life and missing the moments around us. On this Monday morning maybe we can begin to shift that way of thinking. To that end, our usual weekly recap that appears early every Monday will show up a little later today. All good things to those who wait…
Ah vanity, my unfair and familiar friend/fiend. Your work has made a mucky mess of my perceived reception in the world yet you keep me coming back for more. Here we travel back in time, to a summer spent lounging by the pool, striking all-too-serious poses or simply squinting from the sun. Life is too often a happy accident or unintended joke, and the best way to traverse its tricky path is to laugh it off whenever possible – and there is always the possibility for a laugh. It’s taken a few years, and some arduous work within, but I’m easily able to laugh at myself now – and there is much to find funny.
Included in the items I now find humorous are pictures like this, in which I did my Zoolander best to find the perfect scowl that looked both effortless and meaningful, and somehow ended up merely appearing utterly ridiculous. Turns out that’s a good look for practically anybody – we are, after all, just a pile of neurotic habits – and everyone feels better when we feel less alone.
As for these pics, along with the chuckles that Speedo-preening produces, I’m remembering certain summer days when all there was to do was sit beside the pool and read and watch the sun languidly move across the sky. Back then we would bask in the heat and light, commune with the bees and butterflies, sip iced tea and lemonade, slip into the cool water, and repeat. It feels so far away, and still so familiar – the way summer usually works. I remind myself to simply give in to it, to let it splash all over and not worry about any mess. We’re all a little messy, and that’s ok – especially in the summer.
The quirky fact that he used an actual camera to take this featured selfie is reason alone to grant Neil Patrick Harris his first crowning as Dazzler of the Day, but he’s got a career and a lifetime of accomplishments to justify it beyond that fun fact. He likely won’t remember it, but I swear he gave me the finger when tearing up the stage in his Tony-winning performance in ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’, and that’s just the tip of the entertainment juggernaut he’s amassed and created over the years. These days he is successfully balancing an ambitious entertainment career (that touches about every form of entertainment there is) and a burgeoning family life with husband and two kids. Not all child actors are able to make the transition to adult superstardom – Harris is the happy exception, and an inspirational role-model for all.
During my days and nights of drinking, it wasn’t the physical hangover that bummed me out from time to time (though those did hurt, especially the tail-whip ones, wherein just when you thought you were ok, a wave of nausea came on like the last minute tail-whip of that demon in ‘Lord of the Rings‘ that took Gandalf the Gray) it was the emotional hangovers that left me confused and scared and defeated. One of the things that made quitting drinking an easy choice was the determination to never again waste a morning – particularly a summer morning – lost in that hazy fog. One need not quit drinking entirely to avoid such a state – one just needs to avoid drinking to excess. My past was all about the excess, so I fell prey to losing many a morning.
Turning this into a musical moment for summer involves injecting a bit of Diana Ross disco into the scene, which lends its own fabulousness with nary a drop of liquor. It begins in slow fashion, the way one typically wakes, with or without a hangover to be honest, and slowly insinuates the embrace of losing oneself to love, and the regret or recreation of falling in such a way. Reminiscent of sweaty fever-dreams, and the secretive desires that summer holds within the folds of her gossamer wardrobe, the song is a hypnotic exploration of the morning-after, whatever the night before might have been.
To that end, it is magical – an extended musical trail that rises and falls, offering twists and turns and the ultimate disco-abandon of Ms. Ross at the dawn of the 1980’s. Summer is the best time to lose oneself to the decadence and debauchery that youth affords, and I have absolutely no regrets about digging deeply into that lavender haze.
Lace has come to embody many different meanings, conveying myriad effects: innocence and sex, delicacy and depravity, virgin and whore, or saintly and dirty. It runs the gamut from undergarments to flowers to insects to frills. It lends elegance to some and vulgarity to others. In this lace-cap hydrangea, its effects are equally outrageous, defying words to the point that I’ll stop writing to let the photos and the looks speak for themselves.
All too briskly, June has bonded toward its end and we have already arrived at the start of July. Summer moves quickly and waits for no one. That doesn’t mean I won’t try to still its march and slow its roll. Hence this post, which looks back the Junes that came before. I’m not quite ready to let go of that glorious month, and at only thirty days it feels like we owe it one more. That January gets thirty-one seems criminal if it could have been tacked on here.
June 2010: Thirteen years is a long time – revisiting this June feels remote and lovely.
June 2011: Recent Supreme Court rulings have many of us rightfully concerned about marriage equality, which means we might be going back to 2011, and before.
June 2012: Pride was all the rage in June, and happily it remains so.
June 2013: The best Junes are often those in which nothing but summer happens.
June 2014: Summer vacations and Tom Daley in a Speedo.
June 2015: Flowers and frills and more flowers.
June 2016: Summer salads and nakedness and movies.
June 2017: Sunsets, Speedos and sweet summer perfumes.
June 2018: We took this summer off, but it still had some good entries.
June 2019: Boston in the summer and days by the pool.
June 2020: Foodstuff, flowers and fluff.
June 2021: Olympic glory, dazzlers and Madonna.
June 2022: A shepherd’s pie of summer posts.
In front of many a strong man is a stronger woman, and while this website has thus far only celebrated the Nick Jonas half of this entertainment power couple, it is Priyanka Chopra Jonas who earns this Dazzler of the Day. As an actress, singer, film producer, writer and philanthropist, she is one of India’s most renowned and beloved celebrities. She has been making motions for worldwide domination with recent films and series such as ‘Quantico’, ‘Baywatch‘, ‘Isn’t It Romantic’, ‘Citadel’ and ‘Love Again’. Her upcoming work ‘Heads of State’ finds her joining John Cena and Idris Elba for an action film, but that might be a cakewalk compared to her latest role as mother.
How strange it should be that my major doses of roses this summer have come not from my own garden, or some countryside stand or greenhouse, but rather from a few bushes in downtown Albany which have been blooming their heads off for the past week or so. Such a sight has given life to my lunchtime strolls, and is a reminder that flowers can offer emotional sustenance in the deepest and darkest of downtown corners.
My relationship with the rose is as basic as anyone else’s, and though we don’t bother with growing them anymore (Andy and I gave up because we don’t have any extra space, or the additional effort the successful cultivation demands) we still love them. In fact, a bouquet of them stands in our den at the moment because I pick them up for Andy from time to time as I know how much he adores them. They remind him of his mother, and so they carry a sentiment that is worth keeping.
These roses are located in a little corner garden right on Broadway in downtown Albany, where they provide a happy sight to office workers out on lunch or a break – should they choose to stop and smell them.
After an auspicious start as a fashion model, Sidharth Malhotra quickly and sensationally made the jump to acting, where he has crafted a passionate worldwide following for his television and film appearances. including the upcoming film ‘Yodha’ and web series ‘Indian Police Force’. This marks his first Dazzler of the Day crowning, in a happy year that started off with a much-ballyhooed wedding.
You may have heard that this is the 20th year of ALANILAGAN.com, and as such I’m going to start culling a few ‘Top Twenty’ lists from the archives in celebration of such a milestone. (Who knows if I might make to another?) We’ll begin with one that is close to my musical heart: the Top Twenty Madonna Timelines. (These are not in any strict order, as it’s too difficult to rank that, they are just twenty notable timelines.)
The Madonna Timeline has been a regular installment here wherein I dissect a specific Madonna song (chosen randomly by the ‘Shuffle’ feature) and go into whatever memories or background I have of the song, when it was released, and/or what it has come to mean to me over the years. For a long time, I could date my life based on what Madonna era was happening, but failing memory and lack of indelible career moments have largely left that in the past. Here’s a reminder of some of my favorites.
1. Drowned World/Substitute for Love ~ This is my favorite Madonna song (with the caveat that such a preposterous proclamation is always subject to change – but this one has stayed at the top of my list since it came out in 1998, and as much as I adore her I don’t see Madonna topping this one anytime sooner or later). The opening track of her best album to date (the miraculous ‘Ray of Light’) this song ushered in one of the greatest Madonna eras ever. It was once again about the music, and this music came with layered nuance, lyrical poignance, and introspective grace. It was an emotional reckoning, highlighted by this compelling track, which seduces the listener with a calm and languid beginning then ruminates on the price of love and fame and the search for something more before culminating in one of the most powerful bridges she has ever written.
2. Vogue ~ Madonna has always been about fun and glamour, and nowhere is that more evident than in her classic anthem ‘Vogue’. From the opening command of ‘Strike a pose!’ to the quasi-rap litany of Hollywood royalty, this is Madonna at the crux of fabulous and campy in an ode and an invitation to the gay balls of the late 80’s. It also inspired a major timeline sprinkled with Oscar Wilde quotes and gay memories galore.
3. Like A Prayer ~ The rarefied upper-echelon of Madonna’s catalog contains many iconic moments and the crowning jewel of her musical oeuvre has to be ‘Like A Prayer’. For substance, style, and transformative musical transcendence, this remains Madonna’s most majestic move, and it has endured for decades with good reason.
4. Erotica ~ Sex and sin and seduction, oh my! A turning point in Madonna’s career formed a valuable and necessary life-lesson for me, laying the groundwork for my own creative expression.
5. Turn Up the Radio ~ Losing oneself in a pop song is one of Madonna’s most enduring hat-tricks, and a large reason why some of us have never been able to quit her. ‘Turn Up the Radio’ starts off as a stellar slice of escapist pop music, until you realize by the bridge she is desperately doing all that she can to simply survive (“We gotta have fun, if that’s all that we do”).
6. Rain ~ Forging the heart of the gorgeously-icy ‘Erotica’ album, ‘Rain’ was part of a pivotal moment in my life – and may have actually saved it.
7. Rebel Heart ~ At this stage in her career and life, Madonna has nothing left to prove, but an air of defiance imbues the title track of the under-appreciated-if-chaotic ‘Rebel Heart’ album. It’s a bit of a look-back and reassessment of “all the things I did just to be seen” while refusing to be anything other than the rebel she has always embodied.
8. Crazy For You ~ One of my very first crushes forms the narrative portion of this Madonna Timeline, and for that reason it holds a special place in my heart.
9. Secret ~ The Madonna song that will forever be linked with the memory of the first man I ever kissed, ‘Secret’ is heartbreaking on a personal level, and healing in the same way.
10. You Must Love Me ~ Though I was semi-stalking a young man at the time this song came out, ‘You Must Love Me’ eventually became the command that came true, as the object of my affection way back then ended up becoming a lifelong friend.
11. Music ~ When it comes to fun, nobody does a better bop than Madonna. From ‘Holiday’ to ‘Spotlight’ to her millennium-opener ‘Music’, she knows how to craft a catchy and infectious tune. Coupled with the first few months of dating Andy, this song informs one of the happiest times in my life.
12. Express Yourself ~ Another moment in Madonna history is also one of the most self-empowering songs ever written, and this take-charge anthem is a potent blast of pop perfection (cue the horny horn break).
13. Ray of Light ~ Exploding out of the spring and summer of 1998, the lead track to Madonna’s greatest album ‘Ray of Light’ is a roaring revelation of celebratory abandon and realization – the zenith of Madonna’s dance-pop evolution, even if she had no hand in actually writing the song. The timeline is always a fun memory, as it brings me back to a night in Boston when, fueled by a cocktail of something called ‘Liquid Cocaine’, I sped through Copley Square on roller-blades with a long black cloak flowing in my wake.
14. Messiah ~ Despite her ‘Something to Remember’ collection, Madonna has never truly been appreciated for her ballads, which is criminal, as they form the compelling contrast and anchors of so many of her albums. This selection from the somewhat-messy ‘Rebel Heart’ opus echoes other brilliant balladry such as ‘Falling Free’, ‘Promise to Try’, ‘I’ll Remember’ and ‘I Want You’.
15. True Blue – An ode to old-fashioned romance and sweet, hopeful innocence, this frothy confection of ear candy goes down easy and rekindles a simpler time in life.
16. Live to Tell ~ The best songs of Madonna transcend the limitations of pop music, allowing multiple readings and layers of interpretation. ‘Live to Tell’ hints at secrets and betrayals, survival and destruction, and is one of Madonna’s most serious and powerful ballads.
17. Secret Garden ~ Closing out the sexual kaleidoscope of ‘Erotica’, this glorious glimpse of a metaphorical musical garden found flowering and fruition and little to nothing to do with fucking. A precursor to cocky clickbait.
18. You’ll See ~ Turning romantic tragedy to independent triumph, ‘You’ll See’ was pegged as the ‘I Will Survive’ of its day, and it came at a time when my own romantic adventures were just beginning.
19. Survival – Opening her deceptively-soft-focused ‘Bedtime Stories’ album (one of the most unexpectedly-pivotal albums in her career, lowering expectations as it repositioned her as an artist who would endure rather than burn-out in a blaze of glory) this track and timeline found both Madonna and myself in a fascinating state of flux.
20. Material Girl ~ Where it all began for me.
