The Halloween/Thanksgiving/Easter Cactus

This poor cactus doesn’t know when to put on its show. Sometimes it hits for Halloween, sometimes it waits until Thanksgiving, and once in a while it’ll do a brief reprise around Easter. It’s never managed Christmas, which is fine; there’s too much else going on at that time. I’d rather it be spaced as it is. Maybe that’s why it’s in bloom now – to avoid the rush and bluster and risk of getting lost in the shuffle. I admire such planning and foresight.

Its blooming cycle is dependent upon how many hours of daylight there hour, and since it’s located in an unused storage room (or former work-out room back in the days when I could feign working out), where it gets no artificial light, it’s been pretty reliable. Just not reliable enough to schedule a holiday around it. Halloween is a far cry from Thanksgiving, and I’m giving thanks for that because no one is near ready.

Personally, I like its reliance on a general timeframe, as well as its refusal to adhere to a strict schedule. I’m that way too – I love structure and schedules, but I like room within them to move about freely. Contained chaos. Controlled craziness. The lessons of a cactus. (I’ve already got the prickly part down pat.)

 

Continue reading ...

Not Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen

Andy went all out last weekend to close things down for the season, mowing our overgrown lawn three times (to mulch and manage the field-like grass) and then getting things together for a super supper of chicken curry. As he was out procuring the supplies, I started the rice and then began preparing the chicken. We usually don’t tag-team cook, as he does things his way and I do things mine, but on this day I knew his back was hurting and I wanted to help him get a head-start. 

I chopped up the carrots and onion, then seasoned and browned the meat – chicken thighs, skin-on and bone-in: the most moist and flavorful parts to use. (White meat and breasts are over-rated.) By the time the meat was done with its first round of cooking, Andy had returned with the rest of the groceries. I chopped up the garlic and ginger and started that, then let Andy take over to work his magic, with Thai chili paste, baby corn, tomatoes, pineapple and snow peas. He added a bit more fresh ginger too. To this, he poured in some coconut milk and let it simmer for an hour. 

It was our best batch of chicken curry in a long time. 

Continue reading ...

Tiny Threads: An Insignificant Series

Me to the co-worker who instantly started engaging me first thing in the morning: “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to start a conversation.”

#TinyThreads

Continue reading ...

The Madonna Timeline: Song #146 ~ ‘I’m Going Bananas’

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

Hola! Ese bato loco!
I’m going bananas,
And I feel like my poor little mind is being devoured by piranhas,
For I’m going bananas.

A story once circulated that en route to one of her Girlie Show gigs around the world, Madonna watched ‘Sunset Boulevard‘ for perhaps the first time. It sounds a little suspect. That this would be her introduction to such a classic film so late in the game feels unlikely. But such is the story, and who knows if it happened. The point is that it may have informed her “crazy” section in that otherwise glorious tour production. There’s a very distinct stretch that begins with ‘I’m Going Bananas’ in which she wears a bandana on her head like a skull-cap and then performs ‘La Isla Bonita‘ and ‘Holiday’ while acting downright maniacal, at times refusing to vacate the stage in an elaborate James Brown routine. It was almost cute, and nice to see her poking fun at herself and her little career slump following ‘Erotica‘ and ‘Sex‘. Of course it was far from the end, but the wink was a reassuring reminder that she hadn’t lost her sense of humor, nor her way.

That’s how I view ‘I’m Going Bananas’. Not really worth psycho-analyzing such a trifle of a Dick Tracy throwaway track. Better to be reminded of some other cuts from that theatrical soundtrack:

There’s bats in my belfry.
Won’t you make sure this straightjacket’s tight,
Otherwise I might get myself free.
Yes, there’s bats in my belfry.
Who knows?
Could be the wine I drink
Or it’s the way I think,
That makes me gonzo.
Oh, Doctor Alonzo says I’m going bananas,
Someone get me a bed in the “Casa de Loco” for all my mananas,
For I’m going bananas.
Yes, I’m going bananas.
Si, I’m going bananas.

SONG #146: ‘I’m Going Bananas’

Continue reading ...

Tiny Threads: An Insignificant Series

Silk boxers.

Like so many other things, the concept works better on paper.

And who wants to dry clean their underwear?

Still, if Tom Ford says it’s ok then I’m game for silk wedgies. 

#TinyThreads

Continue reading ...

Audience of One: An Interview ~ Part 6 – PVRTD Promo

“Don’t let yourself feel worthless: often through life you will really be at your worst when you seem to think best of yourself; and don’t worry about losing your “personality,” as you persist in calling it: at fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon, and when you are my age you will give out, as I do, the genial warmth of 4 p.m.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

For our last official interview session, he has invited me to witness the “sacred space” of getting ready for a big party. Only a few select people have been behind this curtain, and even Andy is not part of most of these intrigues. While he’s only recently been more vocal about his social anxiety when it comes to events large and small, it’s been with him all his life. He’s worked out various ways of dealing with it (a cocktail never hurts) and in the hours before heading out he has several methods of which we’ll try a smattering. First up, a showing of ‘Auntie Mame’ – no party he throws is complete without watching a few minutes of Rosalind Russell greeting her guests in the opening tableau. Her gift for gab and meaningless small talk, along with her carefree skills as hostess form the backbones of his cocktail persona. Second is Madonna. In the bathroom, she blares from the stereo speaker while Alan fixes his hair and makes his cologne selection.

In an impossibly-frilly satin robe, silver in color and accented by numerous sheer flowers in darker shades of silver and gray, he opens the glass door that leads to his pride and joy: an extensive collection of fragrances, anchored by the largest number of Tom Ford Private Blend bottles I’ve seen outside of Ford’s flagship Manhattan store. Even rarities like ‘Japon Noir’ and ‘Amber Absolute’ are here, along with recent offerings such as ‘Fougere D’Argent’ and ‘Fucking Fabulous’. It’s a cologne connoisseur’s dream featuring other houses as well: Byredo, By Kilian, Hermes, Diana Vreeland, Creed and Frederic Malle. For tonight’s event he chooses By Kilian, and the rum-accented ‘Straight to Heaven’, the name of which he quickly condemns. “How would I ever tell someone what I’m wearing?” he asks. “If it didn’t smell so heavenly I wouldn’t abide it, but it’s so good I couldn’t resist. And I suppose cheesy over-the-top nonsense is what I do best, so ‘Straight to Heaven’ it is!” With a dramatic flourish of the handsome black cologne bottle, he expertly lands a few spritzes at all the pulse points and caps it with a click. I giggle at the histrionics and he laughs at himself too.

Walking by me with a swish of his robe, he does smell damn good. “Pick out something to wear too!” he shouts over his shoulder before closing the door to his bedroom. The opening electronic strings to ‘Vogue’ sound as I peruse the olfactory riches on display, and for a moment I give in to the decadent indulgence on hand, losing myself in how pretty the world can be, and how gorgeously it can be scented. “When all else fails and you long to be something better than you are today… I know a place where you can get away…”

I make my choice: ‘Vert D’Encens’ for its incense-like take on fall. A single spray on my wrist is all I need, or want, and I make my way out into the living room. Settling into the ornate conversation couch, I spy the ‘PVRTD’ project on the table before me. It looks smaller than expected. For something that contains such powerful images, it appears diminutive and harmless, with its elegantly-abstract cover and manageable size. Surrounded by beauty, and scented decadently by Tom Ford, I feel at odds with the pages I slowly thumb through, and the opening images of a snowy winter lend a sudden chill to the moment.

Though I’ve seen them already, the photographs draw me in again. ‘PVRTD’ is one of those rare works that gets better with repeated viewings. The subtlety lost on first glance returns with a resonant grace, while the overall arch of the piece comes into a more focused rendering. For all its referenced horrors, ‘PVRTD’ is very much a work of beauty – heartbreaking, harsh, atrocious beauty – and it encompasses the human spirit simultaneously at its best and worst.

Images that rekindle the holocaust, white supremacy, and prisoner abuse are etched into our minds, but they are fading. Someone growing up today doesn’t have the same visceral reaction to a hooded KKK figure or a burning cross. ‘PVRTD’ wants to jolt us into feeling that abhorrence, to shake us from the lethargy of apathy, stir up something inside each of us that we must never forget or allow to be dulled. Our complacency is our death. If it’s Ilagan’s most political project to date (there isn’t much competition) it also manages to steer clear of direct reference to current events, taking the past for its initial inspiration. That said and seen, it’s shocking how prescient it feels when one thinks about the state of the world right now. When framed with that, ‘PVRTD’ is almost perfectly, if diabolically, timed.

As Madonna fades into the background, and the distant rumble of drawers and closet doors being opened and closed sounds in muffled fashion, an eerie sense of being suddenly and unexpectedly alone begins to give unnerving apprehension to the images in my hands. On this cusp of day and night, when the inside and the outside light are a match and you’re not quite sure which will end up being brighter, I find myself in a disconcerting disposition. This, then, is the twilight.

Andy is out getting groceries, Alan is getting ready, and I sit upon the conversation couch sifting through the pages of PVRTD. An ancient folk song plays from a music box in some sorrowful minor key. At least I think it’s a music box. The raspy way it slows and repeats indicates some mechanized element; it sounds like the whole world is ticking slowly down to a standstill. A waltz picks up where it leaves off, some bit of Viennese elegance and enchantment, and I turn the pages of crumbled stone and snow, dust and ice and desiccated flowers gone to empty seed-heads. A world of ruin beautifully frozen in gradations of gray. Beauty’s where you find it…

The dichotomy of this – the conundrum of such hard reality and history in the face of such comfort and beauty – makes me wonder at the world. I know that these photographs are intended to inspire contemplation. Raised awareness. A reminder that these atrocities did occur, they did take place – this was all real. And it might be again. 

The circle of gold-rimmed cocktail glasses sits atop a smoky mirror, surrounded by a border also gilded with gold. They are empty, and perhaps a little prettier because of it. They hold the emptiness of promise – the possibility of getting filled or getting left behind. We will not fill them tonight, but there will be other nights, at least I hope there will be, when company will regale itself with revelry and camaraderie. After all, what else is there besides company?

I think of the times we have spent together – all the moments, really. Once you make a friend of someone, they are with you forever, most of the time anyway. And if you’ve made a friend with yourself, well, that’s the best kind of friendship to have. If you can get on with yourself, you can get on with just about anybody. 

I hear him in the distance.

A door opens and closes, and another one opens. 

There are many doors in that little hallway of that little house.

Eventually I hear the rustle of his approach. I want to turn around and look, wondering what he or I may have chosen to wear on such a night. I wonder at what we wear on any given night. How silly and foolish and all-important it might be. Outside, the world has gone black. A lone light stands in the middle of the front yard. Is it safety? Is it warning? Does it welcome or does it repel? Oh what a world. What a wicked, wonderful, wayward world. 

He rounds the corner of the couch, lifting the finery in which he is draped, and sits down gently beside me. Close and near, it feels as though our hearts beat as one. I place a hand on his leg out of reassurance, and friendship and, yes, love, and I feel it on my own leg. The finery surrounds me, and in such beauty and luxury there is comfort. 

It is time to go. A party awaits. Andy is back and dressed, and I’m just about ready. As I search for the remote to turn the television off, I catch the last bit of a Lawrence Welk episode on PBS. The farewell song is playing – the song that once lulled me to sleep as my father would lift me up, carry me upstairs and tuck me in to bed: “Good night, sleep tight, and pleasant dreams to you, here’s a wish and a prayer that every dream comes true…”

Flinging a coat over my shoulder, I laugh. Half a guttural guffaw, and half a demonic squeal, all before Andy can hear and question my stability. The absurdity and sorrow is so much that all there is to do is laugh. 

The song fades.

Silence, and then the static-like crackle of a distant fire, and a hissing that grows louder…

On the news, reports of a shooter in a synagogue are just trickling in. The gunman reportedly shouted out “All Jews must die” as he killed eleven people at a baby’s bris. Thirteen bombs have been sent to Democratic leaders and supporters who have opposed the current President. Two black people were killed at a Kentucky supermarket after the gunman tried getting into a predominantly black church. 

The world burns, but oh how brilliantly it glows…

{See also Part 1, Part 2, Part 3Part 4 & Part 5.}

‘PVRTD’ will be released on The Projects page this month.

Continue reading ...

Tiny Threads: An Insignificant Series

Resting bitch face?

Please.

As long as I’m awake my game is fully active.

It’s called work ethic.

#TinyThreads

Continue reading ...

Audience of One: An Interview ~ Part 5 – PVRTD Promo

“Life is so damned hard, so damned hard… It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can’t be hurt ever any more. That’s the last and worst thing it does.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

There’s an epilogue to one of the ‘Grey Gardens’ documentaries that shows Little Edie touring the yard at the brink of winter. They had long since finished principal filming, and this looks and feels like a reunion of sorts after their summer together. A torn fur coat is draped over her shoulders as she surveys the damage of the colder seasons. All the leaves that provided such verdant drapery for the movie have been ripped from their perches and the land is bare but for the winding architecture of vines and tree limbs. It is comparatively somber, and Little Edie lets out plaintive coos about another oncoming winter.

I’m reminded of that scene when Alan brings me into his backyard in upstate New York, where the pool is still open but filled with dark leaves and swirling dead flowerheads from the once-glorious seven-sons-flower tree. He is not in a fur, but rather a colorful crocheted poncho made of yarn predominantly in a shade of flaming poppy red. A pair of jeans and a sensible yet still stylish pair of work boots complete this look, and once again his shape-shifting leaves a new impression. His scent is both intoxicating and off-putting for anyone other than cologne aficionados. I like it on him. I can’t imagine it on me. “Don’t worry,” he tells me. “It’s a secret combination of Tom Ford Private Blends. You’d never be able to conjure it. I probably couldn’t do it again either.”

He is equally imperious and self-deprecating today. If you’ve only heard about him or experienced him from his website, you might be surprised at how easily and quickly he will burst into laughter, often at his own expense. As we survey the wilted baskets still hanging from the canopy frame, Alan pulls the long, limp, lifeless length of a sweet potato vine off one of the patio lounge chairs. It has apparently been a long time since anyone sat outside. “We are but one step away from the poor-man’s version of ‘Grey Gardens’! And maybe not even that far…”

Inside, Andy is up to his own machinations in the kitchen. It makes for a cozy scene, these two gentlemen about to entertain for family and friends on a fall afternoon. “Let’s sit outside for a bit, while we still can,” he implores, brushing off more leaves from one of the chairs. “I love being on the verge of cold weather. It affords so many more wardrobe options.” A collection of gold crosses and chains dangles from his wrist, and he asks about favorite fall libations that he might have on hand for me. I venture a few beer selections, at which he scoffs. “I meant a real drink. This isn’t grade school.”

A simple yet potent Manhattan later (“note the Bada Bing cherries, do!”), I’m under his spell, and an afternoon that at first looked bleak and gray has blossomed into a rich wonderland of autumnal beauty. The sun slants through the fine fiery fronds of a Japanese maple and the ripe heads of a tree hydrangea, still holding onto their rich salmon shades. Alan is going on about the virtues of a certain Sweet Vermouth when Andy opens the door and asks what I want for dinner. A charmed existence indeed. 

A spaghetti and meatballs dish ordered and en route, I return us to the task at hand, and though talk of the ‘PVRTD’ project “feels almost blasphemous” on such a gorgeous day, Alan is game for more. But only a little more. “Must we sully the afternoon this way?” he asks himself almost inaudibly at one point. The air grows colder as our afternoon wears on. He folds his arms over his chest and wonders whether he should grab a hat. At such an idyllic autumn moment, it is difficult to place the horrors of humanity that are hinted at in the new project. Yet it pervades even this escapist space of respite. At the bottom of my almost-empty Manhattan, a cherry of the darkest red bleeds sweet juice and takes its final dying breath. I swallow the last of such bourbon-soaked sweetness and contemplate the predicament of an empty cocktail glass.

We touch a bit on the more controversial photographs in ‘PVRTD’. There are references both blatant and subtle made to the Holocaust, white supremacy, and the KKK – and it’s always dangerous to reference that kind of historical pain. As a gay man of a certain age, and a bi-racial minority from an inter-racial marriage, Ilagan has his own history of prejudice and pain. Though he comes from a position of financial stability, he can get away with a bit more because he also speaks from inside a place of first-hand prejudice. Before the choruses of ‘faggot’ as he got older, there were the students who poked fun of his Filipino heritage.

“Some of them thought I was Chinese,” he remembers, “And would pull their eyes into slits to make fun of me. And there was one kid who simply would not believe that I was NOT the Asian actor from ‘The Goonies’ – he insisted it was me. He was not really making fun of me, he just couldn’t get his head around the fact that the world was comprised of different people outside of those who attended St. Mary’s religious class in Amsterdam, New York.” He laughs a little at that memory.

Racism wasn’t always as direct as that, and most of his childhood and formative years would be divided between those who favored and doted on him as the first-born son of Dr. and Mrs. Ilagan, and those who eyed him suspiciously in stores, or substitute teachers who seemed harsher to him than to others. Is there any hard-proof that some of these adults treated him differently because of his race? No. That’s the insidious nature of latent racism; one usually never quite knows. But it’s there.

Homophobia was a little more easy to ferret out, particular when people would yell ‘faggot’ as he walked past, but it was no more easy to accept. The world has made strides toward equality, but the current administration and the things we are seeing daily on the news indicate a backlash against acceptance and love. In some respects we seem to be going back in time to a more sinister era when racism and homophobia were the accepted order of the day. Some of the same conditions are in place, some of the same hatred has risen to the surface, and some of it is sanctioned by the uppermost levels of our government.

The photographs of ‘PVRTD’ illustrate the perverted nature that society dictates and builds into existence. It’s dangerous folly to think that something similar won’t happen again – gays are being killed around the world, especially transgender people – and the suicide rates for both groups are exponentially higher than heterosexuals. What if it’s not a sickness that’s born with them, but one that society has imposed and created from years of oppression and hatred? What if the perversion is not of nature, but a man-made symptom? It gets into a dicey and difficult area, and such questions are not blatantly asked, which is another departure for Ilagan. (He has, of his own admission, veered into heavy-handed hamming when it comes to making a point or illustrating a thesis). ‘PVRTD’ offers no such up-front explanation to its images, and even less of a defense for the more incendiary photographs.

He himself gives no easy answer, no kumbaya save-the-world push for peace, no bumper-sticker feel-good turn of phrase – only the cold images that echo the barbarism from our past. It’s easy to think of the Ku Klux Klan and their burning crosses as the stuff of ancient history, to relegate the Holocaust and its Anti-Semitism to the sepia-toned memory corridor of long ago; Ilagan brings a renewed recreation of those horrific images not only to remind, but also to reveal. What does it inspire in the viewer? Outrage? Apathy? Disgust? Dismissal? Why does the very notion of a burning cross cause such a commotion? And if we push it away, if we avoid it and bury it and pretend it doesn’t have a place in today’s world, why couldn’t it happen again? More than ripples of such hatred have been making waves in America. The latent racism and tamped-down hatred of certain groups has found fissures and outlets to release itself, and certain individuals and political parties seem to embrace this dangerous divide. Ilagan wants to hold them to the light, to bring them forth from their caverns and basements and hidden recesses and reveal them for what they are. That can get messy, especially when he doesn’t offer a clear-cut answer. ‘PVRTD’ takes its premise of how hatred perverts the natural order of love with which most humans are intrinsically born, and makes the bold stance that the historically ‘perverted’ categories of people have been made so by the actions of those denying them their true nature. ‘Gay reparative therapy’ with its electroshock treatments and cruel, forced method of eradicating the ‘gayness’ of its subjects is the most glaring example of this. To cure a ‘pervert’, one need only force them into a hetero-normative situation and mindset.

The oppressiveness of this dark new world sinks into both of us as we head inside for a refill. Andy says that my dinner plate will be ready in a few minutes. Alan is working on a bourbon cocktail for fall, as family will be arriving for dinner soon. He arranges a circle of gold-rimmed glasses on a smoky mirrored tray then disappears for a wardrobe change. I spend the remainder of my time with Andy, enjoying his homemade meatballs and feeling cared for in a way I don’t often get from my own family.

I have to leave before Alan emerges in his latest finery, so I can’t report what he was wearing for that evening’s gathering, but we have one more official interview before I can return to my status as friend and confidante…

{To Be Continued… Also see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 & Part 4}

Continue reading ...

The Spice Girls Minus Posh

I was about to go all devastated about the news that the Spice Girls were mounting a tour without Posh, but then I realized that Victoria Beckham has much better people, I mean things, to do. 

PS – Find more of Mr. Beckham in his underwear and other gratuitous glamour here

Continue reading ...

Tiny Threads: An Insignificant Series

Something that continues to challenge me: gauging the number of napkins I’ll need for a take-out order. Woefully under or over, never a happy median.

#TinyThreads

Continue reading ...

Audience of One: An Interview ~ Part 4 – PVRTD Promo

“We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.” – Andre Berthiaume

We make our way along Boston Common and then the Public Garden, where Ilagan was married in 2010. He ushers us along one edge, as is his usual wont when passing by, pointing out where they stood during the ceremony. It’s a comfort to pass through, even as evening has arrived, and the leaves have started falling in earnest. He recalls their wedding lunch at the Four Seasons across the street. Even at a distance, Andy is never that far away. In the same way that he informs much of Alan’s blog (as do many of us friends and family if I may be so bold to say), he is present even in absentia.

The scent of early fall is in the air, and walking beside him and thinking of this online cast of misfits and familiar characters makes me feel slightly less alone in the world, even as it grows ever colder and dimmer. The hour, already christened the saddest of the day, adds to the melancholy dampness that suddenly stands between us and the long walk back to the condo. Alan senses something too, and just as we exit the Garden he suggests one more stop for tea at the Taj.

A sumptuous couch is open in one corner and he quickly makes it his own, dropping his shopping bags and relaxing onto its arm like he owned it. He requests a list of teas from the slightly snooty server, dismissing my annoyance at the attitude of said server, and settles on a peppermint herbal selection. “No caffeine for me, ever,” he pronounces. “I need to sleep tonight.” Here, in another place where people make their temporary homes away from home, I wonder at his propensity for hanging out in hotels. It’s been a habit of his from the time I’ve known him, and all these years later he still thrills at the notion of transitory strangers. He doesn’t want to examine the notion much. “Maybe I just like other people to make the bed?” he ponders before swerving us back to his new project. If I wanted to get deeper, peppermint tea was not the way. Yet he is passionate about the new work, and as he delves into it he gets as animated as when talking of friends.

“The whole idea of certain people being perverted has always been fascinating to me,” he says. “Is it society that that has perverted us or is it we who have perverted society? Is a gay person more perverted than a leader who believes certain minorities are less than human? Why is it more perverted for me to love my husband than for a stranger to hate us because we’re gay? That notion of where true perversion lies formed the impetus for this project.” He is off on a trip now, galloping quickly as his words tumble out between sips of tea.

“I also found myself returning to the artistic aspect of photography and using the camera as a means of communicating an idea or a thought. Just images and whatever narrative the viewer brings into it. I wanted the photographs to indicate something missing. Empty space. I wanted to capture that feeling of emptiness, but also something haunting. Faded spirits. Foreboding. Ominous. Dread. A haunted aspect as if something or someone was missing. Photos that beg the questions: what happened here? Did someone disappear? What is missing? Is someone waiting? I wanted there to be tension and a taut sense of mystery. A sense of doom.”

There is a palatable tension to much of the project. Photos that initially read as mundane – an empty doorway, a deserted run-down factory, a dirty patch of snow – gradually turn into something more upon closer and longer examination. The cover is a ghostly vision of Alan, jarringly out of focus and barely recognizable as human, which looks like he could be dancing or being hung. That about sums up the different and disparate levels of meaning and image that run through the work. It is surprisingly complex, and eons beyond anything he’s done before.

He is somewhat critical of past projects, saying, “Most of my photos have been very posed and choreographed and set up just so. Very staged, very still, and there’s not a lot of movement in it. I wanted to do something different and new to convey movement and restlessness. So much of my previous work is stationary. Dramatic, yes, and over the top with costumes and stuff, but not in movement or action. Everything is perfectly posed, backgrounds meticulously created, framed and designed. It is deliberately formal. This project is raw, casual, entirely of-the-moment. It is urgent and transient, indicative of change and transformation. It also goes against so much of what I see today – on Instagram for example.”

 

Alan has a growing Instagram following, in addition to his formidable FaceBook presence (when he’s not being banned), a sizable Twitter account (verified, no less) and even an oft-neglected YouTube Channel (“Do subscribe!” he begs). Unlike some people, however, particularly those with much larger followings, he uses most of his social media outlets as light entertainment. Granted, his Twitter account veers hard into political retweets, and he is often calling out the current President for stupidity, cruelty, and simple nonsense, but for the most part Ilagan uses his social media accounts to drive traffic to his blog. “The rest is just fluff, honestly. People take those things way too seriously. For a long time I did too, but as much as I make use of them, they actually have little impact on real life.”

He will expound upon the virtual online world that is being created, and he owns up to being a part of it, but is hyper-wary of it. “I’m the first to post about a new coat or pair of shoes I got, or a trip to see a Broadway show, and cumulatively the world gets a very skewed notion of how I live my life. I don’t document getting up at 5:30 every morning to get to work, or sitting at my office desk, or getting home and typing a week of blog posts into my laptop. Yet those are what constitute the bulk of my daily life. On Instagram though? I’m a fucking star who lives a glamorous life where the only thing I need to do all month is try out the latest Tom Ford Private Blend.”

If ‘PVRTD’ is a social commentary on today’s political world, it is also as much a statement on Ilagan’s own artistic evolution, and how his creative work fits into the current pop culture environment. The advent of social media has resulted in a platform for everyone to act like a star, and all the filters and apps and fancy digital tricks have given even the dullest person an opportunity to shine. That comes with benefits and drawbacks. The playing field may feel more even, but it’s also more vast, and in such a climate where the masses can theoretically put forth their own content in the same exact way that Kim Kardashian or the President does, something has to set people apart from one another. As Alan and I sit near each other, engaging in a conversation, following the threads of where thoughts and listening lead us, I’m struck by how suddenly old-fashioned such a scene has become. In this ancient hotel of this most ancient city, we are relating as humans have related since we first learned to communicate. No one under the age of 30 would dare be caught idly sipping tea and simply talking without a cel phone within safe reach. It all feels slightly sad, and I wonder if that makes me old.

Alan mentions going into “old curmudgeon mode” and indulges in a bit of lamenting to go along with my train of thought. As much as the landscape of ‘PVRTD’ is a new challenge for him, the process of its creation marks a return to where he actually began.

“Today everything is in sharp focus, brilliant color, and has this impossible-to-ignore sheen,” he explains. “With our filters and photoshop we can make perfect images, even from rather rough raw material. I didn’t want to do that for this project. I’ve never been a big photoshop fan. If you can’t take a decent photo without excessive filters and effects, then you need to work on that first. I wanted these shots to be unfiltered and unfettered by those bounds of perfection. I wanted it to be a throwback to film, when a hand or arm or foot was inadvertently part of the finished product, when you caught what you could catch in the blink of an eye, and didn’t take a series of bursts from which you could get the best shot. I wanted the immediacy of that, yet also the time-freezing and time-catching that was a hallmark of film.” To that effect, ‘PVRTD’ is strikingly effective, and plants Ilagan squarely in the realm before the arrival of digital cameras.

“It feels like moments and photos are more fluid today. There are so many ways of capturing pictures, it’s no longer so strict and unforgiving. When you used film, you had the 24 or 36 prints that were available on a roll, and that was it. You had to reload, do it all over again, and send it away to get processed if you didn’t develop them yourself. You didn’t see how things were progressing, whether you needed more or less light, until days or weeks later. Most of the time you worked with what you got, even if it was less than perfect, and tried to make it better the next time.

Conversely, today’s technology allows for instant correction – not only in the editing process but in the act of taking the photos themselves. You can see what it will look like instantly on the screen and readjust instantly. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted it to be like one roll of film, where you had to use what you got. It gave the thing a feeling of daring, of risk, of possible failure. But it gives an absolute rendering of a moment that is less staged and artificial. What happened was what got captured. There were no repeats, no retakes, no additional opportunities to make things better or prettier.”

If it sounds like he may be pining for a by-gone era, don’t be fooled: his website exists precisely because of the advance of the internet. It’s not lost upon him, yet his Thoreau-like aversion to too much technology has kept him mostly on the creative side of things (even if he can tell you what “HTML” code stands for). As we finish our tea, I look around the beautiful room, at the Public Garden across the street, and I yearn for a little bit of the past. A little bit of our youth. A little bit of what the world was once like. At the end of this day, it feels like it’s all gone.

We part in the lobby of the Taj, near the bottom of a circular staircase and beside a banquette of seasonal flowers. Alan always walks through this space just to see the floral arrangements; he still recalls the bountiful bouquets of peonies and cherry blossoms that marked his wedding stay all those many years ago. It is a fitting end to our Boston interviews. He will go back to the condo and sleep on the couch, listening to the sounds of the Braddock Park fountain before it is drained and put to bed for the winter. We’ll rendezvous at his home in upstate New York in a few days for one last interview session. He sweeps through the revolving door and disappears into the night.

{To Be Continued… Also see Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3}

Continue reading ...

Recap Fortified by an Extra Hour

The magic and mystery of Daylight Savings. What did you do with your one extra hour? I’m spending mine going over this recap for you. Everything that got posted in the last week, all in one convenient post for your reading pleasure, or otherwise. Shall we begin, Mr. Hart?

The week was mostly about promoting my new PVRTD project (and all the ass shots that have nothing to do with the project itself but are fun because it annoys everyone and their mothers). The Press Release is here (ass shot included). The promotional interview (with all the requisite tooshie pics) begins here.

Tomorrow we vote. Here’s what we are up against. 

I model my office behavior on Juno. 

The conundrum of Halloween

… solved by the perfect costume for this point in my life. 

November dreaming goes deep. 

Beautiful Scars by Madonna: the rare non-noteworthy Madonna Timeline entry. 

It was a week of frying.

The perverse thrills of a onesie made out of netting. (Ass shot warning!)

The perfect song for the extra hour. 

Tacos of the sea

The second part of the PVRTD Promo interview is posted here. (Where you can debate what constitutes ass-coverage when netting is involved.)

Follow the threads back to the beginning. 

Shawn Mendes showers in his trunks (but a shirtless Shawn Mendes is better than no Shawn Mendes at all). 

The third part of the PVRTD Promo interview gets rather ghostly, but I’ve not given up the butt-shots just yet

Hunks of the Day included Vanilla Ice, Ronnie Woo, Diego Arnary, Sidharth Malhotra, Brian Sims and Joshua Morrow

Continue reading ...

Shawn Mendes Showering

A much-needed break from the grossly-egotistical navel-gazing going on in all the PVRTD Promos of late, coming in the form of Shawn Mendes taking a fake shower in Japan. He’s shirtless, but he kept his trunks on for some ungodly reason. Oh well, we still have his Hunk of the Day post to revisit. 

 

Continue reading ...

Audience of One: An Interview ~ Part 3 – PVRTD Promo

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

The day has turned cloudy and cool. Alan thrills at the shift in the atmosphere. “Finally, fall in proper form!” he proclaims to no one in particular. In the shadows of the downtown buildings, the day feels even darker. Fall indeed has descended and as much as he professes to be excited about it, a furrowed brow indicates the first tinge of worry. Shopping bags in hand, he directs us up an old cobblestone street into the lobby of the Parker House Hotel, bringing us back a full century. In the hush of the dark entrance, we pass couches and chairs where people are propped looking down at their laptops or cel phones. Even in his most outrageous outfit, Alan might go unnoticed in this modern scene. No one looks up as we glide by, even with the occasionally inappropriate outburst. (“That luggage is ghastly! Isn’t that luggage ghastly??”) He knows a cozy nook upstairs where we can have oysters and early afternoon cocktails, looking over the bustling street below and secreted safely away from the suddenly-wicked wind.

We choose a window seat, and the glass is from an era of imperfection and wavy variation, lending a surreal distortion to the people walking outside. Our server takes the order – a dozen oysters and a pair of dry martinis, one with olives and mine with a twist – and then we are left alone. If it were not for the television almost-discreetly placed in the corner, I’d swear we had gone back several decades. Alan is game for timelessness, leaning back into his chair and surveying the room.

“This is the first place my friend Kira tried oysters, and she’s loved them ever since,” he says, recounting former antics with his long-time friend. Whenever he talks of friends, his eyes are a bit more animated, and a rare glimpse of affection emerges from a typically-stoic stance. Kira has become a mainstay on his trips to Boston, one of the regular characters who populates his blog. That little village of friends and family is known to those of us who regularly follow along on his website. “God love you,” he intones in a quieter voice, “But no one close to me reads my blog with any regularity.” There is more to be said about that, but he’s not quite ready, or willing. It’s easier to talk about his artistic output, the separate entity that originates from within and takes on its own life once it’s been birthed. Distance and time, time and distance – he can address anything with enough of them. And so he begins telling of the origins of ‘PVRTD’.

The idea was seeded at the Art Institute of Chicago in the spring of 2017. He hadn’t been in the city since 2000, and as he left it in the rear-view mirror of the rental truck that he and Suzie were driving away from his busted-up relationship, the salty film over his eyes blurred it all in a haze of heartache and pain. Almost two decades later, he found himself back at the lakefront, on a sunny but windy day, entering the museum by himself. Two immense lions guarded the edifice, and he remembered a holiday shopping article he had written for the Windy City Times in which he visited the museum gift shop and was given a foam pen topped with a colorful abstract lion. At the time, conflicted by his break-up and the nagging sense that he didn’t belong in that city, he’d wanted to roar like those lions, out of devastation and sadness. All these years later he felt a kind of fondness for returning to the place where he had to grow up, but such warmth was marred by those bittersweet memories.  

“I was visiting Chicago and surprised by how moved I was looking back at everything that had happened so long ago. I went to the Art Institute and there was an exhibition called ‘Provoke’ culled from the Japanese photo magazine of the 1960’s (‘Provoke: Provocative Materials for Thought’), which featured black and white photography of the protests of the period, of the artists, of the human life that was going on. It spoke to me on many planes, and it reminded me of the purity of photography, something I’d sort of neglected or marred with the ease of iPhones and Elphs. I was inspired to focus on the photograph, and less on the gimmick or presentation. I was moved by how raw much of that work was, how there were fingers blocking some of the photos, the smudge of movement, the unfocused brutality of it all. And that style was what I wanted to attempt. Coupled with the state of the country, and the frightening situation of having such a dangerously inept and volatile leader, it made for fertile creative ground.”

By the winter of 2018, he had an idea of what he wanted to present, he had only to execute it. Test shoots were held at his brother’s new house in Amsterdam, NY, while the overall trajectory of the work began to flesh itself out. Themes of winter, outcasts, and the darkest points in our collective history echoed similar events playing out in the current news cycle. Recalling such tragic and dark points in the past – from the Ku Klux Klan to the mass-extinction of Jews during World War 2 – bled into our modern-day world, and he saw similarities that were as eerie as they were alarming. He wanted to make statements on that without hitting the viewers over the head with any overt message.

“Guilty,” is his verdict on getting the point of past projects across. “I have always worried that people wouldn’t get whatever message or statement I was making, and some of my work got a little… clunky because of it.” For ‘PVRTD’, there is no table of contents to guide the viewer through the pages, no foreword or preface to give an indication of what is about to be seen. Alan kept the whole project under the strictest secrecy, only revealing a few key images when others were employed to help with the photography and he himself slid in front of the camera (which he did far less for this endeavor than most others).

It wasn’t always easy to get people to help – his brother voiced concern over stepping onto abandoned property, while others weren’t comfortable being involved when select portions of the subject matter was described (“I purposely left out the whole trajectory and intent because I didn’t want to reveal that, but in hindsight it might have helped people understand things better”), but throughout the winter and spring of 2018, he worked diligently at getting the bulk of principal photography finished. When he took a summer break from his blog, he also set ‘PVRTD’ down for a couple of months.

When he returned to it at the end of summer, the world was in an even more chaotic place. The final set piece shot for the project was its most incendiary (quite literally, as it involved fire and burning certain objects). As he watched the country return to a 1950’s nightmare of racial unrest, sexist inequality, and blatant bigotry, he brought to life disturbing images of white supremacy, reminders of how awful our country had been, not so long ago. (As of this writing, only a select few have seen the finished product in its entirety, and no one wants to be the first to go on record as to its merit.)

Part of him wants to get deeper into the creative process of how ‘PVRTD’ came into existence, but the hour has turned tricky. “The saddest part of the day,” is how he describes our current predicament. Our oysters finished and our martinis sweating onto the table, it’s almost time to go. He doesn’t want to speak further on the topic at hand. I excuse myself for a quick trip to the bathroom.  After giving direction to the stairs that lead up to the next level, Alan gives a quiet warning that it’s haunted. He settles back in his chair and folds his arms across his chest after the decidedly unsettling comment, and I back away.

Looking it up later, I find that the Parker House is indeed rumored to be haunted, and on the third floor, deserted and empty, there is a discernible feeling of being watched, a creepiness amid the pretty surroundings. The sense of someone lurking around each corner is palpable, and I know not whether it’s simply the suggestion of a haunting or an actual ghost. Neither is very reassuring, I must admit.

Darkness comes, sooner than expected, sooner than I realized. I rush down the stairs and find him ready to go.

{To Be Continued… Also see Part 1 & Part 2}

Continue reading ...

Tacos of the Sea

One of the best lunches I’ve ever had was a simple dish of fish tacos. We had just walked the Marginal Way in Ogunquit, Maine, and in Perkins Cove we stopped for a meal at MC Perkins. While they generally do things on a fancier plane there, I ordered the fish tacos, and what arrived was a quartet of the most delicious delights I’ve been lucky enough to eat. Maybe it was the walk along the Maine shore that made me so ravenous, or maybe it was the way we simply seem to enjoy food more when on vacation, but this

While they did theirs with a simple fried white fish and typical flour tortilla, it was the accents that made it shine: a glorious red cabbage slaw, some fresh jalapenos and cilantro, and a tasty remoulade that brought it all together. For years I’ve been trying to find a similar dish, but in upstate New York such magic is in short supply. With our fryer in full effect, this seemed as good a time as any to see if I couldn’t replicate it myself, and in case you don’t want to read any further I’ll break it down with a simple spoiler: it was fucking fantastic. 

First up, the fish. After looking online at various options, I decided on a bastardized beer batter using 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of a Corona. One recipe I read called for a dark Mexican beer – an Equis Amber maybe? – but I wasn’t going out in the rain so a Corona would have to do. It’s one of the few beers I drink anyway; sometimes laziness dictates recipe substitutions. You mix them together, add some salt and pepper and smoked paprika, and let stand for about fifteen minutes – perfect timing to assemble the slaw.

Here’s what I used for the recipe:

  • 1 pound thinly sliced or shredded cabbage (I found a bag of red and green cabbage with carrots at Trader Joe’s and all the slicing and chopping was done)
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ¼ cup thinly sliced & diced red onion
  • ½ cup chopped cilantro
  • ¼ of a jalapeno, finely chopped
  • ¼ cup fresh lime juice 
  • 2 Tablespoons olive oil

Mix it all together and you’re done. 

If you’re going for something healthier, you can probably omit the creamy sauce (though if you’re going for something healthy, a fried fish taco is rather pointless). I would advise indulging and adding this remoulade because it absolutely brings everything together. Again, I bastardized a mishmash of several online recipes, and the end result was, more or less, as follows:

  • ½ cup mayonnaise
  • ½ cup sour cream
  • Juice of half a lime
  • Tbsp of chipotle adobo sauce (or less if you’re shy in the company of some heat)
  • 1 teaspoon of fresh garlic, finely chopped
  • Salt and pepper to taste

This remoulade should really be made earlier in the day so the flavors can meld, but in a pinch it will do immediately. Obviously, I wasn’t waiting. We fried up the fish, assembled the tacos, and all was right again with the world. (Thanks to Pati Jinich for the inspiration!)

Continue reading ...