On the Eve of 40: An Epic Brunch

Brunch on the roof-deck of the Taj Hotel is no average affair, but the last day of one’s thirties is no average affair either. We splurged at the establishment that hosted our wedding weekend, and tried out their highly-touted Sunday roof-deck brunch. It was, unsurprisingly, an over-the-top affair, with and endless buffet of decadent treats. I tend to get a little uncomfortable at such formal affairs, especially when the wait-staff puts on airs of utmost importance, but no such formality or judgement was in evidence. The service was attentive but non-intrusive, the professionalism intact but friendly. It set us at ease to enjoy the food on display. And what a display it was.

Endless platters of shrimp, oysters and crustacean claws (already cracked!) spread out before us. I could have made a meal on these alone, but it was only the beginning.

A charcuterie board looked almost too perfect to disturb, but at I made a big disturbance. (A bit more money would have gotten me a glass of champagne, but I couldn’t waste precious stomach space on the bubbly.)

A sashimi spread put the average Japanese restaurant to shame, and here it appeared as almost an after-thought. (Likewise with the freshly-carved tenderloin and bearnaise sauce, not to mention the omelet station, and an entire Indian buffet – the nod to Taj heritage.)

Yet it was the desserts that caught the eye most, such as this insanely-good hibiscus elderflower mousse, which somehow managed to taste even better than it looked.

A sinful cavalcade of sweet treats went on much further than the stomach could contain, but we did our best, and I managed to sample almost everything.

It was a decadent indulgence on the morning before my 40th birthday, but things were about to get even more sumptuous, thanks to Judy Garland…¦

(Before that, however, I needed to sit down. Five plates are a lot to digest.)

Continue reading ...

An Almost-Secret Garden in Boston

While waiting for my birthday massage, I walked into a South End community garden, where long rows of plots were bursting at the seams with flowers and foliage and vegetables. It was an escape to paradise in the middle of Boston, and my heart has always thrilled at the prospect of discovering these lesser-known spots filled with nature. Like some secret garden, they are made more precious from their very secretiveness, as if the whimsy of the world whispered only to you this enchanting confidence. A silly notion, perhaps, but no less lovely because of that.

Those stalwart summer annuals – zinnias and cosmos – which I’ve unfairly dismissed over the years, reminded me of why they were so popular in the first place. Their vibrant colors, coupled with their blooming power even at this late stage of the gardening game, have put them on my list of things to grow next year. As we head into the final stages of summer, it’s a comfort to think that there’s another one coming.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the beauty of the vegetables on hand – the bright cheery squash blossoms and their resulting bulbous gourds hanging perilously heavy (the largest ones safeguarded by a tenderly-placed net beneath their growing carriage).

Vines trailed over fences and overhead, creating nooks and alcoves of hidden delight, small spaces away from the prying eyes of the city, where treasures like these cherry tomatoes could grow and ripen for the enjoyment of their caretakers.

An Asian woman in a floppy hat – one of the only people I encountered here – beckoned me over to a cage covered in leaves and tendrils. She didn’t speak English, but she pointed excitedly to the pendulous squash hanging like fairy tale lanterns. With a smile and some laughter, she was just as thrilled as I was at discovering this secret stash.

There’s a certain child-like innocence that a garden brings out in most of us, a sense of wonder and magic that adults seem to find more and more difficult to access. It’s one of the joys that gardening has maintained in my life, no matter what else might be going on.

Beauty is a balm for the soul, and for the battered heart that feels so much in such a cold world.

The dahlias were beginning their show, as the phlox was finishing up. Fall was on the edges of this garden too, and soon it would be everywhere. For now, though, a suspension of summer in the heat and humidity on hand.

And it seems I was wrong: we weren’t the only ones in the garden that day.

This rascal made the most racket, but no one seemed to mind.

Continue reading ...

Dinner at Douzo

A favorite as much for its decadent rolls as its convenient location right off Southwest Corridor Park, Douzo was where I once enjoyed a New Year’s Eve dinner of hellaciously good stuff. We revisited it recently, and it was just as good as I remember. Sometimes it’s better to just let the images speak for themselves, particularly when they’re as pretty as the presentation included here. To give a brief synopsis of what you are about to see, the appetizer was a Yuzu lobster dish served over shiso tempura, followed by a collection of special rolls (including the aptly-named, and strikingly-crafted, caterpillar roll). Everything was as delicious as it looks.

Continue reading ...

Riding Into My 40’s

My over-riding feeling on turning 40 was that it was just another day, so arrangements for the moments leading up to and including my birthday were low-key and casual (even if there was an itinerary). We drove to Boston for a long weekend, and arrived at the condo, where we set up camp for a couple of days. A quick and easy dinner at Cinquecento (to which we arrived courtesy of Andy’s new Uber skills) was followed by an early night. I needed to rest up for all the relaxation and fun that the next day would bring.

For my 40’s, I want to be more relaxed, more playful, less worried and concerned about things that don’t really matter. I want to let go of certain things, and hold onto what was always most important to me – friends and family and love and beauty. I want freedom from the constricting binds of jealousy, envy, unfairness, injustice, and hatred. I want redemption from the past – from the hurt and pain and heartache that accompany most of our journeys to 40. Mostly, though, I just want to have more fun. I don’t ever really allow myself to do that. Something is always holding me back.

For the last weekend of my 30’s, I relaxed into a few days of celebratory ease, and it began with a wonderful visit to Etant Spa in the South End. I’ve gone there for a massage before, and it is always a luxurious treat. A massage is more than mere self-indulgence: it provides a bit of nourishment for the soul, a blissfully tranquil state of perfect relaxation. That has always done more for my health and well-being than exercise or healthy eating ever could.

Having a massage early on in this long weekend provided the best point of entry for the proceedings. Everything that followed was tinged with the sweet shadings of a lighter touch, the removal of daily work concerns or home tasks, and a reinvigorated state of being. The eyes opened up to play then, and everything felt more alive. An art installation I might otherwise have overlooked, and certainly not have jumped on, called to me.

Entitled ‘InMotion: Memories of Invented Play’ by Amy Archambault, it was a fitting embodiment of what I wanted to do as I entered my 40’s.

A dinner at Douzo was next. The last days of my life as a thirtysomething were coming to a close. Quietly. Happily. Contentedly.

Continue reading ...

A Belated Birthday Wish for My Father

Being that my Dad’s birthday falls rather inauspiciously on September 11, I always miss out on the public well-wishes for his special day. Here they are now, a day late, but with no less love or fanfare. Earlier this summer, he had a series of health issues which scared me to the core, and it made me wonder what a world without him would be like. I didn’t, and I don’t, want to face that, and if this birthday means a little more because of it, I’m happy that it’s so.

Every boy who’s lucky enough to have a father can’t help but look up to him. Every boy who has a father as good as mine holds him in iconic status, no matter what he does. That doesn’t change as we grow up. If anything, my love and respect for my Dad has grown in stature, as has my understanding of the man who left the Philippines, and the only life and family he knew, to make a better life for himself – and his future family. I’ve never forgotten that – and I never will.

Happy Birthday, Dad – I love you.

Continue reading ...

An Unhappy Reminder

As I’ve done since opening this website in 2003, tomorrow marks the one day a year when things go silent here out of respect for the lost lives of 9/11. Words have never been enough to convey the profound loss and sadness of those who experienced that day, and I would never be able to explain the shock and horror of everything that we all went through at that time. Instead, a day of silence – to honor, to remember, and to heal.

Tomorrow also happens to be my Dad’s birthday, but he has never minded the lack of a timely post for that. And in case he does now, here’s an early Happy Birthday to him. More later…

Continue reading ...

A Male Celebrity with the Balls to Wear A Speedo

Behold, the blue Speedo of Luke Evans, a guy who has yet to be named a Hunk of the Day (it will happen sooner or later I’m sure, sop stay tuned). In a bold departure from the disastrous board shorts most male celebrities hide behind at the beach, Mr. Evans makes the impressive and distinctly un-American move of donning a budgie-smuggler. Such is the confidence and natural ease of Europe in contrast to the hypocritically-puritanical wimpiness of the United States. American men are just supremely prudish when it comes to swimwear, and I’m not sure why. We are so bold (rude, really) when it comes to almost everything else, but present the notion of a Speedo and the men run whimpering. It’s such a shame, particularly when given such specimens as Zac Efron, Tom Brady, Nick Jonas and . I guess we’ll have to make-do with the foreign likes of David Beckham, Tom Daley, and Mr. Evans to lead the Speedo brigade.

 

Continue reading ...

Another Madonna Tour Opens

The magic is in the air again. The lights are about to go down. And only one woman in the world can instill such a rapture in me and so many others, even three decades into her storied career. Madonna’s Rebel Heart Tour opened last night in Montreal, and in a few short weeks I’ll be seeing her in Boston. Suzie and I will return to the place where we saw her live for the very first time, some fourteen years ago, on her Drowned World Tour. It’s our tradition, and we’ll be celebrating our 40th birthdays again that weekend, which makes it doubly momentous.

This time around, I almost didn’t get caught up in the usual excitement and anticipation that precedes a Madonna tour. I’m not sure why – maybe tour fatigue (I’ve seen her nine times since she returned to regular touring in 2001) – or maybe just the natural maturation of fandom, whereby one is less obsessed but no less in love. Yet as per tradition, the electricity is arcing again, and as these video promos for the show will attest, something special is in the offing.

After the catastrophic leak of the ‘Rebel Heart’ album earlier in the year, Madonna has managed to keep pretty much every aspect of this tour under wraps. She’s teased song titles and set-list ideas, but the visuals, until now, have been impressively secret and unseen. A few costume sketches showed up in Women’s Wear Daily, and they looked lovely – but the real test will be how they appear in person. It will also be interesting to hear how many of her teased songs make it into the final set-list. (Whispers of ‘Who’s That Girl’ and ‘Rescue Me’ had most Madonna fans fainting with giddy nostalgia. Yes, the 90’s are nostalgic at this point – deal with it.)

As for whatever else this tour brings, the element of surprise, often an aspect of her greatest work, is back in effect – and I’m getting extremely excited.

Continue reading ...

It’s Still Summer

Labor Day may have come and gone, but technically it’s still summer, and at 93 degrees it certainly feels like. While I’ve put away my white pants for the season, summer lingers on in poetry and pool romps. Here’s a poem by one of my favorite writers, Mary Oliver, extolling the continuation of the sunny days:

 

LITTLE SUMMER POEM TOUCHING THE SUBJECT OF FAITH

 

Every summer

I listen and look

under the sun’s brass and even

into the moonlight, but I can’t hear

 

anything, I can’t see anything

not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,

nor the leaves

deepening their damp pleats,

 

nor the tassels making,

nor the shucks, nor the cobs.

And still,

every day,

 

the leafy fields

grow taller and thicker

green gowns lofting up in the night,

showered with silk.

 

And so, every summer,

I fail as a witness, seeing nothing

I am deaf too

to the tick of the leaves,

 

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet —

all of it

happening

beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

 

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.

Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.

Let the wind turn in the trees,

and the mystery hidden in the dirt

 

swing through the air.

How could I look at anything in this world

and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?

What should I fear?

 

One morning

in the leafy green ocean

the honeycomb of the corn’s beautiful body

is sure to be there.

~ Mary Oliver

Continue reading ...

When the Mockingbird Sings

Every once in a great while, a book comes along that makes you slow down and savor each page, forcing you to devour it as quickly as you don’t want it to end. The great literary conundrum – when you enjoy something so much you rush through it because you can’t stop, but at the same time you do everything in your power to prolong the pleasure, earmarking pages and underlining passages and revisiting favorite parts before it’s even over. Such was the power of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee – a classic that had somehow escaped my vision in the course of four decades. I just finished it, and what a wonderful read it was. In many ways, I’m glad I waited. This sort of jewel might have been wasted in my youth. Instead, I am still moved by its last few chapters, and it’s been haunting me since I finished it. The best books do that. They stay with you long after you’ve read them, inhabiting a place inside the soul that enriches and emboldens – a place that you don’t let everyone see, because it means too much, and too many people might sully it. Instead, you hold it close and secret and safe, and you hope the world doesn’t rock you too much to dislodge it.

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.”

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”

“A steaming summer night was no different from a winter morning.”

 

Continue reading ...

A Sun-Setting Recap

On this day of Labor, we recap the week before, and as I’m wrapping up a Tour Stop in Seattle as we speak, let’s delve immediately into the past before looking ahead. Unofficially the end of summer, Labor Day is really when the fall season heats up. To that end, the Hunk of the Day feature was in full daily effect, with the gorgeous likes of the following gentlemen strutting their shirtless selves:

Jess Vill

Nate Gill

Sacha M’baye

Warren Carlyle

For many unfortunate people this week marked the return to school. Sucks to be them! And on some days it sucked to be me, saddle shoes and all.

Hateful, homophobic, and law-breaking fashion-abomination Kim Davis was still defying the highest court of the land and refusing the issue marriage licenses to gay couples.

The Delusional Grandeur Tour rocketed from one side of the country (Portland, Maine) to another (Seattle, Washington) in less than a week. Boomerang anybody?

While hooting it up in Seattle, a series of Sunset Boulevard posts from the Tour Book were put up. It began with a pool, and the unfortunate detour of a writer at the end of his rope ~ a man who ended up the victim of his own machinations as much as… hers.

My love affair with Norma Desmond began twenty years ago, and comes full circle on this tour. This world’s waited long enough, I’ve come home at last.

Continue reading ...

This Time Will Be Bigger

She whispers ferociously in my ear. “It’s a return!” Flinging her sunglasses off her face, her eyes still smolder, her gaze is still entrancing. When I begin to doubt anything, she adjusts her turban and sweeps around the room with majestic flair. Enveloped in leopard print or sparkling in a beaded gown, she mesmerizes with a glamour that cannot be erased with the passing of time. It may fade, but it can never fully disappear. No one who makes such an impression can ever be forgotten.

I DON’T KNOW WHY I’M FRIGHTENED
I KNOW MY WAY AROUND HERE.
THE CARDBOARD TREES, THE PAINTED SEAS, THE SOUND HERE
YES, A WORLD TO REDISCOVER, BUT I’M NOT IN ANY HURRY, AND I NEED A MOMENT 

I’VE SPENT SO MANY MORNINGS JUST TRYING TO RESIST YOU
I’M TREMBLING NOW, YOU CAN’T KNOW HOW I’VE MISSED YOU
MISSED THE FAIRY TALE ADVENTURE IN THIS EVER-SPINNING PLAYGROUND
WE WERE YOUNG TOGETHER…

I DON’T WANT TO BE ALONE, THAT’S ALL IN THE PAST
THIS WORLD’S WAITED LONG ENOUGH, I’VE COME HOME AT LAST!

AND THIS TIME WILL BE BIGGER! 
AND BRIGHTER THAN WE KNEW IT!
SO WATCH ME FLY, WE ALL KNOW I CAN DO IT.
COULD I STOP MY HAND FROM SHAKING?
HAS THERE EVER BEEN A MOMENT WITH SO MUCH TO LIVE FOR? 

For twenty years she has haunted me. For twenty years I have felt her passion and her pain, her heartache and her hopefulness, her determination and her desperation. In many ways, she inspired my very first tour, and this false notion of being a star.

No One Ever Leaves A Star…

In the same manner she believed her fame and notoriety preserved through all those years, I built a legend and a sense of celebrity to everything I did. I wasn’t famous enough to fade. I wasn’t known enough to be forgotten. Yet I carried myself as if I was the Greatest Star of Them All.

Now it’s time to let her go. To let myself go. To break the delusional mirror at last. It’s not a good thing to be stuck in the gauzy, glamorous solitude of a mansion on Sunset Boulevard, no matter how pretty or decadent the trappings may appear. It’s not a happy place to be. It’s not a safe place to be, and at this stage in my life there is a lot to be said for safety, and warmth, and comfort.

Yet a part of me will always belong to Norma, and a little bit of Ms. Desmond will always reside in my heart.

The whispered conversations in overcrowded hallways
So much to say not just today but always…
We’ll have early morning madness
We’ll have magic in the making
Yes, everything’s as if we never said goodbye
Yes, everything’s as if we never said goodbye…
We taught the world new ways to dream!

THE DELUSIONAL GRANDEUR TOUR: LAST STAND OF A ROCK STAR

Continue reading ...

Dangerous, Delusional & Devastated

Before she slashes her wrists open, before she withers beyond the point of salvation, there is a moment when Norma Desmond has the hope that everything will, finally and at long last, work out. That she will get the guy, and that the guy will love her in return. It’s a sad and deluded take on what is happening – the belief of a person too desperate to face the truth of the situation. Yet there is something noble and honest and raw about her happiness. It’s the stuff of childhood, the stuff of innocence. The sort of earnest belief that a lifetime of delusions will foster and encourage, but it carries with it a purity and grace that far less jaded individuals too often fail to exhibit, or even know.

In the name of that innocence, she dances a dance few of us have the guts to execute.

It is a dance of unabashed happiness, a dance of dreams.

Yet at the end, it is only a dance to the death of remaining hope.

RING OUT THE OLD, RING IN THE NEW, A MIDNIGHT WISH TO SHARE WITH YOU

YOUR LIPS ARE WARM, MY HEAD IS LIGHT, WERE WE ALIVE BEFORE TONIGHT?

I DON’T NEED A CROWDED BALLROOM, EVERYTHING I WANT IS HERE

IF YOU’RE WITH ME NEXT YEAR WILL BE THE PERFECT YEAR.

He tries to tell her, he tries to ease the news, but it’s easier not to, easier to leave before landing the final blow. As misguided and mistaken as she is, Norma is never dishonest. Her want is raw and open, her desire is stated, and boldly at that. She puts it out there, and leaves her heart vulnerable for the taking.

He does not take it. He tramples on it. Lightly at first, but it is unmistakable, and a declination, no matter how kind, stings however it is delivered. When you love someone and are told that you are not loved in return, there’s a sort of pain that’s different than dealing with anything else. It isn’t blameless, like death, and it isn’t random, like an accident. It’s a deliberate verdict on what you mean, or don’t mean, to another person. It is a dismissal.

ANOTHER CHANCE, ANOTHER START

SO MANY DREAMS TO TEASE THE HEART

WE DON’T NEED A CROWDED BALLROOM

EVERYTHYING WE WANT IS HERE

AND FACE TO FACE WE WILL EMBRACE THE PERFECT YEAR.

She wants so much to be wanted.

She wishes so badly to be loved.

She asks for so little… and so much. She asks for everything.

She gives her heart to this final dance, not knowing it will be their last. That’s just how she lives. A dance isn’t worth dancing if you’re not going to take the chance. She goes hard that way, burning brightly and at all expenses. The magnificent white-hot brilliance of pouring the whole of your being into the existence of another.

“What you’re trying to say is that you don’t want me to love you. Say it. Say it!”

She is dangerous.

She is devastated.

Above all else, she is delusional.

It carries her through to the very end.

It was the only way she could survive.

THE DELUSIONAL GRANDEUR TOUR: LAST STAND OF A ROCK STAR

Continue reading ...

I Can Play Any Role

A woman sits in a dark room, shrouded in a cloud of tuberose perfume and topped with a turban befitting royalty. Even in the dim light, she wears sunglasses – perhaps to add an air of glamour, perhaps to hide tearful eyes, perhaps to shield her from the prying gaze of others. Whittling the months and years and decades into splinters of time and decaying dreams, she went from having the world at her feet to being forgotten and isolated. What terrors lurked in her great, dim mansion? What nightmares tormented her sleep? Is it better to have never known such happiness and adoration at all, than to know it and lose it and spend a lifetime trying to win it back? It must have been a brittle existence, a fragile and lonely one ever on the verge of breaking apart, shattering into a thousand jagged shards.

WITH ONE LOOK I CAN BREAK YOUR HEART
WITH ONE LOOK I PLAY EVERY PART
I CAN MAKE YOUR SAD HEART SING
WITH ONE LOOK YOU’LL KNOW ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW 

WITH ONE SMILE I’M THE GIRL NEXT DOOR
OR THE LOVE THAT YOU’VE HUNGERED FOR 
WHE I SPEAK IT’S WITH MY SOUL
I CAN PLAY ANY ROLE. 

This is Norma Desmond. On this day she waits, for what she does not yet know. Joe Gillis is about to pull his car into her driveway and hide it away in her garage. For now, though, in this early morning of a sunny day which once again won’t allow any sunlight into her grand home, she sits quietly nurturing the heart that survived the only way it knew how. A belief in the grand illusions of her faded fame. A hope planted on the fantasy of her implacable glamour. A delusion that saw her through decades of a lonely existence. The things we believe in order to go on living… and the things we refuse to believe.

NO WORDS CAN TELL THE STORIES MY EYES TELL
WATCH ME WHEN I FROWN, YOU CAN’T WRITE THAT DOWN
YOU KNOW I’M RIGHT, IT’S THERE IN BLACK AND WHITE
WHEN I LOOK YOUR WAY, YOU’LL HEART WHAT I SAY. 

She is a sad creature, but she doesn’t see that, not in the way that most people might see it. She’s not sad in a pitiable way, in the way that makes one feel sorry for her – she’s internally sad that she can no longer thrill like she used to thrill, that she can’t make her art the way she once did, that there is no longer a place for her in a changing world that left her old-fashioned craft behind. She’s also sad because she’s had her heart broken. No doubt she’s broken a few hearts in the process too, and sometimes that’s worse. Sometimes that takes a deeper toll, a toll whose devastation only becomes clear long after the fact, in the ruined years that follow. It’s a toll that doesn’t ever seem to find comeuppance, a hurt and ache that finds no resolution or relief. A guilt that bears down on everything that comes after it.

WITH ONE LOOK THEY’LL FORGIVE THE PAST
THEY’LL REJOICE I’VE RETURNED AT LAST
TO MY PEOPLE IN THE DARK, STILL OUT THERE IN THE DARK… 

Yet she is not broken. She has not yet cracked. There is the distinct possibility that a return is possible. Not a comeback. Don’t ever call it a comeback. She hates that word. But a return, yes. A return to form, a return to glory. A return to being loved. Why should she be so punished for wanting that again?

WITH ONE LOOK I’LL IGNITE A BLAZE 
I’LL RETURN TO MY GLORY DAYS 
THEY’LL SAY, “NORMA’S BACK AT LAST!”

Somewhere downstairs, off the terrazzo where rumor has it Rudy Valentino once tangoed, her butler shuffles about. A car rolls into the driveway, and she peers out the slats of a window shutter. A man walks toward the door, out of the sunlight, into the shadows of the house on Sunset.

Norma Desmond rises. He is not who she thinks he is, but he may be altogether better.

And there’s that hope again, that innocent belief in herself, and the possibilities of the world, even when it’s done nothing but dash her against its cold rocks. She emerges from her boudoir, regal bearing intact, ready to demand the love of the world, or the love of a man, or simply the chance to do it all again.

THIS TIME I’M STAYING, I’M STAYING FOR GOOD

I’LL BE BACK WHERE I WAS BORN TO BE

WITH ONE LOOK I’LL BE ME! 

THE DELUSIONAL GRANDEUR TOUR: LAST STAND OF A ROCK STAR

Continue reading ...