Helming a production of ‘Sunset Boulevard‘ as Norma Desmond is no easy feat, and when a show so dramatically veers from its original theatrical conceit, it’s an even riskier business. All reports of Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond in the current wildly reimagined version of the musical directed by Jamie Lloyd have her successfully making the role her own. Today she earns this Dazzler of the Day for having survived in show business from her days leading The Pussycat Dolls. Tickets for ‘Sunset Boulevard’ are available here.
It just barely caught my eye in the brilliance of an early October morning. A slight, barely discernible rustling in the high branches of a pine tree, lending one branch a distinction that set it apart from the others, is what gave it away. One of my few talents is being able to quickly locate when something is out of place – it’s a trick of the Virgo eye, and a bane to the existence of my friends when their hair is awry or they’ve got a piece of bacon on their boob (ok, in that case I didn’t notice right away since I’m gay and boobs don’t attract my attention).
On this morning, I detected the movement of one singular bough, the pinecones dangling at its end bobbing ever so slightly, and hidden in the shadows of the evergreen needles was a large bird of prey. I couldn’t make it out at first, as its back was to me. It seemed to be making a nest and working on something in the upper-echelon of its perch, and as it turned around I could see it bob its head up and down as if eating something. Circle of life, I suppose.
Standing there and capturing some of its motions on camera, my arms ached a bit as it went patiently about devouring its morning meal. A blue jay fluttered by at one point, squawking loudly in some vain effort to chase it away, but the hawk simply ignored it, continuing to enjoy its breakfast. After a while, the hawk stood then took off, flying across the sky to another pine tree nearby, where it was joined by another hawk. Two now perched upon the pine, resplendent and regal in their composure and power beneath the morning sun. What a sight to behold.
Photos and video rarely do these magnificent beauties justice – the perspective is always askew without a frame of reference, but you can feel how enormous they are, and sense their size as they bend boughs that only sway in the strongest gusts of wind. Silently, one takes off again – danger and might gliding through the air – a warning and a reminder to keep one eye on the sky at all times.
The #TinyThreads feature used to be a daily item here, but such nuggets of wisdom are difficult to come by with any regularity. That said, perhaps it’s time to resurrect the category, at least as best as I might muster in these trying times. It breaks the posts up a bit, especially when things get heavy, and with the attention span of everyone dwindling and showing no sign of ever returning, these little jolts of nonsense and whimsy are the perfect amuse-bouche for the rest of your meal here. Eat up, chow down, and be happy – the #TinyThreads resume tomorrow!
Since it’s no longer a surprise, I can reveal that Andy and I will be attending one of John Mulaney’s upcoming shows (the Proctor’s one, released just after he sold out the Troy Music Hall). It’s a birthday present to Andy, who enjoys a comedian more than I usually do (he introduced me to Lewis Black) and after seeing several clips from Mulaney this looks to be a riot. It also comes as a recommendation from Suzie’s daughter Oona, whose taste in music and comedy is unrivaled. As for the man himself, Mulaney earns this Dazzler of the Day for his Emmy and WGA award-winning work as actor, comedian and writer. Check out his website here for the whole rundown.
For a certain segment of our wayward society, a section which I happily frequent and in which I mostly reside, lines from ‘Mean Girls’ are more significant than scripture. Today is considered ‘Mean Girls Day’ thanks to the opening quote from the movie. Personally, and wholly unsurprisingly, I’m more aligned with Regina George than Cady Heron, or even too-gay-to-function Damian. Regina has provided some of my most commonly used responses. There is no situation where I cannot work, “Whatever, I’m getting cheese fries” into a dismissive way of exiting a conversation. Try it. Happy October 3rd!
Hello little guy. This letter comes with no significant meaning or purpose, other than to mark this day in time. Yesterday our family gathered for a brunch two months to the day that we lost your Lolo, and you slept through most of it as you tend to do. You awoke when the eating was done, and you joined us for some crawling and almost-walking. I don’t blame you for taking your time – you have a whole life of walking ahead of you; make the most of these days when you can lounge and crawl – some of us spend our time figuring out ways to do those things, and most of us find it impossible. Hang onto your childhood days as long as you can.
I took the featured picture of you from outside Lola’s door. You were looking out at your brother mowing the lawn on a summer day. I took a similar photo of your brother and sister when they were about your age, standing behind a glass door at their first house. Now they are thirteen, and I wonder where the time went. One day many years from now I’ll try to tell you about this past summer, if I’ve made some sense of it by then, and I’ll remind you of how much you were a source of light and healing in a dark time.
YOU GOTTA HOLD ON
HOLD ON THROUGH THE NIGHT
HANG ON
THINGS WILL BE ALL RIGHT
EVEN WHEN IT’S DARK AND NOT A BIT OF SPARKLING
SING-SONG SUNSHINE FROM ABOVE
SPREADING RAYS OF SUNNY LOVE
It dawns on me that while I have promised to be your guide and guardian whenever you may need one, you may be the one guiding us as we fumble our way toward healing, finding our footing in an uncertain time when it feels like we’re slightly unmoored without Dad. It’s difficult to be sad when we see your smile and hear your laugh, and if you’re gently nudging us back to happiness, I’ll lean into that and try to feel the joy of the moment.
AND SO I HOLD ON TO HIS ADVICE
WHEN CHANGE IS HARD AND NOT SO NICE
IF YOU LISTEN TO YOUR HEART THE WHOLE NIGHT THROUGH
YOUR SUNNY SOMEDAY WILL COME ONE DAY SOON TO YOU
October dawned gorgeously, and this week looks to be a glorious one weather-wise. Taking a recommendation from my therapist, I’m going to embrace the good days as they arrive, so let’s have a sunny one, inside and out. On with the weekly recap…
Our first fall baseball foray had the potential to be as magical as Boston can be at this time of the year, but as we set off on our annual BroSox Adventure, it felt like the world decided to continue taking a dump on any fun plans I might have made this summer, and with all the obstacles mounting, this trip was doomed from the start.
It began with our rescheduled structure- we had originally penned in an August Red Sox game, when summer would be at its height, but reality intervened and made our original date impossible. Shifting to September thanks to a lovely birthday gift from Sherri and Skip, it sounded like we might make our very first fall outing. That was fraught with its own memories – my very first Red Sox game with my family was in the fall of 1986, when they were in the running for the series. That trip remains a happy family vacation memory, as much for the game as for the brown paper bag of four paperwhite narcissus bulbs that I had procured at Faneuil Hall prior to the game. A return that reminded me of that game could be a welcome reminiscence, or prove a tricky bit of sadness if it only recalled things I’d lost – either way, Skip was a safe friend to have along for such a moment, and the idea of a fall baseball game without heat and humidity was a refreshing change of pace.
As we finalized our tentative plans, Skip noticed that the tickets he ordered were not for the Saturday game as we originally planned, but for Sunday afternoon at 1:30. We’d usually be returning home to upstate New York by 1:30 on Sunday afternoon. He put those tickets up on SeatGeek, but at this point in a losing season, there were no takers for seats at half that price. The weather forecast was suddenly looking pretty awful too, so we ended up going forward with the Sunday game plan. Honestly, I didn’t mind as long as it didn’t mess up our traffic flow, which would already be disrupted by a Friday afternoon departure.
That drive into Boston was lovely. The sun was out and behind us, just like summer on its final day of the season, and we made good time right up until the end, when a sign indicated that the seven miles to Boston would take 28 minutes. Skip was driving by that point so I leaned back, let go, and let God, as the quasi-religious gypsies say. It worked, as we made it into town half an hour later, found a parking space, and were slurping on pho in Chinatown as a warm welcome to a cozy fall weekend. We walked off the soup and made it home for a quiet Friday night in.
The next morning was overcast, with rain encroaching on the rest of the weekend. After the short misty walk around the corner, a pair of counter seats at Charlie’s Diner proved available for a late breakfast, which included some of the best biscuits Skip claimed to have ever had. We made a customary walk along Newbury for the tranquility of Muji and provisions from Eataly. A welcome nap (as we are at the age of necessary naps, and grunting whenever we bend over to reach something) and some snacking passed the bulk of mid-afternoon. Our favored stoop-watching practice was derailed by the rain, but we had a loftier vantage point from the window.
Dinner that night was at the Smoke Shop BBQ at the Seaport, where we’d also planned on checking out the mini-golf scene at Puttshack. Continuing the doom and gloom of this particular trip, the whole evening was booked, thanks to the weather at hand driving people indoors, and all the damn college kids now inhabiting the city. That’s the most blessed thing about summer in Boston: they’re all gone. And yet somehow we had a grand time at dinner. More than grand, in fact, as I was aided by an edible, and time seemed to still as I got lost in laughter in a way I haven’t done since before summer began.
Outside, the rain came down, and we made hurried motions to cross the river back into Boston proper, where we found our way to the Langham Hotel for a moment in their chill lobby. There were memories here too – fall memories, coming at the same time of the year in which they were first made – and they should have proved at least slightly problematic, but thanks to Skip’s indefatigable attitude, we found fun in a hopeless place. When at last our Uber dropped us off, we sailed deep into the night playing Heads Up until we both crashed.
Game day dawned with the threat of rain. With the closing of our beloved Cafe Madeleine, Flour would have to stand in, even if it was a longer walk, and a more annoying line. We took our food to go, had a brief siesta back at the condo, and as the rain started in earnest we began our trek to take the T rather than get gouged by a $31 Uber trip to Fenway. By the time the above photo was taken, in the muggy “subterranean hell” of the Copley Station T-stop, both of us were thinking that $31 would have been a steal after some crazy person jumped onto the tracks and stopped subway traffic for half an hour.
We arrived to a rainy game already deep into the first inning. Our seats were soaked, but a friendly woman in the next row up gave us a wadded-up pile of napkins to wipe them off. Our raincoats were working overtime, but the seats were good, and as we sat down and soaked our asses, it looked like the sky was brightening.
“That’s just the game lights,” Skip assured me. Oh, of course. And the longer we sat there, the more it rained.
The mind wanders at such times. I looked out onto the field and tried to remember the first baseball game that my Dad took us to – it was there, but the memory was different. That day had been crisp and sunny. We had been young. The world had felt hopeful. On this day, the rain came down harder. The world felt darker. But I was with a friend, and out again in the world, even if it had dimmed since earlier in the summer.
“Wait,” I said suddenly, as my eyes fell upon the other team going underground, “Is it called a dugout because it’s like ‘dug out’?” The revelation felt almost too simple – and what kind of simpleton calls a place such a stupid thing?
Skip laughed a little and said, yes, then marveled that the realization was coming 48 years into my life.
By the fifth inning, the rain was pouring down. We were soaked, but we hadn’t had our Fenway Franks yet, so we headed indoors, scarfed down the dogs, and walked around inside, heading upstairs as throngs of people began leaving.
“Where is everyone going?” I asked.
“They’re leaving!” Skip laughed.
“For good?”
“Yeah!”
We stood in the rafters looking at the scene below. A tarp had been pulled over the diamond, and Skip proposed leaving. The last time we left a game early, Neil Diamond came out and sang ‘Sweet Caroline’ live just minutes after we exited the park. This time, there would be no song and dance, and as the rain showed no sign of abating, we joined the crowds exiting into the pouring rain, and were back on the Mass Turnpike headed for home within an hour.
This should have been the worst BroSox Adventure we’ve ever had – instead, it was one of my favorites, and I don’t remember having this much fun with Skip in years. It was also one of the first excursions after the awfulness of this summer, and it was precisely what was needed. I think it was good for Skip too – his spring was as difficult as my summer, and we were both in need of letting loose. Looking at the pictures here, I am smiling because they don’t exactly portray the fun that was had, which cracks me up even more, and Skip would say the same.
I’d almost forgotten the powerful healing aspect of simply hanging out with a cherished friend. The older we get, the darker the world grows, and finding refuge in such a friendship is the surest method of finding your way home. Thanks Skip.
The original purpose of this post was to provide a nifty item to pin to the top of my Twitter, err, X account should that site’s idiot of an owner decide to start charging for new tweets, err, xeets (oh please). No way I’m paying for such nonsense, and should it come to pass I’ll just leave a link to this particular page up for posterity. Once that was decided, I realized what an onerous task I’d set up for myself in trying to encapsulate what this silly blog has come to embody over the past twenty years of its existence.
Earlier in the year I’d made some half-hearted attempts while looking back over its two-decade existence, such as in this post and this one, but nothing has ever come close to approximating everything this site has been. Truth be told, nothing ever could. It’s like trying to describe a person you’ve known for twenty years to someone who has never met them. Where do you begin? How do you capture their essence and what they mean to you? The only way to do so is to take time and slowly reveal, through action and stories and presence, what they are like.
This isn’t something that can happen in a single sitting, or in a few carefully-chosen words. It isn’t something that can happen in a lifetime of sittings, or in countless, rambling, limitless words. And so it is, practically speaking, an impossible mission. All I could ever do would be to approach some better sense of understanding, some approximation of knowing, but never the whole thing, never the entire story, never the definitive view. Still, a challenge is a challenge, and this one merits an attempt.
Perhaps the best way to begin describing this site to a newcomer is to go back to its basic structure – the categories which were assembled at the start to organize topics that would be visited and revisited over the years. Let’s get the salacious and gratuitously-skin-baring ones out of the way first, as that’s what most people have come to click on before reading a single word of any exquisite (or ugly) prose. These would be our click-bait and thirst-trap moments – the posts that bring all the boys to the yard (and the girls and beyond for that matter) in an effort to get some engagement and notice for more important matters. And, truth be told, beauty and sex are a happy end(ing) in and of themselves. Each of the following links will bring you to the last few posts from each Category, giving you a taste of what drives most of the traffic here:
Gratuitous Nudity: the name says it, and then some. I still haven’t quite decided what separates ‘Gratuitous Nudity’ from the more generic ‘Male Nudity‘ which is another category altogether, but everyone seems to have fun trying to figure it out.
Naked Male Celebrities: another pretty self-explanatory category, as ‘Nude Male Celebrities’ were all the rage in the early 2000’s.
Shirtless Male Celebrities: a more benign and less NSFW category for those unprepared for uncovered derriere.
Bulge: clear your throats before clicking that one. Only certain gents merit this designation.
Underwear: the favored garment of choice in these parts, one that has merited countless moments of inspection and introspection.
Now that the gratuitous stuff is out of the way, onto the real deep shit of the website: the frivolous and the fabulous! Even way back in 2003, the internet was filled with doom and gloom, and since then it has only gotten worse – way worse. This little hidden corner of the not-so-dark web was intended to be a frivolous and carefree space to entertain the meanderings of my mind, which has only grown more whimsical and lost over the years. Somehow I’ve managed to keep it that way, without succumbing to ads or monetization, because this is, quite selfishly, a place for me to find peace and creative expression no matter what anyone else thinks. And so, some of my favorite categories come up:
Cologne: oh how I love the sense of smell. It has often been said that one of the main triggers of a memory is scent – and I adore the idea of triggering memories. This has often been proven true, as there are certain perfumes that bring me instantly back to certain moments in my life – almost always good ones. Every spring the lilac blooms will recall my childhood in a way that no photo album ever could. Come December, the first morning after our Christmas tree has gone up I am immediately returned to running down the stairs on Christmas morning with that initial whiff of evergreen. The moment rekindled from certain colognes I’ve worn are too numerous to mention, hence this category.
Fashion: dressing up for the world is a sign of good manners. Those are in short-supply these days, and largely erased altogether. Everyone is out and about in sweats and t-shirts, and the battle for dressing things up was lost long ago. Still, it’s fun to try.
Dazzler of the Day: for those who inspire and enthrall me, this category was created to showcase their talents, their attributes, their accomplishments, their beauty, or their presence.
Broadway: because ‘Theater‘ wouldn’t be the same without it.
Male Models: perhaps this should have gone in the click-bait/thrist-trap section? Oh well, it’s here as a gift for those who waded past the initial thrills – consider this a reward. (See also David Beckham, Tom Daley, and Ben Cohen.)
Tom Ford: my favorite cologne designer, my favorite underwear designer, and my favorite fashion designer – he’s also a talented director whose first two films are absolutely devastating. He’s also a song by Jay-Z.
Delusional Grandeur Tour: an absolute exercise in the frivolous and fabulous, along with an unhealthy dose of the delusional.
Tiny Threads: little bits of whimsy, silly thoughts that run through the head.
Perhaps less flashy, but no less interesting from my perspective, are the categories that fall somewhere between style and substance. This is the magical space where beauty blends with something more serious, the space where I can delve a little deeper.
Travel: this category is one often forgotten, so there are myriad posts that are about traveling that simply didn’t get labeled as such. Oh well, there’s enough here to give an idea of all the places I go.
Sports: not sure how this category came into existence, but sports matter, and athletes can be heroes, especially when they take their clothes off.
Home Design: this is hilarious – I have no business having a Home Design category but every once in a while I’ll slide something in here because someone has asked.
FireWater: burn, baby, burn. It was just a project.
Every once in a while, things turn somber and serious here, and as the years pass these entries seem to come more frequently. I’m not thrilled about it, but such is life.
Homophobia: it still exists, and its proponents are getting louder and more emboldened.
Antiracism: racism still exists too, and it’s also getting louder.
Straight Ally: when things get serious, they can also get good.
Mocktails: one of the major story arcs of this site was how I went from ‘Cocktails‘ to mocktails.
The meat of the matter, and the real purpose for all that I’ve own here for the last twenty years, is to be found in the following categories, which form the bedrock of this website. This is what really matters to me, and it’s the heart behind all the hubris.
Putting a definitive cap on a life – even the life of a blog, no matter how short or long it’s been – is an impossible task. Still, it’s worth a try, and this little corner of the internet is where I’ll keep making the effort. You are always welcome to be my guest.
“I have emptied a pot of lentils into the ashes for you. If you have picked them out again in two hours’ time, you shall go to the ball with us.” ~ Into the Woods
This wonderful lentil soup recipe makes for a perfect fall meal. That something as simple as a pot of lentils, through heat and seasoning and some supplemental ingredients, should become something as delicious and sustaining as a soup is a wonder that will never disappoint me. Fall brings me back into the kitchen, back to the stove from which I generally shy away during the warm summer months. There is a comfort in that, and it reminds me of winters when a broken heart would only be healed through the warmth of a pepperoni tomato sauce. Food can heal that way. Cooking too.
The Harvest Moon, also known as the Corn Moon, rose in full, super form last night, in the second of such shows this September. Drained of color, the sky allowed one brief glimpse of its glory before clouds obscured the light and hid its globular form. I wonder if the cloud cover will work to blunt the madness a full moon can often elicit. I hope it does. I’ll take a day of rain for some of that protection.
There was a time when farmers used the light of the Harvest Moon to do what its namesake indicated – late night harvesting of vegetables, mostly corn at this time of the year. I haven’t been making my usual outside rounds, and I have no idea what state our backyard gardens are in. When last I checked there were Japanese anemone in bloom, and a coreopsis that I always forget about at this tail-end of the gardening season.
I also haven’t been to the garden centers or nurseries of late, so I don’t know what sort of bulbs are on offer, nor am I inclined or ambitious enough to purchase any and set up that kind of digging work for myself. It might make a good present and activity for Mom though, so perhaps I’ll pick some up this weekend. She has new space for bulbs, and I’d love the coming spring to be filled with flowers and a chance to start over again at her new home.
Bad news fellow full-moon dreaders: we’ve got a full supermoon rising on this Friday, September 29, and it’s already fucking things up big-time. It spurred yesterday’s attitude of no-more-fucks-to-give, which looks to continue through the end of the week, and quite frankly I’m not sure how anyone around me is going to handle it. Here’s hoping that no one decides to fuck around and find out, because the finding out this week will be like none you have ever experienced.
A combination of grief, agitation, and uncertainty is a very bad combination indeed. In an effort to re-focus what can often be a manic energy from the full moon, I intend to fly as far under the radar as I can without crashing – a delicate and dangerous balancing act that has proved difficult to master.
Daily meditation has formed a safe and consistent bastion of stability in my world over this past summer, a time period when I needed it most. In addition to the formal meditation practice, I’ve also been taking things quietly, using what focus I can find to get through the work days, and spending the remaining hours of the afternoons and evenings writing these blog posts, listening to music, and doing some light reading.
This song came over the radio the other day, and I paused in the post I was writing to listen.
Originally I thought that the fall would reinvigorate me, allowing us to move beyond what was a terrible summer, but I haven’t quite felt that. Not yet. It might simply be that I’m not ready, or it may be that this is the slower pace and quieter footfalls of all that is to come. Learning to accept that is part of this fall, and there is already something peaceful and calming about it.
Taylor Swift put Travis Kelce on the map the same way Bridget Jones put Renee Zellweger on the map. Only one other person in the world will get that, but it tickles me in the same way that people who had never heard of Travis Kelce are suddenly acting like he was not known. Full disclaimer: I did not know of Travis Kelce prior to Taylor making a spectacle of herself at one of his football games (a spectacle of which I fully support, because I spent all last weekend trying to get into one of those cozy glass houses at a baseball game where it was pouring rain – but that’s a story for another post, and trust me, it’s coming up…) As for Travis Kelce, some rudimentary research and image-seeking found a man wholly worthy of this Dazzler of the Day. See for yourself.
