While he’s made a musical name for himself in his own right, it took a little video by Troye Sivan to put him on the Dazzler of the Day map, and now he may reign. Ross Lynch is a darling of certain social media accounts (most all the gals and gays in the younger demographic). This Dazzler crowning is just another accolade in a year of accomplishments for him.
The best part of the Harry Potter play is the ‘Staircase Ballet‘ by Imogen Heap.
The featured photo here, of a fabulous slice of cinnamon bread from Bella Napoli (quite simply the greatest cinnamon bread in all of creation, no exaggeration) has been hovering about my desktop for the past two months. For all my limited efforts at finding a blog post in which it was utilized, I’ve come up empty-handed. I genuinely cannot remember if I’ve written a post about it, or put it on display here or somewhere on social media, and so it goes on the list of items that I’ve forgotten or never even knew – that tricky growing collection of things that prove I’m older than I ever intended to be, the mind rotting on its downhill trajectory, and gaining speed in the worst way.
It looks like the picture was named ‘rainy day’ so I may have been planning a post that referenced that, and the cozy aspect of a piece of toast might have been the impetus for that. Or maybe I wanted to go into the many joys of a cinnamon bread so delicious – French toast and bread pudding and whipped room-temperature butter. I honestly don’t recall.
So I Google myself. To be precise, I google “Alan Ilagan cinnamon toast” and this memory of my Gram is one of the first on the list. It’s followed by this memory from my days at Brandeis comes up. The next entry that appears is this write-up of a family brunch that went off with some work but no hitches. Happy recollections all of them, though I dare not press my luck by traveling any further down the Google path. I’ve seen what lies ahead, and none of it is pretty.
Enjoy the toast.
Much like this gratuitously-shirtless post of male celebrities, this post narrows in on those shirtless male celebs who happen to identify as LGBTQ+. The gays came to slay, starting with Jim Verraros, whose recent renaissance has been sparked by the anthemic dance club knock-out ‘Take My Bow’ – a welcome return to the musical landscape by the ‘Do Not Disturb’ singer.
Tom Daley’s armpits get an airing in this very knowing photo he released, proving he knows exactly what he’s doing.
Gus Kenworthy knows what he’s doing too, as this auto strip-tease reveals. Kenworthy bares even more here and here.
Matt Bomer in shirtless motion could be a post unto itself and perhaps it will be again, as it was in the beginning.
LGBTQ+ trailblazer and heart-throb Wilson Cruz has a body matched only by his winning smile.
The preferred wardrobe of Luke Evans should be the Speedo (when it isn’t total bare-ass nudity), as he has illustrated time and happy time again.
Matthew Camp knows how to give good face, and even better body.
With vocals as appealing as his visuals, Tom Goss presents a perfect package yet again.
Josh Sabarra dazzles with his good looks as much as for his witty way with words.
Finally, Olympian Adam Rippon has put his physically-honed body to good use on this blog, here and here and here.
Without Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Disney+, or any other streaming service save Amazon Prime, I don’t watch many series or shows. A notable exception, and one of the reasons we still have HBO and MAX, is that I do enjoy ‘The Gilded Age’ – the guilty pleasure that is sort of an American version of ‘Downton Abbey‘ by the same creative team. It’s set to return for a second season on October 29, and I cannot wait. Bring back Bertha already!
This is usually the time of the year when fall finally breaks summer’s back, taking it out for real, with nights that steal into the 30’s and 40’s and days that struggle to push into the 60’s. This pre-populated post won’t make any predictions as to the current weather conditions, but here’s hoping October has a few more sunny and warm days in her. On with the weekly recap…
Dazzling beginnings were made by shirtless male celebrities, and one very naked Harry Styles.
When negligence leads to troublesome beauty.
Decades after ‘Last Tango in Paris’, butter is still getting kinky.
A man in glasses and contemplation.
X most definitely doesn’t mark the spot.
A lion’s paw, hidden in the green tumult of summer, finally reveals itself.
Everyone has their stop-whatever-they’re-doing movie.
Beware! The flippant, innocuous post typically gets the most traction.
The struggle is real, and enlightenment is ever-unattainable for me.
Shirtless male celebrities are always a hit in these parts.
A bit of the blame game, with lots to go around.
Dazzlers of the Day included Jonathan Bennett, Paul Castle, Emma Corrin, Christopher Rice-Thomson, and Gloria Estefan.
When we see our own faults in others, why do we blame and attack them instead of working to improve ourselves?
Gloria Estefan doesn’t get the credit she deserves for creating a body of music that has pervaded pop culture more than any of us realize over the 80’s and 90’s and early 2000’s. She’s kept creating music in the first two decades of this millennium as well, as fans and appreciators know, while pushing forth on endeavors like a Broadway musical and various philanthropic enterprises. She earns this Dazzler of the Day for doing it all with heart and soul, and staying true to herself and her heritage before such things were fashionable.
Meditation has proven to be a saving grace in my life, and I somehow manage to do it every day, but it’s not always easy. Lately I’ve had my own struggles in keeping focused, and not allowing troublesome thoughts and worries to surface during my twenty-minute sessions. It’s been a couple of months of agitation and annoyance with the world, and that has seeped into my meditation – a combination of grief and healing and the rushed passing of time that has resulted in general prickliness, and a vague, troubling sense that I’m no longer the best company. My heart hurts a bit too much to really care, which is another sort of sadness altogether, and so I turn back inward, back to the simplicity of the practice.
As evening descends, sooner and earlier than it ever did in the summer, I find myself sitting lotus-style in the dim living room, the glow of a solitary candle the only light as the sky deepens from blue to a darker shade of the deepest ocean. I go through my usual focal points of meditation, mostly about family, and then, where I would usually start letting my mind wander a bit, I returned to the way I began meditating about four years ago, with a basic counting of numbers that went along with the breathing.
Inhaling slowly, I would focus on the breath, thinking to myself ‘Breathing in one,’ then on a slower exhalation thinking ‘Breathing out one’. On the next inhalation, I would think ‘Breathing in two’, then ‘Breathing out two’. At this point in my practice, my inhalations are about twelve seconds long, and the exhalations are about twenty seconds. That’s about two full breathes per minute, which is why a twenty-minute meditation seems to move along pretty quickly, and I don’t have to count that high before it’s done. That’s a good length to completely calm the brain, and on this day it works. The worries about my niece and nephew not returning my texts, the concern about getting my Mom to schedule her next doctor’s exam, the stress and sadness of finding my own way through grief – they all somehow fall away as the minutes tick by, and the breathing steadies.
The mind is clear by the time I’m on the tenth inhalation or so, a reminder that it’s still possible to achieve that calm and stillness. A reminder that I can still find that quiet.
For your superficial Saturday night viewing pleasure, here’s a brief collection of shirtless male celebrities to see you through the evening and into the morning.
Michael B. Jordan closed out another shirtless post here but he opens these proceedings with two scintillating shots to show that we are serious about shirtlessness right now.
Regé-Jean Page brought heated elegance to ‘Bridgerton’ and this dazzling post.
Troye Sivan is pulling out all the stops and pulling off all the clothing, in support of his latest collection of songs. Worth a listen, and worth a look.
Jason DeRulo is ready for his close-up, and his Dazzler of the Day crowning.
Dan Reynolds usually prefers to perform without a shirt, and who are we to disagree?
Channing Tatum revealed some ass-cheek in this sexy post, and teased a shower shot in this one.
Nick Jonas and the Naked GIFs – sounds like a great band name.
Does Jason Momoa do everything without a shirt on? That’s not a problem, BTW.
Finally, it’s always worth revisiting Ben Cohen, even if he was most recently featured here a few days ago. His work with Snooty Fox Images is a consistent delight.
The flippant, innocuous post gets the most notice and does the most damage. Meanwhile, my passive-aggressive missives from hell, blared from the rooftop of my mind, are barely a blip on anyone’s radar.
{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.}
A quintessential fall album, coming out during one of the most indelible falls of my youth, ‘Bedtime Stories‘ was the soundtrack of a pivotal period in my life. This little soft-focus disco ditty was one of the few upbeat moments in a relatively moody atmospheric album, although ‘Don’t Stop’ felt like one of those unremarkable filler tracks designed to puff out a Madonna album so more solid material like ‘Secret‘ or ‘Survival‘ could shine. Hearing it now brings me back to that time period, to that tricky fall when I shared my very first kiss with a man.
Such darkness came with the descent of fall, with its early evenings and frosty mornings – the shock of it after the ease of summer, the way it took one’s breath away – the advent of autumn was still a surprise at that time in my life. The ‘Bedtime Stories’ album set an evocative tone with lush orchestral tracks like ‘Love Tried to Welcome Me’, ‘Forbidden Love‘ and ‘Take A Bow‘, while the hazy atmosphere of ‘Inside of Me’ and ‘Sanctuary’ spoke to the private cocoon I’d wrapped around myself, isolating my daily existence from classmates and people in general. The contradiction of not wanting to be lonely and not wanting to be around people was apparent – I just didn’t find a way to put it into words. In some ways, I was happier bopping about alone in my room to a song like this and imagining being around friends and lovers than actually putting such imagined scenes into action.
You have probably seen him dancing across you phone screen on Tik Tok or Instagram, where his moves have catapulted him to social media popularity, or perhaps you’ve been lucky enough to witness one of his on-stage performances in person – whatever the case, Christopher Rice-Thomson has earned this Dazzler of the Day for his winning way around a theatrical production. His talents run beyond performing, and he is about to open ‘The Little Mermaid‘ at the Franklin Performing Arts Center in the demanding roles of director and choreographer. That show runs from October 13 to 22, and tickets are available here.
There are certain movies that, once you find them playing on television, you stop what you’re doing and watch them through to the end for the cajillionth time.
Like ‘Stand By Me‘.
Much like this surprise bloom from a backyard hydrangea, the lion’s paw flower you see here, in glorious and furry orange, grew to it full four-foot height behind the thick curtains of some fountain grass, a butterfly bush, and the typically-unstoppable Rosa rugosa. Only now, when things have started to die back, and the fountain grass has wilted a bit and parted its curtains, did the lion’s paw reveal itself, appearing as customarily late as they like to be.
Oh little lion, thank you for brightening my day a bit, and my apologies for forgetting you too. Even without an ounce of care this season, you grew and bloomed and welcomed me back into your graces. You are the perfect fall flower – tall and stalwart, with hues to match the fiery season, and some fuzziness to approximate the coziness we will soon be craving.
