With a new album and tour, the Jonas Brothers are all sorts of busy for the next few months, bringing their fans to a frothing tizzy thanks to a successful maturations that most ‘boy bands’ don’t usually achieve. That may be due to their genuine musical talent and knack at writing a decent song, and the ‘boy band’ label might be an unjust one if we take it to mean the usual manufactured pretty boys thrown together to please a wide demographic. No such contrived machinations hinder these brothers, so feel free to indulge in their music with gusto.
My allergies have absolutely stopped life in its tracks for me, as I am unable to do just about anything. I have no idea whether a new set of contact lenses are working, because my eyes won’t stop watering. I have no idea how dry the garden is because I cannot go outside for more than thirty seconds without suffering a sneezing attack. I have no idea whether my frustration is due to the discomfort I’m in or the lack of a full meditation session because I can’t sit still and simply breathe for more than ten minutes.
Originally intended to convey a certain freshness or wonder at the world, Madonna’s ‘Like A Virgin’ has endured over the decades thanks to its multiple levels of meaning and widely-varied incarnations. My favorite rendition remains her entrancing and then-scandalous performance of the song during her Blonde Ambition Tour, in which she introduced the world to cone-bras on male dancers, and simulated self-pleasure on a velvet-topped scarlet bed. With Middle Eastern musical accents and a slow-burn take on her classic #1 hit, the ‘Like A Virgin‘ of 1990 was a wild reimagining that went far beyond a ‘freshness’ and into decidedly sultry territory – Madonna finally giving in and culminating in the sexual gratification that everyone (wrongfully) assumed the song was about from the beginning.
For me, this version embodies the glamorous and glorious spring of 1991, when ‘Truth or Dare’ was about to take the world by summer storm, kicked off by Madonna’s scene-stealing underwear show at the top of the stairs at the Cannes Film Festival. It was a legendary Madonna moment, and sowed the seeds of an era of sexy self-reflection that would later find full flowering in her ‘Erotica’/’Sex/ project. Back then, it seemed slightly salacious, but today it feels like a quaint little ripple compared to the tsunamis to come. And so ‘Like A Virgin’ was about a certain innocence after all, a fresh look at a fresh season starting all over again.
Australian gymnast Heath Thorpe has his sight set on the Olympic Games, which is about the loftiest goal an athlete can have, and as such he earns his first Dazzler of the Day crowning. As an openly-gay athlete, Thorpe also considers himself an LGBTQ+ advocate, something that has been surprisingly missing from the vast majority of the world of men’s gymnastics. Here’s to changing that for the better.
This phallic-shaped cartridge is the item that is giving me the greatest pleasure these days. When the oak and pine and maple are populating the air with their pollen, I am absolutely in allergy hell. After just a few minutes outside, my nose starts running a marathon that lasts the rest of the evening, while sneezes and a sore throat provide just enough accents to be even more annoying. Allergy season has arrived, and I’ve buttressed my regular Zyrtec regime with this double-puff of Flonase. Still, it’s not enough, as my mucus will so voluminously attest.
This is one of the drawbacks of spring, and a necessary evil of the season. I’m doing my best to go with the Flo.
The Korean Spice viburnum is not particularly noted for its audacious form or bombastically-colored blooms. Instead, it is the delicious perfume of its flowers that is the main draw. Its foliage is handsome enough to carry the look through the season, and the shrub is used widely in landscaping, which is why I gave up on viburnums long ago – they’re everywhere, which is lovely, but when I’m home I’d rather be anywhere other than everywhere.
That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate their fragrance at this time of the year, when they’re at their glory. It’s a powerful perfume that rides on the slightest breeze, a magical scent that evokes Gatsby-like springs full of hope and fairy’s wings…
I’m all out of sweet tea today – all that’s left is bitter dregs, so if you’re seeking something positive and upbeat, you’ve come to the wrong place. Case in point: this person’s parking job last night, which took up not one, but two parking spaces.
This is the definition of a dick.
Don’t be a dick.
Be better.
Happy Tuesday.
Just a few more days of Mercury in retrograde to go…
At this turn in the seasonal year, my attention turns to living rather than notating things about life, and so my posts of late are lighter and less time-consuming – both for you and for me. To that end, this is the weekly recap, quick and mostly painless.
Thirteen years ago today Andy and I stood in the Boston Public Garden and proclaimed our love for each other in front of some of our closest family and friends. The year was 2010, and we had been together for almost ten years, so a wedding felt like a formality, but as with most weddings the words transformed the day into something more meaningful and life-altering. I didn’t understand or believe it would happen to us, and after being denied such a simple rite of passage for so long, it meant something more to me and Andy. That’s the reason I always make such a big deal of our anniversaries – and why I look back on this day more than any others.
The lilac forms an integral part of many childhood memories; its perfume is enough to bring back any number of magical spring moments. This is the third installment of our purple-hued trilogy, following the violet and the tulip, and it is by far the most gloriously fragrant.
This is the single-flowered non-hybridized variety, and its simplicity is part of its rustic charm. For all the love so many of us have for excess and frills (guilty as charged) I find my own style preferences leading toward the simple and streamlined the older I get. The love I felt for the ornate Victorian house I once visited as a child has been supplanted for a love of the latest Japandi craze – a cross of Japanese and Scandinavian design. The same thing is happening in my garden. The double-flowered heavy-headed blooms of some plants feel too ostentatious for these times. The pendulum swings back to the simple, and spring should always be uncluttered.
Our purple celebration continues from this violet post with these tulips – one of the emblematic flowers of May. This one come with a song, a song that should run over the end credits of our latest episode, which involves changes and shifts in houses and homes and our steady traipse toward older age. Life advances, no matter how much we may want to slow its irrevocable cadence forward.
It’s a good song for the last full month of spring, and the color of these tulips may be a harbinger for the coming summer (there’s also a golden orange hue that Gloria Swanson wore in a photo shoot that I will be using as another inspiration color for the season of the sun). These trifling concerns distract from the heaviness that has engulfed us for the last few years.
So let us find joy in the little things – the tulips, the purple, the song – and the Saturday at hand.
This little beauty is hardy as hell, and can be invasive and pesky, but when it’s this early in the season – a season that has stalled in rain and cold – I appreciate its color and stalwart power, its insistence on blooming through the gloom. The white and violet version of these flowers are much more ubiquitous, so this pure violet version of the violet is simplicity and grandeur at once.
The lyrics for Sumiregusa were inspired by a Hokku, or Haiku, written by the Japanese poet, Basho, while he was traveling to Otsu.
He says that on his way through the mountain road the sight of a wild violet touched his heart.
We have all been moved by the beauty of nature, so I am sure we can all relate to those seventeen syllables that Basho wrote. We have all had a moment that pulls at our heartstrings. One such moment for me was when I was walking in the woodlands and I came across an old, broken, dying thistle. He was such a sad sight. There was a small history in him that would soon be lost. And yet he struggled on. I called him Don Quixote. I went every day to see him until he wasn’t there any more. The following year his children bloomed, he did not return. Even today, although that place has been taken over by the ever vigorous bramble, and there are no signs of any thistles, I still pass by and remember him.
Perhaps these moments are an epiphany.
Perhaps it is our own acceptance of the world and the way it is.
Perhaps it is a celebration of life, or just a moment that is ours alone. In Sumiregusa all of nature is equal in its power to inspire, to move, to touch – from a small pebble to a great mountain, from one green leaf to the many colours of autumn, from the song of birds to a purple flower.
NOTES BY ROMA RYAN
