Category Archives: General

…{Continued from here}…

I immediately followed him back and sent a few quick messages: “Hey… Sorry if I’m a bit sensitive about certain comments. I’ve been trolled and attacked and I’m decent at dealing with them, usually in an offensive manner… That said, I’m sorry for your circumstances, and I wish you good health no matter what.”

He replied: “No worries. I’m a jerk. I was just speaking to and apologizing to someone today for making social media comments without regard for the fact the people on the other end are actually real. I don’t know why that’s such a struggle for people to realize but it is. Especially probably with more well known people such as yourself. People say really rude things but don’t actually see there’s a real person on the receiving end, so I’m sorry.”

I was touched by the response, and replied as much: “That’s a very cool thing to say, and it has been taken to heart. I’ve been trying to be less defensive as well, because you’re right, I put myself out there on other public pages, and the whole point of social media is to engage and interact. I’m trying to be better, and sometimes the most unlikely people bring that out…Anyway, thanks for engaging and helping to turn this around… My name is Alan. I’m pleased to meet you. Have a good night.”

His response: “I’m really sorry man. I’m Kenny. I’m really glad we turned this around. Proud actually. Thanks and nice to meet you Alan.”

That’s what this world needs, and that’s what we each need to work on: being patient with each other, learning to listen, being careful not to lash out, and being willing to disagree but not take it all so personally. There is still grace to be found here, there are still people whose commonality supersedes their differences. Most of us, in fact.

It started in the way that so many troll-attacks have started on my Twitter-feed of late: a comment that my profile picture was “ridiculous”. Being that the commenter’s profile pic was a doleful-looking canine, my knee-jerk response was: “Said the dog.”

What followed was the usual sussing-out of whether this attacker was one of the usual Trump-trolls, just having a bad day, or making a joke that I was taking way too seriously. We bantered a bit, sparring over why he had come to my Twitter feed to make a disparaging comment when I hadn’t even been aware of his, and seemed to be on the verge of blocking each other or engaging in full-out war.

My pet-peeve is when someone sees a post I made on someone else’s FaceBook or Twitter feed, then proceeds to criticize or insult me. That’s what raises my ire, because I have not tagged them or gone on their respective page to do such a thing. I’m trying to be more understanding about that, as more often than not it’s just done to get a rise out of me or gain some notice that their limited number of followers could never provide.

This time around, the gentleman in question was responding in an occasionally-challenging but generally respectful manner, and I held my typical tendency to go on the offensive more or less in check. I’d been called worse than ‘ridiculous’ in the past, so when he said it seemed to have struck a chord with me, I realized he was right. For some reason it had. Maybe it was because he wasn’t just another hateful troll who was only out to hurt someone to make his own life feel less miserable. Those are easy to dismiss. This was someone who seemed to have a head on his shoulders, and based on a quick perusal of his photography, an appreciation for beauty, or at the very least a desire to capture something honest and truthful in this world. He was also battling some health issues, and seemed to be having a tough time because of that. We each have our demons, and even when being called names, I always remember this. A favorite line from ‘The Great Gatsby’ came suddenly to mind: “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone… just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

We paused in our exchange. Somehow, and maybe by a little miracle, we each seemed to have a moment of grace, timed fortuitously and at the perfect junction where we both let our guards down a bit. That rarely happens on social media, where arch-enemies are conjured as quickly and ferociously as friends, and none of it translates into the real world. Here was a time fraught with the possibility of breaking through that bullshit. I wanted to write a little apology to him for taking it so personally, but he wasn’t following me so I couldn’t direct message him, and I didn’t want to make it all so public.

Just then a notification popped up. He had just followed me.

{To be continued…}

‘I don’t know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes– it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, ‘Well, if I’d known better I’d have done better,’ that’s all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, ‘I’m sorry,’ and then you say to yourself, ‘I’m sorry.’ If we all hold on to the mistake, we can’t see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can’t see what we’re capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that’s rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don’t have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.”

~ Maya Angelou

Thanksgiving came and went with a quick whimper and groan, and as my pants are screaming for their lives, we recap the week where the buttons almost went bust, the kilts came off, and the Christmas decorations went up. But I’m getting ahead of myself. All good things to those who wait…

It all began with this shameless reminder that my ass is on Instagram and you should totally be following it.

A favorite on this blog is Ben Cohen, who gave the good word that his new calendar is available now.

My Christmas wish list 2016 is online with some vital requests and recommendations.

Matt McGorry shook his money-maker for his Hunk of the Day honor.

The moon is not super right now, but I prefer a slice of crescent anyway.

When Snoopy says dance, you dance.

A pair of porn stars made their Hunk of the Day debuts: Jordan Levine and Derek Atlas.

Jagged edges, pretty leaves.

Ryan Dungey gets naked to go motocrossing.

This is Christmas in a Glass.

Justin Hartley took his shirt off for his second Hunk of the Day crowning.

Some brooks are quiet, some whisper discreetly, and some babble incessantly.

As you can tell from the featured photos here, the week was mostly about the return of the Special Guest Blog, which found Nick Vannello writing about his work heading up Kilted Bros.

Only upon closer examination might you become aware of the variety of serrated edges on leaves that otherwise appear so round and soft. It’s one of those quirks of nature that I find so amusing. Surely there is some useful scientific reason for such a design, but you can google that shit yourself. I’m merely here to raise the question and present photographic evidence.

The wind, so brutal of late, has ripped most of these pretty leaves from their tenuous attachments, but the beauty has been preserved, as best as we can muster, in these photographs. We captured a bit of the sun too, which is soon to be so short of supply.

On this day of thanks, let us contemplate the beauty all around us.

There is always something to be seen.

It’s Oscar season for the common man/woman, the day when we give our acceptance speeches and show how grateful we are for all the little people and little things in our little lives. Break out the holiday thankfulness hashtags – #trulyblessed – and strike up the exit music because I’m so ready to start shouting over an orchestra.

Just kidding, I’m not going to bloviate about all the wonderful things for which I have to be thankful, mainly because they’re the simple and obvious ones: family, friends, health, home, food, warmth in the winter and AC in the summer. Creature comforts, perhaps, but most of us survive on them. I’m very much aware that I’m one of the lucky ones in this world, and I’ll never have a day when I’m not grateful for that. If I don’t say it or express that on a daily basis, that doesn’t mean it isn’t so, and those who need to know it already do.

Happy Thanksgiving, Turkeys!

Oh crescent moon – what secrets dangle their feet off your pointy ledge? What can you tell us to ease our journey when you’re not around? You contain the mysteries of the universe in everything we cannot see. The wink of your light is only marginally reassuring, but the rest of you will glow again when you’re free from our overbearing shadow. Sometimes we don’t know how to get out of our own way.

Sometimes we make our own darkness.

Oh crescent moon – so beloved, so often conjured in cheap poetry, cited in inspirational memes, coerced by the well-intentioned… surely there is more to you than a logo, than some mythical boy sky-fishing from your cradle, but what is it? What is your secret? What are you hiding?

How cold it must be where there are only shadows on your surface, how dim and dark and wild. That’s our fault. We did this to you. But one day, and you know this cycle well, you shall shine again.

One day, you shall be full.

This sort of selfish post is usually up long in advance, so as to give people a chance to save up some money for the exorbitant purchases I’m so shamelessly asking them to make. This year, though, I’m not feeling it as much. In fact, it wasn’t until my Mom’s prompting about what I might want for Christmas that I even gave a wish list some thought. Not that it didn’t flow easily once I remembered all the things that captured my interest this past year…

The first item is, to no one’s surprise, a bottle of cologne. Rather than a decadent but special-occasion-only fragrance that gets brought out for the holidays (Tom Ford’s ‘Santal Blush’ or Vreeland’s ‘Absolutely Vital’ come to mind) I’m asking for something more utilitarian, for everyday office wear: Bois D’Orage, by Pierre Bourdon for Frederic Malle’s lovely line, Editions de Parfums, available at Barneys.

The second, but probably more important request given my website and travel-penchant is the updated ELPH camera that I’ve had for a few years now. My little green friend is on its last legs, so I am in dire need of an upgrade, and purple is the way to go. The Canon PowerShot ELPH 360 HS (in Purple) is the current version with all the bells and whistles I need for traveling.

A pair of Tom Ford items makes it onto this year’s list, as precious as two turtle doves, and they’re actually quite reasonable when you consider the price of a bottle of one of his Private Blends. In this wish instance, there is a Hydrating Lip Balm or Anti-Fatigue Eye Treatment. [Sigh] – I’ve reached that age. And what the hell, let’s go for three: the Oud Wood Body Moisturizer.

Gift certificates are always appreciated: Brooks Brothers, Barneys, Bluefly & Sephora all work well. Or if you’re just looking for a trip to give me, make it in the name of a journey to the Southwest, where I’d love to close out The Delusional Grandeur Tour in peaceful, spa-like style. I’ve been wanting to visit Arizona for quite some time…

When all else fails, and you long for some stocking stuffers or more economical treats, there’s always my Amazon Wish List. Everyone knows I love a registry.

Finally, after several years, I continue to be taken by the elusive  Jeremy Scott Adidas Wings 3.0 “Gold”, Size 10. This is only available on eBay search, and even that will prove tricky, but t’s a dream until it becomes reality. (These are not to be mistaken for similar wing-tips that Mr. Scott has produced – these are the ADIDAS JEREMY SCOTT WINGS 3.0 GOLD SNEAKERS.)

This is no more than a shameless (and shameful) plug for my Instagram account. Once again, I was a latecomer to the Instagram scene, hemming and hawing about yet another social media time-sucker, but for the amount of photos I have, and the easy posting opportunities, I gave in and it is no one of the more enjoyable accounts. (There seems to be less room for political bullshit and other discussion, which has been bogging down everything in the last month.)

If you are so inclined, and would like to see some of the photos that finicky FaceBook has deemed pornographic, check it out and #follow.

How on earthly hell did we come to be at the start of Thanksgiving week already? ‘Hung Up’ my ass, time does not go by so slowly, and this is not a ‘Love Song’. But if you gave me ‘Diamonds & Pearls’ I might be a happy boy or a girl… You know if I’m quoting Madonna and Prince songs this early in the week, it’s going to be a long one. On with our Monday morning recap before we dive into the candied yam prep work…

Franco Noriega kicked off the week in stunning Hunk fashion.

The world seemingly went very dark, but I wasn’t in the least bit surprised.

Human kindness.

John Raspado kept things hot.

Come and meet the letter people.

Interesting art.

Ricky Martin got engaged.

A world of wood.

A much-needed laugh.

Luke Adams was finally named a Hunk of the Day.

My Magic Mike moment.

Another weekend in Boston.

Matt Cook in his turn as Hunk of the Day.

Tom Ford for Men.

The end of green… for a while.

Miscellaneous (and shirtless) male celebrities.

Got more wood?

In our own backyard.

The end of delusional grandeur… nowhere in sight.

Most of the time, we don’t have an autumn show in our backyard. One or two Japanese maples might work their magic, and a weeping larch, on a good year, burns a bright golden yellow before dropping its leaves, but the rest rarely makes anything worth relating or capturing in a photo. That wasn’t the case this year, when a patch of fountain grass and an ancient oak caught the vanishing sun one afternoon, passed it to scarlet Japanese maple, and played tag with prettiness.

A soft blue sky in the background helped set everything off to striking effect, and I realized I’m not quite ready to let go of those leaves. Not that any of us has a choice in such matters, but the heart still wants.

Somewhere smoke was rising from a fire – maybe of wood, maybe of leaves – and the tell-tale incense-like scent was carrying on the wind. A quintessential autumn odor, it signified coziness. Crackling embers echoed in my sound memory, and I could almost trick myself into feeling the heat as I approached the imaginary fire in my head.

Getting caught in the woods as dusk falls is a frightening thing, even if the woods aren’t that expansive, even if they’re right at the edge of your backyard. Dark comes quickly in a forest, quicker than it does probably anywhere else. The shade inherent in such spaces hastens its descent. There’s danger in that, and fall is filled with such dangers.

I remember one late November afternoon when I was a kid. On the edge of the wooded patch behind our house, I spied the glow of the windows, a warm golden glimpse into where dinner would soon be served, but I wasn’t yet ready to come in from the dark. I had been on a mission, and my collected treasure sat in a haphazard pile on the bare ground. A mound of evergreen boughs – mostly Eastern white pine – sat awaiting an artistic endeavor that would turn them into holiday wreaths. My hands were chilled and having trouble manipulating the rigid branches, but I would wire and forced them into semi-circular forms. The scent of pine resin was a lovely complement to the smoke in the air, and the sight of our house in the distance lent a quaint cottage-like slant to the scene. It was a happy pre-holiday moment – all anticipation, all hope and possibility. My favorite time.

Eventually the light in the sky dimmed beyond the point where I could continue working. Reluctantly, I gather what wreaths I’d made, put the wire and shears in my pockets, and trudged back to the garage. The rest would have to wait for another afternoon.

The tropical elephant’s ears that made a spectacular, if slow-starting, show this summer could not handle the colder nights we’ve been having. Their beautiful canopies of waxy green foliage were no match for a freezing spell that decimated their cellular structure, reducing their expansive surface to wrinkled hoods of drooping despair.

There is a haunting beauty in these remnants, however, and a grace to anything so stricken at the height of its life. In the span of a single chilling night, it’s as if they decided they weren’t going to put on a show anymore, choosing instead to hide beneath their mottled hoods, turning themselves inside out to reveal their veiny support system, now lifeless and limp.

There’s an integrity to anything that gives up the ghost before the real chill of winter sets in.

Like lightning burning its fleeting design onto a swirling globe, so has this wooden sphere been scorched with enough heat to leave such artistic marks. A map of carbon, tributaries of burnt wood, fire and water joined in symbolic union – it’s all here. The greatest and simplest works of art draw disparate forces together, marrying aspects seemingly at odds with one another, and the resulting union can be one of tension or resolution.

Here, I find it’s one of peace and completion, all conflict resolved in a sphere of beauty. In this splendor, we can choose to peacefully coexist.

The scars may be indelibly burnt onto our little worlds, but they mark our journey and map out what we’ve learned. They show us where we’ve been and give clues as to where we might go.