While a stomach flu threw a wrench in most of the plans for this past week, shit still managed to get done, and as we close out this wretched and final full month of winter I want only to race forward. Big things are happening this week, as we mark the official 20th anniversary of when this website went live way back in 2003. Two decades baby! But first, a look back at the last week as we always do on Monday morning.

Things began in fine family form with a sleepover with the twins, a trip to Saratoga, and a family dinner wherein Jaxon Layne made his first visit to our home. 

From there, it was shit city, as that nasty stomach flu that’s been going around hit me hard. I’m still awaiting that first solid bowel movement, which I’m confident will be as glorious as everyone is imagining it to be. #StayStrong

A bouquet of tulips to ease the winter pain. 

Unhappy Ass Wednesday.

Can we talk?

There’s always room for Jello!

A gratuitous and shirtless Shawn Mendes post.

Madonna’s best album ever, ‘Ray of Light’, celebrated its 25th anniversary. 

My baby brother celebrated his 46th trip around the sun. 

The Madonna Timeline fittingly returned from the dead with ‘Come Alive’. 

When the winter gets icky and messy. 

Spoiler alert: Twitter still sucks.

Dazzlers of the Day included Corey Feldman, Brenden Sanborn, Omar Apollo, and Micah McLaurin.

Why are we even bothering with Twitter anymore? I just don’t know…

Andy happily left the platform months ago when that idiot-savant-minus-the-savant Elon Musk took over and began its long slow drive into the ground. Musk seems hellbent on taking down Tesla along with Twitter, as both companies are tanking in the real world. Oh well, this is why we can’t have nice things. The whole platform is slowly crumbing, as evidenced by messages like the one below, which is becoming more and more common. Social media society… I still don’t know…

This is that time of the year when everything outside starts to feel icky. Whether it’s another snow/ice storm (or something called graupel that a certain wimp in Santa Monica, Cali-fucking-fornia was bemoaning because it wasn’t 75 degrees outside), the weather is turning on its rollercoaster-like menace, zigging when we want to zag and vice versa. It’s also the time of the year when the streets turn to absolute crap, filled with treacherous potholes that are always bigger than they seem, and caked in dirt and salt and grime that will then cement itself to your car before you even get it home from the carwash. 

My apologies – this hasn’t been the calming Sunday morning post I wanted it to be, but winter is a necessary reminder that life isn’t all sunshine and lollipops. The sooner we realize that the sooner we can get on with it. The initial bitterness that began this blog is being tempered as I look outside at the snow gently falling. It’s not at all unpretty. It gives pause to the day, presents the helpful conundrum of determining whether what I had planned is truly necessary. Do I need another shopping trip to Homegoods? Isn’t our home already good enough? When I think in those terms, ‘good enough’ becomes the new goal. I am finding comfort in that, great comfort, and such a reframing is a wonderful thing, especially at the end of winter. 

Despite this dip in temperatures, and winter’s reassurance that it isn’t quite ready to budge, my heart remains hopeful, and my thoughts will indulge in the coming of spring. February is almost done… the pavement is coming, dirty or not, and the snow will go. It’s all happening. 

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” ~ George Eliot

This little-website-that-could is celebrating its 20th anniversary this winter, a rather impressive feat when you consider the average lifespan of a personal blog. Its length is not for any popularity or demand, but rather the singular self-focus of yours truly, and the way this has become a daily journal/diary which helps me sort out certain things in a very public fashion. Spilling such tea can be a messy business, but the messier things get, the more interesting they seem to be. 

“He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

This is my playground, where I get to trot out playthings like words and photographs and whatever fancy feather that happens to drift my way. Far more than that, once I started keeping posts and archiving them (rather than simply revamping and erasing a year’s worth of posts, which is what I did for the first ten years or so of this site) this became a way of looking back at the overarching themes and trends of my life – what was working and what continually held me back or caused problems. 

“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon-instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.” ~ Dale Carnegie

As my interests developed and changed, so too did the blog posts, and the way I wrote about myself and others. Focus shifted, gradually and gently over time, and while I still feel like the same person I was twenty years ago, in many ways I simply am not. That’s how it should be, and I’ve always been slightly suspicious of anyone who hasn’t exhibited the capacity to change or evolve over time. Adaptation is an essential component of survival. 

“People like this are beautiful storytellers, breaking rules you didn’t even know were there, just so you can see better and maybe be better. Life is so full of rules and so full of predictable routines that one can almost forget that art and life depend on spontaneity. Enter the eccentric.” ~ Andrew O’Hagan

Eccentricity is a term largely used in negative fashion, designed to denigrate behavior that is merely unconventional. We too often associate that which is different with that which is negative, perpetuating the idea of difference as something dangerous.  I don’t consider myself all that different from anyone else, but over the last twenty years I’ve heard many remarks to the contrary, and I’ve leaned into all that is contrary, if only to jolt myself into new ways of thinking.

Having a place to document and notate what my daily life is like, and heightening it for some aspect of entertainment and enjoyment (my own admittedly and selfishly above anyone else’s) has resulted in a space that forces me to face things I might otherwise tamp down or pretend away. Confronting such darker facets of a personality is not something most people enjoy or often employ, and for that I may be a little eccentric. To do so in such public fashion begs the question why, and part of it has been for accountability. Not everyone likes that either.

“That’s what makes a real eccentric: they really mean it, and they’re willing to suffer for it. Their social function is to explode our preconceptions about what beauty is and what good taste means. Eccentrics raise the bar on the impossible… The true eccentric gives us more mystery, more wonder about being human, a new side to beauty, while the faux-eccentric gives us less of everything.” ~ Andrew O’Hagan

As we embark on the 20th year of this website, I’m reminded to embrace my eccentricity, such as it may be, while owning up to my failings and flaws, and using them to better my future actions. I’ve made many mistakes over two decades, and while I usually find a way to learn from them, I also have my moments of refusing to learn. The process continues, the work endures, the journey begins again… 

“They didn’t always get the life they wanted, but they knew how to dream… And maybe that’s the true definition of an eccentric – someone who can’t be slain by what lesser people might say.” ~ Andrew O’Hagan

His recent hair-cut made the biggest hair news of the years, as Shawn Mendes just lopped off his signature wavy locks for a swaggering short-do, and, like most things, it becomes him. Here he is showing off the new look, with some shirtless sun shots to remind everyone of what they’ve always loved about him. 

Mendes has appeared here strikingly in posts that celebrated his underwear, his shower, his shirtlessness, and his… everything. 

What wonder is a cup of tea. Seems like such a simple thing – water tinted by dried leaves – and yet in that process is all the worth of the world. I often forget how the mundane acts of a morning make for the sustenance of an entire day. Please, join me, and sit for a spell. I’ll put on some music so we don’t even have to worry about conversation.

While a snowstorm swirls outside, let’s keep comfort on the conversation couch, enjoying the calm and quiet and simplicity of a couch. Pull up a blanket if you’d like some extra warmth – ’tis the damn season after all. Sip slowly, hold the warmth in your palm. Tea should be a sensual experience.