Almost halfway through the month of January, we pause for our weekly Monday morning recap. The holidays are already an ever-dimming memory, while winter jabs and pokes at us with icy pincers. We are in a holding pattern until it’s time to stir in March. On with the recap…

For shits and giggles, check out the #TinyThreads series. When you reach the end of one, click the “#TinyThreads” link at the bottom of the brief posts and follow them back. It’s fun. Try it. If you’re patient you can follow all the way back to the very first TT post. 

All fruit, no labor.

My 9th anniversary of being on Twitter came and went. 

I prefer flora to fauna.

Cristiano Ronaldo in wet underwear.

Mary Poppins returned with a treasure trove of childhood memories. 

The last days of a Christmas tree.

A lovely pianist duel/duet.

Get a Clue. 

Another project, already.

Doing their best to keep things warm were the Hunks of the Day: Brian Kenny, Austin Wallis, Ed Krassenstein, Brian Krassenstein, John David Washington and Keith Laue.

This will be a bit of a working weekend in Boston, as I begin preliminary preparation for the next project. That’s the fun part, though, so it’s not really work in the sense of drudgery or duty. This is the time when I have a few slim notions in my head, a few themes knocking about and looking for direction. Here is where I will rely on the universe to nudge me in the right direction and help a more definitive idea etch itself out in my mind. It always does, in relative ease too. I’ll suddenly see a motif everywhere I look – a certain color palette repeated throughout the day and in the most disparate places. The same song will play on the radio, then in a store, then on the computer. A book will be on display in the bookstore then show up on my social media feed then be mentioned by a friend. All of these coincidences I will take as signs, and they invariably lead me to the creative project I will conjure next. The key is to be open and observant. That means being ready to listen and be quiet. It is, oddly enough, my resting stance, so this is familiar, comfortable territory.

This also means that during a time of creation the blog takes a backseat to other endeavors. Usually when that happens I’ll populate posts with pictures of shirtless male celebrities or the like and viewership will increase dramatically. The more substantial and meaningful my posts are, the less they are viewed. Sigh. 

As we gear up for that lull, bookmark this page so you can revisit these projects if you’d like. The photos – almost all here – are throwbacks to a more innocent, youthful period of a slimmer stomach, darker hair, and relative carefree attitude. May we return there soon…

PREVIOUS PROJECTS:

• StoneLight
• The Circus Project
• A Night at the Hotel Chelsea
• A 21st Century Renaissance: The Resurrection Tour
• Bardo: The Dream Surreal
• The Delusional Grandeur Tour: Last Stand of a Rock Star
• PVRTD

Andy marked the date down weeks ago. It’s one of our favorite silly movie, but unlike Andy I’ve never been lucky enough to see it on the big screen. This Monday that will change, as ‘Clue’ is playing at the Palace Theatre, and after a dinner at dp we’ll be taking part in the madcap murderous mayhem.  Everyone has a favorite line or zinger from this movie – mine is “I am determined to enjoy myself!” Along those lines everyone also has a favorite character that they most resemble. Such broad archetypes never really manage to encompass the more contradictory and complex among us, but if I had to choose I’d be a cross between Mrs. Peacock (those glorious feathers!) and Ms. Scarlet. Andy thinks I’m closer to Mrs. White, but for the sake of him and his own… you know… he’d better hope he’s wrong.

It would be impossible to come up with anything, no matter how perfect, to match the storied history that Suzie and I have (half-real, a quarter conjured, and a quarter, no doubt, make-believe) with Mary Poppins. It is one of the first memories I have with Suzie and it’s remained part of our legend and lore for over four decades. When a movie and its music is that deep in one’s lexicon, any sort of update, sequel, or related entity is doomed to pale in comparison. Happily, Ms. Poppins, and her whimsical lessons of life, manage to retain the magic and wonder of the original, and may just be the classic continuation to see the character through a new generation.

It helps immensely that the film revolves around a winning performance by Emily Blunt, and energetic support from Lin-Manuel Miranda. Guest turns by Meryl Streep, Noma Dumezweni, Colin Firth, Angela Lansbury, Dick Van Dyke, and a trio of preciously precocious but not grating children round things out in sparkling fashion. The costumes are deliciously exquisite – sumptuous in color and design – and the animation is seamlessly drawn in, whimsically enchanting for children and adults alike. The story is serviceable, and where it lacks the compelling family transformation of the first, a more somber undertone of loss runs through it, giving the grounding it needs for such fantastical flights of fancy. Mary Poppins is about delight and wonder, and how to conjure each in a world of dim adulthood. 

As Suzie and I sat there next to her kids, nearly forty years after we sat at a showing of the original, I pondered part of our journey. As they boarded a cartoon carriage onscreen and rode through a porcelain path of Royal Doulton, I thought of those happy moments beneath a grape arbor or wandering through the forest of a Renaissance fair. Of course I also recalled our first viewing of ‘Mary Poppins’ in the same mall. A finger crushed in the car window. A platter of fried clams. It meant more to us than it could to anyone else in the theater, but that’s the way it’s always been. 

Given today’s nine-filled date, I was reminded that Twitter recently sent me notice that my 9^thanniversary of having joined the social network came on New Year’s Day. (Guess I was bored at the family dinner and signed up to start tweeting about it.) So… nine whopping years of tweets… and nothing to show for it. I shudder to think how many years I’ve wasted on FaceBook… I came relatively late to the Instagram party, so I feel a bit better about that.

All of this makes me pause and take stock of how social media has become such a part of our lives. My formative years were spent without such stuff, and I’m better for it. Having worked in human resources for well over a decade, I’ve seen the changing shifts in job applicants, and it’s decidedly unimpressive. Gone are the days when one crafted an error-free cover letter or carefully-curated resume. Gone are the days of candidates who could attend an interview and actually engage in and follow a conversational thread. Some of it may be attributed to the way the current generation processes everything on their phones, not worrying about spelling full words or figuring out how to make sustained eye contact or simply focusing on a single topic for more than two minutes. But now I’m losing sight of the whole point of this nine-centric post (credit my burgeoning crotchety-old-man attitude – you knew it was coming – hell, it’s been coming for forty years).

What does one do for a Twitter anniversary? For starters, follow me: @alanilagan. Then never open the app again, because the only thing worse than Twitter is FaceBook.