In the heart of the maelstrom that is our latest winter storm, the snow blows and throws everything into a frenetic, chaotic haze. Lost among the swirling snowflakes and billions of ice crystals is the hope of spring. I know it’s there, it’s just out of sight, hidden among the harshness of winter. Beneath the snow, the garden is still asleep. Like a kid on Christmas morning, I want to rush in and wake it up, drag it in its sleepy, rumpled state to the edge of snow, and make it wave the magic wand of warmth to force the winter away for another year.
Instead, winter still holds the upper hand. My eyes sting with the cold impact of suicidal snowflakes. Kill or be killed, and so I trudge on, struggling to gain an advantage, to find my focus again.
We must create our own oasis in the midst of this desert of winter.
The post-Oscar glow is still in effect as we look back on the last week. In many ways it was a tumultuous time, thanks to wildly-dramatic weather and equally-dramatic movie moments.
If I have the energy and the desire, I’ll be updating this with my own special brand of obnoxious Oscar commentary. As much as I want ‘Call Me By Your Name’ to win everything it’s up for, I know that’s not going to happen. But I’ll watch to see if Jennifer really does show up with Brad, and all the rest of it. Keep coming back here to see how much I feel like adding. (Or watch in more instantaneous time on my Twitter or FaceBook feeds.)
Jane Fonda is forever immaculate – elegant, classy and resplendent in white.
Echoing that white theme is Laura Dern, in a very good way.
Rita Moreno (EGOT winner) is wearing the same gown she wore when she won her Oscar in 1962. Proof that true style never goes out of date. (It was made from a Japanese obi.)
Mary J. Blige rounds out a triumvirate of white gown eleganza.
Tiffany Haddish is wearing something I would wear to the Oscars.
Allison Janney has the kind of sleeves I want to wear to work.
Betty Gabriel makes her own colorful choice in a gorgeous shade of green.
I adore Whoopi Goldberg, so the less said about that dress the better.
My favorite thus far: Salma Hayek in Gucci, though I’m guessing this will be polarizing.
Eliza Gonzalez is our fashion canary. How’s the coal mine?
Turns out that white wasn’t just for the ladies, as Timothee Chalamet donned an all-white tuxedo ensemble, and almost pulled it off.
I see Jennifer Lawrence stopped at Deb for her Oscar dress.
While I don’t feel ‘Get Out’ is worthy of the Best Picture Oscar (I liked it, but it didn’t move my soul), I do think Daniel Kaluuya should get some major credit for daring to break with black tux tradition.
Nicole Kidman is how high school girls mistakenly envision their prom dress will look.
Viola Davis just made Jennifer Lawrence’s dress look like gold.
Maybe if they stopped talking about how long the show runs over, it wouldn’t. Same for these montages that span literally 90 years. It’s enough that the number is in the hashtag. We get it.
Let’s see: the first of three mini-films by Walmart or a piss-pot stop? [Cue the pee.]
Lupita Nyong’o always manages to thrill with her sartorial selections, but on the Red Carpet I wasn’t sure about this one. Under the lights of the stage, however, it glittered and shone in all the right ways.
Sneakers. At the Oscars. So cool, man. Cooler than sunglasses at night.
I’m bored already.
But Sufjan Stevens rescued the lull with the ‘Mystery of Love’ and a delicious jacket.
Ok, focus. No matter how well-tailored his jacket is, Tom Holland is lost in its double-breasted style.
I hate an Oscar gimmick. Getting some stars to surprise an unsuspecting movie audience? If I were in that audience in my sweatpants, then broadcast to the entire world, I’d be pissed.
A sentence I never thought I’d have to write tonight: I wish someone would move the hot dog so I could get a better gander at Emily Blunt’s dress.
Wait, the man bun is still a thing? Can it not be?
Even with tinsel on, Margot Robbie is gorgeous.
Just when I think I’m over Sandra Bullock she adds an extra layer of charm and I’m helpless.
Inspired by that seminal/semenal peach scene in ‘Call Me By Your Name’ this is an off-the-cuff cocktail I crafted in honor of tonight’s Oscar ceremony. It’s a little rough and raw, somewhat sweet and juicy as all-get-out. I took a good amount of peach vodka, some ginger liqueur, some peach nectar and a healthy splash of peach bitters, and mixed them with lots of ice. You really want to get in there and shake it up good. Keep going even when you think it’s done. You want everything to come together in one brilliant peachy explosion.
Only strain out the ice – you want this one to be messy and murky, as if a peach had been pulverized in riotously unseemly ways. Find a pretty receptacle, add a willing cherry – the darkest and richest you can find – and let the juice plop in on top of it. Voila – the Decimated Peach.
Very seldom does a movie based on a book live up to its source material, but ‘Call me By Your Name’ is an instant cinematic masterpiece. Maybe it’s because enough time has passed since I first read the book by Andre Aciman that this feels equally fresh and wondrous, or maybe its treatment at the hands of director Luca Guadagnino, and leads Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer, makes it its own work of art – whatever the case, ‘Call Me By Your Name’ is brilliant, and moved me more than any other movie has in recent and long-past history.
An idyllic summer in some vague Northern Italian town finds an American, Oliver (Hammer) visiting for several weeks. The son of the family with whom he is staying, Elio (Chalamet), is at first put off by the arrogance and ease with which Oliver quickly assimilates, but soon a friendship blossoms. It leads to other, trickier things, but it takes a while to get there. At first some people may find that it drags, but Guadagnino is merely setting up for a richly rewarding final third.
Set in the 1980’s, that decade is slightly removed from the timeless story, but does manage to creep in with a few pop songs, those iconic striped short-shorts, and the cumbersome walkmans. (Not to mention the widely-celebrated dancing scene in which Mr. Hammer comes into his endearing own.) The sun-soaked summer, with all its lazy pleasures, opportunities for fresh fruit, and revitalizing splashes in pools and ponds, forms the gorgeous backdrop to the proceedings.
As Oliver, Hammer brilliantly capitalizes on the arrogant, familiar, and all-too-cocky American role, but at moments he lets the golden-boy mask drop, and the devastation in his eyes, and the slightly wrinkled brow when he studies Elio as he sleeps, are gut-wrenching. For his part, Chalamet offers a revelatory, career-shaping performance. His Elio is all teenage awkwardness, preternatural wisdom, and hopeless, diehard romanticism even when he doesn’t know it.
While the movie is a glorious work of art on its own, on a personal level it moved me just a little bit more. Never in my life has a movie touched upon so many memories, so many key moments in the youth that formed me, yet the ache and longing of and adolescent’s coming-of-age-and-angst is a universal touchstone. By the end of the film we are left asking the eternally-terrifying question: what do we really mean to each other? In certain summers, when all is tender and raw and beautiful, the answer is… everything.
When the movie was over, Suzie and I went our separate ways – her car was in the downstairs lot and mine was on the upper level of the mall. It was around midnight. Snow was falling – impossibly-large and fluffy flakes, noiselessly drifting through the dark night. I sat in the car and wept for what I had just seen.
All those times I thought I was in love with someone, when the idea of them filled and informed every single thing I did, came rushing back. Four decades of loving and wishing and hoping and crying, hurting and lamenting and laughing and smiling – all the moments I gave in to the pain and the joy and the despondency – I cried for the ways we choose to embrace the miraculous ecstasy and exquisite sorrow, and for all of us who took the tougher path because we knew somehow it would be better. I never shied away from the pain because I knew there would be no escaping it; the only way out was through. And there were times and days, from the moment I woke to the moment I fell asleep, that someone else occupied my existence, robbed me of who I was, and chipped away at my soul, but somehow I trusted it would be better that way.
In the end, I cried out of gratitude and gladness, because love is never wrong, and I would never regret giving it. No matter how it ended, no matter what would become of me, I knew what it was to love, and I wouldn’t erase the heartache or the hurt for all the blissful ignorance in the world.
“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything – what a waste!” ~ Andre Aciman
Twenty years ago today, Madonna released ‘Ray of Light’ – the greatest album of her career (thus far) in the United States. (World-wide it went out on February 22, which is why the past week has been a happy celebration of all things ‘Ray of Light.’) I distinctly remember the midnight moment of its release, and the line of fans that snaked through the old Tower Records at the end of Newbury Street in 1998. Pulsing throughout the store, the title track thumped its way into my heart, warming the cold, late winter night, and setting the sonic landscape on fire as only Madonna, at her finest, could do.
It was after 1 AM when I finally got back to the condo. Despite having to work the next morning, I turned on all the lights and put the album on louder than was fair to anyone else in the building. The wooden floors were hard against my back as my body spread out and the music flowed over me. Madonna’s voice called out from a space of despondence, despair, hope and awe. I wanted her wisdom. I needed her guidance. I hungered for her secrets. For the next 67 minutes I listened, and learned, and loved.
Two decades later, the music sounds just as fresh, just as compelling, and just as miraculous as it did on that first night. In honor of that epic album, here’s a track-by-track run-down of each musical moment that made this the crown jewel of Madonna’s impressively-extensive catalog:
Drowned World: Substitute for Love ~ The opening track of the ‘Ray of Light’ album is also my favorite Madonna song of all-time. I’m mostly alone in that assessment, but this is one brilliant beginning, and sets the tone and mood of the introspective proceedings. William Orbit’s ambient and lush electronic orchestrations usher in a new era for Madonna and pop music in general, but it is Madonna’s impassioned delivery, and those ‘Evita’-emboldened vocals, that reveals a depth and artistic clarity that moved her eons beyond the bubblegum pop of her youth. This was a woman looking out at the world with an informed and almost-weary eye, but she was still willing to believe and hope and seek out deeper truths.
Swim ~ Guitars played a big part of Orbit’s music for the ‘Ray of Light’ album, as heard in this slow rocker. This song also introduces a recurring motif of water imagery that permeates the proceedings, both in the gurgling and churning undertow of this song, as in its overt message of swimming to the ocean floor and crashing upon the shore. A lament on the state of the world, and a desire to swim to somewhere better, and somewhat blindly.
Ray of Light ~ Her most glorious title track since 1989’s ‘Like A Prayer’ this spiritual dance anthem was her most buoyant and joyous outing in years, and remains one of her happiest songs. A throbbing bass and tons of driving guitars give a 70’s folk song a vital jolt of instant import and Madonna’s treatise on a world gone quickly. The accompanying video drives home its fast-paced race against time.
Candy Perfume Girl ~ Lustful word games and potent descriptors see Madonna inviting an object of desire to devour her, and the carnal flower that results is as delectable as it is deadly. A pretty poison pill of grungy wanton behavior eventually ends up in a bitter but entrancing crash of guitar-raging boy versus girl versus boy tension.
Skin ~ One of the few tracks that hasn’t received a Madonna Timeline treatment yet, I’ll save the personal sexual salvos that informed this trance-like doozy for a later time. For now, it’s enough to simply be mesmerized by the racing wizardry of the music as it builds into the gloriously-insane Middle Eastern snake-charmer bits that bleed out at the end.
Nothing Really Matters ~ A classic track that bridges the more-traditional pop roots of Madonna’s past with her newfound interest in more worldly lyrical notions, this for me was one of the album’s weaker moments upon first listen. A stunning bridge (“Nothing takes the past away like the future, nothing makes the darkness go like the light. You’re a shelter from the storm, give me comfort in your arms…”) and one of the most magnificent videos of her career (channeling her then-obsession ‘Memoirs of a Geisha‘) eventually won me over.
Sky Fits Heaven ~ With its soaring piano chords and heavenly chorus that saw Madonna “traveling down this road, watching the signs as I go” this was a highlight of the album. That glorious chorus comes after a few jarring and clanging verses, but once it finds release the sky opens up and it’s a beautiful thing. Adding to this is the earnest quest of her spiritual journey: “I think I’ll follow my heart, it’s a very good place to start.” At the halfway point of ‘Ray of Light’ this then-new Madonna was different than any that had come before, and the result was magical.
Shanti/Ashtangi ~ Nowhere was the change in her more apparent than when she broke into an all-sanskrit chant backed my Orbit’s own Eastern-inspired aural mysticism. I read the liner notes over and over until I could sing along with this. Sahasra-hasra-sirasam!
Frozen~ The lead single, with its desert-scaped video and Moroccan flourishes, was an exercise in salvation and reinvention from the undisputed Queen. Lush but frigid strings drive the heartbreaking narrative of an inaccessible heart, while Madonna’s impassioned pleading brings the melancholy beauty into icy relief. A master class in sweeping, orchestral, cinematic brilliance. The emotional centerpiece around which the entire album swirls, ‘Frozen’ is one of Madonna’s most powerful ballads, and in a history spanning ‘Crazy For You‘ and ‘Live to Tell’, that is pretty astounding.
The Power of Good-bye ~ And speaking of magnificent ballads, ‘The Power of Goodbye’ is a shimmering and exquisite piece of sadness and loss given gorgeous musical form. A break-up song with the power to process and heal, it’s the beaten-down and resigned emotional flip-side to ‘Express Yourself‘ and ‘Survival‘ – a rare moment of defiant vulnerability.
To Have and Not To Hold ~ A slowly-churning gem that sounds almost submerged, but such sonics aid in putting across the claustrophobic hold one person’s desire can have on their life, and the way such an obsession so often stems from something within. A fascinating and oddly-soothing examination of how we are beholden to our own hearts.
Little Star ~ Dedicated to her daughter, whose birth informed the entire ‘Ray of Light’ album and phase of her life, this is a delicate electronic lullaby, absolutely melting the cool production with heartfelt adages and motherly prayers: “May the angels protect you and sadness forget you”. The genius of this one song reflects the genius of the entire album: the cold production juxtaposed with the warmth of the lyrics, and the masterful manner in which Madonna binds the two.
Mer Girl ~ Haunting and moody, this dark atonal poem closes out the album, the final few lines delivered a cappella directly from Madonna’s lonely childhood. A damp graveyard scene reverberates with a rain-soaked background, a final vision of water imagery that melds healing with the devastating power to break stone. Her last words, “I’m still running away…” leave things exquisitely unresolved, because when you’re 40 years old life isn’t always a holiday. But there was, and remains, a great deal of beauty here.
Happy harbinger of spring! This is a red witch hazel, blooming in Boston long before it will bloom in upstate New York ~ well, perhaps not that long, but long enough. At the tail-end of winter, the days crawl slowly by as we bide our time waiting for the sun. There is nothing new about this post, as I usually post the parade of witch hazel blooms as they start to burst; it’s the first spot of color after a long stretch of barren and depressing surroundings.
Usually I despise repeating myself, but when that repetition is of such a happy tradition I’m glad to suspend my derision. The earliest signs of spring are always welcome, no matter how tried and true.
As a Virgo, I’m a creature of habit. I like order and consistent schedules. The blooming of witch hazel satisfies all that, as well as my love of warmer weather. Soon it will be time for the first tour of the garden ~ a time to assess winter damage, to remind me of where we last left off, to inspire the plans of summer. It shall be a good time indeed.
While the unnecessary appearance of Ivanka Trump marred the last leg of the Winter Olympics (what is her official role again? Why doesn’t she have security clearance yet? What kind of nepotistic fuckery are we allowing to go on in the most elevated office of our nation?) I still kind of miss it. Without the bright windswept snow of the mountains and the ice, the excitement and drama of the competition, and the nightly suspense over what Johnny Weir and Tara Lapinski would wear next – there’s a bit of a hole left in our winter entertainment.
It’s been fifteen years since this website first went live. Hard to believe I’ve been doing it for a decade and a half. Harder to believe that some of you have been visiting for just as long. What a long, strange trip it’s been! How many outfits, mood swings, stories, tours, photos, links, and social media feeds have we been through since 2003? Too many to name or count. (Remember MySpace? Thankfully I barely do, though some of these now-vintage photos may still be up there. The internet is forever.)
Most personal blogs don’t last as long as this old chestnut. In terms of a blog’s average lifespan, ALANILAGAN.com is a dinosaur. (Some of us prefer to think of it as a thoroughbred. But that suggests better breeding over longevity, and I can’t claim that. Sometimes it’s enough just to outlast the others.) In times of perhaps-excessive hubris, I like to think of this website as a long-running Broadway show: people come and go, some visit and love it, some visit and hate it, and some completely forget about it until some link reminds them that I’m still here and still posting all these years later. Whenever I think of those shows that I first saw years ago that are still running, I remind myself that those performers are up there on stage every night, doing what they do, while the rest of our lives go on. To that end, I will take some credit for keeping things going.
For the better part of a decade, I posted every single day (with the exception of 9/11). That arduous schedule was happily altered for the first time last summer, when I took a couple of months off for a summer sabbatical. I wasn’t quite ready to end the site completely, but I definitely needed a break. It was wonderful! I liked it almost too much, which begged my friend Skip to ask why I didn’t modify things to my own liking. It’s not like I was making any money off this, despite a decent amount of traffic. The small, non-quantifiable benefits of having a blog (an uncensored outlet for whatever I wanted to say) had long been available to anyone in the forms of FaceBook, then Twitter, then Instagram – and now there are too many social media platforms to mention here in whatever form one prefers. The tiny amount of cachet that having a popular blog occasionally affords has long been eclipsed by whatever small amount of influence I have on Twitter or FaceBook.
The riches of having such a creative outlet, however, proved greater than any monetary value anyone could give to this site (though I’m open to those numbers too if you’re interested…) It is largely enough to be able to write and have a few people read what I’ve written – that’s all I ever wanted from the very beginning. The act of writing and taking photos, of creating and conjuring flights of fancy or social commentary – it was and remains a process of love. Sometimes, it was survival. Always, it was my grounding space. No matter how much I fucked up in other areas of my life, this little URL was a sacred place to which I could return, safely and confidently, to be myself in ways I couldn’t anywhere else.
As years passed, and I found the genuine confidence and wisdom to make my real-life path a little easier, I had less of a daily need for such stability, but I always knew that it would be.
Just as importantly, I knew that you would be here.
Yes, you.
Whether you are one or a million, if you’re reading this I am speaking to you.
Without you, this website exists, but it doesn’t matter.
Without you, I will post, but it will mean less.
A website is nothing without its visitors. It becomes a hollow shell of record, an empty archive of faded memories, a stale catacomb of lives that have gone somewhere else. We both need to be here for it to work. To that end, I’m thankful for you.
Fifteen years is a long time for anything. I’ve had this website for longer than I’ve had my job. Longer than I’ve been married. Longer than I’ve had a niece and nephew. Longer than FaceBook and Twitter have been around. Longer than the iPhone’s been in existence. I’ve had it through a goatee and gray hair, a 30-inch waist, a 31-inch waist, and a 32-inch waist (and counting…) I’ve had it through the deaths and births of countless loved ones, though fifteen winters and fifteen springs, fifteen summers and fifteen falls. The head spins when I think of all the crazy costumes and outfits I’ve donned here.
Through it all, a few things have been consistently celebrated and nurtured in these parts. The most popular feature of this site is the Hunk of the Day feature. Oddly enough, this was a more or less recent addition (probably after 2011 or so). Who knew everybody was so thirsty?
A major Madonna Timeline is on the horizon, so get ready for that glorious return too. Another regular inspiration around here is Tom Ford; in fragrance and style, there is no better. David Beckham and Ben Cohen have been relatively quiet of late, or maybe I just haven’t been paying attention. Tom Daley and Nick Jonas and Zac Efron may have stolen a bit of their thunder, but Hunkdom is ever-evolving, and we are always open to new forms of beauty.
Somehow, the evolution of a human being has seeped into these web pages, intended or not. Sometimes the most revealing posts happened almost by accident, while others were intentionally confessional in the hopes that someone else might be touched or moved by it, or better yet see something of resonance in their own life. If you have visited and enjoyed one of my stories, or a photograph, or some song I posted, I thank you. No one exists in a vacuum, and though I spent years fighting it, I do need other people. I should be too lonely if no one said hello.
As for the future fate of ALANILAGAN.com, I don’t intend to go away anytime soon. There will be another summer break this year because it was so awesome, but there are a few more projects I’d like to post as well, and I have quite a bit more to say before I pack it in for good. And even then, the words will live on. The photographs will circulate. The internet will live forever, and everything we’ve put here has the potential to last. For now, it’s happening in real time, and I invite you to join in the fun as it happens.
In his captivating turn as serial killer Andrew Cunanan in ‘American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace’, Darren Criss has made a habit of showing off his buns, whether in a gratuitous Speedo scene or naked preening by the poolside as seen here. While the series has been hit-or-miss with me (I’ve missed the previous two episodes due to the Olympics), Criss’s ass definitely deserves an Emmy. Or two.
I tend to jump the gun in my mind when it comes to March, foolishly assuming that since this is the month that spring begins again all will be sunny and warm and lovely. The truth is that march is often the harshest of the months, coming with its wintry mixes when our last winter-weary nerve is frayed beyond all recognition. This year we will hunker down in the basement by the fire until the month passes.
But let’s take a look back at the other firsts that this month has provided in the past. It’s a nice way to ease back into the blogging swing of things as we enter the official month in which spring returns. That lends a happy sort of feeling to the proceedings, regardless of any impending snow.
Tantamount to Rippon was another openly-gay athlete, Gus Kenworthy, whose nude ESPN spread was a highlight of this website (and it was the gift that kept on giving). After his try for Olympic gold, he kissed his boyfriend on live television and we all melted a little. (His cheeky Instagram posts didn’t hurt either.)
Chris Mazdzer added a major thirst factor to these Olympics, with his penchant for showing off a hairy chest in previous social media moments (and these GIFs from a gratuitous Cosmopolitan story).
On this final night of the Winter Olympics 2018, one more hottie takes the spotlight: Axel Jungk. The German skeleton racer has great hair, and takes a great pic – with or without a shirt. See below.
It appears I’ve reached the limit of how much time and effort I intend to invest in my social media platforms. On the request of friends, I opened a SnapChat account recently, but quickly lost interest after posting just one or two ‘chats’. I’m better at the Big Three: FaceBook, Twitter and Instagram. They are more than enough to waste time and (ideally) direct traffic to this website. For the uninitiated (and I happen to know a few), here are a few brief bullet-points of what I like and, more importantly, don’t like about each.
Likes: Your FaceBook page is like a mini-website, with outlets for words, pictures, videos, events, and allowing for a more complete representation of an online persona. For better or worse.
Likes: Fast and efficient, even if it goes beyond 140 characters now, it’s the easiest way to see what’s trending in more or less real time.
Dislikes: Trolls and Russian bots. (The use of certain hashtags, #TrumpRussia or #ImpeachTrump for example, is only partially effective in getting them to back off.) It’s best to never engage.
As far from my August 24 birthdate as one could get on a calendar, my brother was born on this day 41 years ago. That means that, with the exception of my parents, I’m the person he has known longest in his life. As such, there is a bond between us that cannot be broken under any circumstances. We may fight or squabble, and it can get down and dirty sometimes, but brotherhood is more powerful than any of that nonsense, and the love between two brothers is something we have come to embrace after four decades of learning to be friends with each other.
We’ll head over to Amsterdam this afternoon for a family dinner in his honor – with the kids and all the trimmings. Hang onto your birthday hats.
