Joining other luminaries from ‘The Gilded Age‘ (see Carrie Coon, Christine Baranski, Ashlie Atkinson, and Donna Murphy) Louisa Jacobson earns her first Dazzler of the Day thanks to her sweet turn as Marian Brook, who forms the sentimental heart of that sometimes-cutting show. A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, Jacobson began by making her mark on stage, which is where the bulk of ‘The Gilded Age’ actors originated, lending the ensemble its own stylistic grace.
For the most part, I am happily immune to FOMO.
(Fear Of Missing Out.)
To those who are afflicted, it must be awful.
It just seems like such a tortured way to live, and a sure way to regret in some way, shape or form.
Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention, and FOMO won’t be affecting my life to add to those few blips.
Make your choices, then make the most of them.
Most of the people I know who suffer from FOMO on a regular basis are mostly miserable. Rather than face it and address it head-on, they’ll do anything and everything to distract and pretend it’s all good. I get tired just watching them.
An Olympic superstar, Michael Phelps helps continue the fanfare for this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris, France. Phelps is no stranger to the five rings, holding the record of the most decorated Olympian in history (28 medals). More recently he’s been speaking out on mental health, something that may prove just as compelling and important for those in need of support. He earns his first Dazzler of the Day for his legacy and his efforts to keep making a difference. (And his previous penchant for going naked doesn’t hurt.)
The scent of carved wood seeps out when the air reaches the right temperature and level of humidity in the Victorian entryway of the house where we spent my childhood Fourth of July celebrations. In a large vase, a sumptuously-full bouquet of garden flowers taken at the height of their glory sprawled out from their perch. The majesty was mostly made up of a gorgeous collection of delphinium blooms – the kind that Lee Bailey once decried as too finicky and difficult to grow in his Bridgehampton gardens.
It was one of the first times I’d see their legendary blue blossoms up close, and I wasn’t supposed to dwell very long in that deserted entry way. The party was outside, in the massive side yard where we had to play softball, and along the driveway, where enormous tires of ice held all sorts of Adirondack sodas. Typical Fourth of July trappings in upstate New York, filled with beer-swigging adults, rowdy kids, and the sort of crowd I wanted mostly to simply avoid. And so I took my time in the ruse of seeking a bathroom, and here is where I found that bouquet, and the magnificence of the delphinium.
Back outside, in the heat and sun of the day, I followed the driveway deeper into the yard, and away from the crowd. I reached its end and continued on into the lawn, extending down to the back of the property, where voices grew dim and muffled, and the quiet that I always craved came back in temporary relief. A secluded row of gardens revealed itself behind a wall of hedge, and I found the source of the flower vase filled with delphiniums. There were only a few secondary blooms left behind, but they were just as beautiful, perhaps more-so with the imperfect zigging and zagging of the awkwardly-angled stems that didn’t make the show.
Too few flowers give us the blue of the sky. Maybe the sky is enough for all the varieties of blue it wears. Maybe the flowers wanted to fill different voids, shine in different ways. In this secluded, secret garden, I waited out a bit of the party, happier in the quiet company of the unchosen delphiniums.
A little more coquette music for a coquette summer.
The sky mirrors the mood – tentatively pink, tenderly salmon – deceptively soft, enough to mask the tumult behind the clouds. Colors like Taylor’s ‘Lover’ album. Music dreamy and divine, with a touch of dirty decadence.
Hurled into the clouds, they suddenly dissipate. There is only light there, and color, a feeling more than anything else.
Summer ambivalence, coming so early in the season, sets a dramatic sky into motion. The obfuscation of a blog post to cover my emotional tracks. Ghosts of last summer linger and tap my shoulder. The hurt still haunts. I shall endeavor to escape into the sky.
A ferocious weekend with a full moon and threats of tornados finished up last night – capping a week that ushered in the summer season amid soaring temps in the 90’s, a colonoscopy, and a tumultuous storm system that wreaked havoc no matter where I went. And with that run-on sentence, let’s streak unabashedly into summer with the weekly recap.
It started and ended with a sick-looking sky.
A quintet of shirtless male celebrities.
My colonoscopy journey begins…
Summertime officially begins with a song.
A Madonna tease – the best kind of tease.
This summer’s Olympics in Paris is shaping up to be a Speedo-centric event, as all summer Olympic Games should be, so we begin with this gratuitous Tom Daley Speedo pic, and congratulate US Divers Greg Duncan and Tyler Downs for helping Team USA qualify for a spot at that event. Looking forward to seeing all these men perform in the Paris pool.
In the meantime, more Tom Daley, who has proven a hit on this blog thanks to posts like the following:
Tom Daley busting out of his Speedo.
Tom Daley selling his stuff in a Speedo.
Tom Daley bathing and bulging.
Tom Daley stripping and stretching.
Tom Daley as Dazzler of the Day.
Queasy summer shower, steam off the pavement, evening coming on too quickly no matter how late the light lasts. A preponderance of pink in the night, a song by Mitski to accompany the mood, a fan of pink feathers to wave away the heat. Coquette summers are all about the exquisite ache, the untethered longing, the there-but-not-there emptiness of loss. Summer gains darkness as the years go by, so we need a little pink glow to get us through the night.
Sigh of decadent dismissal, smile of weak and shaky form, movements of languid timidity. Sentences broken into pieces of phrase, words cut and shattered, grammar torn. Cruel, abrupt, clipped summer. Evocation and adoration too. Summer carves out its space, removing its heart.
I don’t speak French, but anyone can translate anything on the interwebs, and it appears this song is a summery seaside tale of looking back on summer days by the sea gone by. It’s a bit early for that sort of melancholy take on the season, but such is the space of a coquette summer. And one can’t go very wrong with a song by Brigitte Bardot playing by the pool.
The mesmerizing spell of summer transcends the boundaries of language. It works its magic through melody and sound, atmosphere and environment, sun and water. A bit of escapism is welcome here. Slowly, I’m finding my way back into the pool after largely avoiding it last year. I sink underwater and listen to that quiet again. A bit of a French bop, some coquettish decadence, and the indulgence of a pool day conspire to captivate the senses. Somehow, in their distracting magic, they remind me to inhabit the moment, to enjoy what is at hand rather than worrying about the past or the future. Only and all of which we can be certain is now – this moment.
Madonna has teased that her babies have a secret – not sure if she meant multiple babies, or ‘baby’s’ as her online entries often leave much to grammatical accuracy and proper punctuation. I like the polished and filtered look of these teasers, and I do hope they are in service of something more substantial. In the meantime, we fall back on the legacy of her music and live performances. See more links below…
We are also due for a new Madonna Timeline, which I’ve been doing for well over a decade; somehow we’re still not through her entire song catalog, which is further evidence of her musical history. Let’s highlight a few classics:
The forecast calls for a mixed-bag of weekend weather – rain has a decent chance of falling – and a summer weekend of rain makes for a very sad weekend indeed. Another coquette summer song then – ‘The Conflict of the Mind’ – to give atmosphere to this conflicted moment. It’s part of an upcoming Coquette Summer Playlist – the second installment, on the way in a little over a week.
Whoa – the lyrics went a little deeper than I realized when I first put this song on the playlist. At first it was all about the gentle mood of the music, the atmosphere it conjured – but reading through these words make it all cut a little deeper. I suppose that’s the real province of summer: crux and conflict – the crossed and the conflicted. The search for summer solace.
Let us seek out that solace in beauty and grace, in mindfulness and meditation. Let us find it in the garden, in a book, in a lazy day by the pool – all simple pleasures, all at hand sooner or later in the season of summer. Even in the rain there is joy to be found – maybe it’s in the break and pause the rainfall provides, when it’s impossible to work outside or go for a swim. Little joys. Little bits of balm. Little pieces of solace.
Five decades of any career is impressive – five decades of a career in show business is the stuff of legend, and such is the stuff of Holland Taylor, who is crowned Dazzler of the Day. Many, many years ago, I was at a party thrown for Lee Bailey that Holland was attending, but I was much too shy to say anything to her. Maybe it was her indelible scene-stealing turn in ‘Legally Blonde‘ that lent her such an wonderfully-intimidating slant, or the weight of her sparkling career glowing around her like a legacy. Whatever the reason, I’ve always been a fan, and today she is our Dazzler.
Happy Pride Month – because Pride still matters, now perhaps more than ever.
It may be summer, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t storms, or darkness. Sometimes the darkness in summer is deeper than it is in winter. All the tree leaves lend shadows upon shadows, darkness piled on more darkness. In winter the branches are bare, the moonlight can sift through, and the snow and ice reflects any light that might remain. Summer plunges all of that into blackness.
That underlying melancholy runs through this outwardly pink and perfect little song by Alex Sloane. The lyrics and images start off innocuously enough – all whimsical, airy fluff, all romantic overtures and posturing – and then it veers a bit darker, the way summer sometimes suddenly turns on a storm.
The summer storm often feels more punishing because it seems at odds with the notion of the sunny season. It stings a bit more coming in the midst of all that was supposed to be lovely. Like the fall of these little petunias – so bright and cheery and seemingly invincible, yet how quickly they shrivel and go to pieces under the briefest of thunderstorms, their blooms limp and lifeless, never to return to what they once were. How strange and sad, all these little deaths, replaced immediately by other blooms where forgotten ones once shone.
Summer angst, summer melancholy, and a little bit of summer madness. All part of the glorious package that makes up a coquette summer. It’s only the second day in… who can say what the rest of the summer will bring? The push and pull of this song personifies the moment – a moment that feels torn… fraught. Like the rain…
Ahh, summer.
Your heat, your sun, your love…
It’s simply divine.
Heavenly. And that puts us in the mind-frame of a song – a song that fits snugly into our coquette theme with its dreamy stylings and lush melody.
“Coquettes are, but too rare. It is a career that requires great abilities, infinite pains, a gay and airy spirit. ‘Tis the coquette who provides all the amusements – suggests the riding-party, plans the picnic, gives and guesses charades, acts them. She is the stirring element amid the heavy congeries of social atoms – the soul of the house, the salt of the banquet.” – Benjamin Disraeli
Summer so sweet, summer so heavenly. Summer so rife with memories… of Montana, of what must have been love, of getting pantsed and showing off my rear, of pride and guilt, of picking the beans, and of reading the rainbow. Summer is adept at seering certain moments into the memory. They remain embedded more powerfully than what happened yesterday, part of my make-up in a way that other memories can only echo. Summer makes for forever.
This heavenly song and moment work to forge another memory of love. Summer works that magic perhaps better than any other season. Summer makes us dance, it makes us want more. Summer makes us have fun, and start all sorts of adventures. It makes us want to play. And it makes us want to listen.
Summer brings us back to childhood in the best possible way, burning away sadness and angst with a rose-tinted flame that gives light to all that was dark. For that reason alone, let us have summer, and let it burn brilliantly into our memory banks – with fire, with heat, with love…
