Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

For those of you unlucky enough to be texted or involved in last night’s caffeine/sugar high and ensuing antics, you know how definitively why I do not do well with caffeine. It was a mad scene, sparked by an inhalation of boba tea at at 8:30 at night, after I just proclaimed to abhor the stuff. Apparently I love it and it’s my new crack. Next time I’ll go the matcha route because anything with a black tea base is proving to be too much for my delicate constitution to handle. Grab a bowl of popcorn and see last night’s live blog post for how it all went down. Maybe the next installment of live blogging will be me taking an edible and seeing what transpires. Won’t you be sorry then?

Somehow, I still managed to get up at a reasonable hour to pick up cider doughnuts for my parents. On such a rainy Sunday morning I felt no guilt retuning to the house to do much of nothing. I may get brave and throw out some sweet pea seeds just to get them into the soil before it turns too warm. I’ll wait to plant the cucumbers on the first of May, doffing clothing completely and partaking in the old custom of a young man planting them naked at midnight for best results. (A bit of a reversal of history, as this new custom will feature an old man doing it all, but I digress…)

A spell of music then, for a rainy Sunday. Languid, tranquil, easygoing music to slow the trudge toward Monday. Music tailor-made for a rainy afternoon, that tugs at the heart just a little, and in just the best possible way, sounding off a reassuring melancholy that the human spirit was made to endure and embrace. It will see us into the night, as the rain tapers off, and spring continues weaving her seductive spell. 

People have been trying to get me to try bubble tea for years – and I thought I might have on an excursion with Kira in Cambridge years ago – God how we miss Kira – but it apparently made little to no impression on me other than I wasn’t a huge fan. Oh Lord my head is spinning! Wait now… 

Ok – here’s the sitch: I do NOT do well on caffeine. It hypes me up too much, I feel like my heart is exploding and I’m jittery and talk-a-mile-a-minute even if we should be moving into the metric system, and apparently there is tea in bubble tea which, DUH, maybe I should have thought about but didn’t. So I am going to live-blog this mofo night in our house while the rain and wind rages! Join me! ALL NIGHT LONG, like Lionel… not that Lionel, the Richie one. Check back for more updates! 

8:25 PM – I slurped up the final beads of a Coconut Bubble Tea, with traditional BOBA, because this is only my second time at the Bubble Tea house and I went with what felt like I should be saying when the woman taking my order started peppering me with questions. Andy and I ran an errand after I got it, but I left the tea in the cup holder because I’m not allowed to have liquids in his car anymore (though I only ever remember crumbing a chocolate chip cookie in his car in the early days of our relationship). At about 8:26 PM it suddenly dawned on me that – WAIT – is there caffeine in bubble tea?!?

8:27 PM – I panic-texted a few friends who had mentioned the bubble tea to me in previous incarnations of our time here on earth.

8:29 PM – Time to heat up the carnitas!

8:30 PM – My spirit animal is the first to respond (I just saw her in Boston!) and she was all “HAHAHA” and then “My friends were next to me when I got this and I got a chorus of ‘I love your uncle.'”

8:32 PM – More reports coming in that bubble tea is tea and may have caffeine in it. I’m befuddled. It looks perfectly cream-colored with nary a tint of tea. 

8:57 PM – Andy banishes me to the attic for the rest of the night. Like I can’t FUCK SHIT UP from this lofty vantage point! HA!!! I’m going Michael Flatley on these wooden floors! Lord of the Irish Jig! Where my clogs at?!

9:13 PM – Mia chimes in to my caffeine SOS: “God help you. God help us all. Take cover and sleep it off.”

9:24 PM – Oh fuck, I forgot the carnitas in the microwave! No wonder it was beeping every five minutes. I have become adept at ignoring the BEEPS. 

9:28 PM – Let me add some links to this page. I love links! Click on all the links I am going to create for you! 

9:31 PM – Oh fuck, I forgot the carnitas again! What is the post of the dumb BEEPS if no one is going to listen to them? 

9:32 PM – Too many messages are coming in from everywhere and I’ve bitten off more boba beads than I can chew. I need the carnitas. Let me dine in peace! It is not good to eat so late. 

9:35 PM – Click on this link now. Remember the old Atari 400 Computer when we would write little lines of code. Line 10 would be ‘Make a colorful line’ and then Line 20 would be ‘Go to Line 10’ and then a loop of colorful lines would appear when it ran! This is like that. Go to Line 10. 

9:39 PM – Please allow me to remember and enjoy a carnitas bowl that has been in the microwave for God knows nobody’s business. 

9:41 PM – Adding a carnitas link!

9:41 PM – Does anyone click the links? I do hope so – links are life! They connect the present with the past. We just watched ‘Grey Gardens’ again today. It’s very difficult to keep the line between the present and the past. Very difficult. 

9:50 PM – Carnitas break! For real this time! Back in a bit! Maybe not! Shouldn’t be live blogging. This is why. 

10:00 PM – All glory and honor to the almighty ‘American Life’ album, celebrating its 20th anniversary! Just like us!

10:02 PM – Caffeine may be fading, but it’s still bringing out the exclamation points! 

10:13 PM – When you don’t know how to end it: Miss Vanjie… Miss Vanjie… Miss Vanjie… 

10:14 PM – Taking a shower! 

10:54 PM – Guess who’s back? Tell a friend! 

10:55 PM – Before I start the entire series of ‘Mad Men’ again, a few thoughts that came to me while showering. Most of my best blog post ideas, if any have been decent, come to me when I’m in the shower. That’s when I’ll come up with the perfect turn of phrase or cadence of words for something, and of course there is nowhere to write it other than on the shower door which the steam soon erases anyway so we need to devise some sort of writing mechanism that is water-proof – maybe mascara – for just such an instance. There, now, it’s gone from my head. This should have been brilliant. But now only the faded echoes of brilliance, which is just dullness, remain. Caffeine gives me the jitters and run-on sentences. 

11:07 PM – ‘Mad Men’ has been chosen as the (Godwilling/fingers-crossed/Sweet Baby Jesus) wind-down for this journey because it has always held a sort of Zen-like atmosphere. Maybe it’s the intricate period detail, or the slow and methodical character development, or the delicate unfurling of all that cigarette smoke – whatever the case, it’s a calming show for me, and at this particular moment of all the particular moments, I want for a calming influence. (I’ve also had a big-ass glass of water so once the caffeine gets diluted I’ll be able to fall asleep and probably wet the bed.)

11:21 PM – Here to make this post extra linkalicious for you. FOR ALL OF YOU!!! ALL FUCKING FOUR OF YOU!!!!

11:28 PM – Is this thing on? 

11:30 PM – To quote ‘Parade’, “This is not over yet!” I will speak for you Leo!!!

11:31 PM – Nope.

12:56 AM – Attempting sleep now. Pray that this long national nightmare is over. 

1:01 AM – Let me just check Instagram for a sec as I’ve already done the Wordle of the day. 

1:02 AM – Do I need a colorful fan wreath? It’s a wreath made out of colorful fans. 

1:03 AM – Maybe I will sleep better in the bedroom. 

This fall will mark the 25th anniversary of our friendship, so this birthday post for my friend JoAnn is fraught with a little more import and significance as we are about to celebrate a quarter of a century of life together. The last few years have not been easy for any of us, but in spending time with friends, making journeys and adventures and time for each other, we have sustained a friendship that sees us through the difficult moments. They seem to mount as the years progress, but so does our understanding and appreciation of the time we have together. JoAnn has grown and found her own way, over the past few years especially, and when we gather for a visit, it’s as if we were never apart. That’s the mark of a lasting friendship. 

Happy birthday my friend – we will celebrate again in person soon. Spring is here… summer will follow. Stay fabulous. 

Once upon a time before the internet, I chronicled my days and nights in a little Garfield-fronted diary that was a gift for some birthday or holiday. It had a lock on it which I could seldom be bothered to use – what’s the fun or point of a diary without the danger of someone else reading it? Back then, I was too young to have anything of any great import in it, and once I did start spilling family secrets (mostly my own) I ended up destroying it in a fit of rage and fear. It didn’t matter – there would be other diaries and journals and projects that would pick up where Garfield left off, chronicling my thoughts and adventures for an audience of one, unintentionally designing a method of dealing with the encroaching madness of the world. 

Today, we reveal every last detail and secret about ourselves on social media the instant it all happens, baring and daring our minds and bodies in ways that would have felt flagrantly preposterous a few decades ago, even by the standards of the most exhibitionist-leaning among us. I’m as guilty of this as anyone (and probably a lot more than the average person) and I’ve done it all in an effort to chronicle my mundane life to better understand it. That said, there is much I don’t share, and lines that I will not cross. Having grown up in a blessedly-internet-free world, my childhood and young adulthood did not get captured by any entity other than my own written words and printed photographs. The mistakes of my youth remain mostly in my head, and unavailable for research or deep-dives into the past. That gave me a long stretch of time to make life errors without the lasting evidence of online documentation, and, more importantly, to realize the importance of not putting everything on social media. 

I also lived through the first few years of social media growth, and saw how it had the ability to wreak havoc with people. Once you post something online, there’s a good chance that it will be up here forever. The internet is the ultimate paper trail, and it’s almost impossible to eradicate some things at a certain point. My rule-of-thumb on posting things has always been to assume that my mother is going to see and read it (because for the most part she actually does). Luckily, or unluckily for some, I’ve always been shockingly open with my Mom, so I tend to share things that others wouldn’t, but again, anything I post is something I would stand behind for a lifetime to come. 

Maybe I’m getting more prudish in my older years, or maybe this is just the accrual of some missing sense, but when I look at what people are posting these days, I wonder if they’re thinking of the mother test. I also wonder what they will do if one day they have children who have the basic ability to search and find the electronic fingerprints left by their parents. Will they be able to explain what they wrote as an immature 18-year-old on Instagram? If not, I hope they have the wisdom not to post it. The internet is now and forever, and offers little space for regret. 

Having said all that, follow me on Instagram!

A first glimpse of the movie adaptation of the Broadway musical ‘Wicked’ (itself a rather poor appropriation of the vastly more impressive original novel by Gregory Maguire) has given me hope that the latest iteration of the witches of Oz skews more darkly true to its source material.  With Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba (the titular ‘Wicked‘ Witch of the West) and Ariana Grande as Galinda (which she early-on shortens to Glinda in supposed honor of a Goat) this two-part movie, directed by Jon Chu, has a lot of expectations and hopes attached to its bubbles and brooms, and all I’m doing is crossing my fingers and wishing for the best. The early peeks seen here have given me cause for muted excitement. 

Back when the musical premiered in 2003, starring Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, I was decidedly more Team Glinda than Team Elphaba. My tastes veered determinedly toward the pink, and my obsessions were whatever was pretty and frivolous: the more sparkly and flashy, the better. I had no time or desire to investigate the world of politics, or the people around me, or anything other than matching my underwear to my socks. That’s how Glinda starts out too, and when she sings about being ‘Popular’, she was singing about all that inspired me in the most superficial and silly of ways. Twenty years ago, Glinda was my muse. Ten years ago, she remained such, with her deft way around a star-studded wand and nifty knack for pulling off a tiara. She’d been wounded in love too, as the trajectory of the story goes, and we had that in common, and I understood that being seen as someone who has their shit so fabulously together comes with its own exacting price. 

A few years ago, I felt a subtle shift, as the world as we all knew it began to crumble and reassemble itself in miraculously devastating ways. I wondered at the time if I wasn’t turning the tiniest bit green, turning toward the darker and more serious territory that Elphaba so nobly embraced. For the first time, I felt more like defying gravity than being popular, and that was a profound change. 

When these first looks at the movie were released, I found myself wondering for whom I felt more of affinity two decades later. Elphaba surely was the more overtly noble and courageous of the two, lending her the distinct air of import and earnestness. It’s who I wished I had been from the beginning, and it’s who I attempt to be on my best days now. But Elphaba’s journey, while full of twists and turns, is more or less linear as far as who she is and who she turns out to be. Defiant and brave and strong from the beginning, she carries that through to the very end. 

Glinda, on the other hand, starts out literally in her own little bubble: self-obsessed and self-centered, she thinks she is on some yellow brick road to happiness on which she is the shining pink star, until she meets other people who aren’t as impressed by her dress or lineage or beauty. When challenged by those who are different from her, she fights and strains and grows under the chaff. Her journey is one of evolution and change, and as she becomes more aware of other people, and how she might help or hurt them, she begins to seek a greater purpose and greater good for her life. That journey is both more dynamic and subtle than Elphaba’s, much of it taking place within rather than announced in full-screech perched atop a flying broom. Glinda may get all the gazes but Elphaba gets all the glory, and the world was unfair to both of them.

And so, if asked whether I like pink or green these days, my heart still leans pink.