Category Archives: General

When things get too busy for a wholly original post, I like to look back at all the work that’s gone on here before. Writing a blog that’s updated at least twice a day is no easy feat. This website usually only goes dark on one day a year, and has done so for ss long as the blog portion of it has been in existence (at least ten years). For today, a look back at what was going on here a year or two ago.

June 23, 2014 started with a ginger and a summer recap – the best of both worlds. It closed with a set Hunk of the Day in the form of one Kieron Richardson.

June 23, 2013 found me in the pool, one of my favorite places to be in the summer season. There was music in there air too, and it was as dramatic as a summer storm, bat-style. Last but not least, a cocktail ended the hotness of the day.

For more, check out the archives and search around a little. I love a good treasure hunt.

It’s only been here a day, but we’re already recapping a bit of summer. Oh well, such is the state of the calendar, and no one is complaining. I’ll drag my naked ass out of the pool to go over what happened in the last week, as much of it was light and fluffy, while more serious stuff was going down. That’s the way summer rolls. Hang onto a noodle and paddle.

Adam Lambert got us all a little bit high. 

After a lengthy absence, the Madonna timeline returned, in a quiet way. We went back to 1995, the year that she took one of many bows, and then she put out this fun summer video that pissed half of her camp off, and thrilled the rest of the world.

Zac Efron got shirtless, as he is wont to do, and nobody complained.

A new (old) summer fragrance from the house of Hermès.

Bradford Shane Shellhammer made his first appearance as Hunk of the Day. (And if I can score an interview with him, it may not be the last…)

Ginger Glory via Kinky Boots.

Suzie turned 40. Who will be next??? Oh, right, Chris…

The world’s baddest Noah, of ark-building fame.

The world’s fiercest fashion model.

Lunch by Cher.

Here’s why I was largely out of circulation for the past week or so – and on that note, Happy Father’s Day again!

For those of you unaware of classic gay culture, the lunch I made for Noah and Emi was directly inspired by Cher’s sandwich-making efforts in ‘Mermaids’. I didn’t have a star-shaped cookie-cutter, so these shapes were more basic in design and appearance, but I still think they were cute enough to merit more than a passing ‘Meh’ from Emi, who, it seems, does not like bologna. (Well I don’t either but I’m not five!) Next time I’ll do up the watercress and tapenade as originally planned.

Kids can be finicky, but in the strangest ways. Rather than bologna and mustard, Miss Emi Lu preferred a simple meal of bread and butter, with a side of pickle. I’m assuming she’s way too young to be pregnant, so I didn’t get overly concerned, merely buttered up some white bread and popped open a jar of McClure’s finest. Chased down with half a glass of milk and finished off with some chocolate cake and whipped cream, it was the most disgusting thing I’ve seen in a while. But if a kid can be made whole by bread and butter, I’m not about to complain. Pass the pickles.

Actually, this is sort of what Suzie and I have been doing for years: a whole lotta nothing, and much of it foolish. Gone are the days of endless car rides to Renaissance Faires or Beaver Sanctuaries (you may think I’m joking about one of those, but both really happened). Instead, as we get older, our birthday celebrations have somehow turned into even sillier affairs.

Most times, this one included, we end up simply hanging out at someone’s house. It used to be the Victorian on Locust Ave., where Suzie grew up and I spent all my childhood holidays. For a few years we ended up gathering there for her birthday – as the summer was about to begin, when the daisies and mock orange were in bloom, and the fringe tree just starting to pepper the yard with its enchanting perfume.

They were simpler days, but sadder in a way too. Our cares may have been largely non-existent, but our hearts could still riot. I wish I’d known then to just calm the fuck down and relax, that somehow it would all turn out more or less all right. Instead, I think we worried more than we needed to, and pondered serious things that no one so young should ever ponder.

To get us through, we found nonsense and frivolity in most situations. A bat hanging in the kitchen window, for instance. I was able to laugh at that because I wasn’t sleeping there. (Suzie may have found it less funny, but if so she never let on.) A drastic pruning job on the wilderness of viburnum bordering the front porch (I told you they’d grow back fuller than before!) The haircuts we gave to each other, and the hair dyes we tried when we didn’t look ridiculous enough. Rites of passage gone through together.

For this time around it was hot dogs wrapped in soft pretzels. And yo-yos that lit up. We will do a formal 40th celebration in Boston come September, but for now the birthday girl has to cut her own bread.

Andy made a valiant effort at a peanut-butter, fluff and jelly cake at the request of Suzie’s son MoMo, but it exploded in its own over-the-top madness. It appears that fluff does not take kindly to being trapped between layers of peanut butter.

Thank God for the peonies.

As real-world concerns encroach on the otherwise-happily-delusional borders of this website, posts this week will be on the light side. Since it’s almost summer, this is most fitting, as this is the season for something lighter. On with the recap of the previous week, which featured a few of my favorite posts of late.

It started with the 40th birthday of my best friend Suzie. Four decades. Wow. And it still feels like we’re four years old.

Though I had to miss out on this year’s Pride festivities for a number of reasons, they were represented quite hotly by the sexy likes of Jimmy Fanz and Jacob Ford.

Since I’ve returned to a downtown Albany work location, I’ve had to deal with insanity like this. Unacceptable.

I adore this lady, and she’s always been beautiful to me.

A quick trip to Boston to see the Red Sox with super-fan Skip Montross was just as fun as anticipated.

(Even if it ended with a minor run-in with the police. All’s well that ends well!)

And all’s hot that ends hot, especially if you’re Hunk of the Day Harry Louis.

One of the more popular Hunks of late was Luke Casey, who’s already gunning for a second crowning.

Finally, forget-me-not.

She pulls the shade
It’s just another sunny Sunday
She dodges the light like Blanche DuBois
Bright colors fade away on such a sunny Sunday
She waits for the night to fall…

Then she points a pistol through the door
And she aims at the streetlight
While the freeway hisses
Dogs bark as the gun falls to the floor
The streetlight’s still burning
She always misses
But the day she hits
That’s the day she’ll leave
That one little victory, that’s all she needs
She pulls the shade
It’s just another sunny Monday
She waits for the night to fall.

After all the trouble we could have gotten into with the beer and mayhem of a Red Sox game, all the possibilities of a night out in Boston, and two back-to-back trips speeding along the Mass Turnpike at roughly 80 miles per hour, I get stopped for a ticket literally two minutes from my home. We were in the very last stretch of our Sunday morning arrival when the lights and siren sounded behind me.

“Do I pull over here?” I asked Skip, trying not to panic. Even having been in this position a number of times before, it still frazzled me.

“Yes,” he calmly instructed. “Turn the car off.”

“Off? All the way off?”

“Yes. And turn your hazards on.”

It should go without saying that I had no clue where or how to turn on any hazards, Dukes or otherwise, and I was too flustered trying to figure out how to roll my window down to worry about a light show at that moment.

A blonde-haired, blue-eyed police officer strode to the side of my car and smiled as he peered in. “How are you doing? That’s a different color! What do they call that, seafoam blue?”

Was he really talking about my car? The Ice Blue Show Queen? I chuckled nervously, “Yeah, I think so!” He could call it prairie dog diarrhea bullshit brown for all I cared, just as long as he didn’t beat me.

“Ok, I stopped you for going 45 in a 30,” he said as he walked to the front of the car to get a closer look at it. My lime green stripes must have caught his eye again as he made another comment on how different the color was before asking politely for my license. I handed it to him and he walked back to his car, all smiles and Sunday morning cheer.

Skip said there was no way I was getting out of it. 45 in a 30? No way. I asked how much the ticket would be. $200? MORE?!? We were just about to get into the odds of getting a ticket in the final minutes of a two-and-a-half hour ride home (during which I probably broke the speed limit much more than this little residential romp) when Officer Handsome strode back.

He made yet another comment on the color, “It’s just registered as ‘Blue’!” He exclaimed, laughed a little and then said he was letting me off with a warning. Then he smiled and said to have a good day. I thanked him. Aside from Andy, this was hands down the friendliest of Colonie’s finest that I’ve ever encountered. I wouldn’t have even minded if he gave me a ticket after all. (Ok, that’s totally not true, but I can pretend to be so magnanimous… because I got off.)

A happy ending to a happy weekend.

Never under-estimate the power of a new haircut. I’ve always maintained this adage. In times of feeling down, I find that a new haircut can be completely exhilarating. Occasionally, it’s life-altering. Such is the case with my friend Kira. She has had the same hairdo for the better part of her life. That’s almost four decades. This last year, however, she finally cut it all off as I’ve been advising her since we met (that would be 15 years and counting). The transformation has been a big and glorious one, and it’s happened just as much on the inside as on the outside. I will always defend the fact that appearance shouldn’t really matter, but it carries its own set of powers, and whether we like it or not it defines who we are. You don’t have to agree with that, but you do need to acknowledge it.

For Kira, it’s instilled her with a new confidence, and for someone who was so quiet and timid when we first met a decade and a half ago, that’s a pretty fantastic thing to witness. Recently she competed, by herself, in one of those Color Runs (wherein you get coated with colored chalk and run a 5K course) and this summer/ fall she wants to go skydiving. I’m trying to work up the courage and craziness to join her, but she may have already surpassed me in being brave.

As I write this, the Tony Awards are on right now, and Kelli O’Hara just won her first Tony. (I was lucky enough to see her on stage in ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ last year.) And since the show is still going on, this recap will be brief (and woefully without a nude Adam Levine). A busy week ensues…

With an arsenal of photos from the past decade, it’s somewhat of a lazy entry to throwback with old photos and favorite quotes, but too damn bad.

From now until June 21, ‘Sister Act’ is raising the rafters of the Ogunquit Playhouse.

Scott Eastwood took his shirt off to get doused in cool water for Cool Water.

It was a week bookended with Boston moments, beginning in the night and waking up in the morning. Soon, it will culminate with a recounting of my first time at Fenway Park in two decades.

Caitlyn who? This is Brody Jenner, shirtless and hunkified.

Ben Cohen got down to his briefs in honor of his new cologne.

Do I make you porny?

The magic torsos of Magic Mike.

The sparkle is back at Starbucks.

Hunks of the Day included Nikita Gutsu, Dominik Persy, Jeff Tomsik and Justice Joslin.

The night is black

And I am excited about you.

My love climbs in me, and you ask

That I should climb to the higher room.

Things are hidden in a black night.

Even the dream is black

On the black-lacquered pillow,

Even our talk is hidden.

– Geisha song

This is a culture in which hedonism, sensualism, and the art of the erotic, not at all the same as sex, were uninhibitedly developed in very sophisticated ways. In the floating world of the geisha, it was love, not sex or sensual pleasure, which was taboo. ~ Lesley Downer, ‘The The Secret History of the Geisha: Women of the Pleasure Quarters’

The whole thing was a game. Like any game, you had to play it to the best of your ability and you had to stick to the rules; but in the long run it was not to be taken too seriously. And whatever went on in the licentious night-time dreamworld of the Yoshiwara was always forgotten the next day. It never infected the world outside those enchanted walls. That tradition carried over into the world of the geisha. Mystery was of the essence.

It was all show biz. But in the floating world, nothing could continue unchanged for long…

To play at love was one thing, really to fall in love quite another – and in the supercharged world of the geisha it was always a danger…

Often the only solution was death.

~ Lesley Downer, ‘The The Secret History of the Geisha: Women of the Pleasure Quarters’

How cruel the floating world

Its solaces how few –

And soon my unmourned life

Will vanish with the dew.

~ Saikaku Ihara

June is here! Glorious season in which summer returns, filled with roses and sunshine, signifying the end of the school year, the start of vacation, and all that is right with the world. We begin with… cold and rain. Whatever. Let’s look back over the last few sunny days in which we fast-forwarded to the onslaught of summer.

It began in a depressingly demon-like way, with this post about child molester Josh Duggar. It’s hard to bounce back from a story about a guy who molested his own sisters, and whose parents covered it up and then went on to preach about how sinful the gays are, but we’ll try.

And what better way to try than with a trip to Ogunquit, where the cares of the world seem to melt away like lemon drops.

It was a quiet and sleepy visit, exactly what we were looking for, and it gently restored us to our senses.

The lilacs were in full bloom, fragrantly blazing a delightful trail from nose to nose.

Shh, don’t tell!

Somebody certainly seems to enjoy a pearl necklace.

What a beautiful pansy and…. AAAAAUUGHHHHHH!!!

All good things must come to an end, but there’s a full summer to be had before we return.

Take this, doomed Duggar brood – the Hunks are coming back to reclaim this space.

A tick, a tock, a moment on the T.

Summer is on the way. Have faith.

And last but not least, Adam Levine’s naked ass. Yup, a very nude Adam Levine shut down the month of May in most winning fashion, with nothing but his bare butt.

Whether or not I can summon regular installments of the ‘Summer Memories‘ series I half-heartedly started a few years ago remains to be seen, but that is my intent to keep things fresh on the blog. Summer burns both music and memories into one’s consciousness, searing such indelible moments into the mind due to a combination of heightened temperatures and heightened emotions. It’s a deliciously heady time, thanks to the sensual delights of sun and water, fragrance and light.

Water and light have formed the critical crux of many a summer moment. I can still remember an oppressively hot weekend in New York City when the simple sound of running water seemed to cool everything down. Most of the hotels were booked (and this was before the median night cost $350) but a little place in Chelsea still had a room available. It was an interesting few floors – typically cramped, with a shared bathroom down the hall, and a strange little room on the second floor, which had an open-top hexagonal aquarium/terrarium in the middle of the space. I’d never seen such a set-up before, both an architectural piece and a place for a pet, with seemingly no other point for the room’s existence.

Goldfish swam languidly in the expansive tank, and I crouched down to peer in at them. Somehow, some light managed to penetrate the alleyway behind the building, filling the space and reflecting the iridescent scales of the fish. The sound of the tank’s running water, and the bright oasis in the middle of the city, soothed me. Summer, and the heat bouncing hard off the cement and the buildings, can be trying in New York. This moment made it all right. During my weekend there, I’d pause whenever I passed the second floor, rejuvenating heat fatigue and calming frayed nerves.

That’s the beautiful conundrum of summer – so much gorgeousness, so much heat, so many attempts at cooling off. It makes the head concoct all sorts of strange scenarios, such as stalking. It also affords moments of respite, high above the city. There are walks to more water, and music that is giddy and innocent, or imbued with an underlying darkness. It’s the season of the sun… even if we’re not quite there.

The labyrinth of previous posts on this blog runs long, wide and deep. Go to town with that metaphor until you’re raw and sore, but it’s the truth. Here’s a look back at two previous Memorial Day posts, which are all recaps given that the holiday is traditionally celebrated on a Monday – our look-back day.

In 2013 a sexy spread of Matthew Camp enticed readers to click away.

Last year, Ben Cohen and David Beckham tag-teamed the post – the former bulging through his briefs, the latter chilling in his sweats.

Stay tuned for this year’s Ogunquit recap, coming up as soon as I rest from this vacation.

Let the unofficial start of the summer season begin! This is the real ‘most wonderful time of the year’ for me, as it signals the sweetest weather is about to arrive, and the gardens are still relatively fresh and green. It’s a time of promise and hope and all that has yet to come – the time of possibility. Anticipation will always trump execution in my warped mind. That said, a dose of recent nostalgia with this look back at the previous week’s events will make this vacation Monday an easy one.

Kicking up the heat with his cooking acumen, Chef Michael Chernow was named Hunk of the Day earlier in the week.

Yet another record-breaking week for Madonna. Bow down, bow down, bow down.

Meet the newest bulge of Armani underwear: Fabio Mancini.

Get a load of this dick-wad.

Digg this: Hunk of the Day Taye Diggs.

John Irving, Master of Words.

A recommendation from a straight guy: Hunk of the Day Toby Kebbell.

A pink pansy (and I don’t mean me.)

Exposed my naked ass, and I did it with a smile.

Where we were.

Talk about your hot nuts, this is Hunk of the Day Morris Chestnut.

Within the realm of Hunkdom, a look at some of the finest.

“We said earlier that the trickster simultaneously represents the animal and the divine in humanity. In societies like those of the Western world in which sexuality is given high priority and organized religion depreciated, entry into no other sphere of activity than sex is so much desired. No other channel for desire offers so many people the gratifying illusion of power. They seem to sense that though its ecstasies sex might let them breach the limits of the body to touch immortality. Power seems even to many of the powerless to be within reach here.

Of course the search for power tends to corrupt no matter where it is found; and for every sexual relationship that empowers its partners, delivering them to ecstasy, there are others dogged by misery. Far from being a romantic, lyric or even comfortable figure, the trickster invariably presents us with an awkward uncomfortable personality as well as a persuasive and amusing prankster and sexual polymorph.” ~ John Izod

“Significantly, he cannot be tied down: he is a shape shifter, appearing at one moment in one form, only to transmute and make his next entrance in quite another. Such versatility matches his function in running counter to the orientation of the individual’s conscious mind.” – John Izod