Category Archives: General

When I was kid, I didn’t have quite the vocabulary that I have now. My ‘penis’ was my ‘thing’ and as Suzie recently brought to light, I had no word for ‘vagina’ (nor an occasion to use it.) So when I tried to convey to my parents, before I knew any words, that I wanted to watch ‘The Magic Garden’ all I could do was scream out ‘Bushens!’ Eventually, they landed on the channel where the “bushens” were, only it was more accurately known as ‘The Magic Garden.’

‘The Magic Garden’ combined my love for flowers with my love for music, and Carole and Paula would become prototypes for all the good girls I’d befriend over my life. A holiday episode of ‘The Magic Garden’ was recently unearthed, and it turns out these lovely ladies are still performing (and still alive) as seen in this promo for the show.

As a kid, I loved the show so much that one of the first records I got was the soundtrack to ‘The Magic Garden’ – on vinyl no less – and I wore it out singing and dancing in my childhood bedroom. Not unlike what goes in my adult bedroom. The lessons were ones for the ages – “You can even get mad at me, but don’t you push me down” – and the setting was the stuff of surreal fantasy. It paved the way for ‘Reading Rainbow‘ and all the other PBS shows I’d come to love.

This is such a strong memory, I can remember sitting in the family room surrounded by the wooden paneling and the plaid sofa. Dad would have been at work, or just coming home from work. Mom would have been in the kitchen or doing something with my brother. I watched Paula and Carole in their garden, singing and harmonizing, walking through the chuckle patch and listening to the flowers laugh. In the middle of a bleak winter, it was a comfort – and it was proof that I was a child once, that I had a childhood, and that it was, for the most part, pretty good.

I always get in trouble when I decry breastfeeding in certain public places. Let me preface this by saying that I don’t mind when it’s necessary, and I have nothing against the practice at all. A three-hour plane or train ride? Give the kid a drink. A trip to the grocery store to get food for the family? Pop it out and go to town. But a stop at Starbucks? That’s not necessary. And breastfeeding your child in the seat next to me when every other table and chair was open and available? That’s just rude.

My issue is not with breastfeeding in public. There are times when a woman has no other choice. But at Starbucks? No. Starbucks is a choice. Coffee is not a necessity. You can do it in the car or at home before or after your trip to the cafe. Better yet, how about simply remembering, “Oh, I have a baby to breastfeed. I’ll get this coffee to go.” Instead, as I lift a cream-topped peppermint mocha to my lips I see a saggy tit getting suckled by a slobbering baby just two feet from my face. (Hey, if you’re going to do things in public, I’m going to write about it.)

I’ve heard people say that breastfeeding is a natural and beautiful part of life. Well, for some of us masturbating is natural and beautiful. How would you like it if I whipped out my dick and shot a load in my empty Starbucks cup? Eggnog Latte, straight up and coming your way. Some things just don’t belong in Starbucks.

As befits this year’s holiday card (wait for it!) the snow has been unleashed in upstate New York, and with somewhat of a fury at that. It’s a wee bit early, but Thanksgiving was all the prettier for it. No one seems to mind the first few snowfalls of the season (with the possible exception of those in Buffalo).

Handy man-cave-maker Jason Cameron led the charge of Hunks for the week, followed hot on the heels by Matthieu Charneau.

There was a party in my pants, and it went all the way back to the 90’s.

This floral trooper threw a party in its pot, and it was gorgeous.

How you want to pronounce his name is scandalously up to you, but Gregory Nalbone is a Hunk no matter how you say it.

Uncle Al wears leopard pajamas. Duh.

Divine Madness: Joan and Don at Christmas.

More Hunks: Tavi Castro and  Max Emerson.

New Madonna music leaked, and I kind of creamed my pants over it.

Finally, one of my favorite Hunks of All-time: Michael Breyette.

When they came into my brother’s bedroom to tell me the news, I was sitting on the bed listening to the radio. All I could muster was a faint, “Oh.” That was all. What they had told me was that my classmate – a kid I had known for all of my childhood – had shot himself. We were juniors in high school at the time.

Suzie was away for the year in Denmark. There was no one to talk to who might understand how to deal with death. We were all struggling, trying to find a way. A star athlete, a future with such promise, and a boy I used to tease (and who teased me in return) from first to sixth grade. Back then I was brave – braver than I was in high school. Yet for all my cruelty, he never turned the tables on me when he grew a foot taller and put on more muscle than my entire body weight.

As I sat on the bed, and my parents reluctantly left the room – because what more was there to say? – I thought back to the last time I’d seen him. In the hallway of high school, near the end of the day. Our lockers were near one another, and I was hurriedly trying to get what books I needed when I caught him staring at me. I looked up and scowled. “What?” I asked dismissively.

He looked at me. Haunted. Vacant. A little sad. At least, looking back that was the look. At the time I don’t think I saw the sadness in his eyes. He said nothing, only shook his head slowly. I studied the cross he wore around his neck. He felt far away. Far from our days growing up together at McNulty school. Far from the kid whose Mom threw him birthday parties with old-fashioned games like a clothes-pin drop.

On the radio that month, this silly Vanessa Williams song played over and over again. To this day, whenever I hear it, I remember that time. It instantly brings me back. For many reasons, I don’t like listening to it. Once in a while, however, it’s good to remember. It’s necessary not to forget. And it keeps a friend alive in my heart.

Sometimes the snow comes down in June,

Sometimes the sun goes round the moon…

This is the week it begins for real: the holiday season. Unofficially kicking off at the Beaujolais Nouveau Wine Celebration, the holidays are now in full effect, as Turkey Day is already upon us. There are still a few days before things get hectic however, so let’s have a calm and peaceful look back at the previous week (where I admit to having gotten slightly lazy and letting the Hunks have their say – not that anyone seemed to mind.)

This post won’t get me on Santa’s good side, but I’ve long since given up any hope of that. Besides, it’s too funny not to share again. As ‘NSync once said, ‘Bye Bye Bye!’

The male model was a mainstay of most days this past week, starting with Josh Kloss.

You can quote them on this.

Fare thee well, firelight. (Watch out Flutterbye!)

Derek Yates makes a play to be Ellen’s gardener.

The age-old battle of long hair versus short hair on a male model. (I think the FaceBook verdict was that short hair was better.)

My mind’s playing tricks on my memory.

Jesse Metcalfe tried his best to fix the internet that Kim Kardashian broke by posing in his skivvies. I think it worked.

Country singer Ty Herndon came out as a proud and happy gay man and was promptly named Hunk of the Day. (I came out as a relatively cranky one back in 1997.)

Male model Parker Hurley, and that’s all that needs to be said as the photos speak for themselves.

The most important outfit of the year bears another look.

As the holidays begin, I find it helpful to pause and reflect.

Would it surprise you to know that I once dabbled in basketball?

The genetically-blessed Broderick Hunter.

Onward to Thanksgiving…

The hour is dawn. The road is mostly empty. Ahead, a bridge rises, high over a river, somewhere before the border between Massachusetts and New York. On my way to Boston, in the early morning light, I speed along the Thruway and turn the music down for a moment. The hum of the Mini Cooper and the faint drone of its heater rise slightly above the rush of the road.

It’s one of those moments when I remember to pause and listen to the quiet. I don’t do that as much as I should. There was a time when I drove through cemeteries, turning down the stereo to honor the dead, and restoring the soul in such stillness and silence.

At first it is a bit unnerving. So much noise and background chatter informs the bulk of life now. We are so scared to be silent. Yet it is so necessary, especially as the holidays approach, as our lives become ever busier, as the mayhem of living catches up with us all. As I get older, the riot of my heart may be somewhat diminished and assuaged, but other concerns take its place. The demands of a relatively new job, the ticking of the almost-40 clock, and the simple fact of being alive at this strange, dismal, wonderful, deafening time all take their toll. Finding peace is not always as simple as turning down the music and sitting quietly, but it’s one way to start.

As I cross the bridge to another day, I hasten to see the rise of the sun. In too many ways, it’s easy to be jaded and cynical and weary of the world. A sunrise like this, in a moment of quiet between two worlds, restores the order and quells the chaos.

The featured photo of this post goes back to 2004 or 2005. You see, my memory falters after about 2003 or so. I can remember what happened in November of 1989 better than I can remember what happened in November of 2013. It’s a sad reality of the aging process (appended by my new bifocals.) Back in 2004 (or 2005) I crouched in the backyard as the sun went down, and waxed all contemplative.

A single strand of bamboo rises on the right side of the photo, while dried miscanthus, already devastated by the frosts and the winds of late fall, backs the middle and left. A wooden fence, bright and relatively new at the time, lends a bit of structure to the goings-on. It’s been about a decade since this was taken, and I’m not sure which has aged worse – myself or that fence – both are pretty worn. Yet still we stand, season after season, struggling with the rough days, basking in the good ones, and meeting in a mostly happy and fortunate middle.

Today I look out the window and study that wooden fence, as one might study the lines in their face, or the gray in their hair. The wood is lined with water stains, gray with age, and haggard with edges torn by the claws of scurrying squirrels, yet it’s a testament to the test of time. Eventually, it will fall – all things do – but another will rise in its stead. Good fences make good neighbors, someone once wrote, and we all could stand a couple of boundaries in our lives. The biggest one I’ve found is time, and no one ever surmounts it.

It was the lone light in the night. A single spot of warmth. We hovered around it, pressing close, shaking and holding out mittened hands over its heat. Behind us the darkness nudged us closer. The cold kept us together. Together they corralled us around the fire, where we made a friendly circle of flushed faces and sparkling eyes, fire dancing in pairs of irises.

I watch the heart of the fire go blue. I don’t know if it’s a trick of watching the firelight for too long, or if it’s really happening, and I don’t care – I just like the way it looks. A hypnotic and mesmerizing effect, it entrances the senses, and though the iciness laps at our backs and lassoes our feet, we stand there listening to the crackling of the wood, the dogged rush of the wind, the muffled laughter through scarves. This is how we get through fall.

Winter will be another story.

Following this weekend in Boston, I have about 80% of my holiday shopping done. Only about 30% of that shopping was for me, so put that in your holiday spirit pipe and suck it down. In honor of that, I’m posting this hilarious and touching video of a little girl demonstrating her new Flutterbye Fairy. God knows I love a good fairy post, and if you watch this I’ll bet you will too.

Tis the season!

Bring in the Yule Log!

Stoke the fire!

(And if you’re looking for gift ideas for moi, check out my newly-updated list on Amazon. Not for the faint of heart or light of pocketbook.)

The rain came, cold like it does in the month of November, but there was hardly time to complain about it. There was a shift in the atmosphere, and those throwback days where summer echoed in the sun seem to have disappeared for good this year. Now we wait until they return. It’s dark when I get up in the morning, and dark when get out of work at the afternoon, and none of that makes me very happy. My friend JoAnn was lamenting that, and somewhere in me I found the hope to say, ‘We will make our own light.” So that’s what I’m going to try to do.

Before it got too dark, however, JoAnn threw her annual Fall Party, and it was by all accounts a smash.

November 14 marked StandUp Day, a day honored by Ben Cohen and his StandUp Foundation in a effort to stop bullying and homophobia. A great cause deserves a great front-guy, and Mr. Cohen is certainly that.

Setting up his own warm front was Tom Brady, in a few rare shirtless shots.

As God is my witness, I’ll never go hungry again. After all, tomorrow is another day.

The mightiest oak began as an acorn.

This is a big reason why I need to get back to Boston more.

There is such a thing as a thirty-year-old Virgin.

There was also the time when Madonna was Evita.

The Hunks of November did their work by keeping things hot here, so a big round of thanks goes out to Scott Cullens, Louis Virtel, Olly Murs, Nacer Chadli, Diego Furoni, Christos Birbas and Christopher Marchant.

It takes a certain amount of observation to notice all the small things that go on around us. I’ve tended to be much better at it in the past than I am now. Life has a way of getting in the way of such nuanced observation, as proven by these photographs. When they were taken, I was simply trying to capture a few acorns in the afternoon sunlight. I was entranced by the color and the shine of their shells, and the way their chestnut brown shading was set off by the green bed of moss on which they rested.

It wasn’t until I pulled them for this post that I noticed that they were sprouting. A moist and warm fall had triggered their germination. Split, the acorns spilled their life, unsuspecting of the winter to come. Yet here is where the mighty and majestic oak tree originates. Most of them won’t make it – and that’s ok: think of the thousands of oak trees the world would have if each acorn grew up. A few will, though, and they may stand when I am long gone. At that point maybe someone else will find the next generation coming up on a fall day, and take a picture, and think about their moment in time.