Category Archives: General

In this strange sky perhaps there is a portal to another world.

In this strange sky perhaps there is a path to the beautiful.

In this strange sky perhaps there is a pool in which swims all the answers.

With the first hard freeze, the pretty leaves have mostly shriveled and fallen. Luckily, I caught these just in time, as the last of the sunlight lingered into the afternoon. As we near the magical close of a calendar year, it is all barren trees and empty branches for the foreseeable future. The colorful beauty seen here is now a memory.

Once upon a time I made a gift registry for my birthday. It didn’t go over well. That was long before I had a website, in my younger, more delusional years. Most of the items were beyond ridiculous (a trend that I’ve carried through to this day, because if you ask for the Louis Vuitton train case for $4500 it lessens the sting of a bottle of Tom Ford for $210). The reason for this list is for those family members who always ask me what I want, and to give them an idea of what’s appealing to my fancy these days – a tricky bit of boxed-in business at best. My whims are fickle as the wind, but everything listed here is something I truly adore.

Since we’re speaking of fragrances, it would be an egregious error on my part not to at least mention the two new Tom Ford Private Blends that were just released, just in time for the holiday season. However, I’m not officially asking for either of them, though they are both decent. The truth is, both of the new Oud scents – Oud Fleur and Tobacco Oud – are wonderful, but not such distinct entities that it justifies their price points. (Yes, I said it: I’m foregoing a Tom Ford Private Blend or two when they’re redundant. In the case of Oud Fleur – my favorite of the two – I felt it was initially a charmed work, until it dried down to an eerily-similar version of Santal Blush (which I already have) tinged with Oud Wood (which I also already have). It did, however, give me the grand idea of combining the two. When it comes to fragrance, I always strongly advise against any sort of mixing and matching. For the Tom Ford Private Blends, combining similar scents usually results in something spectacular, so I’ll be giving the Santal Blush – my favored holiday scent – a supplemental boost of Oud Wood and seeing how they play out, without the hefty investment of having it done for me.

As for the stocking stuffers (and those casual acquaintances who have been reaping the myriad benefits of this website without contributing so much as a hello) there’s also my  Amazon Wish List – to which I’ll add some new wishes. Remember the reason for the season: give ’til it hurts. Jesus would want it that way.

Andy’s birthday cakes from last month – one in tiramisu, and one in carrot cake.

A couple of years ago, I did a live-post day of entries for Veteran’s Day. I’d had the day off from work, and hadn’t made any other plans, so I spent the day doing not much of anything, but documenting it in photos. There were the obligatory naked shower shots, a series of breakfast prep shots, and a few late season rose shots. This year I don’t have the time nor the inclination to bore you with the mundane particulars of the day. (I’m actually driving to New Jersey to select granite for the kitchen.) In my absence, peruse the following links, brought to you by Novembers past.

We begin in appropriately timely fashion, with a treatise on time.

A rural throwback to last year, and a lifetime ago, in the sleepy expanse of upstate New York – Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

It’s almost holiday shopping season, and I’m not ready for another amateur hour.

One of my proudest moments: my stint as a Cheesecake Boy.

Keeping things delightfully (and shirtlessly) toasty, were the hunky likes of Matthew Morrison, Tom Daley, Quinn Jaxon, Tom Daley, some sexy footballers, and even more Tom Daley.

In further circles within circles, Kira and I have been rendezvousing in Boston for two years now, traditions intact. Up next: our holiday weekend where we walk around Boston (oh so much walking!) to look at the how the stores are decked out for the season. A few cozy stops for food and drink, and then a night of good cheer and company.

A coral bark maple was in need of some pruning, and its color was at its peak, so I clipped a few branches and plopped them into water for a fall party I was having. Anytime one tries an unexpected item for cutting, there is the risk of dismal failure. Especially when the cut comes toward the end of a season. Truth be told, I was expecting the worst – the one time I tried to cut a few stalks of bamboo, the leaves fell off almost instantly. (Literally before I could finish arranging them, they started to lose their grip.) A few stalks of a flowering cup plant shed so many stamens overnight that I was starting to think it was possessed. Yet for every few failures, there is a happy, unmitigated success, like this startlingly simple yet powerfully effective bouquet of dogwood branches from this past spring.

Unlike the staying power of those dogwood branches, however, this fall bouquet was quick to shrivel. Luckily, our fall party was set to last only a few hours, so it survived intact, waiting for the night to begin its final stretch of decay.

Once it started that downhill transformation, it moved quickly – drying out in a few short hours, spent from one final fiery show. In other words, if you’re going to attempt a bouquet of fall foliage, cut it just before the party starts because it will not last the night.

Sometimes a banana is just a banana.

And sometimes you feel like a nut.

(Sometimes you don’t.)

This Saturday night I’m taking my friend Kira out for a very belated birthday dinner at Boston Chops. She loves a good steak, and that is the best place to find one. The bar is killer too – and any place that utilizes Luxardo cherries in their Manhattan is top drawer in my Auntie Mame scorebook. Here’s the review I wrote a while back after my first visit. I can’t believe it’s taken this long to return, but it’s the perfect time of the year for a hearty steak dinner – and a beefy Manhattan.

Better than that, as always, is the company of a dear friend like Kira. We have done so many fun things in Boston, most of them legal (a few not so much), and I know this will be another grand adventure deep in the South End. After-dinner options are wide open – we intend to take the night!

With the comprehensive two-part recap of the Madonna Timeline already posted (HERE and HERE) there is little more that needs to be said in preparation for the 100^th entry of that venerable feature, but I’m going to occupy one more post with this preamble. (The official post will finally appear here in a few short hours.)

A trio of hints as to what #100 will be:

• It’s from one of her least popular albums.

• She performed it on the Reinvention Tour.

• It features a choir (but it’s not ‘Like A Prayer’).

Do you ever feel like anxious because time is going by too quickly? For me it happens mostly when something like a crocus blooms, or a tree changes color. I feel glad that there is such beauty to take in, and I’m aware of how fleeting, and therefore precious, such a moment is, but accompanying such happiness is the nagging anxiety that this will not last. It feels like if I don’t acknowledge it, if I don’t honor it in some way, none of it will mean anything.

I guess that’s partly why I do what I do. Why I take pictures. Why I write things down. Why I created this website. It’s a form of documentation, a virtual staking of a claim that I was here – that we were here together – and that it matters, it’s always mattered, and it will continue to matter. It’s quite a stretch to liken a website to art, but the purpose is largely the same.

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,

And death shall be no more

Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore

For these things will have passed away…”

Behold, I am Coming Soon…

Yes, it’s already November, but much too soon to be this tired. However, such is the state I’m in, so this post is going to take an indulgent look back a year, to last November. It started in the aftermath of a political election, when I was feeling particularly dirty. The best thing to do when one feels dirty is to take a bath. (Of course, these things must be done gratuitously.) And you must have the right kind of soap.

After behaving so badly, it was time to go to church.

Luckily, there were other bad boys to pick up the shirtless slack, including Adam Levine,  Keith Urban, Scott Herman, Chris Zylka, Brahim Zaibat, Chris Evans, Channing Tatum, Taylor Lautner, Wes Welker, Dean Geyer, Taylor Kinney, Josh Wald, and Matthew Mitcham.

And we could always count on David Beckham and his bulge, especially in his first and long over-due crowning. And this video.

As we await the 100th installment of the Madonna Timeline, last year we did a quick recap of some of the stronger entries.

This was, and remains, the only person who can give me fashion advice safely.

The proximity to the holidays always brings up happy memories.

Last year was easy – no idea how to follow it up this year.

I spent my first visit at The Out, where I let it all hang out, but only in the good light on the bed.

God, I guess I did get naked a lot. Well, do…

And always – always – there was the sanctuary of Boston.