I don’t do public service announcements.
But for those about to make jackasses of themselves by arguing with the ticket-taker at the movies because you’re so sure your movie is happening now instead of an hour later, this one’s for you.
Turn Your Clocks Back One Hour.
Adam Peaty has been featured here as a Profile during our Olympic madness (set to return this winter!). This brief post shows how amply he fills out his Speedo, especially in the crouched position, ready to pounce. Perfect for the middle of a sleepy Saturday.
It really wasn’t all that out-of-the-ordinary or strange, when you consider it in the pantheon of outfits I’ve worn over the years. A ceremonial Indian wedding coat, adorned with a few sequins and some sparkle, and some beadwork around the neck. A bright marigold-orange silk, paired with a loose pair of turquoise pants. I’d worn it to one of the Beaujolais events a few years back. On the rainy day we were traveling to Amsterdam to check out my brother’s new house, it seemed a fine choice.
Andy and I pulled up to the house, and I texted my brother to help us with the potted palm I’d brought to warm the place. We entered and were dutifully impressed by the results. My brother had worked hard on the house, and he and Landrie welcomed us in as the twins ran rambunctiously around.
We talked home decoration and I offered what little guidance I could. They had already done quite a bit, and the living and dining rooms were mostly complete. We sat for a drink before getting ready for dinner with our parents.
As we were leaving the kids looked at me and asked why I was dressed like this. “Like what?” I asked.
“In a dress,” one of them said. “It’s weird.”
For one brief moment it stung, just a little.
“Aww, you hurt Uncle Al’s feelings,” Andy explained gently as we went out into the rain. But by then there wasn’t much hurt left. This was how kids talked. I understood they didn’t mean anything by it.
I just hope the rest of the world will be as forgiving as me.
This is always the chilliest month. True, January and February bring the coldest temperatures and the roughest weather, but by then we’ve had enough time to acclimate ourselves to the freeze. This year especially, the first few days of cold weather will be a shock to the system. We’ve gone soft with the spectacular October we’ve had.
That velvet curtain seems to have come to a swift close, and like some cosmic thermostat, the temperature seems to have been put back to right. It may be appropriate and typical, but that doesn’t ease the jolt that these first few truly fall days has given.
The wet leaves on a sidewalk remind me of walking back to my dorm at Brandeis after dinner. I may have eaten with a friend or two, but somehow I’d end up stopping at the library, or they would head in another direction, and I’d make the last part of the walk by myself. The sun had long since fallen, and the false lights along the way were no match for the darkness. A stand of trees surrounding my dorm rendered the street lamps mostly powerless anyway.
On the darker days, when the world beat me down, when I flailed in desperate attempts to understand the physics involved in mapping out an astronomy project, I’d return to a black and empty dorm room. That first year I lucked out: my roommate had quickly found a girlfriend and spent much of his time with her, so it was basically like living in a single. I cherished the solitude. Still, as I looked out the third floor window of my room, at the pine tree fanning its needles in the faint glow of moonlight, I wondered how long it might be before solitude turned to loneliness. On those evenings, I’d let Enya play in the background while I tucked into bed, waiting for the light of day to make things better.
I’LL WAIT THE SIGNS TO COME.
I’LL FIND A WAY
I WILL WAIT THE TIME TO COME.
I’LL FIND A WAY HOME.
MY LIGHT SHALL BE THE MOON AND MY PATH, THE OCEAN.
MY GUIDE THE MORNING STAR AS I SAIL HOME TO YOU.
November always starts in the same desolate fashion.
Yet there is hope. The earliest snowfalls lend magic to the gray forest.
The cold days give way to cozy nights by candlelight and fire.
A promise of holiday enchantment; a winter wonderland waiting to rise.
This isn’t much more than a gratuitous post of a shirtless Chris Hemsworth, on the day that he returns to the big screen as Thor. His last solo movie still holds special meaning for me, not so much for the flimsy storyline, but for the way we entered the theater. Skip and I are planning on doing it all over again (minus the sketchy beginning). In the meantime, here’s some more of Mr. Hemsworth (with better hair than in these shirtless pics). And here he is naked in case you need just a little bit more Thor. (And here is his bro Liam for those who prefer that.)
Turning the calendar to November puts us instantly into the start of the holiday proper season. We held onto unseasonably balmy weather right until the end of October, but November wants nothing to do with that kind of cheap sentiment. There’s no rain colder than a November rain. That’s why there’s whiskey.
Personally, I prefer cognac, especially if it’s served in a sidecar (a variation on the persnickety brandy that is traditionally abused). But I’ll take any cozy amber-hued liquor when the days go dark this early. Served on the mantle of a fireplace, or on a candle-lit side table, the simple snifter demands to be sniffed.
It’s time for darker fragrances too, and I go deep into Tom Ford Private Blend territory for this moment in the year. ‘Japon Noir’ and its smoky, soapy vision starts the month off, when scarves and wool and slept-in weekends are the order of the season. Supplemented by a few days here and there of ‘Tuscan Leather’ my seasonal scent map is tentatively drawn.
After my summer sabbatical from blogging, I vowed to treat you (or trick you as today’s case may be) to a different and occasionally-unexpected posting schedule. It goes against the cardinal rule of blogging, which is to stick to a set schedule, but that’s why I like it. When you know the rules you can break them. Hence this surprise post on a day when this blog usually goes dark.
Tonight, we welcome the neighborhood children to our home for free candy in a resigned bow to socially-sanctioned extortion. (And by we, I mean that Andy will be handing out candy with a smile and genuine amusement while I hover in the background nervously sipping a strong cocktail, possibly draped in a velvet cloak lined with purple satin but more likely still in work clothes since everything starts so early these days.)
Our front yard will both beckon and warn the unwary passers-by. A stand of castor beans overhangs the walkway, waiting to grab anyone with its prickly seedpods. Its immense leaves spread wide like an outstretched hand – fingertips elongating to fiendish needle points. A thorny clump of barberry waits to shred the calves of those careless enough to ignore proscribed boundaries. Even our pastel cleome comes with sporadic razor points laying in wait for anyone daring enough to pick one of her pretty flower heads. My plants fulfill two very important needs: protection and prettiness.
When the veil between the physical and spiritual worlds is this thin, we need beauty and barricades.
Happy Halloween, everybody.
Halloween is my day off, which means I will dress down and let the amateurs have their fun. See you on Thursday, when I’ll be back to the usual shenanigans. Until then, check out the previous week here. It was positively ghoulish.
It began with the paws of a lion, padding along even the late in the growing season.
A couple of Halloween heroes.
A party song with a melancholy undertow.
A perfect marriage: flowers and fashion.
Vote for the next Three-Time Hunk of the Day.
An outfit fashioned out of black lace, red garters, and a thong.
Halloween time again.
Hunks of the Day included Miles Kennelly & Zander Hodgson.
‘Tis the season for pumpkins and squash and dried hay and cornstalks as seen in this timely corner of the Anchorage in Ogunquit, Maine. It’s that time of the year when we begin the roasting journey in the kitchen, with winter vegetables and squash, savoring the autumnal flavors and hues. The aromas of sage and rosemary, cinnamon and nutmeg, conspire with the gray smoke trails of extinguished candles and other cozy accoutrements.
Halloween is one day away, and I’m put in the mood by a spell of seasonal songs. Once upon a time my friend Joe and I created some spooky-themed music and lyrics, and next year I’m hoping to return to the process. Until then, a look at what we we’ve already done.
This year’s costume for the Boo-jolais Vampire Ball was the vampier, slightly-more-sinister sister of last year’s lace ensemble. I usually don’t veer so close to something I’ve worn before, but this one seemed to take that one to a new extreme, with its full-six-hoop bottom and high-collar decadence. Its color palette was a complete shift as well. Next year I’ll conjure some head-spinning act that is truly outré. (Which in my case may very well be jeans and a t-shirt.)
Baz Luhrmann has created the holiday promotional video for ERDEM X H&M’s new collaboration/collection, coming next month. This site is big on flowers, as am I, so this looks intriguing enough to get me back in the store. It’s not spring, so florals can be groundbreaking again.
As for this collection, I’m intrigued and impressed, and I only hope H&M delivers something slightly above its average/poor quality for such an enterprise. There’s promise here, but not all flowers are as pretty as they appear in pictures. We shall see.
Andy was good enough to drive Suzie and me to the train station while it was still dark. And chilly. A welcome chill in the relative heat of this autumn, and one that would quickly dissipate, like the fog rolling over the Hudson River as we rushed by en route to Penn Station. It was an other-worldly journey, clouded by the early hour as much as by the strange weather that had portions of the river shrouded in fog and cloud cover, with only a few floating vessels and trees appearing through the haze, illuminated by the morning sun. A magical beginning to a magical day. I wore my grandmother’s sapphire and diamond star-shaped ring on my pinky – a bit of bling that would have made her proud. We brought some lost family members along with us in our talks during the day, as we tend to do only when it’s just the two of us.
We started with a rather unproductive stop at Century 21. I found a stunning Emilio Pucci coat which was marked down to $1260 (from $4000 – which is a bit of a steal when you think about it, but not so much when you really think about it). In the end, Suzie found more than I did, but on a day trip without a hotel home-base, I didn’t mind being empty-handed. We walked along Central Park as it neared lunch time, making our way to the Plaza.
In the past, I’ve discounted this corner of New York as a tourist trap, and it still is, but there are nooks and hideaways that can get you away from the masses and into the embrace of a cocktail. The Rose Court is one such place, slightly hidden up and away from the Plaza’s Lobby. We found a velvet banquette in the corner and set up shop for a ladies-who-lunch moment. A martini and a burger are a great accompaniment for a conversation with an old friend (so is whatever froo-froo champagne concoction Suzie ordered off the menu). The latter came with an orange peel that occupied her. Food and service were both impeccable, and you pay for both. We finished and made our way to Broadway for a matinee preview of ‘M. Butterfly’ with Clive Owen. I was eagerly anticipating the visual sumptuousness that director Julie Taymor usually brings to her work, but it was sorely lacking. The jewel-box description of the show made it sound more beautiful and intricate that it is, but the cast did their best with it. Even when Broadway doesn’t shine at its brightest, it’s still a nice escape.
A walk back toward Penn Station and some shopping stops later (Suzie tried out a few pairs of Doc Martens as if it was 1994 all over again) and soon we were at Keen’s for a final cocktail before our train ride home. It’s our old pre-Madonna concert stomping ground, where we’d always grab a burger before the strenuous gauntlet of a Madison Square Garden show. On this night, a sleepy Sunday evening that had us peering up at the Empire State Building on a breezy but balmy balcony a few moments before, we paused at the bar, holding on to our last moments in the city.
For two weekends in a row, I made a trip to New York. That’s usually the extent of my travels to that not-quite-fair city in a year, but I’m coming around to its appeal after quite some time of general antipathy. It still fatigues me, it still wears on my nerves, and it still wreaks havoc with my social anxiety (it’s not exactly the place one can avoid people), but if I can seek out quieter spots and safe havens, as well as the escape of a Broadway show, I can usually enjoy it.
For the first weekend, I stayed at the rather atrocious Marmara Hotel. The less said about it the better, but I’ll reveal a contradictory complaint to whet your appetite. As some of you may know, I’m not shy about showing almost everything here and getting completely naked at the drop of a hat and/or outfit. I have no hang-ups about nudity or such, but I like to be in control of how it’s done, and how much is actually revealed, and I’m never naked in public in person. (You won’t see me parading around Times Square a la the naked cowboy or that frightening over-size adult baby.) In person, I’m rather shy, and almost always fully-clothed. (There are notable party exceptions, but there’s never full-on nudity of any sort.) So it was with shock and dismay when, in the midst of my changing for dinner, housekeeping barged into the room unannounced and saw me in all my middle-aged paunchy glory. My hands instinctively cupped my cock before I gave up the ghost and shrieked that someone was in the room, but the first woman likely got a full-frontal eyeful. Good for her, I guess, but who enters a room at 5 PM right after a guest has just checked in, and without knocking first? You can find the rest of my hotel review on Trip Advisor, but dirty carpet and sticky balcony doors won’t win anybody over.
Thankfully the rest of my first trip was rather wonderful. The main impetus was to try Tom Ford’s Ultra-Limited Private Blend “Fucking Fabulous†– as first reported here. I’d uncovered hints that Andy might be working on that as a Christmas gift, but its hefty price tag demanded an in-person test for confirmation that it was as exciting as its cheeky moniker. On Saturday morning I made my way up the plush, carpeted circular staircase leading to the fragrance room of the Madison Ave flagship store, and promptly sprayed my arm with the new scent. Happily, it’s exquisite. While it’s described as an Oriental Chypre, I got a much lighter feel from it. Softer than expected, it floats around one rather than stomping about like ‘Tuscan Leather’ or ‘Amber Absolute’ – the perfect bit of subtle sparkle and pizzazz for the upcoming holidays.
With my Tom Ford mission accomplished, I had time to take in a preview of ‘The Band’s Visit’ – the new Broadway musical that got rave reviews when it first opened in Connecticut last year. Those reviews were largely correct – it’s an enchanting little show with two lead performances that are lock-ins for Tony nominations. The music was glorious, the storyline quirky and unexpected, and despite a relatively stark and drab set (intentionally-so to fit the storyline) I was completely transported to another world. Initially and outwardly it appears as a dreary stop on a way to better places, but soon reveals itself rich in the wonder and beauty of the human experience. To be taken away from our own demons for a couple of hours is the greatest gift of a Broadway show.
The next weekend, Suzie would join me for another one…
It struck me as our train was speeding toward its over-an-hour-late arrival in Albany-Rensselaer at one o’clock in the morning. Suzie was asleep next to me and we had just enjoyed a marvelous day-trip to New York. Most of me was exhausted and supremely spent after departing before the break of day and arriving well after the fall of night. But a small part was not quite ready to stop, a part that didn’t want the carefree Sunday to end. A reminder that once upon a time the one AM hour was just when things started to get good.
At 42 years of age, I mostly find that those days have passed. A week later and I’m still trying to recover the sleep that was lost. The body doesn’t bounce back as quickly as it once did, the energy no longer replenishes itself instantly, and getting a second wind is a thing of miracles and dreams. When Miley Cyrus sings this strangely melancholy song of non-stop partying, it means something different to me. Hidden among the distorted vocals and modern machinations is a gorgeously sad melody that celebrates and bemoans not wanting the party to end. Defiant all the way into the first light of morning, we keep our hands up in the air, reaching for something that will always remain elusive, grasping for the final feather in the cap of a perfect day. We never seem to realize that by the time we are trying to capture the moment, it has already gone. Sometimes it’s enough to remember, sometimes it’s not.
And so we draw back from getting too serious, as if by keeping things silly and superficial we can tame the ticking of time, roll back the encroaching years, stop the loss and hurt that age and growing older inevitably bring. In ‘The Great Gatsby’, Daisy Buchanan staves off her sorrow by inhabiting a flimsy atmosphere of sheer, ephemeral glamour, lost in her soft cadence of whimsical words. I wonder if that’s the best way to deal with the world. Turn a blind eye. Escape in the fantasy of beauty and riches. Throw off heartache with the turn of a bracelet. Maybe Daisy was onto something. Maybe she knew things that we don’t.
Our train trundles onward, speeding us toward the final destination, trying to make up for lost time, whether we want off or not. In the still, dim compartment, young people parade by, former versions of ourselves. They’re just beginning, and in their wide-awake smiles and cheery countenance in the face of a very late train, I can see they have yet to be beaten down by life. It warms the heart. They don’t want to stop just yet either, and they have the energy and expanse of a long future to sustain them.
I just want to reach the soft comfort of my bed, and the moment after a long hot shower when I can sink under the covers and inhabit the only place I want to be at one AM these days.
The Boojolais Vampire Ball takes place tonight – starting at 6 PM at the Albany Capital Center. It’s the big dress-up day of the year for some of us – for me it’s just another Friday in bloomers. This year’s outfit is reminiscent of last year’s, but with a darker spin, and a bigger circumference (and I don’t just mean my stomach). It’s always a good time for a good cause. Tickets are still available, so I hope to see you there.
