Category Archives: General

If I must, I suppose I must…

Slay, Billy Porter, slay.

Regina King is a goddess who knows how to drape it.

Melissa McCarthy, proving me wrong in that not everyone should wear a cape at least once in their lifetime. Looks like a shower cap on her shoulders.

Mark Ronson is wearing just enough chicness to set a tux apart from the pack.

Linda Cardellini belongs on Fraggle Rock, and that’s not an insult.

Henry Golding’s outfit is as elegant as his accent.

Diane Warren – bringing back the dickie. No. God no.

I want Michelle Yeoh to be my fairy godmother.

Kasey Musgraves – what’s wrong? Couldn’t get Glinda’s bubble and wand too? (That said, I adore it. Oh wait, just saw it again. Nope. Give it back to Glinda.)

Apologies to Awkwafina: I think Glenn Close did this better yesterday.

Gemma Chan – I am here for this color, but why the shower curtain ruching?

James McAvoy – A black tux. For the Oscars. Groundbreaking. {Just take it off.}

Glenn Close – Restoring my faith in the cape. Take a lesson Melissa McCarthy.

Angela Basset – I’m questioning my sexuality.

Spike Lee – Channeling Prince’s work in Batman.

Jennifer Hudson – A one-shouldered scarlet dream.

Richard E. Grant – The richly-hued tux must match how good he smells.

Jennifer Lewis and Shangela: giving me life. Operation ‘Avenge the Kevin Hart Debacle’ in effect.

Nicholas Hoult – I am here for all of it, whatever the wrap is going on. (It’s actually a Dior tux, and it’s glorious.)

Is Sam Rockwell playing Lex Luthor for something?

Amy Adams always looks so friendly and approachable. Not sure I want that on this night. I want glamorously intimidating and elegantly terrifying.

Jason Momoa – Bohemian black tie sans tie. It works with the hair, even if the fit is just slightly off. (He still looks better naked,)

Charlize Theron – Joan Crawford will rise from the dead to get her shoulders back. 

Rami Malek – Another black tux. What more is there to say? Take it off?

Sam Elliott – matching the hair to the shirt. Well-played, sir. 

Jennifer Lopez, please don’t cut yourself on any of that! (PS – I’ll take it when you’re done. Thank you, Tom Ford.) 

Bradley Cooper – Whoa! The magenta sequins and ostrich feathers are over the top! Just kidding. Just another black tux.

Emma Stone – I’m torn. Need to see it closer…

Lady Gaga – The jewelry is magnificent. The McQueen is the color of 90% of the tuxes. The effect is largely that of this year’s Academy Awards: underwhelming. 

I love Maya Rudolph so much that I will refrain from commenting on that… dress.

Tonight Rachel Weisz comes complete with a cherry-red baby-proof bib. Not sure why.

Chris Evans is such a gentleman, and that jacket is divine.  

Waiting for Bette Midler to save another Awards show… in 3, 2, 1. 

Camo for the Academy Awards? Interesting choice. Not as successful as this one, sorry Pharrell Williams. 

Melissa McCarthy’s bunny just won the Oscars. {Careful with those rabbits, Glenn Close is in the FRONT ROW.}

Nope, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s performance just won the evening. Classy. Elegant. Moving. 

Spike Lee & Barbra Streisand: Best Couple of the Oscars. #hats 

Glenn Close was robbed. Our country can’t elect anyone anymore. 

Julia Roberts is pretty in pink, even with those fish skeleton earrings. 

This year’s Super Bowl was one big-ass dud (with the possible exception of the Adam Levine strip show) but ball games never interested me as much as shiny phallic men. Tonight is the Academy Awards, and once again I’m not as excited about the night as I’ve been in the past (cite a combination of the new Academy nomination process – how many films are up for Best Picture now? – tiresome hosting issues (Kevin who?) and just getting older and growing uninterested in such things). I still have some favorites, including ‘The Favourite’ and Glenn Close, as well as Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman in whatever gown they’ll choose to wear, and of course I’ll watch because there’s something comforting about fluff and entertainment in this present climate.

In the past I’ve done some online posts about the Oscar ceremony (some FaceBook stuff and lots of Tweets) and a recap of commentary on this very blog, and perhaps I’ll get a second wind and do a bit of that, but as we near the last month of winter, I’m probably going to be too exhausted for any of that. (Follow or Friend me just in case.) 

Anyway, let’s get some glamour going. We need it now. 

The very first sundial I ever encountered was in the semi-secret side garden of the Ko house. In the center of a circular stand of hosta, which itself was in the middle of a formal stone-lined section of the garden, near an enormous elm tree and not far from a grape arbor, it stood and marked the path of the sun, or so Suzie and I assumed. Neither of us could read it, even if the dial itself was still intact (that part remains fuzzy in my memory bank). I remembered what was in the surrounding garden quite more vividly: the beds of floppy peonies, heavy and wet from a previous eve’s rainfall – the dirty, leaf-filled basin of a small cement pool that was mostly dry all summer – and the bearded iris that insisted we sniff their beautiful fuzzy heads every time we passed. Only I obliged; Suzie was supremely uninterested in them, no matter how I extolled their virtues.

That sundial stood in the center of the space, yet it didn’t occupy the center of our thoughts. Children don’t often succumb to the intended focus of a place and we were no different. The bees buzzing in dangerous numbers among the Centaurea by the stone walkway demanded our notice, as did the perfume of that summer place, which I didn’t know then but subsequently discovered to be either the fringe tree nearer the street, or a hidden hedge of mockorange dividing the garden from the house next door. And grape taffy – Suzie shared some beneath the grape arbor, from which small green grapes were just starting to form – grapes that would never come to ripeness no matter how many times the sundial marked the day. Or maybe they did and we just weren’t there to witness them. Summer never lasted long enough when you were a kid.

The sundial seen in these winter photos was a gift from a few years ago, and I only just noticed the rather macabre grim reaper on it to indicate the passage of time, and its only slightly-more-hopeful message. Yikes. I’m going to take that as a sign of the passing winter, as it stands there in the snow, marking the march of the sun, and the passing season of a garden waiting to begin again.

Ok, so technically maybe the Prudential Center is not exactly a mall – but it’s close enough in these times when malls are no longer the rage. This stand of ferns was planted beneath a spreading banyan tree, whose roots reached down from the air in tropical wonder, while a few feet outside the glass windows the winter wind raged. We will take our bits of beauty and balm where we can find them. If there’s some greenery involved in the middle of February, that’s a bonus. These are the little tricks that see us through the crueler months, and just because you find yourself walking through somewhere as common as the Pru doesn’t mean there aren’t quieter enchantments for the finding. This little stretch is always a happy trail – bright with all the windows and openness of the space – and it’s filled with a seasonally-updated collection of plants beneath the steadfast trees lining the walkway.

It leads to a bookstore – they once could be found around every corner, now they are an endangered species – and then to the entrance/exit closest to the condo, so I find myself here often, especially in the extreme-temperature months. It’s an oasis of sorts, and during lonelier times I would come here and sit, soaking in the light and the plants, calming the turbulent heart, waiting for the winter to pass.

The less said about the current state of political affairs, the better. I’ll just leave you with the hashtag everyone seemed to be using when Trump went golfing during a self-declared National Emergency: #MarALardAss. Now, let’s take a quick look back at the week that came before, then move quickly on to the week – and months, ahead. Spring shall return. Easter is around the corner. We are on the right track.

Things started off in promising fashion with Zac Efron shirtless and bulging in this hot post. 

This larch wept beauty in the winter. 

Force it until it pops. 

The platonic Valentine.

Broken Valentine wings. 

Open your heart to Madonna’s Valentine music.

Miso soup for winter. 

Before I even realized he was going to drop trou officially, this gratuitous Shawn Mendes shirtless post went up. 

Another winter weekend in Boston, under the sea.

Shawn Mendes debuted his bulge and became the new face and body of Calvin Klein. 

A beautiful Valentine’s Day gift from Andy: ‘Beau de Jour’ by Tom Ford. 

Additional undersea antics from Boston. 

Follow these #TinyThreads for some light-hearted thoughtless fun. 

Ahh, the aquarium.

It’s my favorite section of ‘The Carnival of Animals’ by Camille Saint-Saens ~ it manages to evoke the undulating flow of water and magic beneath the surface, along with evoking so much more ~ mystery, tension, wonder, beauty, tranquility, and the unknown. I’ve always felt a powerful peace when in the presence of an aquarium. Life is quieter under the water. It’s slower and more languid. There is violence there too, I suppose, but danger is everywhere when you think about it. It hints, rather terrifyingly, at the immensity of the world’s bodies of water. Lake or sea, river or ocean ~ each can overwhelm and astound with their vastness, their variety, their untamed wilderness.

Maybe we feel better when we take a few drops and encase it in glass where it can be controlled, where we might have a modicum of power. Maybe an aquarium is our way of mastering a natural element that would otherwise drown us. Or maybe we just like to capture and covet pretty things. The flower power of the sea anemone. The ribbon-like sinewy grace of a moray eel. This boxy little creature with the doe-like eyes and mottled skin. We want our beauty close and contained.

So… Ricky Rebel wore this to the Grammy Awards the other night, and tweeted out his support of Donald Trump. Ick, eww, gross. For that reason, his Hunk of the Day honor (which may have brought him more recognition than the Grammy voters deigned to give him considering that he’s never even been nominated) has been changed slightly. This site has no place for supporting such a hateful political stance, and someone wrote it up much better than I could when it comes to anyone who supports Trump at this point:

“We have all a sufficiently hard battle to fight in life and we fight it a great deal better from feeling that we have a wall of friendship which we stand up against and have only to think about the foe in front of us.” ~ Isabella Stewart Gardner

When you think about it, the first way most of us learn about Valentine’s Day is not in any romantic sense, but in a loving friendship sort of way. In grade school, we were tasked with creating card receptacles for any Valentines we would receive. These little bags were secured to the edge of our desks, and we would go around and deposit the Valentine’s Day cards we wished in our classmates’ bags. Looking back, this feels extremely dangerous – it left the possibility for empty bags for the unpopular among us, and though that never happened to my recollection, it did make it obvious whose bags were full and whose were notably on the lighter side. I’m trying to remember if I was ever cruel enough to not give out a card to anyone, and though it sounds like something I might relish in doing (especially to Sammy, who was mean as a viper to many of us) I honestly think my mother made me fill out cards for everyone.

Back then, Valentine’s Day was a frivolous and frilly holiday where some of my favorite colors were celebrated and sanctioned for all (pink and red, whoo-hoo!!!) Hearts and flowers were the order of the day, and I loved both. It was a day of artifice – of lace doilies and conversation candy in all sorts of pastels – and I thrilled at it all. Underneath that, however, was the collection of Valentine cards from all my classmates. I was popular enough to get one from everyone – even Sammy, I’m pretty sure – and most came with personal messages from friends. How could anyone not like such a day? That celebration of love – in the name of friendship – has remained with me over the years. Despite the awfulness that became the holiday once I was old enough to be cognizant of being single and alone during my early twenty-something years, part of it still touched my heart. Yes, it’s silly and foolish and an absolute travesty to celebrate not being alone (as if there’s anything intrinsically better about someone who has paired off), I still believe in the celebration of love. When it’s the platonic love among lifelong friends, how can anyone be bitter about that?

Eventually we outgrew the Valentine Card bags, and even the friendships of grade school. Yet whenever ‘That’s What Friends Are For’ plays in a store or on the radio, I think back to the group we were then, back when we as kids were all more or less friendly in spite of our gender or race or financial situations. When left to our own devices, we as children tend to have our shit together better than most adults who only want to separate and label and divide. Valentine’s Day reminds me of that love.

The fiery shadings of the Coral Bark maple lend pizzazz to the winter garden. They rings of a deeper red when brought inside at this time of the year, and when I added them to a bouquet of evergreens during the holiday season, I thought that was all I needed. Then they started budding out at the end of their vase life, which gave me an idea to try my hand at forcing a new batch.

Regardless of whether or not it works, they make a finely handsome statement as they are – subtle yet elegant, and the shading of the bark is just enough to ensure that this is more than a bunch of dead branches. If they are good enough to pop into a few chartreuse pom-poms of maple foliage, so much the merrier.

To force branches in the winter (think forsythia or cherry or any early-blooming tree), I usually find a pocket of relatively warmer days (last week’s quick thaw of 50 degree days worked well) and cut off a few prime stems. (If you notice that there are tiny buds ready to swell, that’s an indication they may force well.)

With smaller branches, it’s best to soak them in a large bucket of lukewarm water for a few hours (completely submerged if possible) to rehydrate their system. The branches here were too long and unwieldy to fit into a bucket, so I gave them a shower – literally, in the bathroom – for a few minutes, wetting every inch of them and letting them take in as much as possible before re-cutting their stems and plunging them into a vase.

We shall see if they deign to send forth a few leaves. I do so hope it happens – it would be lovely at such a barren time of the year. Keep your fingers crossed and say a little prayer for this coral-barked beauty.

No real reason for this to be funky, other than I’m in a funky way. I don’t mean deep-groove funk, I mean funky in the strange, odd, off-kilter way of full-moon moments, or when Mercury is in retrograde. I don’t know if either of those things is happening right now, and that’s probably for the best. May ignorance be bliss. On with the weekly recap…

A really bad parking job. 

Chris Hemsworth gratuitously shirtless. 

Adam Levine’s nipples. 

Tiny Threads run on and on. 

Best life hack ever? Possibly. 

Eyes of winter.

Tulip curves.

Sky of winter. 

When Iris eyes are smiling.

Life in miniature.

Tillandsia heads.

My days at the roller skating rink.

Hunks of the Day included: Gabriel Phoenix, Jordan Fisher, David Andrews, and Beau Mirchoff.

The sky in winter is usually more somber and subtle than the flaming sort of shows we get in summer, but every once in a while it does its best to thrill in the face of all the grey, especially when there are clouds with which to paint and play. I caught Andy looking wistfully out the window at the winter scene the other day; he loves summer best of all, when his back can be eased by a daily dip in the pool, or a bloom from a climbing rose can be clipped for his side table. I miss summer too. The good news is that we are almost halfway through the winter season. Days are elongating, and daylight lasts a few minutes more as we gradually gain speed to spring. The lion’s entrance of March is but a few weeks away…

“Sometimes I think, were I just a little rougher made, I would go altogether to the woods—to my work entirely, and solitude, a few friends, books, my dogs, all things peaceful, ready for meditation and industry—if for no other reason than to escape the heart-jamming damages and discouragements of the worlds mean spirits. But, no use. Even the most solitudinous of us is communal by habit, and indeed by commitment to the bravest of our dreams, which is to make a moral world. The whirlwind of human behavior is not to be set aside.”
― Mary Oliver, Winter Hours 

Very rarely does one of those impossibly-hyped life-changing hacks you see online ever pan out into something that actually improves, or even changes, one’s life. This time, it’s different. And if you’ve ever been in the situation where you have received one of those all-purpose gift cards from Mastercard or Visa, but don’t know how to use it in tandem with your regular credit card online, this may help you out.

These general cards differ from the gift cards to specific stores in that they function more like credit cards, with strict limits. As such, they have to be used as the main credit card for online purchases, and most sites don’t allow you to split credit cards for a purchase as you would usually be able to do in person by asking the cashier to type in a specific dollar amount. If your purchase happens to go over the value of the gift card, it will be declined, even if you were planning to pay the difference with another card. That makes things difficult, particularly if you want to use the average gift card towards the purchase of something grander (which is often my case, because Tom Ford Private Blends require that little extra something to make their exorbitant cost more reasonable).

For that reason, I’ve always had problems with making the most out of these general gift cards. Often I would end up giving Andy the card and asking him to buy me something in exchange because it got to be too complicated to use them. This semi-quick fix allows you to use a general gift card in addition to whatever other online payment you wish to supplement your purchase.

The first step is to go to whatever site you want to buy from. If they offer gift cards for purchase, buy one in the exact amount of your general gift card, and then use that to pay for it. If it’s going right to you, you should receive an e-mail with the new card info in it. After that, simply add to your cart and when you’re ready to purchase, enter the store’s gift card in, and whatever supplemental method of payment you want to use. Normally there is no limit to however many store gift cards you can use. It’s a neat way to combine those general credit cards when you’re shopping online.

We are definitely living in a toxic internet land. Once upon a time one could make an innocuous shirtless post about Adam Levine and have a few of his fans write something fun and nice and everyone would call it a day. Those who didn’t find Mr. Levine their cup of tea moved on without comment, because why would they even bother with something that didn’t interest them? Not so anymore. This post about Adam Levine performing at the Super Bowl, and this subsequent post about his shirtless appearance at said bowl, garnered some of the most polarizing views on any of my posts. (Let it be said that these were superficial shirtless posts – that’s sort of the point of the ‘Shirtless Male Celebrities‘ category. It’s not that deep.)

It did, however, bring up a more serious consideration in light of Mr. Levine baring both his nipples in his shirtless portion of the program.

A number of years ago, Janet Jackson was basically stoned for baring one half-second of a single nipple at the Super Bowl halftime show with Justin Timberlake. I posted the comment that it was a bit of a double standard, hashtagging the whole #FreeTheNipple movement. (Look it up – I’m not here to educate or enlighten – I’m here to entertain myself. Emphasis on myself.) Again, just my commentary on the fact that Ms. Jackson, or any female for that matter, would not be able to get away with showing their nipples during the Super Bowl. Rather than acknowledging this or engaging in a civil conversation, people immediately went into whether they loved it or hated it, whether they adored Adam or abhorred Adam, and suddenly a post on a shirtless Adam Levine was as divisive as political commentary. What the actual fuck?

Now, I’m not saying there isn’t time or space for serious discussion and contemplation here. But on a shirtless Super Bowl shot? If that riles you up so much, and if you have so much anger and annoyance that you simply must comment and piss other people off, then this really isn’t the place for you. Please, stop reading, unfollow and unfriend, block and push off, because I’m not here for that. Calm the fuck down and channel your energy into something better.

Like a mood-killer-filler blog post such as this.

People never fail to disappoint me.

Take this asshole for example.

They took up two parking spaces for no reason other than, presumably, to be a complete and utter asshole.

This was the busy parking lot of the Honest Weight Coop, close to the entrance, where every space counts, but this person felt they were important enough to merit two.

Shame.