I love seeing the world come together like this, and with our own country temporarily rudderless, we look to the cute reps for Canada and England to lead us into hunkdom, and a happier day. Justin Trudeau and Prince Harry make a very fetching couple of blokes. I’m assuming that Mr. Trudeau will be granted an invitation to Harry’s upcoming nuptials. (Still awaiting my invite… ahem.)
To the best of my memory skills (which deteriorate by the minute) the first time we met was at my Venetian Vanity Ball – the holiday party we were throwing that year. I’d only heard about him from his then-girlfriend Sherri, but I trusted her judgment implicitly and figured he was a good guy. (Good people bring other good people into our lives.) Most of our co-workers who knew him said the same thing.
I greeted many friends that night, old and new, but only Skip’s introduction sticks out in my memory, which is slightly strange because it was so long ago – 2005 to be exact. At the time I had dark red hair (to match a dark-red Venetian-inspired ensemble) and Skip had, well, more hair (which he mostly kept hidden under a dapper cap). I sensed he had done his best to dress for the occasion, and anyone who makes such an effort gets my respect. We spoke a bit, but like so many other things I can’t recall anything earth-shattering or specific. It would take a while before we became friends, which is usually how the best friendships come to be.
Over a dozen years have passed since that first meeting, and in the way that destiny often designs it our friendship grew organically. He completely set up and designed this website as it now stands, bringing his web-building expertise to my utter lack of HTML knowledge, and after a few power meetings at our respective houses, one of us suggested we check out a movie at some point. The rest is happy history. By now, I’ve probably gone on more movie man-dates with Skip than with my own husband, and while it began with a shared love of cinema, it’s turned into something more.
I’ve never had many straight-guy friends, and at that point in my life I didn’t have the energy or desire to make new ones, but once in a while someone comes along who is supposed to be part of your journey, and if they seem to value you in return, so much the better. Soon our movies included a pre-game cocktail (and my introduction to the World of Beer) over which we’d discuss what had been happening in our lives since the last night out.
Far more than flattery or awe or simple admiration, Skip offered something that I don’t often feel I get from many people, friends and family included: a complete lack of judgment and an apparent enjoyment of my company. You cannot know the relief and exultant joy it is to be around that when the entire world seems hellbent on judging and appraising your every single move, to say nothing of how badly we judge and appraise ourselves. He also liked to talk, which is a nice break when you spend most days explaining things twenty thousand times to the same few people. Skip offered wisdom and a philosophical slant on life as it should be, and he showed me new ways of looking at things that I never would have considered otherwise. We were a good sounding board for each other, and on those movie nights we could escape from our daily lives and be, for a few hours at least, completely free of baggage, of worrying about whether what we say might be misconstrued. I could even wear sweatpants and he wouldn’t even notice.
Since that holiday party evening when we met almost thirteen years ago, we’ve expanded our hang-out time to include an annual outing to see the Boston Red Sox (check out last year’s side-spitting event here and here) and there are persistent, dogged and wildly-unfounded rumors of a possible podcast for some vaguely uncertain future date. In all our time together, there are a few things that have never changed, and I hope they never do: I’ll always ask if there is a new decaf soda at the concessions stand, Skip will always offer to play his memorization game with any game bartender, and we will always recount the tale of Thor to anyone who will listen.
There’s not much we can count on in these dark days, but the safety and comfort of true friendship continues to give me hope.
Happy birthday Skip – and many happy returns of the day!
We mourn the loss of an hour this past weekend, but we are picking up the pieces and moving on with some extra light later in the day. The ‘one to grow on’ portion of this post refers to a bonus post coming tomorrow – so be sure to come back for that, especially if your name is Skip and you’re turning 40. Onto the last week…
Capitalizing on all things Stormy of late, this is a counter-programming post of psychedelic summer shenanigans, the likes of which would likely not be allowed on FaceBook or Instagram or Twitter, given those social media platforms’ insistence on prudish behavior. But you know you can always find the scandalous and salacious right here, where we drop trou and shake our noses and butts at the proverbial staid and stalwart. A quick search through the categories here will give you instance access to all sort of shameless tomfoolery:
An absolutely mesmerizing video of a snowy owl riding out the winter on the rolling ice seems a fitting way to pass this evening. If I had a coat of feathers like that, I’d perch myself in a similar place of peace and meditation.
In the heart of the maelstrom that is our latest winter storm, the snow blows and throws everything into a frenetic, chaotic haze. Lost among the swirling snowflakes and billions of ice crystals is the hope of spring. I know it’s there, it’s just out of sight, hidden among the harshness of winter. Beneath the snow, the garden is still asleep. Like a kid on Christmas morning, I want to rush in and wake it up, drag it in its sleepy, rumpled state to the edge of snow, and make it wave the magic wand of warmth to force the winter away for another year.
Instead, winter still holds the upper hand. My eyes sting with the cold impact of suicidal snowflakes. Kill or be killed, and so I trudge on, struggling to gain an advantage, to find my focus again.
We must create our own oasis in the midst of this desert of winter.
The post-Oscar glow is still in effect as we look back on the last week. In many ways it was a tumultuous time, thanks to wildly-dramatic weather and equally-dramatic movie moments.
If I have the energy and the desire, I’ll be updating this with my own special brand of obnoxious Oscar commentary. As much as I want ‘Call Me By Your Name’ to win everything it’s up for, I know that’s not going to happen. But I’ll watch to see if Jennifer really does show up with Brad, and all the rest of it. Keep coming back here to see how much I feel like adding. (Or watch in more instantaneous time on my Twitter or FaceBook feeds.)
Jane Fonda is forever immaculate – elegant, classy and resplendent in white.
Echoing that white theme is Laura Dern, in a very good way.
Rita Moreno (EGOT winner) is wearing the same gown she wore when she won her Oscar in 1962. Proof that true style never goes out of date. (It was made from a Japanese obi.)
Mary J. Blige rounds out a triumvirate of white gown eleganza.
Tiffany Haddish is wearing something I would wear to the Oscars.
Allison Janney has the kind of sleeves I want to wear to work.
Betty Gabriel makes her own colorful choice in a gorgeous shade of green.
I adore Whoopi Goldberg, so the less said about that dress the better.
My favorite thus far: Salma Hayek in Gucci, though I’m guessing this will be polarizing.
Eliza Gonzalez is our fashion canary. How’s the coal mine?
Turns out that white wasn’t just for the ladies, as Timothee Chalamet donned an all-white tuxedo ensemble, and almost pulled it off.
I see Jennifer Lawrence stopped at Deb for her Oscar dress.
While I don’t feel ‘Get Out’ is worthy of the Best Picture Oscar (I liked it, but it didn’t move my soul), I do think Daniel Kaluuya should get some major credit for daring to break with black tux tradition.
Nicole Kidman is how high school girls mistakenly envision their prom dress will look.
Viola Davis just made Jennifer Lawrence’s dress look like gold.
Maybe if they stopped talking about how long the show runs over, it wouldn’t. Same for these montages that span literally 90 years. It’s enough that the number is in the hashtag. We get it.
Let’s see: the first of three mini-films by Walmart or a piss-pot stop? [Cue the pee.]
Lupita Nyong’o always manages to thrill with her sartorial selections, but on the Red Carpet I wasn’t sure about this one. Under the lights of the stage, however, it glittered and shone in all the right ways.
Sneakers. At the Oscars. So cool, man. Cooler than sunglasses at night.
I’m bored already.
But Sufjan Stevens rescued the lull with the ‘Mystery of Love’ and a delicious jacket.
Ok, focus. No matter how well-tailored his jacket is, Tom Holland is lost in its double-breasted style.
I hate an Oscar gimmick. Getting some stars to surprise an unsuspecting movie audience? If I were in that audience in my sweatpants, then broadcast to the entire world, I’d be pissed.
A sentence I never thought I’d have to write tonight: I wish someone would move the hot dog so I could get a better gander at Emily Blunt’s dress.
Wait, the man bun is still a thing? Can it not be?
Even with tinsel on, Margot Robbie is gorgeous.
Just when I think I’m over Sandra Bullock she adds an extra layer of charm and I’m helpless.
Very seldom does a movie based on a book live up to its source material, but ‘Call me By Your Name’ is an instant cinematic masterpiece. Maybe it’s because enough time has passed since I first read the book by Andre Aciman that this feels equally fresh and wondrous, or maybe its treatment at the hands of director Luca Guadagnino, and leads Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer, makes it its own work of art – whatever the case, ‘Call Me By Your Name’ is brilliant, and moved me more than any other movie has in recent and long-past history.
An idyllic summer in some vague Northern Italian town finds an American, Oliver (Hammer) visiting for several weeks. The son of the family with whom he is staying, Elio (Chalamet), is at first put off by the arrogance and ease with which Oliver quickly assimilates, but soon a friendship blossoms. It leads to other, trickier things, but it takes a while to get there. At first some people may find that it drags, but Guadagnino is merely setting up for a richly rewarding final third.
Set in the 1980’s, that decade is slightly removed from the timeless story, but does manage to creep in with a few pop songs, those iconic striped short-shorts, and the cumbersome walkmans. (Not to mention the widely-celebrated dancing scene in which Mr. Hammer comes into his endearing own.) The sun-soaked summer, with all its lazy pleasures, opportunities for fresh fruit, and revitalizing splashes in pools and ponds, forms the gorgeous backdrop to the proceedings.
As Oliver, Hammer brilliantly capitalizes on the arrogant, familiar, and all-too-cocky American role, but at moments he lets the golden-boy mask drop, and the devastation in his eyes, and the slightly wrinkled brow when he studies Elio as he sleeps, are gut-wrenching. For his part, Chalamet offers a revelatory, career-shaping performance. His Elio is all teenage awkwardness, preternatural wisdom, and hopeless, diehard romanticism even when he doesn’t know it.
While the movie is a glorious work of art on its own, on a personal level it moved me just a little bit more. Never in my life has a movie touched upon so many memories, so many key moments in the youth that formed me, yet the ache and longing of and adolescent’s coming-of-age-and-angst is a universal touchstone. By the end of the film we are left asking the eternally-terrifying question: what do we really mean to each other? In certain summers, when all is tender and raw and beautiful, the answer is… everything.
When the movie was over, Suzie and I went our separate ways – her car was in the downstairs lot and mine was on the upper level of the mall. It was around midnight. Snow was falling – impossibly-large and fluffy flakes, noiselessly drifting through the dark night. I sat in the car and wept for what I had just seen.
All those times I thought I was in love with someone, when the idea of them filled and informed every single thing I did, came rushing back. Four decades of loving and wishing and hoping and crying, hurting and lamenting and laughing and smiling – all the moments I gave in to the pain and the joy and the despondency – I cried for the ways we choose to embrace the miraculous ecstasy and exquisite sorrow, and for all of us who took the tougher path because we knew somehow it would be better. I never shied away from the pain because I knew there would be no escaping it; the only way out was through. And there were times and days, from the moment I woke to the moment I fell asleep, that someone else occupied my existence, robbed me of who I was, and chipped away at my soul, but somehow I trusted it would be better that way.
In the end, I cried out of gratitude and gladness, because love is never wrong, and I would never regret giving it. No matter how it ended, no matter what would become of me, I knew what it was to love, and I wouldn’t erase the heartache or the hurt for all the blissful ignorance in the world.
“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything – what a waste!” ~ Andre Aciman
While the unnecessary appearance of Ivanka Trump marred the last leg of the Winter Olympics (what is her official role again? Why doesn’t she have security clearance yet? What kind of nepotistic fuckery are we allowing to go on in the most elevated office of our nation?) I still kind of miss it. Without the bright windswept snow of the mountains and the ice, the excitement and drama of the competition, and the nightly suspense over what Johnny Weir and Tara Lapinski would wear next – there’s a bit of a hole left in our winter entertainment.
It’s been fifteen years since this website first went live. Hard to believe I’ve been doing it for a decade and a half. Harder to believe that some of you have been visiting for just as long. What a long, strange trip it’s been! How many outfits, mood swings, stories, tours, photos, links, and social media feeds have we been through since 2003? Too many to name or count. (Remember MySpace? Thankfully I barely do, though some of these now-vintage photos may still be up there. The internet is forever.)
Most personal blogs don’t last as long as this old chestnut. In terms of a blog’s average lifespan, ALANILAGAN.com is a dinosaur. (Some of us prefer to think of it as a thoroughbred. But that suggests better breeding over longevity, and I can’t claim that. Sometimes it’s enough just to outlast the others.) In times of perhaps-excessive hubris, I like to think of this website as a long-running Broadway show: people come and go, some visit and love it, some visit and hate it, and some completely forget about it until some link reminds them that I’m still here and still posting all these years later. Whenever I think of those shows that I first saw years ago that are still running, I remind myself that those performers are up there on stage every night, doing what they do, while the rest of our lives go on. To that end, I will take some credit for keeping things going.
For the better part of a decade, I posted every single day (with the exception of 9/11). That arduous schedule was happily altered for the first time last summer, when I took a couple of months off for a summer sabbatical. I wasn’t quite ready to end the site completely, but I definitely needed a break. It was wonderful! I liked it almost too much, which begged my friend Skip to ask why I didn’t modify things to my own liking. It’s not like I was making any money off this, despite a decent amount of traffic. The small, non-quantifiable benefits of having a blog (an uncensored outlet for whatever I wanted to say) had long been available to anyone in the forms of FaceBook, then Twitter, then Instagram – and now there are too many social media platforms to mention here in whatever form one prefers. The tiny amount of cachet that having a popular blog occasionally affords has long been eclipsed by whatever small amount of influence I have on Twitter or FaceBook.
The riches of having such a creative outlet, however, proved greater than any monetary value anyone could give to this site (though I’m open to those numbers too if you’re interested…) It is largely enough to be able to write and have a few people read what I’ve written – that’s all I ever wanted from the very beginning. The act of writing and taking photos, of creating and conjuring flights of fancy or social commentary – it was and remains a process of love. Sometimes, it was survival. Always, it was my grounding space. No matter how much I fucked up in other areas of my life, this little URL was a sacred place to which I could return, safely and confidently, to be myself in ways I couldn’t anywhere else.
As years passed, and I found the genuine confidence and wisdom to make my real-life path a little easier, I had less of a daily need for such stability, but I always knew that it would be.
Just as importantly, I knew that you would be here.
Yes, you.
Whether you are one or a million, if you’re reading this I am speaking to you.
Without you, this website exists, but it doesn’t matter.
Without you, I will post, but it will mean less.
A website is nothing without its visitors. It becomes a hollow shell of record, an empty archive of faded memories, a stale catacomb of lives that have gone somewhere else. We both need to be here for it to work. To that end, I’m thankful for you.
Fifteen years is a long time for anything. I’ve had this website for longer than I’ve had my job. Longer than I’ve been married. Longer than I’ve had a niece and nephew. Longer than FaceBook and Twitter have been around. Longer than the iPhone’s been in existence. I’ve had it through a goatee and gray hair, a 30-inch waist, a 31-inch waist, and a 32-inch waist (and counting…) I’ve had it through the deaths and births of countless loved ones, though fifteen winters and fifteen springs, fifteen summers and fifteen falls. The head spins when I think of all the crazy costumes and outfits I’ve donned here.
Through it all, a few things have been consistently celebrated and nurtured in these parts. The most popular feature of this site is the Hunk of the Day feature. Oddly enough, this was a more or less recent addition (probably after 2011 or so). Who knew everybody was so thirsty?
A major Madonna Timeline is on the horizon, so get ready for that glorious return too. Another regular inspiration around here is Tom Ford; in fragrance and style, there is no better. David Beckham and Ben Cohen have been relatively quiet of late, or maybe I just haven’t been paying attention. Tom Daley and Nick Jonas and Zac Efron may have stolen a bit of their thunder, but Hunkdom is ever-evolving, and we are always open to new forms of beauty.
Somehow, the evolution of a human being has seeped into these web pages, intended or not. Sometimes the most revealing posts happened almost by accident, while others were intentionally confessional in the hopes that someone else might be touched or moved by it, or better yet see something of resonance in their own life. If you have visited and enjoyed one of my stories, or a photograph, or some song I posted, I thank you. No one exists in a vacuum, and though I spent years fighting it, I do need other people. I should be too lonely if no one said hello.
As for the future fate of ALANILAGAN.com, I don’t intend to go away anytime soon. There will be another summer break this year because it was so awesome, but there are a few more projects I’d like to post as well, and I have quite a bit more to say before I pack it in for good. And even then, the words will live on. The photographs will circulate. The internet will live forever, and everything we’ve put here has the potential to last. For now, it’s happening in real time, and I invite you to join in the fun as it happens.
I tend to jump the gun in my mind when it comes to March, foolishly assuming that since this is the month that spring begins again all will be sunny and warm and lovely. The truth is that march is often the harshest of the months, coming with its wintry mixes when our last winter-weary nerve is frayed beyond all recognition. This year we will hunker down in the basement by the fire until the month passes.
But let’s take a look back at the other firsts that this month has provided in the past. It’s a nice way to ease back into the blogging swing of things as we enter the official month in which spring returns. That lends a happy sort of feeling to the proceedings, regardless of any impending snow.
In the past, I may have been too invested in some of my creative endeavors, living out each theme in was that weren’t always healthy or helpful. Hell, my first two projects were ‘Sex’ and ‘Depression’ and God knows I’ve delved deeply into those wells. But that was all long ago, 1993 to be exact, and in the ensuing years I’ve learned a more sensible way of creatively fulfilling my passions without necessarily thrashing my emotional state in the process. It’s the choice many artists have to make at some point, and while I can’t speak for anyone else, I find a bit of separation from the work is the best way for me to exist.
I’m at my happiest when I’m working on a new project, whether that’s in writing or photography or the simple design of a garden. When my interest veers into darker territory (as this new one does), there’s the potential for emotional spillover if I’m not being careful, or if I were unable to disconnect the work from my own state of mind. That has been a key to a happier existence, and a creative fulfillment that comes from the various outlets I’ve culled over the years. It also helps that I have an understanding and patient husband like Andy, who keeps the home, and our lives, in fine form while I undertake any creative endeavors. That’s the real secret of how I’ve been able to integrate the wild fire of artistic passion into a life that doesn’t involve jailtime.
This new project is in its infancy, so the earliest it’s going to come out will be fall 2018 or winter 2019. Until such time, I offer a look back at some of my more recent works. See if you can tell which fun ones drove me (and possibly others) to the brink of insanity before I figured out how to do it right.
Unlike the summer, when the rabbits would brazenly munch on our garden in the light of day, winter seems to make them more naturally nocturnal. We do not catch them during the day, but we find their tracks and their droppings. Maybe they hide in the day because the backdrop of snow makes them too easy to be spied by hawks or owls. The pool may be covered, but danger still lurks in the backyard, especially if you’re little and furry.
