Category Archives: General

Welcome August! A mostly fabulous month – our last full one of summer – and the one in which I entered this world forty-some decades ago. I know, no one believes I’m 40, but there you have it. This year I’ll be 41. Get your gift engines revving. That blessed event won’t take place until the 24th, so for now, a look back at the week that just passed on ALANILAGAN.com.

The self-proclaimed most-well-endowed Jonas Brother, Joe, released this shirtless photo as he aims to garner the gay following of his bro Nick.

A dark confession: I was raised a Republican. But since I learned to think for myself (and especially since the Republican party wrote hatred and gay conversion therapy into their actual platform) I am now a proud Democrat.

A pretty clematis.

A Boston beauty – 1.

A Boston beauty – 2.

A Boston beauty – 3.

Summer Memories: my baseball days… well, as close as I’ll get.

Rain roses.

Watch where you walk cause the sidewalks talk.

Pop it like it’s hot.

This may be my favorite musical, and this is a magnificent production.

Swimming out of July, in sadness and glory.

This is how you lip-sync for your life.

Traditional Hunks of the Day included the fine forms of Alexis Descalzo, Jesus Luz, Alex Bowen, Tyler Clinton and Brian Lewis.

And, from the scorching photo featured for this post, a Double Hunk of the Day: Rick Twombley & Griff King.

Happy August!!

In just a few short days, the summer Olympics will open in Rio, and the British gymnasts will be part of the show. More on them to follow, no doubt, but for now here’s a quick peek at the boys and the bodies en route to Brazil. (That other British visitor, Mr. Tom Daley, will be making his own kind of splash a little later.) Here hoping that our US Gymnastics team can hold its own.

Hot, torturous month of July.

Relentless sun, overbearing humidity.

The glory of summer – even this dark one – shines through.

Respite in a pool, or conditioned air.

My God, I will miss it.

Though the summer of ’16 has turned into a sad series of unfortunate events, it’s still summer, and it’s not over yet. Swim onward, sun-worshippers, swim on like our lives depend on it.

Pull yourselves through the water and kick your way to somewhere better, where the sun won’t go away in a few months, where there is an eternal summer, where the breeze is forever warm.

I’m trying to jumpstart my own psyche.

Summer must go on…

We’ve all done it (some of us more than others) and this clip gives me such immense joy that I wanted to share the link with you. It’s a guy named Griff doing his rendition of ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls’ while preparing dinner for his partner Rick. Amazing in so many ways (how did he not burn the vegetables – mine would be charred) THIS is how you lip-sync for your life. Below is one of their other clips, a song I know all too well – ‘Part of Your World.’

Signs of healing scratched into the sidewalk,

colored chalk ground into concrete;

this is where the ephemeral and the stalwart meet.

Signs of love screaming

Trample upon me,

Tread upon me,

Steal upon me

In the night.

Somehow we survive the morning.

Not all days are washed away by rain.

A little love remains,

faded

but it’s there.

I want to cry, and laugh, and hug, and love.

The anti-thesis of the hatred and evil that the Republican party has been spewing for the last several years, this is a truly classy woman: Michelle Obama, the First Lady of the United States of America. She is intelligence personified. She is history in the making. She is grace on earth. At the Democratic National Convention, she gave a speech that went above and beyond the confines of our political system – it rattled heaven and shook the world with its power and import.

The story that has brought me to this stage tonight. The story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, but who kept on striving and hoping and doing what needed to be done so that today, I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. And I watch my daughters, two beautiful, intelligent, black young women, playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters and all our sons and daughters now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States. ~ Michelle Obama

High summer is upon is, as is a heat dome, and I’m reminded of my hero Lee Bailey’s July mantra: water, water, water – and keep watering. Coupled with weeding, cleaning out the attic, and the rest of the house, it’s a stay-home summer of long-overdue tidying. Of course, it’s more than that, but I’ve yet to determine how best to work it all out here. For now, the usual look-back at the week that came before:

Let’s begin with a bang. The Hunks of the Day: Robert Sepúlveda Jr., Arthur Nory, Keith Milkie, & Max Whitlock.

Madonna and her Messiah.

Another lovely pair.

A light laugh.

The night I took my Mom to a gay bar.

Give it up for Roxette!

High, high hollyhocks.

Balling & bucking it.

Animal!

Summer sun(flower).

A very naked Nathan Adrian.

Our one true anniversary.

Salvation approaches…

Salvation arrives…

Salvation at hand.

For anyone else who needs a quick laugh on this Monday, here you go.

The weather, having been both stormy and hot, made for an interesting week poolside. After work, I’d get home, jump in the warm water, and let the day wash over me. Not that it was all fun and games. I also began cleaning out the attic before we slide completely into Grey Gardens territory and it’s too late to turn back (not unlike this recent battle with the side yard). On with the posts that somehow got posted too…

When it gets hot, the best thing to do is strip off all your clothing and pose for an ESPN photographer.

Tom Daley in a Speedo is always a treat.

Roses, Rufus, and restoring the faith.

Tricky color.

Thyme out.

Hot & wild.

Pablo Neruda too.

Man candy with shades of male nudity.

The Special Guest Blog returned with Colin MacArthur. (Who’s up next?)

Hunks of the Day included: Trey Hardee, David Plummer, David Lurs, Matt Grevers, Seth Rollins, Adam Gumula, and Adam Kenworthy.

Because the world has seemingly gone mad, and in all the wrong ways, let’s begin this Saturday with something bright and cheery, at least when it comes to restoring some faith in humanity. When the evils of the world threaten to bring us all down, I like to think of things like this (and realize that no matter what happens in this country, there’s always Canada).

The pale blooming of thyme demands an almost-microscopic view to be appreciated. Summer is sometimes like that, and when I’m outside away from the noise and the constant bombardment of social media and entertainment, my mind is able to calm itself, returning to the way everything was when I was a little kid. The scope of my view shifts then, and I shrink down and begin to notice all the tiny things that escape me in the usual hustle and bustle of this mad world.

Water lapped at my ears.

A breeze arrived, late after a very hot day.

I looked up, allowed my pupils to dilate, and my eyes to open to the dim early night.

A bank of puffy clouds rose like mountains to my left, their cottony mass illuminated in other-worldly light.

Seeking the source of such brilliance, my eyes traveled to the right, and there, hidden behind a towering pine tree, was a half-moon, glowing the palest shade of lemon.

It turned another group of clouds a soft wintergreen color, a gloriously strange cross between lime and mint green, something that could never be duplicated, that must be enjoyed and looked upon at this one and only moment.

This was a summer night, filled with half a moon, and haunted by a fluttering bat.

Tricky color, yellow.

Doesn’t work on everyone.

In the 50’s and 60’s we all painted our kitchens in the shade of sunshine, certain it would lift our morning spirits.

Turns out that yellow, at least according to some inane psychological studies, actually irritates people more than making them happy.

Oopsie daisy.

Me, I have come around to it, especially in these, the sunny summer months.

And I’m not sure I buy the whole color-determines-mood bit either.

In this outfit, I felt happy as hell.

Mid-July approaches – the height of summer and all its glory – and I’m going to indulge in the season, hence this lazy-ass Monday morning recap. (Though that’s every Monday I guess.) Here we go…

The Olympic Hunk brigade continued its stride toward Rio with Connor Jaeger and Matthew Josa.

This used to be my playground.

A pair of Hunks who brought the wood: Bryant Wood and Jordan Woods.

Adam Lambert got all shirtless & sexy.

Poetry & partial nudity.

A swimmer and a batter: Nathan Adrian and Jake Arietta.

Heaven in the pool.

A hollow bit of heaven.

One last stand…

Maybe it was the fall of Day, or the ghostly-hollow aspect of the building, but the sight of this empty shell of a church was both disturbing and beautiful. I’m accustomed to seeing backless facades, but not the side-view too, which made it feel somehow even emptier. At the descent of dusk, it cast an eerie pallor to its surroundings.

Seeing the sky through the stone is a thrill. Places can haunt just as much as people. If you’ve ever gone back to your childhood home after it’s been changed and rearranged, you know the feeling. It’s unsettling and potentially upsetting. Not unlike an abandoned place of worship at night.