Category Archives: General

Stop what is going through your head right now. Do not do the math. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Somehow, it was my 20th High School reunion last weekend, and though I couldn’t make the actual sit-down dinner on Saturday, we did manage to make it to the Friday night cocktail hour meet-and-greet at the Recovery Room in Amsterdam, NY. (And let’s face it, I’m more of the cocktail hour guy than the buffet dude.)

Two of my best friends from high school – who remain so to this day – stopped by my parents’ home, where we said hello and did some pre-gaming. Ann and Suzie joined Andy and I, along with my parents, my brother, and the twins for some reminiscing before we made our way to the Recovery Room.

Once there, I saw faces familiar and forgotten. FaceBook has made it slightly less surreal to see old schoolmates from two decades ago, but it’s still strange. In so many ways, I thought I would always feel like the kid I was in high school, and at our tenth reunion I felt that way a bit, but no more. The last ten years, which were in large part much more stable than the ten years before that, have changed me in ways that resonate more deeply when compared with my high school self. In the past, I cared a lot more what others thought (even if it wasn’t much, it was still more). This time around I simply enjoyed the moment, listening to what people were doing in their lives, laughing at what we had once done in the past, and discussing where we still wanted to go.

Of course with a support system like Ann and Suzie, it’s impossible not to have a good time. And for the next milestone number that rolls around we may just ditch the formal festivities and do our own reunion small and sweet. That’s all it’s really about anyway.

As for my classmates, most of them have only improved with age (or the ones that didn’t never made it to the meet and greet). Until the 25th, go Rams!

On the rise… and about to wreak havoc…

Tale to be told…

The stats of www.ALANILAGAN.com are not something with which I concern myself all that much. As you can see, I don’t sell advertising, I don’t make a living off this site, and if I wanted to I could shut this whole thing down tomorrow and be all right with it. When I began this endeavor over ten years ago (personal websites age more quickly than dogs, or even gay men) I did it for myself – as a repository of some written work and photographs (and Projects). To this day, that’s still what it encompasses.

When I got back from vacation, however, I glanced through the stats, and noticed that this site has enjoyed a banner month. Unlike most mainstream places, this corner of the web gets pretty much steady traffic regardless of season or day of the week (partly because there is a post – and usually three – every single day). In fact, on weekends and holidays, my traffic tends to increase. (This site is ridiculously banned from many work places, so I don’t enjoy the bump of workday boredom.) But it’s not something to which I’ve ever catered, with the possible exception of a naked hunk here or there. I hadn’t noticed how close we were to reaching a milestone until Sunday, when this little website reached ten million hits for the month of July. It’s far from a big number, but for a personal site it’s not that shabby.

For that, I have no one to thank but you – yes, you – the person reading this right now. Odds are we have not yet had the pleasure of meeting (I’ve only had the fortune to meet a few people from the online world), but please know that the simple fact of you visiting here means more than most of my closest friends sometimes mean (honestly, I could give you a long list of people I love dearly who won’t read a single word of this because they never come here). So for you, the ones reading this now, I offer my heartfelt thanks.

And though I don’t much like to look back, here’s a little retrospective of some of my favorite topics from the past – in honor of ten years of doing this, and a month of ten million hits. You’ll see the main themes of this site – and perhaps divine some new themes to come.

There’s nothing I love better than a properly crafted cocktail.

Unless it’s a properly cut pair of underwear.

Or my ass, which has fueled more hits than… oh, forget it. It’s written itself.

But it really comes down to family and friends, and there’s no denying that both have informed and inspired this site in ways that deepen and explore where I come from, and where I’d like to go. There’s no denying or separating them from me – and I wouldn’t have it any other way. (This includes my elusive husband Andy, who has only recently been more forthcoming about appearing in pictures, much to everyone’s delight.)

The role of beauty in the world is often underestimated. I see it in our gardens, and in the blooming of a flower. I hear it in a song, or listen to it in a musical, or taste it in the simple serving of a meal. It’s there in the fragrance someone wears, or the clothing on their back. Beauty is always around, if you know how to look for it.

Of course, special mention must be made of my main creative muse – still going strong after thirty years (would that this site lasts as long) – who is, and always will be, Madonna. From her epic songs to her lesser-known ones, long may she reign.

A multitude of thanks must also be extended to the naked men who keep this site going when I’m galavanting on vacation or in Boston or simply too lazy to come up with anything beyond shirtless guy candy, so here’s to The Hunks. (Especially those who dare to don a Speedo.)

Finally, if it weren’t for all the places I get to visit (Ogunquit, Boston, Cape Cod, Las Vegas, London, San Francisco, Washington), I wouldn’t have a chance to enjoy coming back here at the end of it all.

Here’s to us… and most especially, here’s to you. Let’s make the rest of the journey together.

Being that it was the last full week of July, and I’m begrudgingly letting it go (although the 97 degree nonsense can be done), here is the recap for the previous week – one in which I was vacationing and relying on pre-programmed posts. Still, there were good things to be found for those who bothered to look. And now I’m back, resuming the battle, taking up the baton, and twirling like there’s no tomorrow.

Many thanks to Tom Ford, who prepared things brilliantly for my birthday next month.

Yet for all of last week, I was in absentia, and happier than hell about it. I have never, in my dozen-years-plus of working for the state of New York, taken a whole week off. And I can’t believe I waited so long.

Just in case you needed further incentive to follow me on Instagram, here’s a spattering of photos that are from that account. So much of the good stuff these days is fleeting and quick, gone in an instant like some ephemeral bit of Tom Ford on a breeze. My Instagram account is a lot like that, made up of little pieces of wreckage, the flotsam and jetsam that float through my daily life, but if you wait long enough there’s occasionally a gem that is just waiting to be excavated.

The juniper berry.

In the immortal words of the Countess, “Get me a bromide! And put some gin in it!”

I haven’t taken a week-long vacation since 1997. Literally. I’m one of those who would rather take two or three longer weekend jaunts in the place of one week away. It’s more interesting that way, and I never get sick of where I am. This year, however, the fates have conspired to have a friend’s wedding in Maine, and our own anniversary a few days later, coincide for one full week of vacation in the state that is ‘The Way Life Should Be’. We’ll begin in Portland today, and finish up in Ogunquit next week.

That means my co-workers, and the great city of Albany, will have a full week’s reprieve from the anal-retentive prissiness and fun that I bring to every party. Unfortunately for Maine, it comes with me.

In the words of Virginia Woolf:

“It was his fate, his peculiarity, whether he wished it or not, to come out thus on a spit of land which the sea is slowly eating away, and there to stand, like a desolate sea-bird, alone. It was his power, his gift, suddenly to shed all superfluities, to shrink and diminish so that he looked barer and felt sparer, even physically, yet lost none of his intensity of mind, and so to stand on his little ledge facing the dark of human ignorance, how we know nothing and the sea eats away the ground we stand on – that was his fate, his gift.”

“Did Nature supplement what man advanced? Did she complete what he began? With equal complacence she saw his misery, his meanness, and his torture. That dream, of sharing, completing, of finding in solitude on the beach an answer, was then but a reflection in a mirror, and the mirror itself was but the surface glassiness which forms in quiescence when the nobler powers sleep beneath? Impatient, despairing yet loth to go (for beauty offers her lures, has her consolations), to pace the beach was impossible; contemplation was unendurable; the mirror was broken.”

The days look to remain in the 90’s, the pool looks to remain inviting, and the only thing that doesn’t look to remain is men when I head out on vacation at the end of the week. For now, I’m here, trudging through the heat and humidity like much of the country, and sometimes the only escape is to look back. To that end, the week in review:

There was gratuitous male skin aplenty, as there tends to be when the temps hit such heights, starting off with Mr. Summer Fun himself, Andy Cohen. Pushing that male nudity envelope even further was the ESPN Body Issue, always such a gift, as it featured a naked Matt Harvey and an equally naked Giancarlo Stanton.

It wasn’t all sports guys who took it off though, Broadway triple-threat Nick Adams got his second Hunk nod, while openly-gay singer/songwriter Tom Goss lost most of his clothing too. Of course, such exposure is par for the course in the day of a male model, as proven by naked male Garrett Neff.

(We also featured John Travolta, on the non-Hunk side of things.)

When I was a kid, I had the whole world in my hands.

It was a week of pricks, weed, and an ongoing project.

A pair of cocktails – one tried-and-true and one brand-new – were presented in the forms of the Bloody Mary and the Rainier Cherry Muddler.

When there are cocktails, there is usually food, and this week I offer two recipes: a traditional Pasta Puttanesca (which I tried for the very first time) and this raspberry summer salad.

Finally, it was the 4th of July, one spent with an adorable family.