As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I have two photos of a shirtless Alec Baldwin hanging in my kitchen. In addition to my parents’ Mostly Mozart Festival poster that hung in my childhood living room and now hangs in my adult living room, these two pictures are my favorite decorations in my apartment.
What the hell are they doing there?
Alec 1
My first Alec Baldwin – the black and white one – was a present from my friend Jon. He’s my oldest friend. We met in kindergarten and later became best friends while in Mr. Stevens’s fifth grade class at French Road Elementary. We have between us almost thirty years of shared humor, simmering in a stew of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Ren and Stimpy, The State, private jokes, and a smorgasbord of stand up comedy bits. One of our favorite movies is Real Genius, in which Val Kilmer wears a t-shirt that says, “I <HEART> Toxic Waste.” We both loved this t-shirt and since this site had yet to produce a replica (such great stuff at Found Item Clothing, check it out), we went to make our own custom shirts at a local t-shirt store.
Our friend Josh – who completed the best friend triumvirate in sixth grade – saw our t-shirts and asked how we got them made and why. “You can get a t-shirt with anything you want on it,” Jon said, “I mean, if you wanted, you could get a t-shirt that just said ‘Josh.'” I’m not doing justice to the delivery but it cracked us up. We thought it so funny in fact that we got him that “Josh” t-shirt for his next birthday, complete with a heart for the O. He came back from his freshman year of college telling us that he wore it to parties and girls would touch his chest. So, we immediately went to the store to buy ourselves Jon and Rob shirts. As you can see to the left, I still have mine.
This is our sensibility, humorous yet stupid. I believe it is in this spirit that he bought me Alec 1.
I think I remember where he got it from. He might have even shown me the link. It was offered for sale on some website as a joke. Then for some holiday – Christmas? My birthday maybe? – Jon said to himself, you know what Rob needs? A black and white picture of a shirtless Alec Baldwin with entirely too much chest hair. And much like Steve Jobs bestowing upon the public products that we didn’t even know we needed, I received this gift and I thought, “You know what I’ve been needing? A black and white picture of a shirtless Alec Baldwin with entirely too much chest hair.” I went to IKEA to get a frame for it because I’m not a philistine. When I arrived in my new apartment, the first one I had ever had to myself, I put Alec up in my kitchen.
Alec 2
My ex-girlfriend had a great friend group. They were a friendly, talented, smart group of people. (I don’t want to say where they all went to college but it rhymes with Harvard.) Among these friends was a married couple, David and Andrew. They hosted dinner parties and an annual pre-Christmas Christmas sleepover in December complete with presents the next morning. David was a creative guy. His paintings and creature creations (check it all out here – he doesn’t know I’m linking to his site, hopefully he’s cool with that) are all great and delightfully creepy. He’s the kind of guy who’s smart and talented but also so nice that it’s hard to be suitably jealous. He’s also the kind of guy who will come to your apartment for a housewarming, notice the framed shirtless Alec Baldwin picture in your kitchen, like it, take note of it, then scour the internet to find you another one to surprise you with at the annual pre-Christmas Christmas sleepover, which he literally did. And so it came to pass that Alec 2 entered my life. I went to IKEA to buy another matching frame because I have an incredible design sense.
There’s one more thing that I want to say about my Alec Baldwins that you might not believe but I swear is true. The homoeroticism of having two framed pictures of Alec Baldwin hung on my wall did not even occur to me. And, yeah, he’s shirtless, and yeah, he’s giving me a winning prom king smile in one and a sultry bedroom stare in the other but those are just my Alecs. It took a couple of guests saying, “Uh, hey Rob? What’s up with the Alec Baldwins?”
What’s up with the Alecs is that they’re awesome, that’s all you need to know.
