(Warning: Older links may no longer be active!)
 
 

May 22, 2005

Sorry to be so slow in posting to the blog, but I've been very busy with glamorous showbiz activities, such as scoping out a couple of new venues for my show, working on a new demo to submit to the upcoming Dallas Comedy Festival, and most of all, doing spring cleaning.  Since we take in all the homeless and handicapped parrots, we've been working all week long dismantling, cleaning and rearranging over a dozen heavy cages. several of which had to be dragged either up or down the stairs.  It's almost more glamor than one person can stand.

Of course, one thing we all learned from June Cleaver is that it's important always to look your loveliest even when scrubbing out bird cages, so here's a beauty product I'd like to share with you.  It's called Japanese Traditional Beauty Secret, and it's now available in the US through the Internet.  Kubuki actors have reportedly used it for centuries to remove makeup and cleanse and lighten the skin.  It's a face cream made from nightingale droppings, treated with ultraviolet light to kill bacteria (I assume that last part is a recent innovation, much welcome by modern Kabuki actors.)

I often get complements on my complexion, and I assumed it was due to the Perricone diet, good genes and staying out of the sun.  But now, I suspect it might just be thanks to my constant proximity to bird poop.

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"Lean Girls" Dept:  For the past few weeks, the covers of all the celebrity magazines have been featuring Nicole Richie and Lindsay Lohan under such headlines as "Scary Skinny."  This sudden concern over anorexic actresses would be a bit more convincing if they weren't the same magazines that blast actresses for being unsightly blimps if they gain 10 pounds instead of losing 10 pounds.  Still, there's no denying that both these young women, who used to have cute, sexy, round figures, are now nothing more than a designer rag, a bone and a hank of hair.  Nicole could now play seesaw with Paris Hilton, and when I saw Lindsay host "Saturday Night Live," it actually made me fear for her health.

Almost as scary as her newly-Skeletor-like physique is Lindsay's reaction to the concerns about it.  Discussing the pressure in Hollywood to be thin, she told "Access Hollywood," "Especially when you lose a lot of weight and then people are telling you, 'You look great!'  You are like, 'So ... did I look fat before?'"

Yes, Lindsay.  You were a big, fat manatee.  That's why all the young (and old) guys were drooling over you, and why they kept giving you magazine covers and movie contracts.  They're all chubby chasers.

But it gets worse: Lindsay told Teen Vogue that she's merely dropped her "baby fat," she feels good about her new figure because "you can fit into more things" (like a clarinet case), and -- brace yourself -- "Compared to a lot of actresses my age, I'm actually overweight.  There are so many really, really thin girls out there."

That's right: under the standard set by Hollywood, the newly-transparent Lindsay Lohan is still overweight.  That means she stepped on a scale, and the needle moved!  And it was, like, so embarrassing when she went out clubbing with the Olsen Twins, and she was the only one who cast a shadow!

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On a happier note, a Harris survey by Novo Nordisk pharmaceuticals found that sex helps keep older people happy.  They polled Americans aged 45 to 65 (45-year-olds are considered to be "older people"?!  And they can still have sex?!  Will wonders never cease!)  It found that 66 percent of men and 57 percent of women consider sex to be an important part of their lives.  96 percent of the women who have sex once or more times per week say they are happy in their relationships.

And so do the men.  Of course, a lot of them are having the sex with their secretaries.

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Once again proving how out of touch Hollywood is with the taste of its customers, the women's magazine Eve polled readers to find the celebrity with the perfect female body, and they chose the voluptuous Catherine Zeta-Jones over all the young hardbodies and stick insects.

An Eve spokeswoman said, "The survey shows that women prefer stars who combine great beauty with independence and a strength of character, and it also demonstrates that women can retain their looks and sexiness when they become mums."

All they need is a nanny, a hair and makeup staff, a personal stylist and a $2,000-an-hour trainer.  But then, Catherine has to keep looking hot, or else Michael Douglas might dump her for a younger woman.

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Giving new meaning to the term "hot flashes," a group of attractive, retired United Airlines flight attendants have posed for one of those discretely nude calendars.  In a record default, United Airlines is handing its pension plans over to a government insurance program that can't guarantee $9.8 billion in obligations, so the women need an alternate source of retirement income.  They call themselves "The Stews," and they are selling a 2006 calendar showing them posing on various planes wearing nothing but strategically-placed items like a feather boa.  The calender is for sale at www.stewsstripped.com and is called "Stewardesses Stripped (Of Their Pension?)"  So go over there, buy a calendar and see them move their tails for you.

Personally, I hope they raise $9.8 billion off of this, but it might not be easy, since all the men their age will probably be buying the calendar by the flight attendants of Hooters Airlines.

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Finally, from our "It's Different For Men" Department comes word that Tony Curtis has decided to prove that he can still be a sex symbol by posing nude for Vanity Fair magazine to mark his 80th birthday.  But Curtis isn't completely exposed: he discretely covered his privates with his pet Yorkshire terriers named after the "Some Like It Hot" characters, Daphne and Josephine (they're probably both really boy dogs.)

By comparison, Jamie Lee Curtis recently decided that she's too old even to appear in movies anymore with her clothes on -- and she's his daughter!

Maybe she just needs to follow Lindsay Lohan's advice and lose half her body weight, so she can feel good about herself again.
 
 
 

May 17, 2005

Sorry to be so long between postings, but it's been a very busy week.  I promise lots more news, both from the media and about my show, will be coming as soon as I have a spare minute, so please check back soon.

In the meantime, here's a story on one of my favorite subjects: the claims made by manufacturers of cosmetics and anti-aging products and whether there's any truth to them.   If that intrigues you, you might want to check out the website of Paula Begoun, the "Cosmetics Cop."  And here is a direct link to the order page of the latest edition of her essential book, "Don't Go To The Cosmetics Counter Without Me."  It contains some very useful and lengthy excepts, including this particularly apropos tidbit:

"Essential Point: Categorizing skin-care products by age groups is nothing more than a marketing device designed to sell products; it does not correlate at all with age-specific benefits to the skin."

For more details, click on that book link.  While you're there, order a copy.  Trust me, her book is worth its weight in anti-aging products, and depending on the line, that could be thousands of dollars.

Also, I have to share this wonderful celebrity quote from one of my favorite stars, Dolly Parton.  I heard it on a promo for a TV bio of her, and it sums up so well everything I've had to deal with in trying to launch my show that I might have to get it embroidered on a sampler and hang it in my living room:

        "I never had to step on anybody to get where I am, but I did have
        to walk around a lot of people."  -- Dolly Parton
 
 

May 10, 2005

As soon as Brian is back in Texas, we will schedule a new D'jango date to make up for the unavoidable May 8 cancellation, so hang in there.  Meanwhile, here's some news from the age and beauty front...

Remember when I told you about the woman on "Oprah" whose facial beauty regimen included fighting wrinkles by rubbing Premarin vaginal cream on her face and shrinking puffy eyes with Preparation H?  Well, WBAL-TV in Baltimore says some doctors saw that, too, and they're warning people that they would be butt heads to take that advice.  Although good luck getting women not to take advice that they heard on "Oprah."

One dermatologist said Premarin puffs out wrinkles because the estrogen in it irritates the skin (we all know estrogen is an irritant; ask any woman with PMS), and gynecologist Terry Hoffman said there are steroids in Preparation H that can cause dark circles under the eyes.  She said these creams might reduce wrinkles or swelling, but there are better alternatives.  She added, with the clinical expertise that can be acquired only from years of medical school, "Personally, if something is meant for my 'hu-ha', I don't think I'm going to put it on my eyes."  And if you do, wash your hands between the two applications.

If you're worried about side effects, I say try Botox. There still might be side effects, but at least you won't look worried about them.

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First, they reported that Pierce Brosnan had been rehired to play 007, and now there's a late Mother's Day gift for people who think spying is too much fun to be reserved for 19-year-old Bond Girls.

Britain's security agency, MI5, wants more Miss Moneypennys and fewer Pussy Galores.  The spy agency is advertising for administrative staffers for their London headquarters, and they're specifically seeking middleaged women whose kids have left home.  The headline is "The older, the wiser."  Perhaps inspired by Margaret Thatcher, they have decided that mature moms who have raised a family have the kind of cool heads, orderly minds and organizational skills to help protect the UK from criminals and terrorists.

God knows, a lot of moms of my acquaintance are well-experienced in dealing with little terrorists.  They can even keep shoe bombers out of Britain by saying, "Oh, no, you are not coming in here with those filthy sneakers on!"  Who knows, maybe they'll even hire a middleaged mom to be the new "Q," and she can create a wristwatch TV that only brings in "Oprah."

Heck, if nothing else, at least it will keep James Bond from constantly hitting on the office help.
 
 
 

May 6, 2005

Bad news!  We have decided to cancel Sunday's Mother's Day show at D'jango.  We had several advertising problems, and most importantly, a family medical emergency.
For those of you who were planning to come, we apologize, and we'll have another show scheduled very soon.

Also, thanks to everyone who was helping us get the word out, especially the great staff at my favorite store in the world, Cache at Northpark (I get all my stage clothes and most of my off-stage clothes there) and Perry Stewart of the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, who gave the show a wonderful write-up in today's paper.  To read it, click here.  I promise, we'll do it again soon, and it will still be worth driving from Ft. Worth for.  Better yet, we'll try to do it in Ft. Worth, if anyone would like to suggest a good venue.
 
 

May 4, 2005

A People magazine poll let people vote on which parts they'd pick to make the perfect Hollywood body (this is pretty much how Beverly Hills plastic surgeons actually do create new Hollywood stars).

They chose Angelina Jolie's lips, Kate Bosworth's two-toned eyes over Charlize Theron and Catherine Zeta-Jones' eyes (teenage girls will now be wearing one tinted contact lens), and Sienna Miller's button nose over the formerly most-wanted nose, Nicole Kidman's (Nicole's nose is now old and has warts).  Salma Hayek's cleavage edged out Halle Berry's and Lindsay Lohan's.  And in more bad news for Jennifer Aniston, her famous hair came in second to Jessica Simpson's.  The good news for Jennifer: she hasn't sustained brain damage from too much hair bleach.

Put all these things together, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what Michael Jackson will look like next year.

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I can always count on the refreshingly blunt Kate Winslet for a great celebrity quote.

In an interview with Glamour, Kate de-glamorized the red carpet with this hilarious spillage of honesty...
 

    "I have exactly the same issues and hang-ups as any woman would have
    going down the red carpet.  You know, what if I step on my train and tear
    my dress? What if I get my period? That's why a back-up black dress is
    essential.
    When I read how an actress 'made a statement in black', I just think, 'Oh,
    period or fat day.'  Sometimes, you just don't feel confident enough to
    wear twinkly yellow taffeta."
 

I'll never be able to look at a little black dress the same way again.
 
 

May 2, 2005

Sorry about the delays in blogging, but it's been a very busy week.  Last Thursday was Pat and my 15th wedding anniversary, and we had a lot of celebrating to fit in.  We went to our favorite restaurant, Cremona (where we've spent every anniversary for 15 years straight -- they gave us free chocolate cheesecake to celebrate.  Forgive me, Dr. Perricone!), and saw several shows, including "Clue: The Musical" in Richardson, "Amadeus" at Plano Rep, and on Saturday night, attended a big fundraising fashion show for a number of charities, including the 500 Inc., of which we are members.  Pat won the bidding on a $250 Happy Hour package from Iron Cactus restaurant, so we might invite a couple of newsletter subscribers once that's set up.  There's a little more incentive to subscribe to my newsletter.

Well, enough of my life, let's get to the news...

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Serious news first: Researchers from Pennsylvania State and the University of Michigan report that many American girls as young as nine are secretly using steroids.  As many as 7 percent of middle school girls have tried steroids, testosterone pills or other risky bodybuilder products, and two-thirds aren't even athletes (or fans of She-Hulk).  They say they are doing it to shed fat and get toned, sculpted bodies, so they'll resemble movie stars and models.

It's working: seven-year-old girls are starting to look a little like Brad Pitt.  Only with Tom Selleck mustaches.  Oh, why can't they be content with being natural little girls and resembling Leonardo DiCaprio?!

Someone needs to tell these poor deluded children that you can't get a movie star's or model's body from a pill!  It takes lots and lots of plastic surgery!

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In other sad news, Ed Schantz, a researcher who pioneered the purification of the toxin used to make Botox, has died in Madison, Wisconsin, at age 96.   But he didn't look a day over 40.  His face has been dead since 1984.  He looks the same as always: embalmed.

Boy, you could just go on like this all day.  That must've been some amusing funeral eulogy.  I don't know how the mourners kept a straight face.  Oh, wait: I do...

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This sounds like something Homer Simpson would dream up: Cashing in on the anti-aging properties of chocolate, the Four Seasons Hotel George V spa in Paris is offering a 2-1/2-hour, $400 (US) "Decadent Chocolate Spa Package" that includes a Chocolate and Cranberry Body Scrub, a Deep Chocolate Massage and a Toffee Chocolate Wrap.  Of course, there's also a bowl of chocolate bonbons nearby throughout.  The manager said it's "such a rejection of the idea of dieting, to dive into chocolate," but afterwards, you have no regrets because all your senses have been satisfied and you know you've done yourself good.

Until you look in the mirror and see you're covered with zits.

She didn't say what this does for you if you're one of those people who gains weight just from smelling chocolate.

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Here's a chilling quote I heard on an infomercial by Dr. Adrienne Denese ("Dr. D"), dubbed the "Queen of QVC" for her best-selling line of anti-aging products.   Dr. D said about looking younger:  "It's not a matter of vanity -- it's a matter of survival."

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Let's wrap up with a few celebrity items...

Renee Zellweger accused tabloid photographers of tampering with her photos to make her look thinner than she really is.  Wow, most movie stars have to pay to get them to do that!  Kirstie Alley would kill for it!  But I don't know if I buy this, because if Renee were any thinner, she wouldn't show up on film at all.

People magazine's new "50 Most Beautiful People" issue is out.  A cornucopia of obviousness, it names Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as the most beautiful of all, includes Jamie Foxx, Halle Berry, and Jennifer Aniston, and has Julia Roberts on the cover for the third time.  In fact, save money and just reread last year's issue.

Finally, in a victory for the over 40-set, This Is London.com reports that Dame Judi Dench, who plays M in the James Bond movies, said that after testing "everyone on the face of the earth" for a younger 007, the producers decided to re-hire creaky old senior citizen Pierce Brosnan.  They also rehired the same scriptwriters, who are 12 years old.  But don't worry, guys: as always, they are casting all-new, 19-year-old Bond girls.
 
 
 

April 26, 2005

A big night last night: we went to the USA Film Festival for the world premiere of "Jiminy Glick in Lalawood," which was attended by Martin Short (who I think is brilliant) and the great comedy agent, Bernie Brillstein.  The movie was hilarious (I might write more about that later).  I got to talk to Mr. Brillstein and his wife, and Pat got a picture of us that will eventually appear here after it's developed (we really should join the digital camera age, but Pat hates the way the photos look -- he says they make everyone look like sweaty wax statues -- and he's a second-generation photographer, so there's no arguing with him.)

Anyway, here are a few items from the age, health and beauty news...

Forget about the new Pope, forget about the Michael Jackson trial (and oh, if we only could): the big news of the past week came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which discovered that -- oops! -- a little fat isn't so dangerous after all.  Somehow, they made a teeny boo-boo (perhaps forgetting to carry the 2), and it turns out that obesity doesn't kill 365,000 Americans a year, but actually just 25,814.  This makes it only the seventh-most common preventable cause of death, falling behind such things as smoking, car crashes and guns.  Guns are more likely to kill you than fat because so many women would rather shoot themselves than try on a swimsuit.

The oddest (or, depending on your point of view, most delightful) part of the story was the discovery that "moderately overweight" Americans live longer than really skinny Americans, and not just because really fat Americans sit on them and crush them.  Now comes the hard part for most Americans: slimming down to "moderately overweight."

Naturally, it took only a few days for a restaurant lobbying group called the Center for Consumer Freedom to start running full-page ads around their new slogan, "Obesity: It's GOOD for you!"

Well, actually, they didn't go that far (surprising, when I consider the jumbo size of the portions I get at most restaurants), but they are running ads making fun of health advocates for overstating the dangers of overeating.  And they admit that obesity is still a problem.  Except they consider it a problem only for All-You-Can-Eat restaurants.

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Turns out "Desperate Housewives" is a documentary:  A British study of more than 500 mothers aged 30 to 45 reveals just how much stress today's moms are under.  Most said they feel "an atmosphere of constant pressure" to be the "perfect" mother.  Sources of pressure they cited include the media, government, schools, health groups and mothers-in-law (Martha Stewart must've been in prison when they took this survey).

The word they chose most often to describe their lives was "hectic," while the more children they had, the less likely they were to describe their lives as "enjoyable" (or even "endurable.")  And most moms would rather have a cleaning lady than more time to spend with their husbands.  I bet some of them would rather have a cleaning lady than a husband.  Others probably figure, "If my husband wants sex, let the cleaning lady handle it."

Besides, spending time with their husbands is how they got into  this mess.

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Finally, a celebrity aging story:  1960's rock star Marianne Faithfull is having such major problems with aging, she's seeing a therapist (not a plastic surgeon?  No wonder this made the news!)

She said that because she was famous for being beautiful when she was young, coming to terms with her fading beauty has made her see a psychiatrist for the first time since she kicked heroin 20 years ago.  She also attacked the double standard for male and female rock stars.  She said her manager told her not to mention her grandchildren in interviews because it makes her sound too old, but because Bob Dylan is a man, nobody even asks about his grandchildren.  Or his great-grandchildren.  Which is odd, since he has an "Ask me about my grandchildren" sticker on his guitar.

It's all enough to make Marianne consider going back on heroin, but she'd never do that: it makes you look older.
 
 
 

April 22, 2005

Thanks to everyone who came to the Pocket Sandwich Theater show Wednesday!  It really went great (I discovered I liked doing that required intermission, and even worked in a costume change), and I especially want to thank special guest bassist Chris Clarke and the terrific staff at Pocket Sandwich Theater.

It's been a very hectic few days (working on a new demo, preparing for the big May 8 show at D'jango, etc.), but more blogging will appear here very shortly, I promise.  To tide you over, here's a delicious tidbit:  Remember when the movie "Something's Gotta Give" came out and many critics sneered that it was a wish-fulfillment fantasy for middle-aged women because it showed young hunk Keanu Reeves actually being attracted to that old hag, Diane Keaton?  Well, I don't usually trust or reference tabloid stories about celebrity romances, but this one is impossible to resist.  Read it and eat your words, you ageist movie reviewer twerps...
 
 

April 20, 2005

SHOW DAY!  No time for blogging, but come see us tonight at the Pocket Sandwich Theater, across the street from Mockingbird Station!  Doors open at 6:15, show at 7:30.  Reservations are appreciated, but you can just come in and pay at the door.  See you there!
 

April 19, 2005

Well, tomorrow is our first show at the Pocket Sandwich Theater in Dallas, so if you're one of those Dallasites who think that going to Addison is like driving to Oklahoma, here's your chance to come see us right in your backyard!  There are still seats available, and you might be able to get in by showing up early and paying at the door, but it's best to make reservations.  Just call 214-821-1860.  Hope to see you there!

And now, some news from the age and beauty front...

First up, a couple of feature stories from the New York Post that you might want to read in their entirety.  This one is a feature about the MTV series, "I Want a Famous Face."  It's the show in which we watch some poor lunatic undergo painful, expensive surgery out of a desire to look, no matter how vaguely, like his or her favorite celebrity, be it Carmen Electra, Carrot Top or whomever.  The producers of this show deny that it's exploitative voyeurism along the lines of "The Swan," because they don't pay for the surgery or encourage it, they just document all the gruesome details of the procedure that the subjects planned to undergo anyway.  They see it as a cautionary tale.  Why, it's practically a public service!  Like everything on MTV.  They say they want to show how unpleasant the surgery is and how it can go wrong.  For instance, you can go through hell to look like Sylvester Stallone and end up looking like Frank Stallone.

This article is a bit more uplifting (well, not more uplifting than a Carmen Electra boob job, but you know what I mean.)  It's a profile of Doris Eaton Travis, a former Ziegfeld girl who made her Broadway debut in 1915, went on to own a chain of Arthur Murray dance studios, and is about to dance again on Broadway for a charity show at age 101.  The funniest thing about her story is that in 1915, she was so young, she had to lie about her age to get cast on Broadway.  In the 90 years since, that was probably the only time she ever needed to claim she was older than she really was to get a job.

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A dating website called BeautifulPeople.net has launched in the U.K. for people who are sick of romancing people who aren't as pretty as they are (the curse of Brad Pitt!)  Potential members submit a photo, and members of the opposite sex vote on whether they're attractive enough to join.  A spokesman said only one in 15 gets in, but they make no apologies: they exist solely so that beautiful people can meet other beautiful people; they are "exclusively for the gorgeous"; and it's an online dating site you'd actually want your friends to know you belong to.  That is, if you had any friends.

The site is here, if you want to give it a try.  But I warn you: you'll either need great natural beauty or a really expensive plastic surgeon.  Or a recent version of PhotoShop.  Or an old picture of Elle McPherson or Tom Selleck.

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Finally, a celebrity quote:  Mick Jagger's ex, model Jerry Hall, says older men are better in bed because they have more experience (but then, Mick kind of throws off the curve), "while the toyboys need a lot of training and instruction before they get things right."  Yeah, sometimes you have to whack 'em with a rolled-up newspaper.

Unfortunately, there's a Catch-22: Jerry Hall is now too old for older men, who are all chasing 20-year-old girls.
 
 
 

April 15, 2005

We went by the Pocket Sandwich Theater yesterday, and they already had quite a few reservations for next Wednesday's show.  So if you'd like to come (and I hope you will) make a reservation today at (214) 821-1860.  And now, on to the news...

Starting out with something serious, from New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who has a good piece about Baby Boomers with their fear of aging having to cope with the failing health of their elderly parents and face their own futures.  I'll quote the first sentence, because I like it and because it mentions one of my favorite photos of Harold Lloyd which my husband Pat has on a poster in his office (he swears one reason I married him is that he reminded me of Harold Lloyd):

"Baby boomers' almost comic fear of aging reminds me of that silent movie scene in which Harold Lloyd hangs precariously from the hand of a giant clock, literally pulling time from its moorings..."  To read the rest, click here.

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Speaking of facing the ravages of age, it even happens to Desperate Housewives (of the TV variety...we know it happens to real desperate housewives).  Teri Hatcher told Contactmusic.com that she was worried when she found a lump under her eye.  But the doctor reassured her, "Teri, it's just a barnacle of age" and he told her she's just getting old.  This doctor is a little fuzzy on the concept of "reassurance."

Well, maybe she is getting old, since she gives an interview and ends up talking about going to the doctor.  But I think Teri has a few good years left in her yet.  That doctor was probably a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, so he tells everyone they're getting older.  It's good for business.  In fact, I'll bet that lump under her eye was just a clump of mascara, but a $5,000 operation has now removed it.

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Wednesday, in a surprising reversal, an FDA panel voted to recommend lifting the ban on certain silicone gel breast implants.  The day before, they'd voted to keep it after finding that one manufacturer hadn't settled concerns about the implants' safety.  But they were so impressed by Mentor Corp's new implants (finding them safer, more durable, and far more squeezable) that they voted to let them be marketed.  They said Mentor's presentation was much more convincing.  Their witnesses were the Pussycat Dolls, with an expert endorsement by Bill Clinton, who filed a "friend-of-the-implant" brief.

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Finally, news from the fashion front: the inexplicably ubiquitous Paris Hilton has designed a line of crystal collars for dogs and is selling them on Amazon.com.  Hilton's own Chihuahua Tinkerbell usually appears with her wearing clothing and jewelry (they both have subhuman brains and are so thin they shake, but you can tell which one is Tinkerbell because the dog is the one wearing clothes).

Hilton told the Femalefirst website that "in addition to my own sense of style, I think a lot of people admire Tinkerbell's look as well, which is why I decided to include a pet collar as part of the new collection."  The slogan will be, "When you think of doggie style, think of Paris Hilton!"

Personally, I wish Paris would take a style tip from dogs and put on a muzzle.
 
 
 

April 13, 2005

Finally got the details of the Mother's Day show at Django On The Parkway in Addison nailed down last night.  It will be $25 for the show and a full buffet dinner, with fancier food than usual.  Also, Red Young of Red & The Red hots will come up after our show and play a set of standards and boogie-woogie in his amazing style.  If you've never heard him, trust me, he's worth hanging around for!  He used to play piano for Linda Ronstadt and does the coolest version of "Straighten Up And Fly Right" this side of Nat King Cole.  This is going to be a great evening of dining and entertainment, so make plans to bring your mom to Django on May 8, and you'll both have a great time.  Call 214-370-9917 for reservations.

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If you're not familiar with the group "Spark! Your Passion," you should check them out.  I've been a member for awhile, and it's a really great support group for women who want to pursue their dreams in any field.  I attended their annual party last Saturday, the Spark Soiree, and entertainment was by Frump, the all-mom rock band.   We shared a bill at a Dallas Library anniversary show a couple of years ago.  They were pretty rough but fun back then, but they've definitely come together as a band since.  I loved their parody of a Ramones song about a lobotomy, which they've rewritten to say that if you wanna be around me, you gotta get a vasectomy.

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One of my pet peeves that I've ranted about here is magazines that insist on "age appropriate" dressing; i.e., saying that if you are over 40, you must start dressing in a certain way (usually like Margaret Dumont.)  Personally, I think that if you've taken care of yourself, a dress that looks good on a 20-year-old will probably look good on you.  By the same token, a dress that looks tacky on you will probably look just as tacky on a 20-year-old.

I was reminded of this Monday night because it was the subject of "Everybody Loves Raymond."  Deborah was getting a lot of grief because she's a mom and still wore sexy clothes.  It led to this exchange involving her horrible mother-in-law Marie and her blunt husband Frank:

Marie:  "For every year you're over 40, you should add an inch to the hemline of your dress."

Frank Barone:  "Then you should be wearing a Persian rug."

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Fans of silicone gel breast implants were left feeling deflated after an FDA panel voted not to lift the ban on them yet, saying the testimony from women who have them left too many unanswered questions (Like, "Mind if I feel those?")

Some witnesses had claimed they can cause health problems, but others said there's no scientific proof.  Some women with silicone implants said they look and feel more natural than saline, and the self-esteem boost is worth the risk to her.  One woman conceded that they could leak, but she said airplanes could crash, and the FDA doesn't ban airplanes.  And if your plane does crash, silicone implants make great flotation devices.

Of course, they didn't mention the biggest health hazard of silicone breast implants: that they give so many men whiplash.

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The University of Illinois at Chicago has gotten a $1 million a year grant for five years from the National Institutes of Health to test a theory that an ingredient in beer relieves menopause symptoms (hot flashes, cold beer...makes sense.)  Natural healers already use hops to treat menopause, and researchers hope to see if there's anything to it.  So they are currently advertising for hot older women who are willing to drink a lot of beer.  They consider this to be the best research study ever.

For now, only one thing is certain: beer definitely helps you cope with menopause, if you're a married man.

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Finally, some showbiz news:  43 years after playing their first gig, the Rolling Stones announced plans for a tour that will start in Boston in August and run for at least a year.  The London Sun said despite all the jokes about their wrinkles, they're still a great live band, but this will probably be their final tour.  They helpfully noted that the combined age of the four regular band members is 242 years.  That's 3,000 in rock star years, and it's also the combined age of all their groupies.

It's odd that people make such a big deal about the age of the Rolling Stones, as if you can't play rock music if you're over 50 or even 60.  Chuck Berry inspired the Stones, and he's still out there playing somewhere.  The Stones are also a heavily blues-based band, and a lot of the blues players they learned from were still playing and getting standing ovations when they were in their seventies and eighties.  Personally, I don't believe this is really their last tour.  I think they're going to keep playing "goodbye tours" and making people think it's their last chance to see the Stones live until they finally manage to break Cher's world record for taking the longest time to say goodbye.
 
 
 

April 10, 2005

My husband Pat is a huge Kinks fan (I've become one, too, after hearing Pat play so much of their music over the years), and he just checked out a book about them from the library.  It contained a quote that I absolutely love.  If it weren't so long, I'd add it to our pre-show slide show, but at least I can share it here.  It's a great thing to remember when critics question why I don't blast all plastic surgery and am so adamant that whatever you want to do to your looks should be your own business, as long as you know what you're getting into and don't go overboard.   Sometimes, changing some little thing about your looks really can make a huge difference in your outlook.  Here's how the Kinks' leader Ray Davies explained it, in a long-ago interview with Melody Maker magazine:
 

        "You can get the most sophisticated man in the world, and if
        he's hung up about his feet, nothing will change it.  He'll go to
        university, he'll become a nuclear physicist, he'll fly to the moon.
        But the moon men will say, 'You've got big feet,' and he'll be
        back at school, because that's what they said to him there.
        People just don't change that much."  -- Ray Davies
 
 

April 8, 2005

Our April 20 show is now on the website for the Pocket Sandwich Theater. If you're one of the people who've told me you didn't want to drive to Addison and asked us to do the show nearer to central Dallas, click here to make reservations now and come see our show!

Did a short phone interview yesterday with a nice lady from the Lakewood Advocate magazine.  They are doing a brief story under the "Launch" section that's sort of about the show but mostly about this website.  It's funny, the website was really only launched to help promote the show, and it seems to be taking on a life of its own.  I hear from people who read this blog and live in cities where we've yet to perform.  If you're one of them, please write to me and tell me if you have any good theater/cabaret venues in town where you'd like us to play.  We'll come sing for you!  And to pay our traveling expenses, if each and every one of you could just send one dollar...

Speaking of hearing from people in farflung places, Pat was Googling around and found something hilarious.  It's a comic strip I drew for the North Texas Skeptics' magazine in 1992.  Someone picked it up, replaced my lettering with what I think is Portuguese, and posted it on the Internet.  What really amuses us is that we don't speak Portuguese, and it's been so long since I did it, I can't remember what it says!  I'll have to see if I can find the original before it drives me nuts.

He also found an even more bizarre reference to me, on the billboard for fans of William Gibson, one of the godfathers of cyberpunk fiction.  Fans were taking a crack at writing scenes for a screenplay of his novel "Burning Chrome," and for some dialogue in which two characters in a bar talk about things you can't do as you get older, a poster named derby378 suggests as ambiant music "'My Ship Has Sailed' as performed by Laura Ainsworth."  This has to be the oddest reference to myself that I've ever seen, especially since I've yet to release any recording of it, which means some major fan of cyberpunk has actually come to see my show full of cosmetics jokes, ageism satire and Jerome Kern music.  All I can think is that it must be a member of the North Texas Skeptics, since "Eclectic" is their middle name.  Well, actually, "Texas" is their middle name, but you get my drift.

Oh well, let's get to the news!...

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From the "Duh" file:  A survey of studies by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis confirmed that tall, slender, attractive people make more money (Michael Moore excepted). Taller people earn 2.6 percent more per year for each additional inch of height; obese white women earn 17 percent lower wages than average-weight white women; and attractive people earn a "beauty premium" of 5 percent more wages than average, while ugly people suffer a "plainness penalty" of 9 percent lower wages (but this could just be supermodels and movie stars throwing off the curve.)

The Catch-22 is that ugly people need more money to pay for plastic surgery, but they can't get it because they're ugly.

The researchers can't say whether it's just because attractive people have more confidence and social skills, or there's a bias toward hotties.  Personally, I suspect hotties have more confidence and social skills due to the bias toward hotties.

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On the other hand, striking a blow of retaliation against sexism, lookism and ageism is Wall Street banker Laura Zubulake, who won $29 million in damages and compensation from the European bank UBS for her claim that her bosses passed her over for promotions, told her she was "too old and ugly" to hold her job, and belittled her in front of colleagues (they probably accused her of lacking self-confidence.)

I never heard of the concept of someone being too old and ugly to be a Wall Street banker.  They must've meant "to be a female Wall Street banker."  Oh well, now that she has $29 million to spend on plastic surgery, that problem should be fixed.

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In a related story, Pierce Brosnan, who was recently judged too old and ugly to keep playing James Bond -- okay, he just asked for more money than the producers wanted to pay -- may yet return as 007.  The producers made a lot of noise about wanting to revitalize the series by casting a hip, young unknown, age 28-to-32.  But with so much money riding on an untested whippersnapper, they reportedly got nervous and are now thinking that perhaps Pierce Brosnan isn't quite ready for the Old Spies Home just yet (although they are still looking for 18-to-20-year-old Bond Girls.)   They're rumored to be courting Pierce for a two-picture deal, one of which will be a sequel to "Die Another Day" called "Please Live Another 30 Years."

Sounds like they finally realized that a Bond is worthless until it reaches maturity.

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"There's Something Behind Mary" Dept:

Those who take comfort in knowing that beautiful celebrities also have to deal with life's tragedies will enjoy learning that Cameron Diaz is carrying a terrible burden: her butt.  That's right: proving that the ass is always greener on the other side of the fence, poor Cameron Diaz doesn't like her body and wishes her bottom were more like Camryn Manheim's.

IOL.com quotes her as saying, "There are parts of my 32-year-old body that need a little more tending than they did even two years ago.  Looking in the mirror, I can see my ass sag to the back of my knees.  All my life I wanted to be a fleshy, voluptuous woman - the kind that bursts out of clothing." (She could probably go ahead and burst out of her clothing now and no men would complain.)   She continued, "But no matter how many bean burritos with extra cheese I ate, even as a child, I knew it was not my destiny."  If that's how you get a voluptuous butt, imagine how many burritos Jennifer Lopez ate!

I was going to send some money to cancer research, but I'm feeling so sorry for her now, I may donate it to the Cameron Diaz Butt Reclamation Project instead.
 
 
 

April 4, 2005

Again, sorry these blog entries are slow lately.  It's been an exhausting week, what with having to move everything out of my mother's house, move half of it into our house, and try to find places for it all, which has sparked a big bout of spring cleaning that's left both of us tired and stiff.  I've also had several other things to deal with, including docenting (is that a verb?) on a historic home tour, writing a newspaper column (more about that when I know when and where it will appear) and preparing for the April 20th show at the Pocket Sandwich Theater (For reservations, call 214-821-1860 today!)  But I'll take a few minutes to catch you up on the vital news you might've missed while all the TV networks were covering the Pope's passing 24/7...
 

Last week, the Supreme Court made it easier for any worker over 40 to allege age discrimination, ruling that employers can be held liable for policies that harm older workers, even if that was not the intention.  Of course, there is a very high standard of proof for this, so it's not a free ticket.  Still, it's nice to see that the Supreme Court Justices recognize the valuable contributions made by workers over 40, or as the Justices themselves would call them, "these kids today."

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Speaking of older workers, after years of shoving them out the door, companies such as Borders Books, MetLife, Wal-Mart, Home Depot and others are now actively recruiting retirees.  They're advertising in churches and senior centers, and offering benefits like flexible hours, health care and even "snowbird specials," where employees can work in Florida in the winter.  Apparently stunned at the realization that years of experience might actually be a plus, they say older workers have lower turnover rates and a stronger work ethic than younger workers, learn faster, and often do a better job.  And the older workers at Borders Books actually know how to read.

This is really great news!  At last, TV anchorwomen over 40 have somewhere to go!

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CBS reports that Chicago nutritionist Dr. Jan Kwasniewski is promoting a high-fat, low-carb diet called the Polish Diet.  It promises that you can lose weight by eating extremely high-fat foods, like kielbasa, bacon, veal brains in aspic (isn't that part of the Bulimic Diet?), buttered Polish bread and eggs cooked in spicy lard, with a cup of heavy whipping cream for a beverage.  This is also known as "the Chris Farley Diet."

One patient on the "fit through fat" diet claims she has dropped from a size 14 to a 4.  She said we think fat is bad when it's really good for you: it provides energy and makes you feel better.  (Although personally, my theory is that it makes your insides so greasy, the calories just slide right on through.)  Another happy Polish Dieter warned that it's not short-term; it's a lifelong lifestyle change.

But don't worry: your life won't be that  long.

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From the "New Uses For Plastic Surgery" Dept:  Two 22-year-old twin sisters from Taiwan looked so much alike, even their parents couldn't tell them apart.  Despite the girls' different clothes and hairstyles, people were still confused (guess they never thought of monogrammed blouses).  They finally got so fed up, one of them (probably the evil twin) turned to plastic surgery to make them look different from each other.  She got a new nose and chin and said she's happy with the results.

In fact, she looks so good, her sister wants to get the same operation.  And then both of them will look exactly like Lucy Liu.

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Finally, here's a story I absolutely love, because it upends so many stereotypes about looks.

A Slovenian TV show wanted to prove how stupid models are, so they tested the I.Q. of ex-Miss Universe Iris Mulej, who left school at 16 to become a bikini model and is mostly known for her provocative comments about her interest in group sex.  She was tested on spatial awareness, logic, math and problem-solving.  The results: she had an I.Q. of 156, higher than anyone else on the show, even a nuclear physicist (What do you know?  Miss Universe really is a "scholarship contest!")  The embarrassed producers had to scrap the "dumb model" show and may now do one on "the world's smartest model" and see if Guinness will accept it as a category.  They might not: she's the only person in it.

The person most upset about this is Iris.  Now that all the men know how smart she is, she can't get a date.
 
 
 
 

March 29, 2005

Still moving things out of mom's house, so there's not much time for blogging.  But here are a few interesting items for you to check out...

Remember that medical researcher who was using stem cells to grow natural tissue breast implants?  Here's more about that story.  He says that one stumbling block is figuring out how to get the implants to stop growing once they're in place.  I'm amazed that a male researcher would think that's a problem.

In a related story, researchers at Griffith University in Australia, working on a grant from the Catholic Church, say they have successfully grown adult stem cells harvested from a human nose.  They say cells from the nose could potentially be grown into replacement livers, kidneys, hearts or other tissues and organs.  Ironically, this means that if only Michael Jackson still had a nose, he could grow a new nose from it.

If we could find a way to grow breast implants from noses, everyone would want the biggest ones possible, so Barbra Streisand could make another fortune just by selling her nose cells.

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Proving the truth of what I say in "My Ship Has Sailed," that life doesn't happen on a timetable, Zabedah Mehedi of Malaysia has just married for the first time at 67.  She accepted the proposal of Jafar Sirat, 78, a widower with four kids, 21 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.  Mehedi said that during her life, she had rejected nine marriage proposals because none of the men were interesting to her, but when Jafar came along, God changed her mind.  Plus, she decided if she was going to have kids, she'd better get moving.

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Here's a story from the weight/beauty front:  Remember when Deborah Voigt, one of the top operatic sopranos in the world, was fired from a lead role in an opera in Covent Garden last year for being too fat?  That's right: the opera was over before the fat lady even got a chance to sing.

Well, Voight has since gotten stomach-stapling surgery and dropped about 140 pounds.  To do it, she had to have a tube put down her throat, which could have damaged her golden singing voice, but she decided to risk it since she was apparently deemed not skinny enough to sing, anyway (luckily, the doctors were able to use a special narrow tube that was less risky).

Voight is now a size 14, the size of an average American woman, or as the fashion industry calls that, "morbidly obese."  While this is probably good for her health in the long run, it does show how obsessed with looks we are that someone is actually considered too overweight to be an opera singer.  Wonder if they ever said that to Pavarotti?

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Finally, a little celebrity news:  Saturday night at the London club Tantra, Mariah Carey reportedly celebrated her 35th birthday with a life-size, $9500 replica of herself in sponge cake filled with praline butter cream, made by a team of 17 chefs.  (Please, no jokes about how many chefs made the real Mariah Carey.)

Like the real Mariah, it was said to be sweet but flaky.
 
 
 

March 25, 2005

Another one of those silly lists came out today, the kind of thing that people are always printing in lieu of actual news.  This one was the result of an international poll by the men's magazine FHM, declaring Angelina Jolie to be the world's sexiest woman.

What's really interesting about this list, however, is who is not on it.  Last year, Britney Spears was #1, the sexiest woman in the entire world!  This year, she didn't even make the top 100.  (Kevin Federline probably didn't even put her into the top 50 women he's attempted to impregnate.)  I know all beauty is fleeting, but this is ridiculous!

Now, you might not expect her to rank as high as last year, considering she went off tour and didn't release any videos, and she spent most of the year being photographed in unflattering swimsuits with a Lucky handing out of her mouth and her hands all over her trashy-looking hubby (you might want to put on some surgical gloves, dear).  But the remarkable thing is that without the constant reinforcement of the polished media images, she plummeted from the absolute pinnacle to completely off the list in just one year!

My husband Pat says this vindicates his theory about the power of the mass media in today's society.  He told me recently that's he's developed a sort of odd reverse fascination with Britney Spears.  Not because he finds her appealing or likes her music (trust me, he doesn't, and he likes at least some of all kinds of music), but because he really, really doesn't.  He says he can't get over how someone whom he thinks is basically a vacuum -- not outstandingly attractive, sings only passably, dances like a small town cheerleading squad reject, and gives interviews that sound like the airheaded babblings of a Shreveport junior high dropout -- somehow became considered the biggesst star and the most desirable woman on the entire planet.  He finds it both fascinating and scary how much power the mass media now wield over people's thoughts and emotions, even over whom they find sexually attractive.

It just proves that with the right images and marketing and enough media saturation, you can make anyone sexy.   Except, of course, Sarah Jessica Parker, because as The Gap has informed us, she's too old.

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Finally, here is one of those "click at your own risk" celebrity aging links.  It's more info about Billy Idol and his efforts to avoid gray hair than you ever really wanted to know.   Don't say I didn't warn you.
 
 
 

March 24, 2005

Sorry about the lack of blogging, but I've been very swamped the past few days with work, spring cleaning and unpacking things from my mom's house and trying to find places for everything.  I'm also still recuperating a bit from last week, when we had to be somewhere every day and night.  But I do have one interesting news story to share with you today.

OnHD.TV magazine claims that High-Definition TV may ruin today's stars the way talkies did silent actors.  Only this time, it won't be hearing their voices that destroys their careers, it will be getting a razor-sharp look at their hideous flaws!  (Now might be a good time to invest in Vaseline stock -- don't say this website isn't useful)).

OnHD.TV helpfully listed the top 10 best and worst-looking stars on HDTV, complete with catty comments.  Cameron Diaz was the #1 loser: they said her acne makes her look like a burn patient.  They say Brad Pitt also has bad skin, you can count Joan Rivers' surgical stitch marks (but you can do that on regular TV), Britney Spears' wrinkles around her lips make her look "10 years older" (than Joan Rivers!),  Renee Zellweger's rosacea is "very visible," Bill Maher is "scary" (again, how is this different from regular TV?), and so on.  In fact, some of the female sex symbols look so bad, Bill Maher refused to sleep with them.

But the magazine claims some stars look great on HDTV, including Charlize Theron, Sting, Halle Berry and Angelina Jolie - although they say Jolie has a small mole on her forehead that in high-def "looks like Mt. Everest" (that's because it's actually a tiny tattoo of Mt. Everest.)

And the #1 best-looking star on HDTV?  Anna Kournikova!

I think this is a scary omen for the future.  The star who comes across best of all on HDTV is the youngest one who has no talent at all: she can't sing, dance, act, or apparently, play tennis.  But God, her pores look fantastic!  And really, isn't that all we should expect of our celebrities in the 21st century?

Personally, I think I'll just stick with my old TV, where Barbara Walters is only shot through gauze and not flannel.
 
 

March 20, 2005

It's been a long day: got up earlier than usual so Pat and I could attend Betty Zoeller's seminar on the voiceover business at Brookhaven Country Club.  Excellent and very informative (plus it included the Brookhaven brunch buffet -- with salmon!)  If you do voice work, or think you'd ever be interested, you should check out Betty's website, seminars and books.  She's a real goldmine of information about the business, recording, making demos, reaching agents, etc.

Before hitting the hay, I will grace you with one news story...

Have you seen the new Gap ads with Sarah Jessica Parker singing, "I Enjoy Being A Girl"?  Well, apparently, she should have been singing "I Enjoy Being an Over-The-Hill Old Hag" because The Gap has decided to replace her with Joss Stone, the latest British teenage singing star.  The tabs claim SJP is very upset because her replacement isn't a big star and is only a teenager, but the Gap thinks Stone "fits their demographic" better.  The Gap doesn't sell the type of attire that would be worn by the over-30 set, like shawls and big granny panties, and we all know that mature women's money isn't nearly as green as that of teenagers.

So say goodbye to the Parker Age and say hello to the Stone Age.  Which is probably what Sarah Jessica Parker is feeling a part of right about now.

As for me, I'll just say goodbye to the Gap.
 
 

March 18, 2005

Finally nearing the end of a very busy week.  We have things going on every night - Lu Mitchell's St. Patrick's Day show at Pocket Sandwich Theater Wednesday (I'll be playing there on April 20 for the first time; hope I can draw an audience that big and enthusiastic), a Dallas Press Club Happy Hour Thursday at Morton's Steakhouse downtown, and our Theater 3 and Dallas Theater Center tickets converged on the same week.  We saw "The Violet Hour" at DTC last night and it was wonderful, the best new play I've seen in ages, like a really witty episode of "Twilight Zone."  Plus I've been having to move things out of my late mother's house, the home I grew up in, because it's finally being sold.  That's both time-consuming and emotionally wrenching.  But I'll make time for a little blogging about the news from the age and beauty front...

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To start with the serious stuff, here are a couple more cautionary tales about plastic surgery.  One is from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, who are concerned that TV shows have made people think cosmetic surgery is so quick and easy, they "can have a face-lift and go out to dinner the next day."  They note that a hysterectomy is considered major surgery and takes 45 minutes, while some cosmetic operations take three hours.  That's right: in the time it takes to get your face remade, you could get four hysterectomies.  Although that's probably not a deal that many people opt for.

The other story is from Manhattan, and involves a woman who won $130,000 in damages for a botched boob job.  She got silicone implants instead of the saline ones she wanted, suffered pain and scarring, and worst off all, her breasts are now too big, a claim which the story says the jury agreed with.  I have to assume there were no men on this jury.

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Happy birthday to Maria Strelnikova of Russia, who turned 115 this week.  Among the congratulations was a message from the governor that read, "The secret of your long life lies in your love of people, your love of work and your ability to enjoy every moment."

She is indeed a remarkable woman if she enjoyed every moment of 115 years, the majority of which were spent in communist Russia.  You gotta think there must've been a moment or two there somewhere that weren't all that enjoyable.  I suspect it's more likely she lived so long because she kept thinking, "Maybe if I hang around one more year, it'll finally get better."

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Ontario, Canada, legislator Lorenzo Berardinetti says he was shocked when he went to a dry cleaner with his wife and discovered she had to pay more for her cleaning than he did (it's amazing how men manage to notice things!)  He said it opened his eyes to how women are charged more for a number of things, including clothes, shoes, haircuts and dry cleaning (of course, that might be because women actually demand that the clothes be clean).  So he's introduced a bill to make gender-based pricing a human rights violation and an act of discrimination, punishable by a fine of from $2,000 to $5,000.

That's $2,000 for men, $5,000 for women.

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Here's an odd story about aging's effect on careers: because of a lack of interest in traditions among young people and a poor economy wiping out wealthy sponsors, Japan's population of geisha girls is aging and having trouble supporting themselves.  Of the 190 geishas still active in Kyoto, 39 are over 65.  A Kyoto traditional arts group is trying to raise money to keep them in makeup and kimonos.   It's sad to think that the art of the geisha is dying for lack of funds while William Hung is being paid to sing.

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Let's close out with some celebrity quotes...
 

Ashton Kutcher blasted people who mock his relationship with Demi Moore, saying, "It's just people's ignorance to think that love has to come with a certain physicality or age or anything other than just honesty and truth.  How many guys are out there that are fortysomething dating twentysomething girls, that nobody gives a damn about?"

I couldn't agree more with the sentiment, although I have to admit I did laugh when Jimmy Kimmel reported that Ashton denied a rumor Demi was pregnant, saying it was just a misunderstanding: "Someone said Demi was 'with child,' but they were talking about Ashton."

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Finally, a funny quote about aging from Eric Idle of "Monty Python," who is behind "Spamalot," the new Broadway musical version of "Monty Python & The Holy Grail."  It's from Men's Health by way of the New York Post's Page Six:

"The only really useful thing about aging is, you can legitimately forget everybody's name.  I have started to do this on purpose, as they get wonderfully angry."  Idle said he loves to introduce "Spamalot" director Mike Nichols and wife Diane Sawyer by saying, "'This is Colin Powell...and you know his wife, Madonna.' [Diane] smiles, but I know she wants to kill me."
 
 
 

March 16, 2005

So much blogging to catch up on, so little time!  We have something going on every night this week (two or three things some nights), and time is short, but I do have a lot of stuff built up, which I will post in a moment.

First of all, congratulations to our friend, the wonderful singer/pianist Michael Gott, who celebrated his 10th anniversary at the Mansion Bar Tuesday night.  Pat and I were among the throng of fans and well-wishers.  I was honored that he asked me to do a song with him, and he accompanied me on "Someone to Watch Over Me," which I sang about five years ago in "Swingin' With The Big Band 2."  I couldn't remember all the words and had to write them out beforehand on some borrowed Mansion stationery with the help of my hubby, who remembers the lyrics to virtually every song ever written (this can be both handy and annoying).  It seemed to go over very well, and Michael later asked me if I'd like to do a full set at one of his upcoming Mystic Note Cafe cabaret nights.  I'll let you know more about that when it's firmed up.

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And now, let's clear out the news backlog...

First up, let's get the sad news out of the way.  For more in our continuing series of stories about people who did not check out their plastic surgeons thoroughly and suffered terrible consequences, click here and here.  But don't say I didn't warn you.

In other sad news, fashion revolutionary Janet Reger has died in London.  In the early 1960s, when women's underwear meant bullet bras and ugly nylon-stretch girdles (the kind of thing Prince Charles probably still likes Camilla to wear), Reger created the first sexy lingerie: satin bras, skimpy panties with bows, mink-trimmed bustiers, and other dainties designed to enhance sex appeal.  Her clients included Princess Diana, Bianca Jagger and Joan Collins, who wore her lacy scanties in the 1978 movie, "The Stud."  Reger once said she knew she'd made it when a Tom Stoppard play included the line, "Don't get your Janet Regers in a twist," using her name as a synonym for panties.  And yet, when people do that with Michael Jackson, he gets all huffy.

She may be the first fashion designer whose death is mourned deepest by heterosexual men.

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Speaking of the merchandising of breasts, former stripper Tawny Peaks' infamous silicone breast implant in size 69-HH (that stands for the sound it elicited from men: "Homina, homina...") has sold at auction on eBay.  Peaks, now an unrecognizable homemaker, was once sued by a man who claimed he was injured by her hard breasts, but a female bailiff on "People's Court" felt them and found them to be soft (hmmm... wonder if she bid on that implant?), and Judge Ed Koch ruled they weren't dangerous to to Peaks' customers, although they probably were murder on her back.  The implant sold for $16,766 to GoldenPalace.com, the online casino that paid $28,000 for the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich (they collect things that are cheesy and make men drool.)

Boy, if you had a breast implant with the Virgin Mary on it, you could get seriously rich!

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Once again proving my point that most people obsess over age yet really know nothing about it, a poll in Britain by Nottingham University Business School found that people don't save enough for their old age partly because they think they'll die younger than they really will.  On average, people expect to live to 79, while government actuaries say the average UK lifespan has risen to 85 (Question: If nobody's saving enough money to survive in their old age, how come everyone's living so long?)

Ironically, smokers tend to think they'll live longer than they really will.  The average smoker believes he'll die three years sooner than a non-smoker, but it's really six years sooner.  Or it might be 30 years sooner, if he lights up where I'm trying to sing.

So remember, if you aren't going to save your money for your old age, better spend some of it on cigarettes.

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Giving new meaning to the phrase, "Baby Got Back,"a  Flinders University study of children in South Australia found that many girls as young as five are dissatisfied with their bodies and willing to go on a diet to slim down.  They are actually learning to count by counting calories.  28 percent of five-year-olds wish they were thinner, and it rises to 71 percent by the time they're seven years old (by the time they're eight, they think Barbie is too fat).  Ironically, researchers say it's partly because they're so terrorized by constant anti-obesity messages from government health agencies, they've become paranoid about being fat.  Next, they'll get scared about being paranoid and demand psychotropic drugs.

It's obvious what the solution to this problem is: they all need a good pilates instructor to burn off that baby fat.  And maybe a cosmetic dentist to put porcelain veneers on their baby teeth.

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Of course, it's not just five-year-olds who are under pressure to look more attractive.  South Africa's female soccer team needs to find a sponsor, so top women's sports official Ria Ledwaba told Reuters they "have to learn how to be ladies" because you sometimes can't tell if they're men or women.  To sculpt them into role models and "national assets," they'll be given lessons in etiquette, skirts and jackets to wear when traveling instead of track suits, and naturally, tighter T-shirts to wear while playing that are cut to show the shape of their breasts.  Or rather, their new Wonderbras.

Why don't they just stuff a couple of soccer balls into their T-shirts and ask Hooters to sponsor them?

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This just in: attending my show makes you live longer!

University of Maryland medical researchers report that laughter may be good for the heart in the same way that exercise is.  Volunteers were shown different movies.  Afterward, the blood flowed more freely in the vessels of comedy viewers, but was reduced in those who watched suspense movies.  They don't recommend laughing instead of exercising, but they do suggest exercising 30 minutes a day three times a week, and laughing for 15 minutes daily.

I suggest laughing at the suggestion that you spend that much time exercising.

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Finally, I always like to close with a little showbiz news.  Salma Hayek apparently hopes to repeat Charlize Theron's deglamorized path to an Oscar by uglying up to star as 280-pound real-life serial killer Martha Beck in a thriller called "Lonely Hearts." An insider said Salma won't put on all the weight, but will have some padding.  She also probably won't have any nude scenes, since her Catholic upbringing makes her want to kill herself every time she sees her breasts on screen.  That makes a lot of other women want to kill themselves, too.

Of course, rather than letting Salma Hayek risk her health by ballooning up, they could cast an actress who already weighs over 200 pounds, but I think there's a law against that in Hollywood.
 
 
 

March 13, 2005

Sorry, it's taken longer to add new stuff than I expected.  I've been very busy seeing a lot of excellent shows at the Out Of The Loop Festival that various friends are involved with.  Things should settle down soon.  Meanwhile, here are a few showbiz stories to tide you over...
 

Ozzy Osbourne's face has been looking smoother in recent months, which he claimed was a result of giving up booze and drugs.  Personally, I would've guessed it was the result of passing out facedown on a beltsander.  However, he has now confessed that he went under the plastic surgeon's knife.  His wife Sharon recently spent over $200,000 on everything from a brow lift to liposuction to fixing her downward-pointing nipples so that, as she said, "they're now pointing in the direction I want, and everything's looking up.''

Ozzy was so impressed with the uplifting results, he decided to try it himself (not the nipple thing -- as far as we know -- but he says he did have a face lift and a nose job.)  He said, "It boosted my confidence no end."  Now he looks so good, he doesn't have to give up booze and drugs!

I wonder if he calls his plastic surgeon "The Wizard of Ozzy"?

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Apparently feeling that his Miss USA and Miss Universe Pageants aren't enough of a farm club system for future wives, Donald Trump is reportedly thinking of buying the Miss America pageant. This would save it from those horrendous plans to turn it into a reality show, and he claims he would maintain the "integrity" of the contest ("Integrity" is his middle name -- it's just the one part of his name he never uses).   But an "insider" told the New York Post's Page Six that Trump would just dump the talent contest and focus solely on looks.  The source said nobody wants to see some girl tap dance or play the violin, so Trump would simply raise their high heels and shrink their swimsuits.

Maybe he should just buy the Miss Nude America pageant.  Or how about if they keep the talent contest, but everybody has to tap dance in sting bikinis?

I suppose traditionalists should be grateful if he just keeps the part where they name the five finalists, and not come out himself and personally fire the other 45.

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Sandra Bullock told Britain's Evening Standard that she keeps her youthful looks by rubbing hemorrhoid cream on her face (I recently added a joke about this practice to my act, and now everybody's going to be doing it!)  She learned the trick while filming a movie  -- turns out the "H" in "Preparation H" stands for "Hollywood."  Bullock said, "It was the most pertinent secret I learned in this job.  Bottom cream really does help against wrinkles."

Although it does give her this strange urge to blot her lipstick with toilet paper.
 
 
 

March 11, 2005

Thanks so much to everyone who came out to the show at the Out of the Loop Fest!  People who've seen it several times came up afterward and said it was the best version they'd ever seen!  They really liked the new theatrical touches, like the background video projections.  The publisher of one local paper even told me it should be an HBO special.  That made me very happy, although I don't know if I'd want to give away all the material, or add a lot of profanity.

Anyway, we are still recuperating, but I have some news stories I must share.  They'll be added later today, so check back over the weekend!  And remember, there are still lots of great shows all through the weekend at the Out of the Loop Festival, so check them out!  Back soon...
 
 

March 9, 2005

It's the night of the big show at WaterTower, and I don't have time for blogging, but I will add new stuff as soon as possible!  Hope you can all make it to the show tonight!  Please arrive by 7, to make sure you get a seat!  Thanks!  (SFX: me running off to the hairdresser...)
 

March 6, 2005

Good news: a small article about the show appeared in Friday's Park Cities People.  I'd link to it, but I don't think it's online.  Thus far, it's the only publicity we've gotten for our show Wednesday at the Out Of The Loop Festival, since the local media seem fixated on the sex shows.  I guess they figure our show is about people over 30, so it couldn't possibly involve sex -- even though it really is about sex, or at least sexual attractiveness, and I think it's more honest about the subject than a lot of the more "raw" theatrical treatments of it.

Anyway, if you've seen our show and liked it, PLEASE pass on the word to your friends and your e-mail lists!  It's Wed. Mar. 9 at WaterTower Theater in Addison.  Get there early for the slide show.  We just added some great new quotes on age and beauty and some truly horrendous historic cosmetic ads.  We've also got a great stand-up bassist, Chris Clarke, to add to the sound, and a few other surprises.

If you'll help pass the word about our show, I'll reward you with a couple of news stories...

First, UOL News reports on someone who took being a late-bloomer to a ridiculous extreme.  A law student finally graduated from La Plata University in Argentina after spending 20 years on one course.  The unnamed student also failed one subject 39 times before finally passing.  A university spokesperson said rules will be changed to prevent this in the future, and that they try "to have tolerance with students, but that was over the top!"

Now, he just has to study for the bar exam.  And when he finally passes that, 20 years from now, he'll be too old to chase ambulances, but he can always get a job as a public defender.

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A 300-year-old compendium of recipes, medicines and beauty potions found at an old British manor will be auctioned this month by Bonham's.  The sellers say it shows how far people would go for beauty, even back in the 1700s.  Among the advice: treat burns with sheep dung and goose grease...remove freckles by rubbing four-day-old lemon juice on your face...and cure pimples by chopping the heads off two puppies who've yet to open their eyes and mixing their blood with white wine.  But not red wine!  That won't work.  Trust me.  Although maybe you're supposed to rub it in, rather than drink it...

Can you believe how barbaric people used to be, just to be beautiful?  Thank God, today we only do reasonable things, like inject botulism into our faces.
 
 

March 3, 2005

Sorry about the slow rate of blog postings, but preparing for the big show next week has us run ragged.  Wednesday, we did the run-through of the show.  I think it's going to go really well, and the lighting and theatrical touches look very cool.  Unfortunately, the Dallas Observer out today completely ignores us -- we're probably not young and hip enough to get a mention on their arts calendar -- so please help us spread the word.   Take it from me: our show is worth seeing.  I've seen it a lot of times, so I know.

I do have time to post one quick item, this time from the health and beauty news:

A souvenir stand at the New Delhi, India, headquarters of the Bharatiya Janata political party, whose platform centers on the sacredness of the cow, is doing a booming business in products made from cow dung and urine.  The constipation pill is quite popular (I don't know if it cures constipation, but at least we know the cow wasn't constipated).  But the biggest seller is a "miraculous cure" for everything from PMS to diabetes, which costs $1 for a month's supply (can you get two weeks' worth for 50 cents, in case you don't live a whole month?)  Other popular products include cow dung toothpaste, skin cream, detergent, soap and a cow urine aftershave that must be the aftershave dads get every Christmas.

My question:  How bad is your breath if it's improved by cow dung toothpaste?
 
 

March 1, 2005

We're right in the middle of preparations for the Out of the Loop Festival show, so I don't have much time for blogging.  I just wanted to say that I'm sorry Annette Bening didn't win the Oscar.  I know Hillary Swank bulked up and was beaten up for "Million Dollar Baby," and I'm sure it was a great performance (haven't seen it yet); but for "Being Julia," Annette not only gave a great performance, she eschewed Botox and showed every line on her face while playing an actress in her 40s.  In Hollywood, showing your age is a tougher physical transformation than bulking up, and the beating it earns you from critics and tabloids is worse than anything Hillary faced in the ring.
 
 

Feb. 25, 2005

You might notice that this page looks a little different.  I got a very nice note from a fellow blogger at MadSpinster.com who gave me a link and a plug (I swear I'll write back, as soon as I have a spare minute!), but she had only one quibble, which was that she found the type and background hard to read.  So I had Pat make the type bigger and take it out of bold and lighten the background.  Is this clearer or worse?  (I feel like an optometrist.)  Anyway, you can't say we don't respond to suggestions around here!

Tech rehearsal for the "Out Of The Loop Festival" went great: the guys at WaterTower Theatre really know their stuff.  We just described the lighting we wanted for a song, and zip-zip-zip, there it was.  I am so excited about this show, which I think is going to look wonderful! I hope you'll be able to come see us on March 9 in Addison.  Get the full pass, which lets you into all the shows over more than a week of performances.  It's an incredible entertainment bargain, with one ticket getting you into everything from serious dramas to music to cabaret to improv comedy troups. All the info is just a click away.

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I deliberately waited one day – to cool off – before writing my comments on the one-hour Fox TV special, “Stars Without Makeup.”

It didn’t help.  I am still so furious that, as I sit here at the keyboard, I’m not sure what’s going to come out of me.

This was possibly the cruelest thing I have ever seen on TV.  (Normally, I wouldn’t choose to watch tripe like this, but since I write about age/beauty obsession, I felt obligated to check it out, barf bag in hand.)  Sure, the tabloids run pictures like these all the time, and websites exploit bad facelifts and celebrity cellulite, and I myself have been known to good-naturedly razz celebrities about truly over-the-top plastic surgery and Botox, but seeing this show on network TV, with its unbelievably snide attitude, made me want to cry.  Now I understand why celebrities despise the paparazzi.

I always tell my audience that, for the most part, I go easy on actresses because they face so much pressure to “keep young and beautiful.”  Before a big red-carpet event like the Oscars, they spend days, not to mention many thousands of dollars, making sure every square centimeter of them stands up to the closest scrutiny.  They are going to be picked apart!  The one-of-a-kind designer gowns!  The jewels!  The lean, shapely bodies!  The gorgeous hair!  The impossibly radiant skin!  The foreheads that miraculously don’t scowl, even in the bright afternoon sun!  We expect our celebrities to look perfect.

But they can’t win.  Once they’ve given us the perfect images we demand, we just can’t stand it that they’re so beautiful and pampered and ultra-rich, so we have to take them down.

WAY down.

So what this show does is contrast the glamorous red-carpet looks of top Hollywood gods and goddesses (mostly goddesses, of course) with horribly unflattering and sometimes downright frightening candid shots of them in sweat pants and no makeup.  The show works very hard to present them in the worst possible light, both literally and figuratively.

There’s a close-up of Britney Spears’ blemished cheek, reminding us of her bad skin, when she herself has talked about her dermatological woes and has even endorsed a line of products for troubled skin.  And never mind that her skin might be clear now; some of the pictures in this show go back a loooooong time.

There’s a picture of beautiful Debra Messing, carrying some extra weight after just giving birth.  The male announcer (note:  MALE ANNOUNCER) makes some comment like (I’m paraphrasing) “Most new mothers like to lose their excess weight after the baby comes.”

Models have a segment all their own.  There’s a picture of Rachel Hunter having what they call a “bad hair day,” when actually she still looks pretty good.  They try to make Cindy Crawford and Tyra Banks look bad, but the worst you can say is that they look unglamorous.  (How dare they look unglamorous!  They’re supposed to look like the cover of Vogue every minute of every day!)  The pictures of Jeri Hall are extremely unkind.  The treatment of Cheryl Tiegs is just mean; these pictures catch her in light that would be unflattering to anyone.  They’re nasty to Lauren Hutton, too, with a photo that was snapped just as she was putting a forkful of food into her mouth.

Celebrities be warned:  you better not eat in public.  Ever.  It gives the paparazzi too many opportunities to take sloppy pictures of you.

There’s a segment just on the stars of “Desperate Housewives.”  They try to make these women look ugly, but it really doesn’t work; they just look dressed-down and are obviously snapped in unflattering light.  They admit they couldn’t find a really bad shot of Eva Longoria (coincidentally, the relatively youthful member of the cast), but that doesn’t stop them from making her look terrible:  they do a forensic-style age progression on her to show how terrible she might look in her 40s and 50s.  So now we know, Eva Longoria will metamorphose into a matronly Italian grandmother with salt-and-pepper hair.  Yes, I’m sure that’s exactly how she’ll look.

Excuse me -- I have to stop writing now and pound my desk and scream for a few minutes.

Okay.  Speaking of age progressions, they did these on other stars, too, such as Jessica Simpson.  For some reason, they decided that she will be a fat old lady.  The one vaguely interesting age progression was done on Michael Jackson, to show what he might look like as a mature man if he hadn’t had any plastic surgery or skin bleaching.  But for some reason, they speculate that Michael would become fat, too.  Wouldn’t he still be keeping himself bone-thin, with or without plastic surgery?

Speaking of weight, they do include one segment on out-of-shape actors in the show, although the announcer introduces it by saying “Men aren’t under the same pressures…”   It focuses almost exclusively on their broadening girth, featuring portly thespians such as William Shatner (whom I absolutely adore, by the way, on “Boston Legal”), Alec Baldwin, Don Johnson (another unfair “face-stuffing” picture), and Ryan O’Neill, who admittedly should’ve known what was coming when he appeared on the beach in that wet t-shirt.

By far the worst part of this show is the lead-in to commercials.  They feature an extreme close-up of some unattractive body part, and ask, “What famous actress does this belong to?  The answer when we return.”  They use an eye with lots of wrinkles around it, a saggy cheek, some fat hanging over low-cut pants, and a bulky bicep.  (Since that one isn’t purely nasty but actually kind of interesting, I’ll reveal the owner of the enormous bicep:  Tonya Harding.  She apparently has gotten into boxing, and quite possibly into steroids.)

This show makes stunningly crass comments about celebrities who dare to show any sign of aging.  Under a less-than-flattering picture of Martha Stewart, the announcer intones, “Someday, as with all homemade projects, the glue stops holding.”  A harshly-lit picture of Celine Dion that emphasizes every line in her face accompanies the words, “Just a weekend in Vegas can take a lot out of you.”

The show also features video footage of numerous stars flipping off the paparazzi and yelling obscenities at them.  After seeing this show, I can only sympathize with the celebrities.  I think they should do whatever they have to do to protect their privacy.  (Bjork actually physically attacks them here; I think I just became a Bjork fan.)  And when the celebrities yell at the photographers, “How do you sleep at night?” I have to wonder the same thing myself.

At the end of the hour, the sneering announcer concludes with something like, “When you take away their Harry Winston jewels, their Vera Wang gowns, their (etc.)…..they’re just regular folks…with seven-digit bank accounts.”

It makes me wonder how much filthy lucre the producers pocketed for creating this inexcusable pile of trash.

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To wash that show out of our brains, here's some happier news to ponder:

In a suggestion that drew Snickers, British chocolate makers, citing the health benefits of chocolate for women, are demanding the National Health Service provide it for free, like a drug.  They say chocolate protects the heart, cuts mood swings, and helps reduce symptoms of depression and PMS (maybe they could pay for it out of the violence prevention budget).  One chocolatier said chocolate should be covered by the NHS because it could be used as a substitute for Prozac.  And it's true, some people do pop Prozac just like M&Ms.

I've never been a big fan of government health care, but this could possibly convert me.

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A survey by Britain's Employers Forum on Age disputes some workplace ageism myths.  According to this survey, the worst victims of ageism are teenagers, who change jobs not out of disloyalty but because they're given boring duties and no respect (probabyl because of the dorky paper hats they have to wear).  Workers in their 30s are supposedly in their best decade for promotions and achievement, but many feel pressured and burned out and are actually thinking about how they can work less and still afford retirement.  Meanwhile, people in their 60s aren't sitting around waiting to retire, but are the best workers of all: they're the happiest and most content in their jobs and the least likely to want to quit.

But, of course, they have to be forced out at 65 so their work can be piled onto the 30-year-olds.

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Researcher Jeremy Mao of the University of Illinois in Chicago has created natural breast implants that could hold up better than artificial ones.  He used human stem cells to grow fat tissue, molded it using a hydrogel scaffolding, and implanted it into lab mice.  After four weeks, the implants had maintained their size and shape.  He said that within a decade, they could replace saline and silicone breast implants.  Also, within two years, mice will be working at Hooters.

Now, this is progress!  First they find a way to make government health care popular, and now they've found an argument for funding stem cell research that everyone can support!  Everyone except people who've already had so much plastic surgery, their stem cells are made of silicone, that is.

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Speaking of women's bilds, Bild newspaper reports that Italian sexologist Piero Lorenzoni claims he can tell a woman's personality by the size and shape of her breasts, much like astrology (actually, more like astrology than he realizes).  He's categorized women's breasts by fruits: for instance, he says women with small ("cherry") breasts are funny, exciting, intelligent, and moderately interested in sex (if you can line up three in a row, you can hit the jackpot).  Women with "oranges" like conversation and partnerships, but have little interest in sex.  "Grapefruit" women may look erotic, but are bashful and prefer tenderness over sex (I know this theory sounds pretty fruity, but imagine the fun he had researching it).  And women with melon breasts like eating and being spoiled and admired, "but seldom like sex."  Did he study any "melon" women other than Anna Nicole Smith?

So I guess the bad news for men is that the bigger the breasts, the less they like sex.  Or maybe it's just that none of the women were very interested in sex with a guy who judges their personalities by their breast size.  Maybe he's just insecure because he has a baby banana.

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Finally, the New York Post's Page Six reports that in the next Harper's Bazaar, "Sex and the City" creator Candace Bushnell advises women to attract men by trying not to be too hot-looking.  She says men fantasize about super-sexy Victoria's Secret lingerie models, "but are secretly terrified to have (them) in the house on a daily basis" (their wings would be constantly knocking over the lamps.)  She says, "Pretty is achievable.  Pretty is what men like."  She suggests dressing like a housewife or wearing a caftan.  I suspect men would prefer that you dress like a Desperate Housewife.

Still, I can see how Candace formulated this theory.  After all, the women on "Sex & The City" dressed very sexily, and we all know they never seemed to attract any men.  Who knows; maybe just before we saw Samantha doing one of her acrobatic nude sex scenes, she'd just whipped off her caftan.
 
 
 

Feb. 22, 2005

Tech rehearsal for the WaterTower show on March 9 is tonight, so I only have a few minutes, but I must mention Monday's "Oprah" show.  It was all about women who had let themselves go, then decided to do something about it, and they now look (and feel) much younger than their actual ages.  One was a mom who gets mistaken for her college-age son's girlfriend, another was a woman who was out of shape 10 years ago and is now winning bikini fitness contests.  The great thing about the show was that, aside from a little plug for Restylane, there were no extreme plastic surgery makeovers involved.  All the women looked much younger than they used to thanks to things like switching to a healthy diet, exercise, changing their hair and makeup, choosing more flattering clothing, etc.  It was all accomplished without the need for a scalpel.  Even the Restylane demonstration included a pitch for doing that instead of having your face surgically tightened. Who knows, maybe if this trend keeps up, someday, our movie stars will start to resemble humans again.

One quick quote before I have to run, this time from Chris Rock on "The Tonight Show," after he noticed that now that he's nearing 40, he's not called a "young comic" anymore:
 

             "The only time you're still called 'young' when you're 40
            is if you die at 40 or you're dating Cher."
 
 
 

Feb. 21, 2005

From the "Wishful Thinking" file comes this story in USA Today about women over 40 in Hollywood.  I'll have something to say about this when I have more time (tech rehearsal for the Out of the Loop Festival is tomorrow, and I'm swamped), but it's a long read, so get a jump by checking it out yourself.

Another more serious story to check out: Singapore is cracking down on misleading plastic surgery advertising.  Nice to see that somebody somewhere is.

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Actress Keira Knightley has topped an In Touch magazine survey to find the female celebrity with the best abs.  She beat out such hardbodies as Jennifer Garner, Serena Williams and Jennifer Lopez, although this probably marks the first time anyone's looked high enough to see J.Lo's mid-section.   This big loser here is Janet Jackson, who used to be famous for her washboard abs until her wardrobe malfunction made everyone forget that she had any other body parts.

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Cocktail waitresses at the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa in Atlantic City were warned (probably by a bloated boss who looks like Tony Soprano) that if they gain more than 7 percent of their body weight, they'll be suspended without pay for three months (that should help them stop eating.)  Then, if they don't slim down, they will be fired, unless they have a medical condition or are pregnant.

Or unless the extra weight is due to getting huge breast implants.

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Finally, Newsweek reports that a study by England's University of Exeter found that when two images, one of an attractive face and one of a plain face, were placed in front of infants, the babies spent 80 percent of their time looking at the pretty one.  Researchers said it shows we might be wired from before birth to prefer attractive people, so women shouldn't get mad when men are distracted by a pretty face because they can't help it.

Because, after all, men are infants.
 
 
 
 

Feb. 18, 2005

Last night's "Entertainment Tonight" was furiously flacking a Fox TV special that airs next Thursday Feb. 24 called "Stars Without Makeup."  It looks like a cheapie production that just televises a bunch of those horrible, intrusive tabloid photos I'm always complaining about, where someone with a telephoto lens catches some poor actress trying to take the garbage out or something, then they harp on and on about how bad she looks (of course, the usual drift is HOW OLD she looks.)  As if being a celebrity means that every time you go outside (or even get near a window in your own house), you have to be wearing a Kevin Aucoin-style $5000 makeup job suitable for strolling down the red carpet at the Oscars.

As much as I hate these things, I have to admit there may be one upside: perhaps seeing these stars without their makeup will undo some of the damage done to more impressionable girls (and women) who take drastic measures like bulimia or extreme plastic surgery in a futile effort to look like the perfect women in magazines and movies.  It might show them how much of that perfect beauty comes from the artistry of makeup geniuses and hairstyling experts.  And of course, in this age of PhotoShop, the models in magazines aren't just perfectly made-up, coiffed, lighted, posed and retouched; chances are, they don't even exist in real life, at least not in the form you see on the page.  These days, bulges can be smoothed, wrinkles removed, and breasts inflated, all with the click of a mouse key.  Playboy even recently did a nude spread on the "virtual women" of video games, all of whom were completely computer- generated, and they were indistinguishable from the Playmate of the Month, who was equally computer-generated.

And as technology marches on, even moving pictures can now be altered.  For instance, I saw "Being Julia" last week (a wonderful movie, by the way; you should see it and Annette Bening should win an Oscar).  In most of the movie, Annette bravely showed every wrinkle as a middle-aged grande dame of London theatre in the 1930s and looked gorgeous; but for a brief early scene set when she was 20, she had nary a line, probably due to the miracle of digital effects being used to erase two decades from her face.

Now, if they could just find a way to fix our faces digitally in real life, we'd all look like the people in movies and magazines.  But trust me, that's what it would take.

By the way, when I run the networks, there will be a special called "Network TV Executives Without Their Toupees!"
 
 
 

Feb. 17, 2005

A little personal addendum to yesterday's story about older doctors not being as good as younger doctors:

I suffered for several years with a serious inner ear disorder called Meniere's Disease that caused violent attacks of vertigo.  It forced me to seriously curtail my stage work and was one of the inspirations for "My Ship Has Sailed," particularly the message that "life doesn't happen on a timetable."  Anyway, I dealt with this problem for years, going through doctors who couldn't help me or didn't even know what my problem was.  I feared it would just worsen year after year.  And then, an acquaintance in radio who had the same condition told me about a great specialist at UT Southwestern Medical Center who had a somewhat risky but promising treatment.  I agreed to try it -- and it fixed my unfixable problem!&nnbsp; That's why I'm able to be back on stage performing today.

The kicker: I was the very last patient that doctor saw before he retired.

Maybe there's something to be said for age and experience in a doctor, after all.

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Speaking of age and medicine, here's a story that explains how both Dracula and Keith Richards have managed to stay alive for 500 years:

Stanford University researchers -- probably young ones -- have discovered that young blood helps keep you alive.  The scientists said the aging process may have less to do with the organs themselves than with the fact that they're being fed by tired blood (was this study paid for by Geritol?)   When an old mouse was hooked up to the bloodstream of a young mouse, its liver improved and its muscles recovered faster.  But when old blood was pumped into a young mouse, its muscle recovery time became longer.  And it wanted to do nothing but sit and watch "JAG."

Hmm, stealing the blood of the young keeps you young... Say, maybe this is the real reason Michael Jackson invites children for sleepovers.

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I'll leave you with a couple of quotes from last night's TV shows.  First of all, here's an attitude I'm hoping to eradicate, from a rejected "American Idol" contestant (and sadly, one of the good ones) who thinks his professional life is over:
 

            "I really, really wanted to be a part of this journey,
            because I'm 28 and this is it for me."
 

And now, because I prefer to leave on a high note, I discovered last night that Tom Selleck is one of the rare devotees of the philosophy I espouse in my show that you should never tell your age because it allows people to pigeonhole you.  Selleck told Conan O'Brien:
 

            "I'd prefer to be an actor of indeterminate age,
          somewhere between Johnny Depp and death."
 

That sounds to me like a pretty good place to be.
 
 
 

Feb. 16, 2005

It's hard enough fighting ageism without having Harvard Medical School joining the opposition, but that happened Tuesday with the release of a controversial new study on doctors which claims that the "Marcus Welby" idea of the old doctor knowing more than the young whipper- snapper is a myth (and I'll bet the young doctor isn't even old enough to know the word "whippersnapper.")

The study found that the longer doctors have been out of medical school, the less likely they are to be up on the latest advances.  One study found that heart attack patients were 10 percent more likely to die under the care of a doctor 20 years out of med school than with a recent graduate (In fact, the only reason your old doctor lived so long is that he has a young doctor.)  Still, many people say they are put off by a doctor who looks too young.  This is known as "Doogie Howser Syndrome."

Say what you will about older doctors, but when it comes to a bedside manner, I still get the impression that George Clooney is more skilled than Noah Wylie.

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Here's a fun article for fans of body dysmorphic disorder:  It's about all the hot actresses who are under so much pressure to be thin (i.e., "beautiful"), they would have to form a huddle to cast a shadow.  It includes a scary photo of Mary-Kate Olsen, along with the good news that after being treated for anorexia, she has gained 10 pounds.  Judging from the photo, that means she must now weigh about...10 pounds.  There are also lots of quotes from celebrity walking X-rays, such as Brittany Murphy, Kelly Ripa and the under-100-pounds Sarah Jessica Parker, all of whom happily deny that they have any eating disorders and insist they are perfectly healthy and just naturally have the slim, sexy physique of an Aushwitz survivor.

Well, there is one actress who admits to having an eating problem.  That's Jane Fonda, who this week finally admitted that she has battled bulimia for 35 years.  That means she spent all the time between 1970 and this week denying that she had an eating disorder.

But I'm sure she's the only one...
 
 

Feb. 15, 2005

Hope you all had a romantic Valentine's Day!  Sorry to go so long without posting, but I've been swamped, between the show, my regular work, the holiday and having to write a column for Companion Parrot Quarterly.  It's also been a slow news weekend, but I do have a couple of amusing items for you...

First, Kylie Minogue's rear end, which went into a brief retirement but couldn't resist the spotlight (or the moonlight) and bounced back into public view, is now going back into retirement.  Kylie has decided that she's now too old for hot pants and wants to enter a new phase of life, like becoming a mother or at least being less of a public ass.  I'll leave it up to you to decide whether her caboose is really ready for the rocking chair.  That link is to the London Sun, which has provided the type of tasteful photo you would expect from a British tabloid, and it will enable you to inspect the subject at hand in minute detail and get right to the bottom of this.

(Incidentally, I now have a wonderful P.R. agent named Kelly Kitchens, but I can't help being a little envious of Kylie Minogue's butt's P.R. agent.  It must have a better flack than Kylie herself, since it gets a lot more publicity.  Notice that this article doesn't have a photo of Kylie's face.)
 

I'll leave you with a great quote from Dana Carvey, who was on "The Tonight Show" Monday night, talking to Jay Leno about how he's trying to take great care of his health after surgeons fixed a heart problem that could have killed him.  Carvey said (corrected on 2/22):

               "Thirteen is the new 18, fifty is the new 40, and
            I can't wait until 'dead' is the new 'alive.'"
 
 
 

Feb. 11, 2005

As I point out in my show, our society is so age-obsessed that Botox purveyors are now suggesting high school girls have Botox parties because they'll never get wrinkles if they never make those pesky human facial expressions that cause wrinkles (or any facial expressions, for that matter).  Well, here's a little more proof, as if we needed it:

Scarlett Johansson told Britain's You magazine that she feels under incredible pressure to stay young looking.   She said, "Everybody in Hollywood is so damn beautiful.  It's hard not to feel under pressure...I have an obsessive character.  I manicure my nails at three in the morning because nobody else can do it right." She added that she is already using anti-aging products.  She is 20 years old.

But she can pass for 19!

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And guess who else is terrified of looking old? That ancient, decrepit hag, Paris Hilton.  It seems that she only acts as if she's on drugs: she told British Glamour magazine that she likes to stay out all night dancing and having fun, but she doesn't do drugs or drink alcohol because girls who do that end up looking "haggard and old" (so do girls who don't get enough sleep, a lesson Scarlett should learn as well, but never mind.)  Paris said she won't drink anything stronger than a Red Bull because "I like my young face.  I don't want to look old."

She likes the way her face looks so much, she never changes her expression.  Oh well, that would just cause wrinkles anyway.
 
 
 

Feb. 10, 2005

I'm still getting over my bafflement and fury that the first person rejected on "American Idol" last night was William Blake!  Pat and I know him and have seen him in a number of shows around town.  This kid has an AMAZING singing voice, and they didn't even give him a chance!  We were looking forward to watching him advance to the finals and possibly even win, and then they let him sing one line and a few backup vocals and sent him home, keeping dozens of people who can't hold a candle to him!  Some of them couldn't even remember their lyrics, despite having sat through "Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch" approximately 400 times before it was their turn to sing it.

Oh, well, Hollywood's loss is Dallas' gain, and he's so talented, we're sure he'll find success in some less formulaic and more creative forum.  I recently read a columnist (sorry, can't remember who it was) who observed that "AI" is trying to line up some major celebrity judges, such as Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger, the type of people who have made the biggest contributions to pop and rock music over the past 30 years.  In other words, the type of people who couldn't have gotten past the auditions on "American Idol."

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As long as I'm in a cranky mood, I might as well direct you to this story, from the British edition of Good Housekeeping.  It's another one of those annoying things where they pick the sexiest celebrity OF THEIR AGE.  For instance, Kylie Minogue is the sexiest thirtysomething; the sexiest woman in her forties was Elle Macpherson; Joanna Lumley of "Absolutely Fabulous" was the sexiest fiftysomething; Catherine Deneuve topped the sixties category; and the sexiest seventysomething was Honor Blackman, who played Pussy Galore in "Dr. No."

I'll bet Elle Macpherson is thrilled to hear that she's still sexy for her age.  Personally, what I think would be absolutely fabulous is if I never had to read another one of these stupid stories that put people in little boxes divided by age and judge them accordingly.

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I want to leave you on a positive note, so here's the feel-good story of the day:

A young mugger in Halberstadt, Germany, approached 88-year-old Gerhard Brinkmann and demanded his wallet and watch.  But he'd picked the wrong victim: Brinkmann was the 1936 German lightweight boxing champ and a friend of Max Schmeling.  He said, "I told him to come closer if he wanted it, and as he did I landed a full-force right hook on his chin.  He remained unconscious for a short while and I called the police, but he pulled himself up and fled before they got here."  He added, "Unfortunately, I can't run like I used to," or he would have chased the punk down.  He also can't punch like he used to, or the punk would still be unconscious.

Next month, he'll be fighting Mike Tyson...and he'll probably win.
 
 
 

Feb. 9, 2005

Not much to report today, except that Rebecca Mitchell of Monette, Arkansas, celebrated her 105th birthday Tuesday.  Her secret: product placement!  She said she's been drinking one Pepsi-Cola every day "for a long, long time," which finally helps us to define just what "the Pepsi Generation" is.

She likes the slogan, "Pepsi: For those who think young!"  Just think, if she drank two Pepsis a day, she'd be immortal!
 
 

Feb. 8, 2005

The major point of my show is that our society is plagued with rampant ageism that is so universally accepted that nobody feels enough shame even to try to hide it.  We are currently seeing a prime example of that in the reaction to the Super Bowl halftime show with Paul McCartney.

I watched the halftime show -- in fact, not caring for sports, it was the only part of the broadcast I did watch -- and I thought it was terrific. ; Paul still sounded as good as ever, and even sang in the same high key (the same key as me, in fact!)  He played four classic songs, he actually sang and played live, younger viewers got to see what an actual musical talent looks and sounds like, and everyone bounced up and down and sang along and seemed to have a wonderful time without having to endure filthy lyrics and semi-nudity.  End of story?  Not by a longshot.

All day Monday, I kept hearing commentators, from radio sportscasters to David Letterman, ridiculing Paul McCartney for being "an old guy," doing songs that might've pleased the old fogies but must've just bored hip young viewers.

Okay, here's a news flash, all you smug arbiters of what's hip and cool:  the songs Paul did have lasted for 30+ years not because of nostalgia but because they are GREAT SONGS! People tend to forget because the "wardrobe malfunction" overshadowed the fact, but last year, Janet Jackson also performed a "song," if you can call it that.  It was brand new, if that impresses you, but it was also computer-programmed, tuneless, witless, vulgar, cliched, over-produced, and lip-synched.  Oh, but it was new, so it must've pleased the young squirts more than old Paulie could, right?

Guess again: Janet's latest CD, from which that utterly forgettable track was pulled, is currently ranked #5,028 in Internet sales at Amazon.com.  The Beatles' CD "#1's" is ranked #17.  In fact, I'd be willing to bet that far more people under 25 bought Beatles CDs in 2004 than bought Janet's CD.

Maybe the ability to recognize quality music isn't a function of age, but a mark of taste and intelligence.  No wonder so many of our current arbiters of hipness don't possess it.

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Now that that's out of my system, here are a few news stories for you to ponder...

The A.P. reports that the growing trend is for people to save big money by getting plastic surgery done across the border in Mexican clinics.  If the phrase "Discount Mexican Facelift" sounds appealing to you, then you need to forget about the Mexican plastic surgery clinic and check yourself into a nice American mental hospital.

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In a survey of British TV viewers, George Clooney and Sandra Bullock were named the world's most attractive people in their 40s, edging out Brad Pitt and Teri Hatcher.  The link takes you to a list of all the finalists, complete with helpful parenthetical ages after their names, none of which I will repeat.  Personally, I don't know why they make lists like this, because who cares that Tom Cruise and Sharon Stone are over 40?  Does that make them less appealing or put them into some special category?  It seems that just as people get old enough to really become interesting, Hollywood sticks them in a box labeled "sexy for their age."  As if anyone stuck in a box with Mel Gibson or Heather Locklear is going to complain.

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West Hollywood, California, Mayor John Duran, who introduced America's first ordinance banning cat declawing in 2003, has introduced a new bill to ban plastic surgery on pets, which will make dogs and cats the only creatures in Hollywood that have not been fixed.  Duran said the declawing ban was just the first step in addressing animal cruelty, and the new law would ban all "noncurative" cosmetic surgeries on pets, including bobbing their tails, cropping their ears and pulling their fangs.  Coincidentally, those are all things that people have to get done to themselves before they can even move to Hollywood.

Don't worry, if your shar pei desperately wants a facelift so it can look like an Afghan hound, you can always take it to a cheap Mexican plastic surgery clinic.
 
 
 

Feb. 7, 2005

UPDATE!  Just found out that tonight at nine, the WB-33 News will air a story on plastic surgery addiction, which is Oprah's topic tomorrow.  I fear that TV reporters may be getting addicted to stories about plastic surgery addiction.

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We were really busy over the weekend, with no time for blogging.  Friday, Pat and I checked out WaterTower Theater's Main Stage to see if our video projector will work, since we want to add some more visual elements to the show on March 9 (it will work, with some tweaking.)  We also saw the current show there, "A Country Life," (an American adaptation of Chekov's "Uncle Vanya").  And Sunday, we attended Flower Mound Performing Arts Theater's romantic musical/comedy revue, "Adventures In Love."  Since I've just been made a Leon Rabin Awards nominator, I'm not allowed to comment publicly on my opinions of the shows, but I can suggest that you follow the links to learn more -- and support local theater!

Anyway, here are a couple of items that might be of interest:

Mark your calendars for tomorrow (Tuesday) when Oprah's guest will be a plastic surgery addict.  No, it's not Michael Jackson, it's a white woman.  Although, come to think of it, that doesn't rule out Michael Jackson.

Last Tuesday's Dallas Morning News (sorry, I've been so busy, the papers have stacked up, and I only got to them over the weekend) featured an article in the Living section about feminist author Suzanne Braun Levine and her book, Inventing the Rest of Our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood.  A former Ms editor now writing for More magazine, her theory is that age 50 is when our "second adulthood" begins; that with child-bearing and rearing over and longer lifespans, women are now really coming into their own and finding their voices at 50.  Read the article for yourself (if the Morning News website requires registration you don't want to give or the article has already gone into their paid archives, there's lots of info about the book at the Amazon.com book link).

"Second adulthood" sounds like an intriguing concept, although I think that second childhood sounds like a lot more fun.  I already tried being an adult once, and I didn't like it at all.
 
 

Feb. 4, 2005

QUICK UPDATE!  Just found this great article about Gloria Steinem.  Apparently, her latest crusade is fighting ageism and getting women to pursue their dreams at any age!   She says that she used to lie about her age, but  when she turned 40, she decided to come clean and announce her real age:
 

        When a reporter told her, "you don't look 40," Steinem shot back: "This is
        what 40 looks like. We've been lying so long, who would know?"
        Her comment was quoted so often "it made me realize that there really
        was an age problem for women"...
 

Of course, she could have taken my advice and just refused to give her age.   But I digress.
Another sample quote:
 

        Steinem calls aging "the greatest adventure of our lives."
        "Think, "What do I do that when I'm doing it I forget what time it is? What is
        there  that I don't care whether I get paid for or not? What is it that I'm really
        motivated and excited by?' And do that."
 

They also note that she still wears her tight jeans and long hair at 70 (she insists on giving her age, so I guess I can mention it), and they quote a younger female punk rock musician as saying:
 

        "Maybe it's sexist to talk about what she looks like, but Jesus, she's a fox...
        I think part of that comes from keeping things interesting in your life and
       still having this glow about you."
 

If anyone knows how to contact Gloria Steinem, please let me know.  I want to send her a DVD!  She's finally starting to sound like me, except she's not telling jokes and singing opera parodies.  That latter part is probably a good thing.

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I hope you saw "Prime Time Live" on ABC last night.  It had horrifying stories about people being injected with industrial silicone and undiluted botoxin, and graphically showed the dangers of not finding someone qualified and trustworthy to handle even the simplest, most common cosmetic procedures.  I'll have more to say on that when I have time to write it up.

Meanwhile, here's a quickie just for fun:

Scarlett Johansson says she's sorry she told a newspaper last year that she enjoys the company of her older male co-stars, such as Bill Murray and John Travolta.  Asked if she'd date an older man, she said, "A guy who's 40, 50 or 60 years old...why not?  I don't think that you can control who you fall in love with."

Apparently, her meaning got lost in translation because she claims that ever since, "It's horrible," that only "balding men with giant guts" ask her out.  (Jack Nicholson, leave that girl alone!)  She pleaded, "Young men can feel free to seduce me."

Sorry, Scarlett: Ashton Kutcher prefers much  older women.
 
 
 

Feb. 3, 2005

Catching up on a couple of stories I didn't have time to post last week because I was too busy getting ready for the Django show...

Harvard researchers may have discovered the secret to an active sex life for older women: borrow a younger woman's armpit sweat.   In the study, 22 post-menopausal women were given a perfume containing a natural "sexual attractant" pheromone that's found in the armpit sweat of young women, but levels fall after menopause.  22 other women were given a placebo perfume.  Those wearing the younger woman's armpit sweat reported a 41 percent increase in kissing and petting by their partners, compared to a 14 percent increase among the placebo group; and a 68 percent increase in sex, compared to 41 percent of those wearing plain perfume  (Hey, try the placebo!  It worked pretty well!)

Still, I have the feeling the women would've enjoyed all that sex more if the men hadn't  smelled like old guys' armpit sweat.

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Paying Through The Nose Dept:   As if going through an extreme makeover weren't taxing enough, the Washington State Legislature is considering a proposal to tax cosmetic surgery procedures, just like other services that are used by the affluent, such as ski lift tickets and tanning salons.  Co-sponsor Jeanne Kohl-Welles claims it's an attempt to level the "net worth playing field" for taxes, because in most cases, people who choose have elective plastic  surgery "are some that have some degree of affluence or at least (are) able to afford it."  Or who were almost able to afford it, until they taxed it.

Personally, I am adamantly opposed to this!  What decade are these legislators living in, that they think only wealthy dowagers are getting their faces lifted and their thighs roto-rootered? If they ever even glanced at my little blog, they'd know that plastic surgery is booming because so many average people have started to worry about their looks and think they have to be young and attractive to keep their jobs.  Lower middle class Americans are forgoing new cars and vacations and taking out home equity loans to pay for plastic surgery.  This wouldn't be a tax on the Beautiful People, it would be a tax on the Wanna-Be-Beautiful-People!

I could see California taxing plastic surgery, since it would pay off the entire state deficit, but if anyone in Texas ever tried it, I'd be happy to join in the revolt.  We could all dress up like Cher during her Indian phase and dump boxes of silicone implants into the Houston harbor.
 
 

Feb. 2, 2005

Sorry to go so long between updates, but we've been very busy and totally wiped out from the weekend.   First of all, thanks to everyone who came out to Django on Sunday!  There were old friends who've seen the show before, and lots of wonderful new people whom I met after the show.  A lot of media people, too, and I've been doing interviews for some stories I'll tell you about when they appear.  I thought the show went very well, aside from a minor microphone malfunction at the end of the song, "Invisible," which left me inaudible.  Still, it's better than a wardrobe malfunction.

Also, thanks to Michael Gott for inviting me to sing at the Tsunami benefit concert on Friday.  That was a wonderful show, with some of the most talented musical artists in Dallas, ranging from folk and New Age singers to people like Michael and me, who lean more toward cabaret and standards.  I wore a sexy but sophisticated black gown I just picked up on sale at Cache and did a salute to Cole Porter, singing "My Heart Belongs To Daddy" and one of my favorite obscure but hilarious songs from 1929, "The Tale of the Oyster."  Michael said the only other person he'd ever heard sing it was Julie Wilson, and he was amazed that I knew it.  That's one of the benefits of being married to a record collector.  I knew it because Pat has it on an album of Porter obscurities that had a great version by Kaye Ballard, and he put it into a fundraising vaudeville show he once wrote and which we both appeared in.

We haven't scheduled another Django show yet because we're so busy getting ready for the BIG ONE: the Main Stage show at WaterTower Theater's Out Of The Loop Festival on March 9!  If you'd like to see the show in a great, non-smoking theater setting, here is your chance!  Wake the kids and call the neighbors and tell them all to come see us!  We may also schedule a quick show in a smaller venue for a warmup/media preview.  More on that soon, if it comes together.

And now, some news from the age and beauty front...
 

In another shocking study from the journal "Duh," the National Institutes of Health found that the part of the brain that inhibits risky behavior and gives people what parents call "common sense" is not fully formed until age 25.  Researchers say this may be why teenagers, whose reflexes and eyesight should make them the world's best drivers, are actually the most dangerous.  And I thought it was because they were blasting rap music and having sex while driving.

The lead researcher said this probably serves an evolutionary purpose by preparing young people to leave their families and fend for themselves without wasting energy worrying about the risks.  Or it might make them keep living at home until they're 25, oblivious to the risk that dad might kill them.

None of this answers the big question:  If older people have all the common sense, why do they let teenagers drive at all?

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Meet my new hero:  Nie Sanmei, a 78-year-old grandmother from Changsha, China, locked herself out of her apartment.  Neighbors urged her to call her daughter to bring a key, but she ignored them and started climbing up the side of the building (she's a regular Hunan fly).  She got stuck on the fourth floor, when she couldn't get around an air conditioner.  She waved away rescuers, telling them, "I'm close to the balcony," but when her daughter arrived with the key, she finally let them put a rope on her and lower her down.  She later said she hopes others don't follow her example, adding, "I must have been drunk."

That must be why my own granny always used to tell me, "Never climb a building when you're drunk."  Those researchers who say that people over 25 develop the ability to resist risky behavior need to spend a little time hanging out with Nie Sanmei, if their hearts can stand it.
 

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Teri Hatcher is the latest "Desperate Housewife" to be desperate to squelch whispers that she's had plastic surgery.  Teri slammed rumors that her breasts are fake, saying she wants to be known for her acting talent and not just her looks.  Wow, she is a good actress if she can say that with a straight face!

She added that there's been so much hysteria surrounding her boobs, "I think they should have been cast in bronze at some point."  Of course, the rumor is that they feel as if they have been.  But as any "Seinfeld" fan knows, "they're real...and they're spectacular!"

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As long as we're on Hollywood, let's finish off with a few Tinseltown quickies...

The Santa Barbara, California, Film Festival gave Leonardo DiCaprio its lifetime achievement award, which he said was "utterly surreal, given I'm only 30 years old."  But in Hollywood, that's at least two lifetimes.  Besides, when you look that much like a fashion model, they treat you like one.

Cindy Crawford, the first supermodel to pose nude for Playboy, has turned down an offer to pose for a third pictorial.  She first posed in 1989, then again in 1999.  But she said she's now a 38-year-old mother of two, her son Presley is five, and it's not worth risking him getting hassled by his friends over his mom being in Playboy.  I'd suggest she just wait until he's 13, and then he'll be the most popular kid in school.  And by the way, if she didn't want him to be teased by the other kids, why did she name him "Presley"?

Finally, Paula Abdul announced plans to resurrect her singing career after this season of "American Idol" ends.  I wonder if she'd be willing to risk standing in front of Simon Cowell and singing acapella to see if she's got the goods.  Oh wait, what am I thinking?  She can't be a singer!  She's over 40!  Forget it!
 
 
 

Jan. 26, 2005

This just in:  I will be taking a break from preparing for Sunday's Django show to do a song or two this Friday at a concert to help tsunami victims.  It's being organized by my amazingly talented singer/pianist friend, Michael Gott, (of the Mansion Bar) at 7:30 pm at the Center for Spiritual Living, 13610 Midway Road, just north of LBJ.  There is no admission charge, just a donation gets you in, and it should be a great show.  For a map, visit their website.

Also, here's a great tip for anyone who likes to be alerted to performing arts events you might otherwise miss. There is a spamless e-mail list called CANotice that sends out free weekly bulletins of all the local events scheduled by members of its arts group cooperative.  We are new members, and the others range from local chamber music groups, orchestras and choirs to theater companies, opera and dance troupes, and many more.  It was created to help promote all types of performing arts in the North Texas area.  If you are in the arts, you should be a member; or if you enjoy attending any arts performances, you should definitely be on the mailing list.  Just contact David Witherspoon at d-witherspoon@ti.com and he will add you.
 

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E! Online reports that Michael Douglas is planning another sequel to his 1980s hit, "Romancing the Stone," but it will co-star hot young Indian actress Aishwarya Rai instead of Kathleen Turner.  Kathleen is now MUCH too old for Michael Douglas.  I hear that the working title for the new movie will be "Romancing The Granddaughter."  Or from her point of view, "Romancing the Stone Age."

Sorry, I normally don't do jokes about how old someone else is, but Michael Douglas is just too obvious and deserving a target.  In fact, a few years ago, Entertainment Weekly even published a chart showing how the older Michael Douglas gets, the younger his leading ladies become.  This rule also applies to his wives.  By the time he's 90, he'll be co-starring with a toddler.
 

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Finally, today one of the greatest character actors ever, Charles Lane, turns 100 (I'll break my rule against revealing ages to wish him a happy birthday).  You may not know the name, but you know the face and the voice: he was in 800 movies and TV shows, many of them classics we all grew up with, from "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" to "I Love Lucy" and "Bewitched."  He was the man you loved to hate, with the long, hawklike face that forever typecast him as cynical reporters, snide bankers and glaring tax auditors. You might remember him as Homer Bedloe, the railroad executive who was always trying to shut down the little locomotive on "Petticoat Junction."

I'm happy to hear that he's still living in his longtime home in Brentwood, California, is in good health and sharp mind, does daily crossword puzzles and has no idea how he's lived so long, except his son says he did give up his lifelong, pack-a-day smoking habit -- 15 years ago, when he was 85.>

As one Internet poster said, "Somebody should seriously bottle this man's DNA."
 
 
 
 

Jan. 25, 2005

Here's a must-read: a national article from MSNBC about some people I know, and they do something that's sort of related to what I do.  This is an article about the new trend of middle-aged moms forming their own rock bands, and one of the most prominent is the Dallas group, Frump.  I met them a couple of years ago when we performed on the same bill at an anniversary show for the Dallas Library (at least one of the members was a librarian, and an unusually loud one.)  They banged out Ramones tunes while I sang Gershwin, but we were still on the same basic wavelength when it comes to encouraging people to follow their dreams at any age, so I'm happy to see them getting some notice.

I'm also really intrigued by the reference to the "Mamapalooza Festival," including one planned for Dallas.  If anyone knows how to contact the organizers, please let me know!  I have to be a part of that!

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New figures from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons show that the number of operations in Britain leaped a staggering 65 percent last year.  92 percent of operations were on women, but the number of operations on men nearly tripled.  Most women sought boob jobs, facelifts and eye surgery and most men got nose jobs.  Experts say this confirms my contention that cosmetic surgery is no longer taboo, even for men, and that patients are now proud to show off their new faces and figures.

And yet, Prince Charles still has those ears...
 
 
 

Jan.  23, 2005

I’ve just seen the wonderful new film In Good Company.  Here is a movie that not only stars actors over 40 (Dennis Quaid, Marg Helgenberger) but that also poses numerous provocative questions relating to age.

Question #1:  How much salmon would I have to eat to have a complexion like Scarlett Johansen’s?

But I digress.

On second thought, any movie starring actors -- and, especially, actresses -- over 440 would have to be about age, right?  If the conflict in this movie didn’t relate to age, the studio would’ve insisted on casting Natalie Portman, Lindsay Lohan or, well, Scarlett Johansen in the lead female role.  Thankfully, Johansen’s presence in this film is that of the main character’s daughter, not his girlfriend or wife.

The undercurrent of this movie, particularly the scenes at the office, is just what I say all the time:  AGE IS THE LAST BIG CULTURALLY-ACCEPTABLE BIAS.  Dennis Quaid plays Don Foreman, a 51-year-old family man and advertising sales manager for a sports magazine.  The people in his department have been working together for years.  Things get shaken up when corporate mogul “Teddy K” acquires the magazine and hot young Turks move in to run things.  These new whiz kids don’t necessarily know what they’re doing, but they’ve got the bluff and the buzzwords and the instinct for playing the game.  Don, on the other hand, knows about ad sales.  His new 26-year-old boss, played superbly by Topher Grace, knows he’ll need someone around who actually does know what he’s doing, so Don is demoted from head of sales to be his second-in-command, or “wing man.”  The boss makes it clear that Don has just two choices:  take the demotion or leave the company.  Don reluctantly takes the demotion, because he’s got huge financial responsibilities and he knows how hard it would be for him to find another job at his age.

The rest of the sales staff, all men in their 50s and 60s, are cut one-by-one from the department.  The desperation they feel is painful to watch; they obviously know that, at their age, unless they’ve always aspired to be Wal-Mart greeters, their professional lives are essentially over.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that if anyone came into a company and axed all the women, or all the minorities, he’d be hearing the words “class-action lawsuit” before he left that day for the racquetball court.  Yet as blatant as the age bias is in this office, these men know they’ll never be able to prove discrimination in a court of law.  Their humiliation is total; they have no fight.

The movie also underscores another of my favorite truisms:  LIFE DOESN’T HAPPEN ON A TIMETABLE.  Don no doubt assumes he’ll be an empty-nester before long, but then his fortysomething wife stuns him by announcing she’s pregnant.  He realizes that by the time his youngest child is 20, he’ll be 72.  Likewise, Don’s 26-year-old boss, recently married at the start of the movie, assumes he and his wife will soon be having kids, but she reminds him she might not ever want to have kids, and then she leaves him.

The new boss celebrates his whirlwind corporate rise in typical fashion, by purchasing a racy new electric-blue Porsche.  It occurred to me that if Don, age 51, were pulling down the big money and bought this exact same car, he’d be viewed as having a severe midlife crisis. That’s the way we judge “age-appropriate” behavior.

Of course, that scenario is strictly hypothetical, because Don would not have a midlife crisis.  He’s a well-grounded guy who cherishes his family and has a close, monogamous marriage.  The good news is that there are guys like Don in real life; they tend not to have a midlife crisis because they don’t set themselves up for one.  They get married and have kids not on a timetable, but if and when they are ready and have found the person they want to be “in the foxhole with,” as Don puts it.  Timetables, in my opinion, should be ignored whenever possible.

To address any more of the age-related issues in this movie would mean revealing too much of the plot.  Just see it.  See it because it has so much to say, and also to send the message to Hollywood that grownup movies are good box office!
 

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I can’t sign off without mentioning something I heard during last week’s “Extreme Makeover” that actually had me crying (a little) and throwing things at the TV screen.

At one participant’s final “reveal,” her elated husband beamed into the camera and said, “I had a 40-year-old wife, and now I have a 25-year-old wife!”

Wow!  Now he gets to hop into the sack with a 25-year-old, and he doesn’t even have to have an affair to do it.  (In fact – lucky him! -- the 40-year-old wife isn’t even around any longer to complicate matters.)  Of course, it’s just assumed here that a 25-year-old wife is better than a 40-year-old wife.  No wonder he seemed so deliriously happy.

I think it’s great when carefully-considered plastic surgery can make someone look more attractive and more vital.  The women on this particular episode benefited greatly from their nips and tucks.  But something about that one moment screamed at me, “Hey! What's wrong with having a 40-year-old wife?  If she’s attractive and takes care of herself, is it really so much better if she looks 25?”

The fact that “Extreme Makeover” decided to make this remark a part of their program tells me the producers didn’t see anything disturbing about it.  It’s only natural for the man to want a 25-year-old wife, right?  Of course it is.  And it’s okay for him to say that.  Goodness, he meant it as a compliment.  Age is the last big culturally-acceptable bias.
 
 
 

Jan. 20, 2005

It's been a very busy and eventful week.  Monday night, Brian and I performed a snippet of the show at a showcase for actors, talent agents, theater owners, etc.  The reaction was very positive, and one lady who's one of the major Dallas names in jingles and voice work (and a highly-regarded, nationally-known former cabaret/club singer) told us we should be doing our show Off-Broadway. From her lips to some New York agent's ears!

Anyway, I have to run out and promote the show, but here is some age and beauty news for you to ponder while I'm gone...

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This has to be the most bizarre story of the week:  Italy's secret service claims that al-Qaeda is launching an online women's magazine called Al Khansa, in which Osama bin Laden is trying to persuade women to "achieve emancipation through martyrdom" (I guess that is the first step if he wants to become the new Helen Gurley Brown.)

It offers fitness and diet tips for female suicide bombers and exercise tips to help them "dominate the passions" and remain calm and relaxed before blowing themselves up.  Typical women's magazine: you're about to die, and the last thing you're supposed to think about is "Does this burqa full of explosives make me look fat?"

On the bright side, once the women lose the weight, maybe they'll rethink the whole suicide thing.  Then they can concentrate on all the other fascinating articles, like "10 Hot Tips to Become Your Man's Favorite Wife!"

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Here's why it's important to ask questions of your doctor:  a Taiwanese woman went to an acupuncturist to cure her facial pimples, and he told her the needles had to be inserted in her left breast (seems like they should be inserted in her pimples, but never mind).  She was too shy to tell him she had saline breast implants, so she just let him go ahead.

Over the next few weeks, her left D-cup slowly shrank back to an A-cup as the punctured implant leaked.  She finally went to a hospital and admitted she was feeling a bit unbalanced.  Her surgeon said her health won't suffer, but it took a lot more effort to reinflate her left breast back to the size of the right one.  If she were any less assertive, she would have just popped the other one.

Still, you can't blame her too much.  When you have D-cup breast implants, it's hard to avoid all those little pricks.

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As a Perricone diet disciple, I find this story hits close to home: Carl English, a truck driver from Doyles, Newfoundland, Canada, was found guilty of illegally netting salmon in a nearby river.  As punishment, the judge barred him from fishing and prohibited him from eating salmon for three years.  While an appeal would be like swimming upstream, legal experts called it bizarre, saying they know of no legal precedent allowing judges to interfere with a Canadian's fundamental right to eat any lawfully-accessed food.  English, who must be truly hooked on salmon, said he understands being barred from fishing, but if he goes into a restaurant and wants to order salmon, he will.

But of course, being a man, he'll order steak and his wife will order salmon.

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Dove is launching a series of unusual celebrity hair care product ads in magazines.  They feature famous cartoon women with bad hair, made over to show how they'd look with "beautiful styles that move naturally."  The ads will feature Marge Simpson letting down her blue beehive, as well as Wilma Flintstone, Jane Jetson and Velma from "Scooby-Doo," whom I fear will end up looking just like Rosie O'Donnell.  Sadly, not even Dove could cure Little Orphan Annie of the frizzies.

My husband saw this and added, "Call me when Betty Rubble appears in Playboy."

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Once again, I leave you with a celebrity quote, this time a stupid and aggravating one, from "American Idol" judge Randy Jackson.  He said that people (like me) who want to raise the maximum age for contestants "are nuts" because most pop stars show their brilliant talent so young.  He said, "You have Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, 'N Sync.  Stevie Wonder started at 13."

I think he threw in Stevie Wonder at the end because he realized that the first three he mentioned were a pretty good argument for raising the minimum age.

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If you'd like to share a news story or your own thoughts and observations about the pressure society puts on us all to "keep young and beautiful"or else, just drop me a line at laura@lauraainsworth.com.

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