This blog is where
I expand on the ideas in "Keep Young & Beautiful" (formerly "My
Ship Has Sailed" I also comment on
news about music, ageism, fashion, plastic surgery, cosmetics, diets,
health
and looks that
we
find every day while writing The Comedy Wire radio service;
discuss
what
it's like to do a one-woman show; and post some of the best comments I
receive from people who want to share their own experiences and
opinions. Write me at laura@lauraainsworth.com.
To see photos
from
the show and the "Ship" TV special and shots with Rob Becker, Eve
Ensler, Irma P. Hall, Bill Paxton, Michael Urie and other favorite
people, click
here.
To receive a free MP3
of a bonus song once my debut CD, "Keep It To Yourself," is released,
just subscribe to my no-spam email list. You'll get first notice
of new
bookings,
plus lots of funny stuff and the occasional freebie. To sign up,
just write to webmaster@lauraainsworth.com.
You
may
also
write
to
that
address
for
info
on
booking
a
show
for
clubs,
theaters,
corporate
events, private party concert
performances.
NEW STUFF!
Laura now has
a
Facebook Page! Join as a fan to be alerted when her CD is out and
shows are scheduled!
Laura's debut
CD, "Keep It To Yourself," is now available at CDBaby.com as a CD or
download! Click
here or on the photo to the left to download your copy right now!
Laura's
husband Pat has a
hilarious
new
website based on his book, Hollywood Hi-Fi,
about
wannabe celebrity singers. Hear Bette Davis, Robert Mitchum
and more trying to be music stars!
And now...The Blog! (Warning: Older
links
may no longer be active!)
Friday, May 13, 2011
Just to clarify, my CD will be featured on BluesJazzRadio.com (see
entry below) Saturday night at 8 Eastern time, 7 Central.
Synchronize your watches!
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Just got word that my CD "Keep It To Yourself" will be featured on the
New Artist spolight hour, 8-9 pm, Sat. May 14 at BluesJazzRadio.com,
then join the regular airplay rotation! Click here to tune in!
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Today being April 28, my wedding anniversary, I glanced at the
Wikipedia almanac page to see what other momentous events occurred on
this day. What caught my eye immediately is that this is Blossom
Dearie's birthday. She was born April 28, 1924. And I defy anyone
to think of Blossom Dearie without smiling.
For the uninitiated, Blossom Dearie was a wonderful bop-style jazz
pianist (her first solo LP, “Blossom Dearie Plays 'April In Paris,'”
was all instrumental), but she was most famous for her distinctive,
little girl voice. Depending on the mood of the song, it could be
playful, heartbreaking or hilarious. You could practically hear her
famous platinum blondness in her helium-high vocals.
If you don't know her, I'm sad for you, but not surprised. She passed
away two years ago in her Greenwich Village apartment, and despite
making many highly-regarded recordings, Blossom remained the ultimate
Manhattan cult act. She could never fill an arena in Sheboygan like
Lady Gaga, but her acolytes were just as slavishly devoted as Gaga's
little monsters are to her. Blossom may have played small cabarets and
clubs, but only she had the juice to insist that her shows start at
5:30 pm so she could get home early, and her audiences would actually
show up at 5:30! She was also reportedly the first act ever to insist
that the audience not smoke when she was on stage. And because she was
Blossom Dearie, they snuffed out their butts. If you came of age during
the non-smoking era, you have no idea how revolutionary a change that
was. Most nightclubs used to be smokey enough to cure hams in.
For you poor deprived souls who've never experienced Blossom, here
is a link to her rendition of one of my favorite songs, Gershwin's
“Little Jazz Bird.” I hope you enjoy it as much as my houseful of
rescued parrots do, and that it encourages you to seek
out
more
of
her recordings and YouTube
videos. And if you'd like to hear some funny personal stories about
her that never could've made it into her obituaries, click here
and here for a
remembrance by my favorite contemporary singer, the dazzling Mary
Cleere Haran. We also lost her very recently, but that's another tragic
story that I don't want to think about when I'm celebrating my
anniversary and Blossom Dearie's birthday.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ELLA FITZGERALD!
Monday, April 25, is the most sacred of holidays to a singer like me:
it is the late Ella Fitzgerald’s birthday.
I grew up worshiping Ella Fitzgerald, which was not typical of most
kids in the rock era. My school friends probably had, at most, a vague
notion of who she was. But I was lucky to be born into the household of
a renowned Big Band sax/clarinet player, and my musical horizons had
expanded far out of the pop mainstream. A precocious jazzman, my dad
Bill Ainsworth played for Tommy Dorsey while still in his teens and
ended up backing the fledgling Frank Sinatra. Thus it is that, years
later, I grew up hearing Frank, Peggy Lee, Nat “King” Cole, Mel Torme,
Jack Jones, and, of course, Ella Fitzgerald. My dad not only played
their records, he actually played with many of them.
To me, Ella was the absolute greatest of them all. Though she could
scat and soar with an inventiveness and sophistication that shames
today’s over-the-top pop artists, I came to love her most for the rich,
pure, perfectly-pitched voice that blended deep chest tones with a
headier resonance as she advanced far up the scale. (She could have
trained as an operatic mezzo-soprano with unbelievable results). She
had such a natural way with the lyrics, too. When the beauty of that
voice was placed with the most wonderful songs ever written and
simply gorgeous arrangements, nothing could touch the results. I feel a
great sense of accomplishment when I am able to sing her songs in her
exact keys and produce notes in the same range with similar vocal
technique. She really did help teach me how to sing! That’s why my
debut CD, “Keep It To Yourself,” includes the classic, “Midnight
Sun.” (click on the title to hear an excertp). I wanted
to include my own take on one of Ella’s songs that I’ve studied the
most to help me develop as an artist.
I saw Ella perform live with my dad only once. She was performing at
the legendary Fairmont Hotel Venetian Room, and my mom and I got in on
“comp night” for band members’ families. She was very old by then, with
choppier phrasing and a little rasp to her voice, and coping with
serious health problems. But she was still fabulous. Years later, I
asked my dad for some little “inside” story about her that no one else
knew. He said she’d spent her entire stay quietly in her hotel room,
watching her favorite soap operas. Apparently, Ella in her later years
grew to be quite a soap opera addict. She’d watch soaps all afternoon,
come down and wow her adoring crowds, then head straight back up in the
elevator to her beloved TV.
I wonder if Ella, if she were starting out today, would even get
anywhere in the modern music marketing machine. She had enough trouble
in her day conforming to the glamorous image stars were supposed to
have. And I contend that looks are more important now than ever. She’d
probably have to win a contest, as Susan Boyle did, to get a record
contract. Of course, they’d make fun of her on national TV for being
frumpy. Then they’d insist she lose 50 pounds, give her an extreme
makeover and PhotoShop her like crazy.
If we hadn’t lost Ella in 1996, she would be turning 94 on Monday, and
probably still sound better than most modern singers. In her honor, I
plan to listen to her version of Cole Porter’s “Ev’ry Time We Say
Goodbye.” Just think – if she’d been born a century earlier, before
the miracle of recorded sound, that voice would’ve been lost to the
ages. But we’re lucky; we get to enjoy her voice forever. As her famous
commercial for audiotape used to note, it may not be live, but thank
God
it’s
on
Memorex.
January 30, 2011 Just heard that Charlie
Callas
died
yesterday
at
83. I met him several years ago when
I was a participant in the Las Vegas Comedy Festival. He was a
very nice and extremely funny man, and he told a wonderful story that I
related in this blog. To save you having to hunt for it, I'll
repost it here:
One of the great people I met at the Las Vegas Comedy Festival was
Charlie Callas, who just before taking this photo graced me with one of
his famous "Vpppt! Vpppt!" sound effects. He spritzed me on the face
just a little. I'll never wash my face again.
During this "Masters of Comedy" seminar, Mr. Callas told a great story
that I think needs to be heard by everyone who is struggling to make it
in his or her chosen field and thinking about giving up. He said that
back when he was a struggling comic, he got a gig in Vegas as the comic
for the hit Louis Prima-Keely Smith lounge show. But instead of opening
the show, they had him close it. Of course, after the headliners
finished, everyone left; and he would find himself walking out to an
empty house. He said it was very discouraging that, night after night,
his performance would be canceled for lack of an audience.
Then one night, he looked out and there were only two people still in
the house: a man and woman in a back booth, obviously drunk and more
interested in slobbering on each other than in listening to him. The
manager said he was going to cancel the show, but Mr. Callas said he
remembered his mentor once telling him, "Never cancel a show. No matter
how small the audience, you never know who might be in it." So he
bucked up his spirits, went out onstage, and did his full-tilt, wild
and crazy comedy act for those two completely oblivious drunks.
After he left the stage, he was sitting in his dressing room, soaked
with flop sweat and tears, so depressed that he was thinking he'd
wasted his life and never should have gone into show business. He was
thinking of what other career he could possibly switch to when a knock
came at the door. He opened it, and standing there were Tom Jones and
his agent. Jones, who was in town headlining one of the big showrooms,
said he was walking back to his room through the casino when he heard
this comic doing a crazy act in the lounge, so he looked in and was
stunned to see him performing for two people. He said he had to meet
the guy who had so much dedication to his craft that he'd give
everything he had to a show for two people. And he said, "I'm doing a
variety show in London next month, and I'd like you to be in it." His
agent arranged everything.
One month later, Mr. Callas said, he was standing outside the London
Palladium, looking up at a marquee that listed Tom Jones and a number
of other top British stars, ending with "Charlie Callas, Comedian" in
big letters. Then he went inside and discovered that it was to be a
command performance for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip, who would
be greeting the performers afterward! So they gave him a quick lesson
in how to behave correctly when meeting royalty.
Here's the kicker: As he was standing in the receiving line, waiting
for the Queen and the Prince to make their way down to him, he said a
thought came to his mind: "One month ago, I was in a crummy Vegas
lounge, performing for two people. Today, I'm at the London
Palladium...and I'm still performing for two people!"
So when you're feeling down and ready to give up on a dream, remember
that story and think about how quickly things can turn
around...especially if Tom Jones knocks on your dressing room door.
Rest in peace, Mr. Callas...
February 13, 2010
Just got a note from our friend DC Anderson, a fantastic
singer/songwriter and recording artist and a longtime star of the
national touring company of "Phantom." That
show
is
coming
to
Dallas, and DC is using a free night to perform
his cabaret show at Pocket Sandwich Theater. He said to spread the
word, so please pass it on! He does both gorgeous ballads and hilarious
comedy songs, and he'll be with Roy Zimmerman, whose satirical songs
have been praised by the god himself, Tom Lehrer. Hope to see you all
there. It's Mon. Feb. 22. Tickets are just $15. Phone
214-821-1860. See www.dcanderson.net or www.pocketsandwich.com.
February 2, 2010
Newsweek offers something near and dear to my heart: examples of the most
egregious
uses
of
PhotoShop in recent years. I hope they're
wrong about the Dove campaign doing retouching on those women. If
the campaign for real beauty had to be PhotoShopped to look
presentable, then what hope do any of us have?
Also, I just discovered an artist I have to learn more about.
Rachel Hovnanian creates artworks inspired by contemporary aspects of
beauty, from pageants to bottles of anti-aging creams. Her work
is on exhibit at the Dallas Art Fair this
week. I'm marking my calendar!
January 29, 2010
Sorry again that blogging has
had to take a back seat to other things (moving, performing, recording,
and we have become writers for a new show for ABC Radio that is very
successful -- too successful, in fact: it's gone from once a day to
three times a day, leaving my husband/webmaster Pat very little time for webby
activities. I now have a new laptop and am trying to learn all
this
stuff myself so I can do updates. So if you see line after line
of gibberish, it wasn't intentional, like some other blogs.
Another thing I've been very busy with is recording my first
album. I have found some fantastic songs, some quite surprising,
that hopscotch genres and eras from the 1920s to today. There are
serious ballads, gorgeous standards, and a few things that are obscure
and hilarious. I took the songs to my partner, Brian Piper, with
my ideas for how I wanted them to sound. He turned them into
brilliant arrangements; played keyboards and sang backup vocals; and
brought in some of the greatest jazz musicians in Texas for the
sessions at Crystal Clear. The players said they had more fun
than on any other session they've played this year, and I think you can
tell that from their playing. We're in the mixing stages now, and
it should be out by late spring/summer.
When it's ready, we want to throw a CD release party, so I hope you'll
join my Facebook or Facebook
fan
page, to get on the invitation list!
May 26,
2009 Yes, I know it's been over a year since I
posted anything! I
apologize for letting this drop, but I've been very busy with other
things, including performing, recording, writing, moving, trying to
sell a house
in a terrible real estate market, recuperating from hand surgery and
pneumonia, and starting a new "day job" with a new national show for
ABC Radio Network. In addition, my computer conked out and had to
be replaced, while my husband Pat, who is the webmaster and posts all
this stuff, was too busy to help (he also was working on the ABC show,
in addition to writing a third daily radio prep service for awhile for
USA News Network). Something had to give, and blogging was what
gave. But things are actually settling down a little, at least
enough to sneak in the occasional post. I'll try to do more, when
I have time. Today, two things: Interesting quote
about Botox and plastic
surgery from Mary Louise Parker in the new
More
magazine: "Somebody told me that they'd read that I
had all this work done and
showed me a picture, and it was totally airbrushed...It made me so
mad. I don't like what that says to other women. I'm 44,
and I look OK for 44. I'm not trying to look 34." Of course, in Hollywood, looking 34 could
be the kiss of death.
Heck, looking 24 is the kiss of death for a model. But she makes
a good point: don't believe any photos you see in fashion or celebrity
magazines. These days, a good PhotoShop artist can not only make
anyone look like a movie star, they can make it appear that you're
sitting in Abe Lincoln's lap, and for good measure, erase Lincoln's
unsightly mole. And here's a little something I wrote for
our radio service, the Comedy
Wire. I really love Susan Boyle and her whole story, but it
was
annoying to me that these TV singing contests keep getting judges
who seem to know nothing about singing (David Hasselhoff is going to
judge someone's singing? Really?) and never say anything remotely
useful. So after Susan made her second
appearance on "Britain's Got Talent," singing "Memory"
from "Cats," I decided that if nobody else was going to say
anything constructive, I would. So here it is: When a
voice breaks the way Susan's
did at the very beginning, it's often because the pitch is in the
singer's passaggio, or transition area. (A passaggio is sort of like a
car shifting gears.) Different singers have different passaggios; for
instance, one of mine is around C#-D above concert A. Singing
through it requires breath
and volume control. Susan's song was probably pitched so it would be in
her "glory spot" for the end; unfortunately, that gave her a more
difficult note to start on. My guess is that she had a little stage
fright - how could she not? - which caused her first breath to be too
shallow. It's challenging to control volume on a first note, too,
because you haven't heard yourself yet. She probably tried to sing that
note at a higher volume than her breath could support. Result: CRACK!
Susan
seemed to sense the problem;
did you notice that she touched her diaphragm? Very soon, everything
evened out and she sounded wonderful. *************************** Okay, that's it, and I promise it won't be
another year before I post
again. April 3,
2008 Lots of news piling up to comment on, but
I'm in the middle of moving,
so I'll get to it ASAP. In the meantime, two quick messages: The May 30 date for "Cole Porter: Elegance
& Decadence" is now
firm. The magnificent Michel Gott and I will be performing two
shows, at 7 and 9:30, on Friday, May 30, at Bass Hall's McDavid
Studio. It's a beautiful 200-seat listening room with great
sound. We plan to do a lot of promotion for the date, and I want
our friends to be there, so please get your tickets early! They
are available only through BassHall.com. Click
here for tickets and full info! Secondly, thanks so much to everyone who
came out to Grand Prairie for
the four shows last weekend! That was my first professional
performance in the town where I grew up, so you can imagine how much it
meant to me. A million thanks to the Grand Prairie Arts Council
and the Women's Club for bringing in the show, for all their
hospitality and for providing us with such a terrific venue. March 26,
2008 Incredibily busy this week with the
Moonlady Fest showcase (very nice
gig, and thanks to everyone for their warm welcome and laughter),
moving and preparing for
the shows (you will be there, right?), but I wanted to take just a
minute to say thanks for all the wonderful media coverage of the
show. I have done interviews with both the Grand Prairie
newspaper and cable TV channel, and articles have appeared in the Dallas
Observer and last Sunday's Dallas
Morning
News
Metro
section. It's all much appreciated. Just one minor note: not to quibble, but
the DMN article makes it sound
at the end as if we've given up getting the show into Vegas and are
sort of moving to retire or something. Perish the thought!
We are working feverishly to book the show nationwide, we are in talks
about getting it into a great theater in Vegas (we could have done it
in January, but the notice was too short to clear the schedule), and we
are moving to streamline our lives and make it easier to sell the
bigger house we're in now. So if you know someone who'd love a
great deal on a four-bedroom, Preservation Dallas award-winning 1913
house, drop me a line! Or better yet, talk to me after one of the
shows! Gotta run (and no, it's not to get Botox). March 11,
2008 Very busy getting ready for multiple shows
(see links at the top of the page),
but here’s a shortie for you: Two Beverly Hills plastic surgeons
recently surveyed colleagues to find
the most requested celebrity body parts, and the Star tabloid figured
that if you combined them all, it
should create the perfect face. To find out, they pieced together a
photo of a woman with Katie Holmes' eyes, Katherine Heigl's nose, Keira
Knightley's cheeks, Jessica Simpson's long blonde hair and Angelina
Jolie's lips; and a photo of a young man with Daniel Craig's blue eyes,
Leonardo DiCaprio's nose and Matt Damon's lips. To be perfectly frank
(or perfectly Frankenstein), the woman just looks to me like a lot of
women who’ve had too much plastic surgery, and the result of stitching
all those perfect young male parts together is a face that looks
surprisingly like a young Jay Leno with a smaller chin. I guess this
means Jay Leno is just one chin surgery away from perfection. Ironically, if Jay Leno went to a Beverly
Hills plastic surgeon, he’d
probably come out looking exactly like a young Jay Leno with a smaller
chin. I suppose if a woman didn't want to have
all that done to her face, she
could just get Dolly Parton's breasts. Then she'd never have to
worry about any man ever looking her in the face again. Feb. 24,
2008 Ooohh, tonight is Oscar night! Of course,
for me, the nominated films –
for the most part, a depressing and bloody lot this year – must take a
back seat to the annual Red Carpet parade of The World’s Most Beautiful
People. The Perfect People. The Sexiest People. The Perpetually
Youthful People. The People Who Are Supposesd To Make Us Run Out And
Get Plastic Surgery To Look Like Them.
But in order to maintain that essential
illusion, Hollywood actresses
will each spend untold thousands on designer gowns, hair color and
extensions, weeks of intensive personal workouts, radical “cleansing”
diets, diamond-particle “signature” facials, fat injections, wrinkle
fillers such as Radiesse, subtle “one-stitch” facelifts for
30-something actresses, “spot” lipo to smooth every molecule of bulge,
foot surgery to help them stand in stilettos, dental bleaching, and
even calming doses of anti-anxiety drugs. If the Hollywood economy lost
billions of dollars during the writers stike, the money spent on
looking beautiful for Oscar night should make up for it. Jeez, if I had this much pressure on me to
look fabulous, I’d probably
be popping Xanax, too.
I haven’t even mentioned Botox yet.
Goodness, movie stars photographed
outdoors in the afternoon sun can’t look squinty, so virtually every
one of them will be Botoxed on the forehead and between the eyes. Of
course, some Hollywood stars will come close to mainlining Botox. A few
will look very pointedly paralyzed. Botox is also injected into the
armpits to keep stars from perspiring on the Red Carpet or while
waiting nervously for that possible Academy Award. Finally (this is
something I just learned about, in a more
detailed
article
in
the
London
Daily
Mail), Botox is now used to
RAISE THE CLEAVAGE and make breasts
look more youthful. (With all the breast implants in Hollywood, I would
hope the dermatologist would take extreme care using needles around
breasts!) There’s even a special cleavage “facial” that’s essential for
anyone wearing a low-cut dress.
Oh, and here’s a newly popular but
squirrely idea: false eyelashes made
of mink or squirrel fur! They cost thousands of dollars a pair, but it
you take good care of them, they’ll last five to seven wearings.
Madonna got some that were made of mink and diamonds.
If all this isn’t enough to make the
actresses look drop-dead gorgeous,
they’ll also be dripping with diamonds and other precious stones. Many
will have every square inch of skin airbrushed the perfect glowy color.
They’ll strut in Jimmy Choo shoes -- and if their feet don’t look
perfect in them, there are anti-inflammatary injections. Also, did you
know that celebrity makeup artists can charge several thousand dollars
for creating just one Oscar-caliber makeup? Appointments are booked
many months in advance.
Sometimes an actress can do all this and
still be savaged by the snarky
TV and tabloid critics. So I understand why stars want to look as
lovely as possible. At the same time, we out here have to keep all
their efforts in perspective. There is so much we can do to take care
of ourselves and look like real, relaxed, healthy, beautiful women
without obsessing about our looks the way narcissistic movie stars do.
Really, who do you think would make the more interesting dinner
companion – you, or a perfectly-manicured J-Lo in hair extensions and
mink eyelashes?
Of course, the mink might be a better
conversationalist than J-Lo. Feb. 6,
2008 DEMOGRAPHICS
AND
THE
PRESIDENCY Disclaimer:
The following commentary
about age as it applies to the Presidential campaign has absolutely
nothing to do with my choice for President of the United States, which
reflects, as it should, my very close examination of the issues facing
this nation and how they might be addressed in the real world by a real
person. What does this individual think about the role of government?
Is he or she able to communicate his views well? What philosophy might
affect his or her choices for Supreme Court justices? What might we
ACTUALLY SEE in the world as a consequence, intended or not, of this
person's election? In my opinion, race, gender and, yes, even age are
not relevant to this analysis and should be set aside so voters can
consider the things that really matter. So there.
*************************** I'm writing this on "Super Tuesday,"
though I live in Texas and
thankfully won't have to go out into the hailstorm (no exaggeration!)
to vote now. But if I were voting today, the choice, as it's been
presented in the media, seems clear: Do I want the young, dynamic black
guy? The older white woman? Or maybe the super-old white guy? Hey, the
Baptist or the Mormon? The only major demographic contest we don't have
- at least, as far as we know - is gay vs. sstraight.
In fact, I'm reminded of an episode of
"Will & Grace" in which Will
(gay) and Grace (Jewish) are trying to decide whom to back for City
Council: the gay man or the Jewish woman. Will, predictably, backs the
gay man, while Grace, just as predictably, backs the Jewish woman.
Later they realize they can't support either candidate -- not because
of their demographics, but because of their incredibly horrid views.
But let's get back to our real election,
where the stakes are higher
because they are not fictional. Here, the young black guy has a
Kennedyesque coolness and a hopeful message that inspires blacks as
well as whites, some of whom perhaps long to recapture that wonderful
media creation, Camelot. The older white woman is doing well among
Latinos, Asians and, not surprisingly, older white women, some of whom
have remarked, understandably, that they just want to see a woman
president before they die. (Additional disclaimer: Please do not assume
that I think everyone supporting these candidates is doing so strictly
because of demographic kinship, but many obviously are.) The really old
white guy is doing very well in the polls, but in spite of that was
recently deemed too old to
be President by columnist Anna Quindlen.
("Race, gender - they're both up for grabs in this election. It's age
that has become the new taboo in a vitality culture.")
Quindlen refers to McCain's age as "the
elephant on the campaign
trail," saying, "There's been plenty of talk during primary season
about gender and race; it's age that has become taboo." Personally, I
think all three should be immaterial and are a convenient way of
tap-dancing around real issues. There has already been too much playing
of the race and gender cards, not so much from the voters themselves as
from those candidates -- and their husbands -- who think it can help
them. If candidates truly believe that race and gender shouldn't play a
part in this election, then they should refrain from bringing them up.
But now Quindlen plays the age card. She
dismisses our society's
so-called "age is just a number" mentality - oh, how I wish we had that
mentality, instead of
obsessing about age the way we do - and goes on to say this: "The
gentle but inevitable passing of the guard that once gave young people
an opportunity to rise has stuttered and sometimes stopped." WHAT?? I'd
like to know what planet
Ms. Quindlen is living on. As a woman in my chosen field, I'd see my
opportunities increase exponentially if I were in my twenties today.
Quindlen also points out that Old Man
McCain suffers infirmities from
his years of incarceration and torture: the inability to climb stairs
quickly or to raise his arms to comb his hair due to multiple fractures
he received at the hands of the Viet Cong. My first observation: What
hair? My second: I wonder whether she would've supported the young,
dynamic-looking, poufy-haired John F. Kennedy if she'd known he
suffered from Addison's Disease and almost incapacitating back pain?
When the cameras weren't on, he must've climbed stairs as slowly as
McCain. What about Franklin D. Roosevelt, so ravaged by polio that he
had to use a wheelchair? How much correlation does age have with
vitality and ability, really? If the writers of the Constitution had
seen such a connection, they never would have specified that Supreme
Court justices could serve for life.
In fact, I recently saw McCain's
95-year-old mother, Roberta, on the
news and she is incredibly youthful and gorgeous! Oh, my god, have you
seen this lady? She must use Perricone. And she's had the vitality to
accompany her son throughout the campaign, city after city. McCain
definitely got some good anti-aging genes.
When I think of the years of excruciating
torture and lasting pain
McCain has endured, I have no reason to conclude that this has left him
a hobbling, feeble man. Instead, I'm reminded of the saying, "What does
not kill us makes us stronger."
George Washington first took the oath of
office when the average life
expectancy was under 40, so even at age 57 he was way past his physical
prime -- including his teeth, which had long since been replaced by a
full set of painful dentures. He served two terms and left at age 65,
which in those days was considered positively wizened. Ben Franklin,
though never elected President, was active in government affairs into
his 80s at a time when few even survived to that advanced age. We've
had Presidents who were young, old, athletic, frail and even morbidly
obese. Granted, Grover Cleveland could never be elected in the Media
Age - not with the camera adding ten pounds to a body that already
fluctuated between 300 and 332 pounds! It was only after serving as
President that he relieved his severe sleep apnea by losing 80 pounds,
and then he continued to serve, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
No one who publicly asserted that a black
person or a woman shouldn't
be President would be respected today, no matter what rationalizations
he or she might employ. But not so long ago, if we'd had a woman at the
top of the ticket, there would've been dire warnings day after day
about the emotional fragility and hormone swings that render all women
-- with the possible exception of Margaret TThatcher -- unsuitable for
high office. Thank goodness we're past that. Yet some are starting to
talk about age in a similar way. It's as I always say...AGE IS THE LAST
BIG CULTURALLY-ACCEPTABLE
BIAS.
Of course, with a 71-year-old candidate,
the choice of his running mate
rises in importance, and Quindlen addresses this, posing the question,
"If you enter the process stressing a hedge against mortality or
incapacity, shouldn't that suggest something about suitability for the
job in the first place?"
Answer: NO.
Just the fact of
being President is as much a risk of mortality as being older. It's a
hazardous job in ways that have nothing whatsoever to do with age. I'm
sure Presidents Kennedy, Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley, all
assassinated while in office, would agree if they could speak to us.
The choice of a running mate is always
important. If you scan the obits, as I often do, you see that
death or incapacity can strike at any age.
It's great that we have such demographic
diversity among our candidates
this time. Still, we won't be over our prejudices until these
differences are simply incidental and play no part in our choice for
President. I think we're still a long way off.
(I'll
now pause to review the
election returns from Super Tuesday, and wrap this up in the morning.)
****************** Well, it's just as I thought. According to
a detailed demographic
breakdown from Katie Couric and the gang at CBS News that made me want
to tear out my hair, Hillary did well with white women, Latinos and
Asians, and not so well with blacks. Obama received most of the black
vote and did quite well with younger whites. The pattern was so
striking that pundits expressed concern about the preeminence of
"identity politics" among Democrats.
Among Republicans, Romney didn't fare too
well; he won his home state
of Michigan and also states with high populations of Mormons, who
wouldn't vote for Huckabee, a Baptist, if Huck paid them to. Huck can't
afford to do that, anyway - he runs a very low-budget campaign! Thus,
another stereotype is shattered: rich doesn't necessarily trump poor in
the Republican Party.
But it's the short, balding, white-haired,
achy-jointed candidate who
really won the night. That's right, the Grand OLD Party came out for
creaky old
John McCain. Thankfully, his age wasn't an issue to the voters, and I
didn't even hear it mentioned by the pundits.
But if he gets the nomination, mark my
word: we'll be hearing about it
a LOT.
Jan 23,
2008 A LATE
WORD ON DONDA WEST – CELEBRITY
DOCS CAN BE BAD NEWS
Well,
did
you
miss
me?
Perhaps you noticed – God, I hope somebody
did – that my last blog
entry was a few long months ago. As luck would have it, just at the
time I was assessing the myriad news reports of the plastic-surgery
death of Kanye West’s mother, I
broke my hand. Kid you not. I slipped on a bit of nonstick
cooking spray that had drifted onto the kitchen floor and, after doing
a fabulous impression of Kristi Yamaguchi careening about on the ice,
landed smack on my left hand with such force and at such an angle that
my ring finger was turned completely around to the side. Oddly, there
was no pain at all involved in this.
X-rays showed that the finger itself
wasn’t broken, but there was a
complicated “spiral” fracture of the metacarpal below that finger. So I
had to have hand surgery, involving a long metal plate and numerous
little screws, a few of which I can actually feel in the palm of my
hand. Pity the person who has to stand behind me in line for the metal
detector at the airport. Also, there’s now a long, red scar on the back
of my hand that makes me glad I wear gloves while performing. It seems
to be healing well, though; nice to know I’m a good “healer” in case I
choose to go in for a facelift someday!
I found that recovery from hand surgery
can really put a crimp – and
even, at times, a cramp – in keyboard-related activities. Surprisingly,
the pain didn’t start until after my finger had been put back in place,
but then it was brutal. While I was slowly recovering the motion in my
hand, so much age- and beauty-related news accumulated that I didn’t
know where I’d begin. So I procrastinated, even after I was able to
type, and more news piled up. You know how it is.
But let’s pick up where I left off: the
sadness and horror of Donda
West’s death. What a tragedy. “My mother is my everything,” Kanye West
said at the time. The story of her death so dominated the celebrity
tattle-shows that by now it must be “old news” to the relentlessly
forward-moving press; still, a woman died under shocking circumstances,
and I believe it’s not too late to weigh in:
Apparently, fame lends such an aura of
infallibility to TV doctors such
as Dr. Jan Adams that their patients don’t even wonder why they’re
being operated on in an outpatient facility in a SHOPPING MALL.
Donda West was
going in for a breast reduction and a tummy tuck – increasingly common
procedures but still major, major surgery – and that’s where the work
was performed. AT THE MALL!
Then, instead of being moved to some type of recovery facility where
she could be watched, she was taken back to her room and LEFT THERE
ALONE. (Pardon all the
total caps; I have no other way to express in print my sheer contempt.)
This was so wrong that only someone who’s been falsely told her surgery
will be a breeze would ever agree to it. She certainly could have
afforded the best of post-surgical care if she’d been under the
impression that she needed it.
I had better surgical facilities and
follow-up for the little bone in
my hand than Ms. West had for her two major surgeries. And I had great
confidence in my doctor, a specialist who does nothing but repair
hands.
TV doctors are on TV because they’re good
on TV. Never, ever give your
trust to any doctor
– or political candidate, but I digress -- just because he or she is
telegenic. Even a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon “to the stars” isn’t
necessarily any good – look at some of the stars! They look godawful!
We tend to think celebrities are special people, with special
abilities, but they’re not. According to “The Insider,” Dr. Adams has
had 15 malpractice suits filed against him since 1998. My hunch is that
the best plastic surgeon on the planet has a name known only to the
lucky few who’ve been referred by word of mouth.
By the way, the “mommy
makeover” -- breast surgery combined with a tummy tuck -- is
rapidly gaining popularity. Women shocked at what pregnancy has
done to their bodies, leaving them with sagging breasts, flabby
stomachs, stretch marks and loose skin, are rushing to plastic
surgeons. I haven’t had children, so I can’t write from firsthand
experience, but it’s easy to understand their haste to undo the damage.
Still, with all the physical, hormonal and emotional changes that take
place in the months after childbirth, many doctors advise waiting on
breast operations until at least three months after breastfeeding has
finished, and postponing a tummy tuck until at least six months after
giving birth.
Now, I’m not an A-list actress trying to
schedule the birth of my child
with shooting a movie in a bikini three weeks later, but this advice
makes sense to me.
Of course, celebrity or not, in this age
of political correctness, any
time a woman considers having plastic surgery, the debate can’t ever
just be about what the woman
wants. Thanks to organizations such as the Boston group "Our Bodies
Ourselves," it has to be about why she
wants it. Is she doing it for the right reason? Columnist and
mother-of-two Theresa
Walsh
Giarrusso, writes, “Yes, your body changes after having
children. And, no, it’s not going to be the same again. But that’s OK.
You’re a different person mentally and emotionally after bringing
children into the world. Why shouldn’t you be different physically? Do
we really need to look good enough to compete with 20-year-olds?”
Jeez, it’s not enough that we’re under
societal pressure to maintain
our sexual allure. We’re also under societal pressure to let go of our
allure, from the very people who claim to be fighting societal
pressure.
Personally, I really wouldn’t want to let
it go. If I didn’t recognize
my body anymore after pregnancy, I’d probably wait the recommended
length of time, lose the baby weight, get super-healthy, and have the
surgery.
But I sure wouldn’t have it at the Mall. Coming
next: ABC News asks, “How far
will Chinese women go in the pursuit of beauty?”
Oct. 21,
2007 Sure, as always, there’s plenty in the
news relating to age and beauty.
I’ll get to all that. But first, I have to satisfy an urge I’ve had for
awhile: to create my very first official List Of Pet Peeves. If you
haven’t
ever made one, try it sometime, just for fun, because it can tell you a
lot about yourself. For example, I don’t consider myself that easily
peeved-off, but my list of peeves turned out to be pretty darn long! Some of these relate directly to The
Age Thing (how could they not?), some only peripherally, and
some not at all. Also, I chose not to include things we all hate, such
as loud cellphone talkers, bad drivers and anything having to do with
air travel. These are personal; some you will no doubt share, while
others may just reflect my own quirks. They’re in no particular order.
So, here we go, with the things that make me say, “Give me a break!” LAURA’S
LIST OF PET PEEVES the term “baby boomer,” also any variation
such as “boomer,” “aging
boomer,” etc. being pointed at or gestured at from a
music video competitive eating contests MORE magazine
(if you read my
blog, you know why) fake call-in radio talk shows that are
really infomercials phrases such as “most unique,” “more
perfect,” “the most complete” the Nobel Peace Prize “over-the-hill” birthday parties with
black balloons flawlessly PhotoShopped models Magazine lists such as “The 50 Most
Beautiful People,” “The Top 100
Movies Of All Time,” etc. (there are many of these, and they all need
to go away, but they won’t. Maybe I should list the Top 50 Reasons for
Them To Go Away.) white walls and beige carpet “tear-downs” and starter castles in
once-charming old neighborhoods being lectured to on global warming and
foreign policy by Hollywood
stars, many of whom didn’t even graduate from high school concert reviews that insist on critiquing
the age and degree of hipness
of the audience awards shows – come on, how often does the
most deserving person win? thug culture Christmas overkill: Christmas season
starting before Thanksgiving is
over (let alone Halloween!); also, 90 percent of all the Christmas
songs that have ever been recorded on the other hand, having to call the
Christmas tree a “holiday tree,”
when everybody knows it’s a Christmas tree fashion magazines’ monthly lists of
“must-haves” the term “reinventing oneself” the age limit on “American Idol,” also the
constant references to
contestants’ ages extremely passionate, argumentative people
who are absolutely convinced
of something that’s factually incorrect today’s Saturday morning cartoons – the
worst politically-correct
pablum! (where are Rocky and Bullwinkle when you need them?) saying of any actress with millions of
dollars to spend on herself that
she is “perhaps the most beautiful woman in the world” gross-out comedies – I won’t go see “The
Heartbreak Kid” and will
never, EVER see “Kingpin”
again using “they,” “them” and “their” as
singular, as in, “Give your child
the things they deserve.” Hollywood-style celebrity “justice” overuse of the phrases “if you will” and
“at the end of the day” seafood from China impenetrable business jargon image politics politicians who run on an issue that
disappears off the radar screen
once they’re elected dividing us by decade, as in “your 20s,
30s, 40s, 50s and beyond” ads for mascara in which the model is
obviously wearing fake eyelashes child beauty pageants adult beauty pageants reality shows, except for “American Idol”
and “Dancing With The Stars” food companies that sell their products as
healthy when one look at the
label tells you they are SO NOT swarms of paparazzi – arrest those locusts
for stalking and harassment my frustrating and unending quest for sexy
shoes that don’t hurt rappers yakking over great old hit songs
written by real songwriters those not-so-fabulous fakes: dark spray-on
tans, chopped-off noses,
wind-tunnel faces, expressionless eyebrows, clown lips, chalk-white
teeth, bowling-ball breasts Dennis Hopper talking to children of the
‘60s about financial services Hardee’s (The “Monster Thickburger”?
Please, Hardee’s, stop the
obesity!) those long loops on dresses for keeping
them on hangers – I can never
seem to keep them tucked inside! Conan O’Brien’s opening, with the
loooooong,
earsplitting trumpet blast at 12:30 AM (11:30 AM Central). Conan has a
fantastic band, but how many thousands of times have they done that by
now? laugh tracks televangelists, “psychics” and “faith
healers” hearing any actor called “the greatest
actor of his generation,”
especially if it’s Sean Penn, because he probably believes it the term “generation” (because unless
you’re talking about someone’s
family tree, people are born on a continuum and generational divisions
are arbitrary, so there!) commercials that say, “Get the (whatever)
you DESERVE!” (because, hey,
for all
they know, I’m an axe murderer and don’t deserve squat) status designer handbags that cost as much
as a new luxury car Whew, that turned out to be a long list!
It’s good that I don’t get
very worked up about most of these things, or my life would be
miserable. Fortunately, I’m an easygoing sort; there are only a few
things that seriously chafe me. And I need this long list of annoyances
to write comedy about. Besides, the list of things I love would
be much, much longer. Next: "Absolutely Safe," a new documentary
on breast implants.
Oct. 14,
2007 In
honor
of
October,
National
Breast
Cancer
Awareness
Month,
here
is
my
wonderful
friend
and
mentor,
queen
of
the satirical folk song, Lu Mitchell, singing her hilarious
song, "The Mammogram," and actually finding humor in what we all have
to go through...
Oct . 13, 2007
PLASTIC SURGEONS LOSING PATIENCES WITH
PATIENTS
Definitely check out the
October issue of Allure
magazine. I was at the hair salon just long enough to read the
article on plastic
surgery patients who present themselves to their doctors as
self-styled experts. This is becoming a frustrating problem for
cosmetic surgeons and dermatologists.
These patients – almost
all female -- have never graduated from medical
school, but they’ve spent a lot of time on the Internet, where the real
truth is, and they walk into the doctor’s office armed with stacks of
single-spaced typewritten pages of exacting instructions. They’ve
created computer morphed “Before and After” shots of themselves. They
know all the medical terminology and sound well-informed to the layman.
The problem is, they’ve never actually performed surgery, injected
Botox and wrinkle fillers, or learned the hazards of many of the
procedures they want their doctors to perform.
Nevertheless, they’re
insistent. And they’re never satisfied – they
have to keep tinkering. Ultimately, they have even more procedures to
“fix” the bad results caused by the original procedures. Then they have
to “fix” the “fix.” And then “fix” that.
One doctor quoted in the
article spoke of a patient who had returned
from Mexico with a vial of some kind of bone cement (I’m not kidding)
that she wanted him to
inject into her face. As any reputable physician would, he refused,
explaining that he had no guarantee of what was in that vial. He could
literally be injecting her face with anything,
and he wasn’t going to be responsible for that. So she waved bye-bye
with her perfectly-manicured hand and continued her search for someone
who would do it for her.
No doubt she didn’t have
to search for long. I've heard of
dermatologists in Dallas who very openly perform procedures – or have
their assistants perform them – that are unapproved by the FDA and pose
serious risks to one’s health and/or appearance. You can probably find
their names on various plastic surgery websites that extoll the virtues
of such procedures. Go ahead, look them up, so you’ll know who not to
patronize.
This problem seems to be
a variation of Body Dysmorphic Disorder, which
is what makes anorexics see themselves as fat when they’re actually
starving to death and Michael Jackson think he’ll be perfect after just
one more plastic surgery. Often it’s a focus on one particular physical
flaw, but once that flaw is addressed, it can morph into a pathological
appetite for perfection that will never be satisfied.
My friend Dr. Brown,
who’s known as one of the best plastic surgeons in
Dallas (and that’s saying a lot!), tells me he has women come in and
tell him exactly how to make over their breasts. A common instruction
is, “Make me as big as you can make me!” But Dr. Brown doesn’t do that.
Often, he’ll counsel a patient that because of her height and bone
structure, he can’t make her more than, say, a “C.”
I think I can safely say
he didn’t do Pam Anderson’s breasts. Or the
breasts of any woman who aspires to look like her.
Quite a long time ago, I
actually consulted Dr. Brown about a possible
reshaping of my nose, and the experience taught me a lot about the
psychological aspects of plastic surgery. If you look at pictures of me
on my website, you’ll probably say, “Her nose looks just fine! Why
would she want to change it?” (at least, I hope you'd say that). Well,
the reason was one photograph,
taken from an odd angle, that really did make my nose loom large. So I
told Dr. Brown that I didn’t want to change the shape of my nose, just
make the proportion a little smaller.
He listened, then had me
come in for some “Before” pictures, both front
and side view. The assistant behind the camera looked confused and had
to ask me, “Now, what is it that you wanted changed?”
I’ll never know if Dr.
Brown had told her to ask that question, but it
sure made me think. “If this person,” I wondered, “who sees hundreds of
plastic surgery patients every year, can’t even tell that it’s my nose
I’m concerned about, then what is my problem?”
Then, when I saw the
photos and realized that they looked more like
“After” pictures, I told Dr. Brown that I’d decided against having any
work done on my nose. He must have been relieved. And I’m glad that he
trusted me to come to my own conclusion; if he’d just said at the
outset, “You don’t need it,” I might have just answered, “Well, I think
I do.”
Unfortunate, overdone
nose jobs are as common as paralyzed faces these
days. One big difference, though: Botox wears off in a few months,
while, to paraphase James Bond, a nose job is forever. And if the first
attempt isn’t right, there has to be another procedure, and perhaps
another. I’ve seen many hypershortened noses that are beyond saving.
Then the question becomes like a bad trip to a casino: Do you want to
walk away with your losses, or risk what you have on another procedure,
knowing you’ll probably come out worse but might come out better? In
that sense, the addiction to plastic surgery seems to me a lot like the
addiction to gambling. With this kind of risk, you might lose the ranch
or lose your nose – or, like Michael Jackson, you might lose both.
This isn’t to say that a
nose job is never a good thing. If you really
don’t like your nose, if it’s caused you to suffer comments and
heartache all your life, then I say, “Rah-rah, rhinoplasty!” If you’re
in show business, and a slight change in your nose will make you
photograph significantly better, then go for it, as lovelies from Paula
Abdul to Halle Berry have. But find the best surgeon you can, one who
will get it right the first time. Find one who will listen to you, and
then…LISTEN TO HIM. Have the
work done. And then, if at all possible, consider it a finished work of
art.
Your life is a work in
progress; your face shouldn’t have to be.
Oct. 10, 2007
A round-up of news from
all over...
THE HALLUCINATORY HALO OF HEALTH
The famously shrinking
Jared lost tons of weight by eating all his
meals at Subway. So everything they have at Subway must be healthy,
right? Wrong!
Cornell
University
found that people who eat at Subway, billed as the
healthy, lowfat alternative to typical fast food, tend to consume more
calories than McDonald’s diners. They gave students coupons for either
a Big Mac (800 calories) or a 12-inch Italian sub with cheese (900
calories) plus any free extras they wanted. Subway eaters were more
likely to add chips, a cookie and a non-diet drink because, researchers
concluded, Subway has a “health halo” that makes people assume
everything is low-calorie. Subway eaters were also more likely to snack
later in the day because they think they ‘deserve it” for eating so
healthily.
Also because, as everyone
knows, free food has no calories.
Their snack of choice?
I’m betting it was a Big Mac.
Does anyone really think
Jared lost all that weight by eating 12-inch
meatball subs with cheese? I’m thinking that most of the people in this
study were college students with fast metabolisms, who got the extra
cookie because it was free and Subway has really good cookies. The ones
who did have weight issues probably just thought, “Well, this is free;
I’ll diet tomorrow.” And maybe it’s not that Subway has a “health halo”
but that McDonald’s has the opposite: an especially bad rep as
unhealthy fast food that makes people choose more carefully. This study
may have some merit, but I’ve noticed that researchers, after
painstakingly accumulating and analyzing their data, often interpret
the facts in an incredibly subjective way. On the bright side, if
deluded people keep chowing down on Subway meatball subs, Jared has
plenty of big old pants he’d be happy to sell them.
BIG SOUTH AMERICAN BREASTS
I didn’t know this, but
it’s become a tradition in Venezuela, a truly
beauty-obsessed nation, to give one’s daughter breast implants for her
15th birthday. There’s more plastic surgery taking place in Venezuela
than anywhere else on earth – is it any wonder that it produces the
most beauty queens? -- and the 15th birthday implants are so popular,
they’re advertised on TV. Breast augmentation has become a rite of
passage, like nose jobs in Beverly Hills.
Proving the old adage
that even
a
broken
clock
is
right
twice
a
day, socialist president and
aspiring revolutionary Hugo Chavez has come out against the ridiculous
fad, calling it “horrible” and “the ultimate degradation.” He also
wants his country rid of “Western icons”such as Barbie dolls. He
lectured the country about this on a recent Saturday TV appearance that
ran eight hours.
I hear that people
actually watched the whole thing, transfixed. Maybe
because it was illustrated.
Obviously, Chavez hasn’t
thought this thing through. If he wants a
socialist revolution, what could be more helpful than a country full of
giant boobs? Also, his stand against fake breasts could be the final
straw that makes Venezuelans rise up and overthrow him. He’s said some
crazy things before, but this time he’s gone too far!
MORE ON BOOBS
Scientist Patrick
Mallucci presented a breakthrough report in London this week. He
thoroughly researched photos of hundreds of female celebrities with
fake boobs to help plastic surgeons create perfect-looking breasts for
clients. (Millions of guys do this job on the Internet, and he’s
apparently the only one who gets paid for it.) Speaking to the Breast
Enlargement Conference (yes!), he said he’d found the ideal breast job
is a “45-55 percent proportion,” with the nipple at least 45 percent
from the top and not at the halfway mark or lower.
He also declared British
model Caprice to have the best fake boobs in
showbiz (they’re absolutely capricious), while the worst are Victoria
Beckham’s, which are “unnaturally round.” I tend to agree. Of course,
they look that way because in honor of her husband, she had two soccer
balls installed.
Also, her nipples are in
the bottom 10 percent.
This researcher had
wanted to study female celebrities with real
breasts, but, unfortunately, he couldn’t find any.
THE RULES OF ATTRACTION: HIGHS AND
LOWS
McMaster
University
in
Canada
studied the Hadza tribe of Tanzania and found
that men with deeper voices had more children than men with
higher-pitched voices. Researchers said previous studies found that
women find males with deeper voices to be more attractive, judging them
to be older, healthier and more dominant and masculine. Also, men
perceive women with higher voices as more attractive, subordinate (!),
feminine, healthier and younger.
Okay, then, I want to
know why Jessica Rabbit, the most seductive
cartoon character ever, was voiced by Kathleen Turner, not Jennifer
Tilly or the woman who voices Minnie Mouse. And why have men
traditionally been attracted to sultry-voiced women like Lauren Bacall
and Susan Hayward?
Conversely, why did women
like the Bee Gees in the ‘70s? Sting sounds
as though he’s on helium, yet he’s perceived to be all the things on
the above laundry list. And look at Mick Jagger and Robert Plant: they
don’t have deep voices, and I’ll bet they’ve got more children than
anybody. Some they don’t even know about.
I personally tend to like
lower voices, for both men and women. My
husband has worked in radio and doesn’t have the basso profundo “voice
of God” announcer’s voice, but it’s still pretty low. It makes him more
attractive to me than he’d be with a high voice. On the other hand, he
doesn’t have kids. I think this may be another one of those studies in
which subjective conclusions have been drawn. Or maybe those
conclusions are just particularly true in Tanzania.
Wife #1 became enranged,
grabbed a kitchen knife and nearly deprived
him of his manliness. He managed to get to the hospital and have it
sewn securely back in place.
Though the wife could get
up to three years in jail, she’s not worried.
All she needs is one woman on
the jury. Then it’s “justifiable penicide.”
Men, listen up. Never, I
repeat, NEVER,
compare your older first wife to your younger second wife. Especially
when you are naked, and there’s a kitchen knife within reach.
STILL TOO FAT FOR THE RUNWAY
Have you seen the
billboards that show anorexic French actress Isabelle
Caro nude? The
shocking
pictures
of
this
emaciated
woman are captioned with the
slogan, “NO TO ANOREXIA.” There’s a magazine ad, too, and Caro has been
featured on Entertainment Tonight
and other TV shows. Critics say girls might look at Caro as a role
model because she’s getting to be a celebrity, and they have a point.
But photographer Oliviero Toscani said that girls with anorexia who
look at it would say to themselves that they have to stop dieting, not
that they have to look like Isabelle Caro.
My thought is that girls
with anorexia will say to themselves that
Isabelle Caro looks fat.
Or maybe they’ll look at
the pictures and say, “Hey, I’m not that
thin... I’d like to
be…”
I’ve seen what she looks
like, and it’s a skeleton with some skin
stretched over it. I don’t know how this woman is still alive. In fact,
my theory is that she’s not actually alive. I think there’s been some
taxidermy involved. She’s been stuffed and mounted.
Well, mounted.
THE BRITISH ARE PHYSICAL WRECKS
A study
by
the
gym
chain
L.A.
Fitness has found that the fitness of Britons
has reached a new low: 53 percent can’t touch their toes, 68 percent
can’t do 20 sit-ups, 60 percent can’t carry their weekly shopping home
from the supermarket, and a quarter of British women are too fat to
fasten their own bras. It has occurred to me that these are the very
women who really need to wear bras! I suppose many of them just give up
and wear tube tops.
The Brits seriously need
to start getting in shape. Here’s one
suggestion: If they’re having trouble carrying home their groceries,
maybe they should stop buying so much food.
Next: In October’s Allure
magazine: Plastic surgery obsession from the doctor’s point of view.
Oct. 7, 2007 DON'T BELIEVE YOUR EYES...OR ANYONE ELSE'S I’ve just watched two
absolute must-see videos. The first one, Onslaught, a
Dove film at campaignforrealbeauty.com,
opens
with
a
closeup
of
a
lovely
fresh-faced
girl,
maybe
about
9
or
10
years
old,
and then takes off into a bombardment of edgy media images
at breakneck pace: flawless faces, perfect bodies in tiny bikinis, and
“transformed” skin, interspersed with yo-yo weight loss and even a
brief flash of the toilet bowl as it awaits an upchucked meal. (This
all happens so fast that one may need several viewings to take it all
in.) It ends with another shot of the young girl with her friends as
they walk to school and the message, “Talk to your daughter before the
beauty industry does.”
Bravo, Dove! Of course,
it has to be said that Dove is
a part of the beauty industry,
but they deserve a huge commendation for their unique approach.
Several months ago, I was
surprised by the cynical reaction to the Dove
campaign expressed by an acquaintance of mine. “I can just see the
executives and ad people sitting around the table, talking about how
they need to position their company to cut through the clutter,” she
said (I’m paraphrasing here), her eyes rolling. “That’s all it’s really
about.” And she considered it exploitative to show the women of various
body types in their underwear.
I must confess -- cynic
though I am -- that I love the Dove Campaign
For Real Beauty. The quest for perfection forced on us from all sides
can be so damaging; this campaign shows how we can be suckered by it
and helps us find our way back to the real world. Even if, in the end,
it is just a way to sell products, at least it’s the right way. May
they break all sales records with this campaign.
Dove has another great
video that rapidly details the amazing powers of
Photoshop to “beautify” a woman’s face. It’s called Evolution,
and
it's
been
on
their
website
for
some
time;
but
there’s
a
new
one,
not
associated
with
Dove, that does the same thing with a woman’s entire body. It’s called The
Power
Of
Photoshop. Unless
you’re a professional photographer who’s already skilled at this
process, you have to see it to believe it.
In the video, an
extremely heavy woman is posing with much of her ample
flesh exposed. The Photoshop artist gradually reproportions the woman’s
body and face, much as a sculptor chips away at a block of marble to
create his vision of Aphrodite. The woman’s dimply skin becomes
flawless, her breasts are lifted and shaped, her dark hair triples in
volume as her hips become one-third their original size, and the light
around her glows like hundreds of buttery candles. She has become a
completely different woman, and the effect is totally realistic. Now,
she’s ready to post her picture on eharmony.com.
Wow, this is even faster
weight loss than they promise in those ads for
weight-loss products. No hunger, no surgery, no sagging skin, and the
weight stays off!
I’m urging every woman to
watch this, in the hope that she’ll never try
to compete with Photoshopped media images again.
*************************
A WORM’S-EYE VIEW OF TIME
As any reader of this
blog knows, I follow the Perricone Prescription.
That means no sugar or other high-glycemic foods and plenty of
antioxidants, both in food and as supplements. I think it’s had quite a
remarkable effect, not just on how I look but on my overall health, so
much so that I even sing an aria, “O Worship Dr. Perricone,” in my
show.
Scientifically, Perricone
has been on the cutting edge, but the jury is
still out on some of his recommendations. For example, the German
Institute of Human Nutrition says that a key to living longer might be
giving up sweets and – here’s the surprising part – avoiding vitamins.
At least, if you’re a
worm.
In
their
study, they blocked the ability of
worms to process glucose, with the result that they (the worms, not the
researchers) lived 25 percent longer. In a human, that translates into
about 15 years. The scientists found that restricting sugar at first
caused the worms to build up free radicals that cause aging. You’d
think that would be a bad thing, but their bodies responded by building
up stronger, long-lasting defenses. This might explain why taking
antioxidant vitamins to wipe out free radicals doesn’t seem to help
people live longer. The researchers said, “The bad thing in the end
promotes something good.”
So it seems to me that,
if you restrict sugar
and take antioxidants, you
won’t live longer, but you will
look younger
when you die. Very important if you want an open casket. You should
have seen how young these worms looked – you wouldn’t even have known
they were segmented! They looked unsegmented!
Actually, I know what
preserves worms best of all. Tequila.
Oct. 3, 2007
TO GRAY OR NOT TO GRAY Did you know that the typical
mega-bookstore has an entire
section devoted to aging? It's true! You see, it's very important to
age in exactly the right way, because every choice you make is going to
be a political and personal statement, loaded with implications about
your values. I just found this out in an article called "The
War
Over
Going
Gray" by Anne Kreamer, who has also written an
entire book on how your hair should age. It's called Going
Gray.
Kreamer, after coloring
her hair for over 20 years, decided to stop
doing it. "I found to my surprise," she says, "that by visually
challenging my peers (if I was really gray, so must they be!), I
unwittingly landed myself on the front lines of a public struggle -
literally superficial but at the same time almost existentially
meaningful to American women - with the vicissitudes of age."
She says she encountered
two reactions: "a sort of proud, sometimes,
sanctimonious right-on-sister enthusiasm from fellow gray-haired
women," and "an equally proud, sometimes resentful
don't-judge-my-choices-I-do-this-to-feel-good-about-me defensiveness in
the comments of the committed-to-dyeing cohort."
"Hardly anyone was
lukewarm in their reactions," she continues, "which
suggests to me we may have a contentious new baby-boomer argument over
gray hair that is as mutually judgmental as the mommy wars between
working and stay-at-home mothers was in the 1980s and '90s."
Again with the boomer
thing. Never mind that the youngest boomers --
many of whom, I'm sure, are graying now -- were three years old during
the Summer Of Love. Among even the oldest boomers, I'll bet I could
find a few who weren't cutting class to join sit-ins or dropping acid
at Woodstock. Nevertheless, there's an assumption that all the baby
boomers used to be hippies and they'd be selling out, man, to do
something as dishonest as color their hair! It's ironic: former flower
children are obligated to say goodbye to the hair they had as children.
The kids who believed they should "never trust anyone over 30" are now
forced to deal with the politics of age. Well, what goes around comes
around.
I know I live in Dallas,
home of the hair that's big and blond, but
have I completely missed something? Where is the existential meaning in
the decision about hair color? Why is hair color an "age thing" at all?
High school girls color their hair. High school boys color their hair.
Twelve-year-old girls get highlights, just for fun. Most women of all
ages change the color of their hair or at least enhance it in some way.
Women go gray "in their
20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond." Hair color,
including the way it changes through the years, is a genetic trait.
Raven-haired Lara Flynn Boyle has said in an interview that her hair
turned totally white in her twenties but that she chose to keep it
dark. (I agree that the dark hair is very dramatic against her fair
skin.) But all-over silver hair can beautiful at any age; I think women
such as Emmylou Harris who attain it at a young age and look beautiful
in it are lucky. And just think - if you're tall, skinny, have great
skin and beautiful white hair, you can be quite successful modeling for
Chico's.
I didn't get the "white
hair" gene. My poker-straight blond hair, about
a decade ago, started turning a little darker and more ashy. I had it
highlighted for awhile, but so many Dallas women are blond that I'm
glad I made the decision eight years ago to turn it a vibrant but
natural-looking red. It makes me feel good. It makes my eyes look
bluer. And the shade suits my overall coloring so well that most of the
people I've met in the past eight years are stunned when I tell them
I'm not a real redhead.
Judging from my eyebrows,
the hair on my head is probably coming in an
ashy-blondy-brownish color. If I stopped coloring it, the occasional
gray hairs that might be there would probably blend in and look like
subtle highlights, if they were noticed at all. My mom didn't get much
gray in her taupe-colored hair until very late in life, so I probably
won't, either. I'll never have Emmylou Harris hair. I have as much
chance of that as of having curly hair. Or thick hair, drat.
Never did I dream that by
coloring my hair I was being dishonest in any
way or making some kind of personal statement about aging. But it seems
I have been, without even realizing it!
Kreamer points out that
of the 16 female U.S. Senators, not a single
one has visible gray hair, though they range in age from 46 to 74. Of
the 70 female members of the House, only seven have gray hair.
"Political professionals," she reports, "say that the double standard
is a great unspoken inequity but that candidates and officeholders
don't dare publicly discuss it for fear of seeming trivial."
What double standard?
There may presently be, percentage-wise, more
gray-haired men than gray-haired women in office, but that number is
going down as more and more men feel the pressure to look young and
vital. Ronald Reagan dyed his hair. (The joke was that he'd gone
"prematurely orange.") I'm sure quite a few men in Congress do. I'd be
willing to bet Mitt Romney's coloring the gray, and my hunch is that
other Presidential candidates - not just Hillary Clinton -- are, too.
Joe Biden got a hair transplant. And imagine how many toupees there
must be among politicians! How many men in politics are being
"dishonest" by covering their male pattern baldness?
Kreamer's article
paraphrases Clairol's in-house creative director of
color and style as saying that one powerful motivator of gray-haired
women to dye their hair is to live the fantasy that they're still 30 or
35 instead of 45 or 60. (This statement chafes me for so many reasons
that if I were currently using Clairol hair coloring, I'd switch to
another brand.) She says that rather than sell it as a fantasy or lie,
the postmodern beauty industry casts artificial color as a means of
expressing a deeper truth about who one is.
Gee. I color mine because
it's fun, it looks striking on stage and, as
previously noted, it makes my eyes look bluer.
Rose Weitz, who wrote Rapunzel's
Daughters:
What
Women's
Hair
Tells
Us
About
Women's
Lives (Jeez, another book on aging
hair??), says, "Even if, in the abstract, we think we look all right
with gray hair, we nonetheless feel as if we are losing our 'real
selves' if we no longer have our 'real hair color' - the color we had
when we were young and looked our best." If that's true, I should want
to be blonde forever. And who says we "looked our best" back then,
anyway? Some of us did. Some look better today.
Interestingly, Kreamer
notes that when she tested gray hair vs. brown
hair on Match.com, posting the pictures three months apart, she had
much more success as the gray-haired version of herself. (She gave her
age accurately for each posting.) Three times as many men in New York
City, Chicago and even Los Angeles were interested in the "gray"
Kreamer. She speculates that her honesty made her seem refreshing and
accessible, or that perhaps her gray hair made her stand out among all
the fake, colored hair.
Both of those
possibilities may be true. But an additional
consideration is that the gray just looks really good on her. Did she
ever think about that?
Probably not. In her
article, she says, "These days, choosing not to
dye has become a statement rather than a casual stylistic choice."
She obviously didn't talk
to me. But I'm telling you now that, down the
road, as I get more gray in my hair, my decision about coloring it will
be nothing more than a casual stylistic choice. My hair color will
never be a political statement. It will not reveal my numerical age. It
will not clue others in to my opinions any more than my numerical age
does.
And to you gray-hairs out
there, dyed or not: Unless you're in a field
that demands employees who look as if they're straight from Central
Casting, I recommend that you get over yourself and stop overanalyzing
this issue. Do whatever you like with your hair. It's not that
important. Really.
Kreamer didn't talk to my
friend Lu, either. Lu is a longtime Dallas
folksinger and songwriter who has straight, thick, uniformly gray hair.
It's not a dramatic white or silver, just light gray. She wears it in a
distinctive short cut that looks good on her. (For those who care how
old she is, she's 80, though she looks many years younger, even with
the gray.) I asked her about the to-dye-or-not-to-dye question; does
she keep her natural color as a personal statement, or what?
Her attitude was very
much like mine. She's not making any statement;
she just chose to do what she liked. I saw an old picture of her with
brown hair, and I have to say, I like the gray better on her. The
lighter color is eye-catching, and she stands out in the crowd.
She could go blonde, and
I'd say the same thing.
Sept. 22, 2007
Maddison Gabriel has blue
eyes, dark blond hair, and is 5-foot 7.
That’s not very tall for a model, but in this case, she could still
grow a few inches. She
just
turned
13
years
old.
Chosen when she was 12 to
be the official ambassador of Gold Coast
Fashion Week in Queensland, Australia, she apparently wore a number of
revealing outfits during the event. How revealing? I don’t know, but
I’d be willing to bet they wouldn’t have met the dress code at my
middle school.
Her participation has
sparked strong debate in Australia, with Prime
Minister John Howard deeming it unacceptable. “Catapulting girls as
young as 12 into something like that is outrageous,” he said. “There
should be age limits -- I mean there has to be -- we do have to
preserve some notion of innocence in our society.” Europe has set an
age limit of 16 for appearing on catwalks (I didn’t know that); he
wants Australia to do the same.
But Maddison’s mom has
demanded an apology from the Prime Minister.
He’s getting “very doddery,” she says. “He does not know exactly what
13 and 14-year-old girls are like. I used to vote for him. We’re trying
to get our teenage daughters to act older.”
Why? So old rich guys
will want to date them?
Fashion Week spokesman
Kelly Wieler said, “Maddy got in because she was
the best contestant. The judges saw that she was fit to do the job.”
She added that Maddy wouldn’t be modeling swimwear or lingerie. (She
didn’t mention that many designer clothes look just like lingerie and
are just as revealing.)
As for Maddison, she
feels she deserved to win and become the “face” of
the show. “I believe that I can fit into women’s clothes, I can model
women’s clothes, so I should be able to do it, she insisted. “It
doesn’t matter about age. It matters that you can do the job. Modeling
is all I’ve wanted to do since I was six. I don’t think I’m too young.”
If she can fit into
women’s clothes, it’s because most of them seem
designed for women who are built like 12-year-olds. And even though
I’ve said many times and believe with my whole heart that “it doesn’t
matter about age,” I am always talking about the world of adults. This
is another issue entirely.
For me, the most
important question to ask is why
the “face” of this women’s
fashion event is that of a barely 13-year-old girl. “Best” is
subjective; why was she considered the “best” contestant? She’s a cute
girl, and if this were a junior fashion show, she would be perfect. But
this event is for grownup women, and I don’t understand why grownup
women are supposed to aspire to look like a seventh-grader, albeit a
very tall one playing dress-up in mommy’s makeup and heels.
This attitude about
fashion and beauty is not unique to Australia. Here
in Dallas, we have an annual event called the Fashion!Dallas/Kim Dawson
model search. (Fashion!Dallas is part of The Dallas Morning News, and
the
Kim Dawson Agency is a local modeling agency.) Each year, hundreds of
contestants show up at a mall to have their pictures snapped. There are
specific height and age requirements. Judges select the finalists,
whose pictures appear in the paper. Readers get to vote for their faves
and select two Readers’ Choice winners, but the judges pick the actual
winner or winners. This is a big deal; being chosen can really
jump-start a career in modeling. Case in point: the first year’s
winner, Erin Wasson, who went on to be a top international model.
The age threshold for a
girl entering this contest is 14; the cutoff
age is, I think, 21. Last year, the girl who won, Ali Michael, was –
you guessed it -- 14.
I’m reminded of myself at
14, certainly tall enough to model after
growing six inches in one year! My height was 5-foot-9, considerably
taller than most of the boys (alas), and I was to grow another inch. I
was skinny, too, with blue eyes and long, straight, very blonde hair.
But I was painfully shy, absolutely naïve, and certainly no
fashion plate; Mom made most of my clothes. I’d gotten contact lenses
but was a year or so away from wearing makeup. Maybe someone could’ve
gotten hold of me then and made a model out of me, but I’m glad nobody
did. I was a baby – way too young. I wasn’t at all ready to be a model
in the very adult and sometimes rough world of fashion.
Today, though, the
fashion world actually seems to prefer babies to
wear its grownup clothes. It’s not my imagination – the models really
are getting younger. In real life, some of these models wouldn’t even
be old enough to wear a prom dress.
By amazing coincidence
(I’d already started writing this piece),
today’s paper features this
year’s
finalists in the Model Search. There are a dozen finalists
this year, all girls, ranging in age from 14 to 20. The 20-year-old, a
5-foot-11 brunette named Ren Vokes, is described as the “elder
statesman” of the group. “Everyone here is 14 and I’m 20,” she
observes. “I feel like an old person for the first time in my life.”
Cry me a river.
Not all the other girls
are 14, but most are 14-16. Looking at their
headshots, I’d think they all could get work as professional models.
(An interesting aside: one of the 14-year-olds is Asian, and she still
has Eastern-style eyes, with no fold. I wonder if this pretty girl will
feel pressure to change that.) In the photos, they all look closer in
age than they actually are. I don’t have a favorite to win, but I’d be
more likely to bet on one at the lower end of the age range than the
upper end.
I can remember, way back
in the Jurassic Period, when teenage model
Brooke Shields created a scandal just by saying, “Know what comes
between me and my Calvins? Nothing.” It was widely thought that she was
too young to do such a suggestive ad. Times have changed. Young teens
now look to such stunning role models as Paris Hilton as their fashion
icons.
Even so, my concern is
less for the extremely young girls involved in
modeling than for the grownup women who feel compelled to try to look
like them. Think about it: even a 30-year-old woman is surrounded by
images of girls half her age. Some
of these models are in ads for anti-aging products.
What is wrong with this
picture?
********************
Next time: “To Gray Or
Not To Gray…that is the question,” and you
better get the answer right because it’s an incredibly significant
personal statement and a matter of political correctness. Or so I’ve
read.
Sept. 20, 2007
Facing Spiegel's "Reality," Beestung
Breasts & Other News The Spiegel
catalog has just arrived - I get one about every three days - and
once again, there's a section called "Reality Dressing - fabulous at
every age!" As you might guess, it's one of my biggest pet peeves. This
one has eight full pages of how to dress in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s,
60s, and "ageless," which I assume is code for 70 and over.
It starts with a two-page
spread featuring one women from each of the
age groups; for example, the 50s are represented by Beverly Johnson,
"legendary model." (This is one of those rare gigs for 50-plus models.)
The other women are not professional models. They include a pediatric
nurse, a real estate broker, a copy editor and a retired teacher. The
40s are represented by Lynette Lewis, author of "Climbing the Ladder in
Stilettos," though she appears to be wearing a medium-height heel. All
the women, from 20 to "ageless," look polished, confident and
attractive.
They're all dressed in
"casual chic" for fall: black pants with lots of
leather. But there's a problem: I'm supposed to see how they illustrate
"leather in every look for every age," but for the life of me, I can't
see what it is that makes the clothes appropriate for their particular
age group. As long as these women have essentially the same body shape,
any one of them could wear any of the outfits. And if they could, why
have they been divided into decades? I don't see the point of this
whole exercise.
I personally would wear
any of the outfits on these two pages, except
maybe the boxy red jacket they put on the "ageless" woman, simply
because I think big jackets overwhelm my willowy build. I feel
swallowed by them, and would "at any age." Ditto the super-wide pants
on the 60s woman.
The next two-page spread
features a lineup of put-together outfits - no
models here, just the clothes - with one supposedly for the 20s, one
for the 30s, and on through "ageless." I'd wear the 20s and 40s outfits
but definitely not the 30s, 60s or "ageless" ones. (Oops, they seem to
have left out the 50s! Whatever will Beverly Johnson wear?)
The next two-page spread
has another lineup, this time of "9-to-5 looks
for every age and every style." None of these are my style. One
possible exception is the 20s look, but it has those floppy, wide
pants. An outfit that might look chic on someone - someone who isn't me
-- is the black "ageless"
pantsuit, which could look quite smart for the right business occasion.
But with its matching long coat, it's so covered-up. Any long coat
tends to make me think of Bea Arthur, and black pantsuits remind me of
Hillary Clinton. As for the outfits for 30s, 40s and 50s, they look
matronly and would add about 20 pounds - some might say 20 years -- to
anyone's frame. (Again, these clothes are shown without models.) I
would never wear them, "at any age."
Moving on to the next
two-page spread, we come to my favorite part. The
catalog takes one article of clothing, in this case a leopard-print
"trapeze" jacket, and shows it used appropriately for the 20s, 30s,
40s, 50s and 60s. (Oops, this time they left out "ageless"!) And for
each decade, they thoughtfully provide an appropriate adjective.
In your 20s, you want to
be "edgy." In your 30s, "sophisticated." The
40s are "elegant." The 50s are "adventurous." Finally, in your 60s,
it's time to be "dramatic." And, believe it or not, for the woman in
her 60s, they pair the leopard-print jacket with A LEOPARD-PRINT
SKIRT. My Lord! Even SCTV's Edith Prickley wore a tasteful
black skirt with her leopard jacket. That's right, I am telling you
that even Edith Prickley had
enough taste to know that top-to-toe leopard would've been too much!
What are they thinking??? And why didn't they include a matching,
leopard-print pillbox hat?
I've tried to cultivate a
wardrobe that manages to be edgy,
sophisticated, elegant, adventurous and dramatic, all on a limited
budget. Ironically, many of my clothes come from the Newport News
catalog. Newport News is part of Spiegel.
So, listen up, Spiegel. I
am not a demographic category. I have always
been and will continue to be "ageless." Stop defining a woman by her
decade of life. I hate it, and I'm sure many other women are sick of
it, too. Your "Reality Dressing" pages are a prime example of the
age-obsession that drives me insane.
It's not my reality at
all.
********************
BEE STING DEFLATES
BREAST, AND OTHER NEWS
Southern
China
City
News
reports that a woman from Miaoli, Taiwan, was
riding her motorcycle while wearing a low-cut dress when a bee stung
her on the breast. "My right breast disappeared in one day," she said
of her saline implant. I understand this was so traumatic for her, she
broke out in hives. Her surgeon said this is very unusual, but the
woman is very skinny, and her thin skin was stretched tightly over the
implant. (Bet that looked
natural!) Ironically, her natural breasts were exactly the size of bee
stings. The doctor replaced her implant but advised her to avoid
acupuncture. Also, lapel pins.
Victoria Beckham should
be warned about this.
********************
Speaking of breast
implants, did you know that the Australian military
has given
taxpayer-funded breast implants to some of its female sailors?
(Maybe they take it out of the budget for torpedoes.) A spokesman
defended this practice, saying plastic surgery is provided where there
are compelling medical, dental or psychological reasons. He said
suggestions that they're trying to make the female sailors look sexy
are not only wrong, but insulting.
Of course, suggestions
that the sailors don't look sexy are also wrong
and insulting.
The spokesman also noted
that in an emergency, breast implants can
double as flotation devices. And women who've had the surgery don't
have to admit it. The policy regarding plastic surgery is strictly,
"Don't ask, don't tell."
********************
More implant news: The
Hindustan
Times
reports that Indian men have noticed women looking
at their butts, and they're getting self-conscious about it. A doctor
at one cosmetic surgery clinic said that for every seven female
patients he sees, there are now two men coming in for butt treatments.
"Butt therapy" can involve anything from liposuction and toning/firming
to hair and scar removal. A few men have even gone in for implants, but
so far, not many. Probably just Bollywood actors.
If this doctor wants more
male patients for this procedure, he should
tell them that butt implants will help align their lower chakras.
********************
A Cosmopolitan
magazine
survey of over 5,000 Australian women found that they are
unhappy with their bodies but don't know how to change them. Almost
half said if they could change anything about their lives, it would be
their bodies; 42 percent consider themselves overweight or obese. Yet a
quarter of the women exercise once a month or less, and nearly half
don't eat fruit every day. One in six women prefer chocolate to sex,
and one in ten would rather skip a meal than give up alcohol to lose
weight. Yet 10 percent said they're so depressed about their bodies,
they'd give up four or more years of their lives to lose weight.
Presumably, they mean the years they'd have to spend on a weight-loss
diet.
Realistically, as long as
women are this depressed, is there any way
they could give up cheesecake? Not to mention chocolate -- if it's
better than sex, giving it up would be worse than death. I can also see
why they'd rather give up food than booze: food reminds them they're
fat, while booze helps them forget they're fat. With these habits, they
may indeed lose four or more years of their lives, and still die fat.
********************
Speaking of chocolate, a
psychologist at England's University of
Bristol says that despite what chocoholics think, chocolate
is
not
literally
addictive. He said some people may think they have
no control over their craving for it, but the compounds in chocolate
that produce a buzz in the brain are found in higher concentrations in
other foods, such as cheese and avocados, which are not generally
thought of as addictive foods.
This doesn't explain the
people who would do anything for a Klondike
bar. But I think it's probably the same as with nuts: sometimes you
feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.
I also believe there may
be people addicted to avocados. I no longer
eat chocolate (it causes my migraines-drat!!),
but I can polish off a pretty generous bowl of guacamole. Especially if
it has a little cheese on it.
********************
Finally, the Northern
Italian town of Piobbico has unveiled a
monument
to
ugly
people. It's sponsored by the World Association of
Ugly People, an Italian-born group that has spread around the world.
Their motto: A person is what he is and not what he looks like. So
instead of a monument showing a good-looking movie star or dashing war
hero, this monument depicts "a person who is just as beautiful, but
only on the inside."
It will be unveiled, then
immediately veiled again.
Oh, and the person they
have chosen wins a free Extreme Makeover.
********************
Next time: the new star
of fashion modeling. She just turned 13.
Sept. 18, 2007
WEIGHING IN ON BRITNEY, MADONNA &
DEMI
I've seen footage of
Britney Spears as a little girl, singing
confidently and on-key. After she'd had a few hits, I saw her sing live
on "Saturday Night Live," just sitting on a stool with a hand-held
microphone, and thought she did a good job. But Britney's appeal has
been more about her hot dancer's body and her choreography - some nice
moves, but certainly not too difficult for most high school drill teams
to pull off -- than about her voice.
In case you are Amish or
from the planet Neptune, I should mention that
the voice we've heard on CDs and in concert was created in a studio.
(To find out how modern hit songs are manufactured, just click here.)
In
concert
or
on
TV,
Britney
is
always
lip-synching
to
a
backing
track.
If
you
think
that's because she can't be expected to sing while she's
dancing, you haven't ever been to a Broadway show. And her songs, while
catchy in the beginning, are now just tuneless and annoying attempts to
be seductive, delivered in that generic overproduced whisper that also
marks the "music" of Janet Jackson and countless other pop and hip-hop
artists who really don't have much voice at all. (To be fair to
Britney, these other artists also lip-synch.)
I don't know what
happened to Britney's voice. Maybe she just got so
accustomed to lip-synching that she lost her confidence for singing
live. Or maybe she spends so much time in loud clubs, talking over
music, smoking Marlboros and pouring hard liquor down her throat, that
she's fried her vocal chords. Whatever the reason, Britney is a musical
performer who never sings.
So what does she have
left? Her ability to lip-synch, her smooth dance
moves, her hot, sexy body? As we saw on the recent MTV Music Video
Awards show, the lip-synching and the dance moves didn't come off well.
Some of the choreography didn't come off at all. Later, it was revealed
that Britney was 4-1/2 hours late to rehearsal and showed up with a
frozen margarita in her hand after clubbing all night. She has only
herself to blame for that, but with all the personal trauma she's been
through in recent years, self-inflicted or not, and the constant public
scrutiny, I'm wondering whether--deep down--she even wants to be on
stage. (Check out late-night host Craig Ferguson's
monologue on the relentless criticism and joking about Britney.) If
she doesn't, she should go somewhere secluded, find some serious help,
and get her life together. This will take some time. There are plenty
of attractive girls with
talent who'd love to be pop superstars and who would definitely show up
for rehearsal.
She did make the cover of
Entertainment Weekly, and the feature story is all about her,
but I'm sorry: there is such a thing as bad publicity, and this is it.
Some might say that
Britney's missing rehearsal was a sign of her
overconfidence. I speculate that it was the opposite. This was to be
The Comeback, and she must've
been feeling more pressure than she could handle. So she avoided the
situation, preferring to down drink after drink of liquid confidence to
get herself up on that stage. Yeah, that helped. Good plan.
So, simply through lack
of preparedness, her dance moves didn't click.
She wasn't sure of the lyrics, either, even though they seemed to
consist of nothing more than "gimme, gimme, gimme," so at some point
she simply stopped mouthing them.
That leaves her hot, sexy
body.
The Internet has exploded
with comments, pro and con, about Britney's
appearance on that show. They range from "Most women would kill to have
that body" (probably true) to "Britney is a fat tub of lard" (a gross
exaggeration). Most of the "fat" remarks have been incredibly snide,
and I'd be willing to bet that most were made by people who weigh more
than Britney. Weight seems to be something that no one can get exactly
right, and yet it's sooooo important.
Opinions vary, and everyone has to "weigh in."
Two pregnancies - along
with, it must be said, mass quantities of fried
chicken and tater tots - had wrought havoc on Britney's trim, sexy body
long before the MTV show, but she had gotten herself into pretty fair
shape for The Comeback. It
was revealed later that she rejected the flattering outfit created for
her as "not sexy enough" in favor of the tiny black bra and little-boy
shorts she must've been carrying around in her purse. That must've been
the margaritas talking. Or maybe it was the outfit she'd been clubbing
in the night before.
The body that might have
looked stunning in the other outfit definitely
lost its "wow factor" in the bra-and-shorts. Britney doesn't seem to
understand what "sexy" is. It's not getting out of a limo in a short
skirt and no panties. It's not wearing as little clothing as you can
get away with on TV, especially if the outfit is unflattering. In other
words, this discussion shouldn't even be about Britney's weight. It
should be about her taste and her judgment.
Also, have you noticed
that the emphasis on super-thinness seems
confined to white girls? Beyonce has a little extra poundage -
temporarily lost to shoot "Dreamgirls," but now comfortably back on --
and so does Jennifer Lopez. They are both considered sexy. Queen
Latifah's career hasn't been hurt by her size. It's only the white
singers who have to be matchstick thin. I just read a capsule review of
white blues singer Joss Stone that mentioned she'd finally lost her
baby fat; would that have been said of a black singer? Unlike Britney,
Joss Stone is a tremendous talent, but we're still talking about her
weight.
When looking at Britney's
career, it might be useful to compare her
with Madonna. Both started as hot, young dancer/singers with lithe
bodies and small voices. Both had the early success in pop music that's
typically associated with flashes-in-the-pan. Both appealed to a young,
fickle demographic. Yet Madonna built on her early success, while
Britney soon faltered. I'd say - and Madonna would no doubt agree -
that the critical difference was Madonna's steely determination and
singlemindedness. Critics say that Madonna has constantly "reinvented
herself" (a term I hate; I'll have to write about that sometime), but I
don't think that's it. Her various incarnations were always expressions
of the Madonna we knew; the important thing is that she grew as an
artist. By the time she sang the torch song "Sooner Or Later" for the
film Dick Tracy, her voice
had become a lovely thing. The chirpiness heard on early hits such as
"Borderline" was gone, replaced by a rich, emotional, mature sound. She
sings live in concert, though probably with a backing track, and she's
kept her dancer's body, even at almost twice Britney's age.
Ironically, the very
maturity that transformed her voice has been her
biggest liability in the pop music world. Now in her late 40s, Madonna
is the brunt of jokes about her age. It doesn't even seem to matter
that she's kept her body in top form. Weight is something virtually all
of us can do something about, but age...well. No one, repeat, NO ONE
can turn back the clock.
Case in point: Demi
Moore, who is in the news. (If an over-40 actress
is in the news, you can bet the subject will be age.) In the London
Daily
Mail, Lucretia Munro writes that four years after undergoing
a massively expensive, top-to-toe makeover, Demi has failed to win the
big Hollywood roles she'd hoped for. It's estimated that she spent
close to half a million dollars on personal trainers, nutritionists,
yoga instructors and various surgical and cosmetic procedures. Those
who follow such things say she even had an operation on her knees to
lift the sagging skin. Demi showed off her lean, sexy body in 2003,
emerging from the sea in a skimpy bikini for Charlie's Angels: Full
Throttle.
Since that time, she's
appeared in only two films, with two more to be
released this fall, while ex-husband Bruce Willis (almost a decade
older than she) has appeared in 13.
Demi has said she hoped
to overturn the belief that juicy roles should
not be given to older actresses, but it doesn't seem to be working out
that way, even though she's looking great. And the problem seems to be
unique to Hollywood; European filmmakers tend to care much less about
it. "If we are told we are not valuable once we hit 30, it is a
problem," Demi said. "We have to say, 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not
going to take it anymore.'"
The same article quotes
Sharon Stone as saying, "When I went to the
Oscars, it was like, 'Oh, there's been an archeological dig and look
what we've found, a 40-year-old."
Her body looks great,
too, but you don't see too many Sharon Stone
movies coming out these days, do you? So maybe Britney Spears should
just concentrate on looking like a normal, healthy woman, growing up,
finding better friends, getting to know her kids, seeing a good
therapist and living a happy life. Even if she starved herself into a
size 2 and decided to get serious about a comeback, she'd have to
realize that untalented pop stars have an even shorter shelf life than
Hollywood actresses.
Sept. 6, 2007
IT’S THE “AGE” OF INSANE FASHION
MAGAZINES
Just got home from the
hair salon, where, in addition to enhancing the
fabulosity of my trademark red mane, I typically spend time researching
the treatment of age and beauty in various women’s magazines. Today I
struck the mother lode – or should I say “load” – with the September
issue of Glamour.
The headline reads “LOOK
& FEEL
YOUR SEXIEST AT 20, 30, 40 – The hair, the skin, the body, the
secrets!”
Three beautiful babes are on the cover, identified as “Hot At Every
Age! Claire Danes, 28; Queen Latifah, 37; and Mariska Hargitay, 43.”
Inside, there are headlines such as “20? 30? 40? Who Cares?,” while the
very existence of this issue shows that the editors of Glamour, their advertisers and their presumed
readership care very much. In fact, they seem pathologically obsessed
with it.
There’s a whole section
called the “20, 30, 40 Special – Inspiration
for every age” that includes features such as “What Will You Look Like
In 20 Years?,” “Look And Feel Your Sexiest at 20, 30, 40” and (my
personal favorite) “Everything You Need To Know About Being 20, 30,
40.”
Spread throughout the
magazine are pages such as “Look-great ideas at
20, 30, 40.” I learn on this page that the 20s are a great time to live
out a travel fantasy (like Claire Danes), the 30s are when you make
time for a cause (like Queen Latifah), and the 40s are the time to “be
proud! ‘I’m aging like a fine wine and showing young women, look at
what you can grow into'” (like Mariska Hargitay). Okay, thinking of
yourself as a role model is great, but can’t you travel, work for a
cause, or be proud of yourself at any age? What’s with all the
categories?
And while we’re at it,
what are the 50s the time for? Apparently,
they’re the time for death, because there is nary a mention of anyone
in this magazine who’s over 49. Yet they keep repeating the mantra, “at
every age…at every age…,” as if there were
no women over 49. Many women I know who have the digit “5” in their
ages, not to mention “6,” “7” or even “8” (one of my dearest friends is
a very current 80), might legitimately wonder what the editors of Glamour mean by “every age.”
Of course, they’re not
going to target women that
old, because their advertisers
obviously want to reach the – you guessed it – 20s, 30s and 40s. This
is why so many magazines make a point of specifying these decades over
and over, month after month. Their advertisers want to sell clothes and
skincare products to 20-year-olds and 40-year-olds. My guess is that
demographic research has convinced the editors that this is about as
wide a net as they can cast and still keep those valued 20-year-olds,
who are also – surprise --
turning into a big new market for anti-aging products. So Glamour can have a full-page ad for Aveeno “clear
complexion foaming cleanser” (to fight acne) and also one for
Neutrogena “anti-oxidant age reverse day lotion” (to fight aging).
Gosh, there’s even one full-page ad, for Revlon Age-Defying Makeup,
that screams “DEFY AGE” in
huge red letters.
More magazine, in
contrast,
covets advertisers who are selling to women 40-plus, and they try –
again, way too hard -- to define themselves in terms of that particular
golden demographic. In this magazine, it’s the 20s and 30s who don’t
exist. Virtually everything in More
is devoted to reminding one of one’s age; I can hardly get through an
issue without throwing it across the room. Jeez, give me a break! I’ve
ranted about More magazine
before and will do so again; for now, let me just say that, although it
often contains wonderful writing from insightful contributors (all over
40, of course), it’s based on a concept at odds with my philosophy of
truly “ageless living.” Sure, it puts a positive spin on aging, but it
also puts a not-so-positive spin on my
head by obsessing relentlessly over everybody’s age.
This particular issue of
Glamour is
just about as bad. I say “just about” because there’s still quite a bit
of content that’s more like their usual thing, with no reference to
age. They have a spread on “the best fall clothes for your body type”
as opposed to “for your age,” and another one on “a power look at every
price” as opposed to “for every age.” They include tips for making more
money, losing weight and enhancing one’s understanding of the male
animal – things women in general truly are interested in. (Aside: I
listed those three things according to relative difficulty.)
But then we get to page
253, and the headline: “20, 30, 40…Hot at every
age!” Here, we get to see which decade of life all our favorite
Hollywood stars (under 50) are currently enjoying. Superimposed in a
little circle over each star’s picture is – you guessed it – her age.
Who’s 20? Who’s 30? Who’s 40? We have to know! Who’s younger than we
would’ve guessed? Who’s older, but passing for younger? Who’s had
plastic surgery? (My guess: virtually all.) Have you had enough? Ready
to throw the magazine across the room yet?
But then, turn the page,
and there’s something that, in spite of the
“20, 30, 40” in the headline, I actually like: “Doing it all wrong at
20,
30, 40. Women explain the value of throwing out your timeline.”
All right! We hear from a
woman who moved back in with her parents at
31, graduated college at 37, had a baby at 45. No, these are not the
same woman. Three different women made choices that ignore the
traditional timetable, and they’re glad they did. It’s a great message
-- although the parents of the 31-year-old mmight disagree.
On the very same page,
though, is another groaner: “The Perfect Woman
In Each Decade.” This pushes me towards the precipice of violent rage,
for so many reasons. But here it is: According to a Glamour poll, the
perfect woman in
her 20s is (for men) Jessica Alba, 26, and (for women) America Ferrera,
23. Men and women agreed on the perfect woman in her 30s; that would be
(ugh) Angelina Jolie, 32. Wow, they sure didn’t ask me. They also
agreed that the perfect 40-something woman is Salma Hayek, 40.
Does everything have to
be
broken down into decades? Is our view of ourselves based entirely on
the fact that we use a base-10 numerical system?
I turn the page in
frustration, and there’s more: “Celebs at 20, 30,
40,” which shows how 40-something stars have changed their looks
through the decades, and “We asked guys, what do you love about women
in their 20s, in their 30s, in their 40s?” I don’t even want to hear
it.
I turn the page again,
and this is the worst part of all! “Guess the
star’s age! 20? 30? 40? A good outfit never tells. (Bonus points if you
can spot the 61-year-old!)” Yes, it actually says this! We see six
fashionably-dressed celebrities, but only from the shoulders down. You
check a key to see if you guessed right; it turns out that 61-year-old
Jaclyn Smith is third from the left.
So, okay, I have to
admit, one woman
over 49 does appear in this magazine. But does the picture of a
headless woman thrown into the mix as a novelty in an age-guessing game
really count?
It just goes on and on.
In “The Secrets To A Happy Life, three
generations of smart, successful women mouth off about what happens to
your head and your heart (and your knees!) as you grow from 20, to 30,
to 40 and beyond.”
Oh, wait! I’ve spotted
someone else over 49! It’s Kathleen Turner,
identified as 53, saying, “I had a great time being young, but I have
no desire to look the same now.” I find it meaningful that the picture
of her they chose to run was taken when she was much younger. It even
says, “Turner in her thirties.” Apparently, the editors desire that she
look the same.
Even the feature story,
“It Took Three Women To Make This Baby,” leads
off this way: “When a couple in their forties, an egg donor in her
twenties and a surrogate in her thirties used science to create a
child…” Normally, I’d find a story like this interesting, but in this
context, I’m thinking, “Enough already!”
Towards the back of the
magazine, after some luscious fashion spreads,
there’s “Look And Feel Your Sexiest At 20, 30, 40!” We learn that
Claire Danes thinks her metabolism is slowing down at 28, that Queen
Latifah has lost her sexual hangups and is now happily enjoying the
“dirty thirties” at 37, and that 43-year-old Mariska Hargitay says,
“You hit your forties, and you’re fearless, you’re just unstoppable.”
Okay…
If my blog about this
magazine seems unusually long, remember: it did
say that it would tell you EVERYTHING
YOU NEED TO KNOW about being 20, 30 and 40. So, hey, I had to
cover a lot of ground! Now, it’s time to sum up with what I think is
wrong with this whole approach.
When I see a magazine
like this one, I know I’m on the right track with
my beliefs about age. It’s why I write this blog, and one big reason
why I perform “My Ship Has Sailed.” My dream is for one’s age to be
thought of as essentially meaningless, like one’s shoe size. Maybe
someday we’ll get there, but, judging from this magazine, I think it
may have to get worse before it gets better. I hope that twenty years
from now, my nieces -- for the record, now in their twenties -- will
find this old copy of Glamour
in a garage sale somewhere and just laugh and laugh.
What does it mean to be
in a particular decade of life? This question
was on my mind this past weekend, because it was the fourth anniversary
of my mom’s death. Mom died of something totally unrelated to her age;
the hospital was never forthcoming, but I think she developed an
infection there that shut her organs down two days after a routine
appendectomy. She’d been in great health all her life, and I think she
would’ve lived many years longer. Over the past few days, I’ve been
thinking back to where my mom was in her life when she was in “my
decade.”
It was totally different.
She was dealing with the personal problems of
a husband and two daughters; I’m married but have no kids, unless 16
parrots count. (Mom would never
have had parrots!) She had a great head for business but no career.
I’ve worked all my life as a writer and performer and am only now
shifting the career into high gear. Mom and I were so different; she
didn’t really share my interests in the arts or theatre or humor. She
hadn’t taken care of herself well and in “my decade” underwent a
complete facelift; something I wouldn’t need at all and can’t even
imagine contemplating for many years. In “my decade,” mom even became
widowed; my father died tragically at a young age. She lived for two
more decades as a widow, spending most of her time taking care of her
grandchildren as they arrived and, as far as I know, not going on even
one date for the rest of her life.
So what does it mean to
be 20, 30, 40? I say there’s no way to answer
that question. I say it’s a stupid question. I can only conclude that
it’s a stupid question that sells magazines.
Sept. 5, 2007
MEN: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE BALD
Every day, I see stories
in the news relating to The Big Age
And Beauty Thing, but
today it's an embarrassment of riches - mostly embarrassing to men, I'm
sorry to say. Where to start?
First of all, did you
know that when choosing women to date, men look
almost exclusively at appearance? It's true! Let me tell you, I was
shocked. Researchers
from
Indiana
University who studied speed daters in Germany found
that while women considered such things as wealth and status,
commitment to family, good health and, yes, physical appearance, men
kept it simple and concentrated on physical appearance. I'm guessing
that by "physical appearance" they meant "breast size."
To be fair, women were
looking at attractiveness, too. Interestingly,
even though they said they were looking at numerous traits, the men
they picked tended to match their own self-assessed level of
attractiveness. Coincidence? The researchers think not; their report
speculates that women know what they can get and aim for men who are
about as attractive as themselves. They don't "overshoot" by picking
men who are more attractive because a gorgeous man might run off with
someone hotter.
This is called "the
Jennifer Aniston Principle."
Personally, I think women
hesitate to choose men more attractive than
themselves because they hate to have to share the bathroom mirror.
Men have always been open
about their tendency to rate women by
appearance; in fact, I've always hated it when a man would say that a
particular woman was "out of his league." Of course, this means that
beautiful women will most often get asked out by men who think of
themselves as outrageously
attractive. Ever date a man like that? Ever want to again?
So the man and the woman
are both thinking about relative hotness, but
at different levels of awareness and for different reasons. The woman
is thinking long term: would he stick around?? The man is thinking in
the moment: can I get her to go out with me and sleep with me on this
date??
Sometimes I think it's
amazing that most of us remain heterosexual.
********************
It gets worse. Did you
know that women are pickier
about whom they'll kiss than men are? (I know, another shocker.) A
New York State University team surveyed over 1,000 students and learned
that women use kissing as a way to assess a man as a potential partner
and increase bonding, then later to maintain intimacy and check the
status of the relationship. Men, on the other hand, kiss to increase
the likelihood of sex, and they're willing to have sex with someone
whom they don't find attractive or think is a bad kisser or whom they
haven't even kissed at all.
Especially at closing
time, after many beers.
It seems that men are
driven to have sex with virtually anyone, even
someone they would never kiss! Of course, there are women with this
attitude; they are called "hookers."
And, to think, women
agonize over what flavor of lip gloss to wear.
********************
Here's
another
study
about
men,
sex
and
age that'll make you cringe:
Researchers at Stanford University believe that humans live as long as
we do because of horny old men. They say that generally, living beings
die soon after their reproductive stage ends, but human males are able
to continue reproducing long past the age at which females go through
menopause. Because men in their 70s are still able to impregnate
younger women, and often do, humans have evolved to live well past the
age at which women lose their fertility. The implication: we women
should be grateful!
The researchers stopped
short of saying that post-menopausal women had
no real reason to keep on living. Perhaps there are reasons for
non-fertile women to exist: for example, to care for the grandchildren
if their own daughters run off to live with Hugh Hefner.
Just think, now that we
have Viagra, soon we'll all be living for 300
years.
I'm wondering if
evolution is perhaps lengthening the time of a woman's
fertility as well. I recently heard of a record-setting birth that took
place when the woman was 59. The conception was completely natural;
she'd taken no fertility treatments. It only makes sense that, as human
lifespan increases, the span of fertility will increase as well.
But men will still be
chasing 18-year-olds.
********************
Okay, I've bashed men
enough for one day. Though you might not be able
to tell so far, this blog is actually for both women and men as we all
deal with issues relating to age and attractiveness.
So let's talk about
something men typically face with either
resignation or blinding fear. That's right: baldness! Humorist Matt
Wixon (mwixon@dallasnews.com) has
a
column
about
his
hair, or lack thereof, in the September 3 issue
of The Dallas Morning News. It was inspired by the fact that after
using the same photo in the paper for six years, he now has a current
one -- one that shows him with a different shirt and, by the way, with
decidedly less hair. Wixon's column, besides being really funny,
testifies to the pressure men as well as women face to keep looking
young and, uh, beautiful.
I love his speculation
about where his hair went, especially that a
bird might have picked up some of it and used it in a nest. (Birds love
our hair; some of my pet parrots like to gently preen and "style" my
long locks, while others don't know their own strength and can end up
snipping off a strand!) Perhaps his hair is just trapped inside a
vacuum cleaner bag, he writes, but maybe it's in an exotic part of the
world.
I'm reminded of what
Charlie Brown says of Pig Pen's dirt in "A Charlie
Brown Christmas": "Think of it as maybe the soil from some great past
civilization. Maybe the soil of Ancient Babylon. It staggers the
imagination..."
"I'm OK with balding,"
Wixon continues. "It was a difficult adjustment,
however. How could it not be? Our superficial culture values
appearance, especially youthful appearance, over just about everything.
There is no "aging gracefully" anymore. Nips, tucks and facelifts are
the way to go, even if some people eventually look like an off-brand
knockoff of a human."
He describes a commercial
for Rogaine that ran a few years ago (I never
saw this one!): "A man steps up to the camera and, with his wife or
girlfriend in the background, asks, 'Will she still feel the same way
if I lose my hair?' 'Sure,' he answers to himself. 'She'll just feel it
about somebody else.'
"Classic!" Wixon remarks.
"I'm not sure if that's more demeaning to men
or women."
What a great comment. I
swear to God I did not ghostwrite his column.
And this is coming from a man. I've
got to get a tape to him of my song parody "My Man"; it's about the way
women still love their men as they (the men) grow bald and flabby -- at
least when they don't resort to those ridiculous combovers.
In spite of that ad
campaign, Wixon did try Rogaine, but he stopped
using it; it's for mild-to-moderate balding, not Yul-Brynner-style
balding. Plus, you have to use it all the time or the hair just falls
out. "It's like you're paying protection money to a neighborhood thug,"
he says. LOVE IT!
Wixon also had to
consider that his self-assessment of attractiveness
(see today's previous stories) was not high, with or without hair.
"It's not as though lack of hair was the only element keeping me from
being stunningly handsome," he says.
The picture in the paper
is small and didn't print sharply, but I think
he looks good. I can't see the very top of his head, though; the photo
cuts it off.
********************
Finally, a sad note about
a very funny and talented lady who sang
cabaret in Manhattan. Dottie Burman, who wrote and performed humorous
songs and also worked as a motivational speaker, helping people get
past the "age thing" to do what they wanted at any stage of life, has
died. I only just found out, though she died last November.
Dottie was a late bloomer
herself. She seems never to have considered
her age an obstacle. More of a personality than a trained singer, she
nevertheless graced some of Manhattan's most well-known cabaret venues
with hilarious songs such as “Age Discrimination,” “Let’s Have A P.C.
Holiday” and "When The Palm Trees Grow In Central Park," about the
bright side of global warming.
Though we had never met
in person, we were mutual fans via phone and
e-mail, and I had hoped to visit her the next time I was in New York.
She wanted to take me around to her favorite cabaret open mic nights
and have me sing for her friends there. But it is not to be.
At least I can remember
her by her wonderful songs. Her website is still up, and
it's still possible to see some of her performances, read her lyrics -
perhaps even to order some CDs.
Sept. 3, 2007
Did
you
know
that,
in
Boston, it takes on average just 13 days to get
in to see the dermatologist for Botox injections, but to get a
worrisome mole examined, you'll wait - gasp - NINE WEEKS??
A study by a UC-San
Francisco dermatology professor found that in the
US, it takes a patient an average of about 26 days to have an
appointment with a dermatologist to examine a possibly cancerous mole,
yet only eight days for an appointment for Botox injections.
Now, the way I'm
thinking, spending up to nine weeks worrying about
your mole is going to give you big-time forehead lines, so you could
always make the Botox appointment, just to get in. Then, if you're like
me and prefer to let your eyebrows roam free, you can feign
squeamishness at the sight of the needle (maybe you won't have to
feign!) and "change your mind" at the last minute. On your way out the
door, you can say, "As long as I'm here, doctor, I've got this mole
that
really needs to be checked...."
This tactic will work
only once -- at least with that doctor -- but
it's worth a try. Of course, you could always just think of your
possibly cancerous mole as a beauty mark and keep it as long as
possible.
The researcher didn't
know why Botox patients got preference but
speculated that it was because of the higher relative payments for
Botox. It's a huge profit center for clinics. My dermatologist told me
she's had patients come in for thousands of dollars worth of Botox and
other cosmetic treatments in just one session, yet I know from personal
experience that the mole screening is just the cost of an office visit,
with other payment going to the lab.
And I was surprised when
they didn't just say, "Come in tomorrow," when
I said I had a suspicious mole. Melanoma is serious business; an
acquaintance of mine died of it a couple of years ago, and it's
possible to get it at a very young age. I have that pale-pale skin
that's highly susceptible, and the small, rough patch was on a part of
my body that had suffered a severe sunburn during those carefree (read
"stupid") college days. But the receptionist wanted to set up the
appointment for about five weeks later. "Wow, is there any way I can
get in sooner?" I asked. "We do have a nurse practitioner on staff,"
she replied, "and she's available this Friday. Would you like to come
in then?"
That's what I chose to
do, and I did end up seeing the doctor briefly;
she came in and also checked out the mole. It did turn out to be
cancer, but not melanoma. Basal cell carcinoma doesn't metastasize into
surrounding tissue, so it wouldn't have killed me, but it did need to
be removed before it got bigger to keep it from disfiguring my gorgeous
bod.
There's one other reason
why it might take longer for a medical exam.
Many dermatologists' offices set aside certain days of the week for
cosmetic procedures, because so much of their business is for Botox and
the like, so all other appointments are made for the days that are
left. A dermatologist will always advise that, once a year, you make a
routine appointment to have every square inch of your glorious body
checked for suspicious moles.
That sounds like a good
idea. As for Botox, if you're in Beverly Hills,
you can call 911 and a team of dermatologists will rush over in an
ambulance to administer it.
********************
As long as we're on the
subject of cancer, there's a story I just read
in the Wall Street Journal
that needs to be mentioned here, if only because it illustrates so well
my beliefs that "life doesn't happen on a timetable" and that one's
numerical age means next to nothing.
Chef Grant Achatz, whose
restaurant Alinea was named the best in the
country in 2005 by Gourmet
magazine, has recently been given a devastating diagnosis: stage 4
cancer of the tongue. With his cancer so far advanced, he's been told
by three doctors that the only way he can possibly survive is to have
part of his tongue cut out. Imagine being one of the world's most
celebrated and creative chefs and having to anticipate life without the
ability to taste.
Achatz is 33 years old.
"Well," you may say,
after the initial shock, "he's probably spent
years smoking!" Achatz, who's described as "skinny and boyish," says
he's never had a cigarette in his mouth in his life. Knowing the damage
smoking can do to the sense of taste, you believe him.
Not surprisingly, Achatz
has been looking for alternative treatments
that might let him keep his tongue along with his life. He'll soon
begin an intensive combination of chemotherapy and radiation
treatments; these may dull his sense of taste slightly as they destroy
cancer cells, but not ruin them permanently. His doctor says the sense
of taste will slowly return after treatment.
Achatz could end up
losing his tongue after all, and, of course, he
could die. When I look in the obituaries, I see people of all ages
there. This is why I think concepts such as "middle age" are
essentially pointless. A twenty-year-old who laughs at "middle-aged"
people may be middle-aged himself, and just not know it.
Those who know Achatz are
confident that with his talent, he'll go on
with or without his tongue. So much of what he does comes from his deep
well of visual artistry and conceptual genius. "You could take out his
tongue and eyes," says Nick Kokonas, his partner in Alinea. "I can't
imagine that he wouldn't be able to overcome any limitations."
May good health come to
Grant Achatz. And remember, whatever decade
you're in, taste life while you can.
Sept. 1, 2007
Wednesday, I was able to
attend the Asian Film Festival here in Dallas
and see Regina Park’s excellent new documentary, Never Perfect, about
the quest by Asian women to achieve their beauty ideal, particularly by
having their features changed surgically.
But what is “ideal”? Can
one ever really attain it? And just how Asian
is it, as opposed to European? These are the central questions of Never
Perfect.
The film introduces us to
a young woman of Vietnamese heritage, the
baby of the family, still living with her mom in a house that she
herself owns – she’s successful at an early age and also owns a number
of rental properties -- as she eagerly anticipates moving to Los
Angeles and being on her own. Mom is nonplussed, but her daughter wants
something new! A new city, she says. And along with her big life
change, she has finally decided to get “bigger eyes.” This is something
she’s thought about for a long time.
One of the first things I
notice about her, aside from her strained
relationship with mom, is that she’s had her dark hair highlighted with
thick, blond streaks.
It turns out that she has
grown up with messages from her mother that
she’s not attractive with her Asian eyes, the heavy-lidded kind that
don’t have a crease. They look too small. Most of the images she sees
in TV and movies show women with more European-looking eyes, and most
of her friends have them, too. Eyelid surgery seems almost a rite of
passage for them. (The movie doesn’t point this out, but non-Asian
girls have these rites too – think rhinoplasty in Beverly Hills and
breast augmentation in Dallas.)
Commentary within the
film addresses the belief that certain features
go along with a particular personality. I suspect that, subconsciously,
most of us share this belief to some degree. That’s right, deep within
us is some stupid little part of the brain that actually thinks people
with weak chins are weak-willed, those with close-set eyes are
dishonest, and those with high foreheads are smart. Character flaws are
revealed to us through physical flaws. This belief is a holdover from
the Middle Ages. If you don’t think it’s still in force, talk with a
casting director about it. (I’m always pleased when a casting director
“casts against type.”)
So what do almond-shaped,
Asian eyes mean? Young girls grow up seeing
them as part of an “Asian mystique,” with highly sexualized depictions
of Eastern women. Some of the images depict mysterious, stiletto-heeled
sexual dynamos, the kind James Bond would take to bed and say “don’t
taste like European girls”; others show delicate, traditional “China
dolls” who are soft-spoken and submissive to men.
(An aside: I may have
unintentionally played into this sexual
stereotype in my first blog about this movie; I mentioned that many
Western men prefer the look of Asian women to that of European women. I
meant this as a good thing, to show that Westerners are open to
different standards of beauty. After seeing the film, though, I wonder
whether the preferences of those men are primarily a response to the
hypersexualized and/or submissive stereotypes of Asian girls.)
The movie doesn’t mention
this, but I should point out that the
preference for larger, more open eyes may indeed be hard-wired into all
of us, and it seems to transcend race. Studies have shown that open
eyes are considered more attractive; researchers speculate that this is
because they make it easier to see the pupils. Large pupils are
interpreted as a sign of attraction.
According to the movie,
the first article about the operation called
“double eyelid surgery” was published in – surprise -- 1896. It grew in
popularity when America put military bases in the Pacific; red light
districts grew up around the bases, and the women who were considered
most attractive to American G.I.s got the most work and made more
money. In the 1950s, during the Korean War, plastic surgeons actually
did free work for the prostitutes, though I’m speculating that there
was more of a barter system in force.
The film points out that
Asian eyes aren’t really slanted; that’s a
bizarre stereotype. During times of war, “Japs” were categorized as
subhuman and caricatured mercilessly, including those slanted eyes.
Of course, today,
actresses such as Sandra Oh portray smart,
accomplished women, albeit with some serious psychological issues in
the case of her character on Grey’s
Anatomy but without the relentless sexual overtones. That’s a
big step forward. Still, I wonder if the brilliant, hard-driven,
antisocial doctor exemplifies yet a different stereotype of the Asian
woman.
There’s also a discussion
in the film of mixed-race beauty. One young
woman says she’s had the message, “Mixed girls are HOT!” An
increasingly popular
opinion among Asian girls is that the ideal of beauty is a racial
composite.
In an extremely moving
scene – and the one that will linger with me the
longest -- the camera stays in close-up on an Asian mom, relating sadly
that her “mixed” daughter has made it clear that she rejects the
“yellow” side of her genetic heritage. Tears finally come as she
realizes her daughter is rejecting her.
Back to our main
character, and more mom issues. “I love my mom more
than anyone else in the world,” she says, “but she’s done a lot of
damage to me.” She says she’s fed up with her mom’s expectation that
everything must be perfect. As for changing the appearance of her eyes,
she says, “This is what I was cultivated to believe.”
Our main character has
put off getting her eyelid surgery because she
didn’t want to let her mom think she “got to her,” but finally she
goes, and part of the operation is shown onscreen. There aren’t rivers
of blood or anything, but it’s still the
eye, and this is definitely not for the squeamish. The patient
is thoroughly medicated and feels nothing, or else there would be a lot
of screaming, but come on, it’s THE
EYE.
A surgeon tells us that
there are different surgeries for different
ethnic looks; Taiwan, Japan, etc., are different. Apparently, some
ethnicities can get away with doing a larger, more open eye than
others. He says you don’t have to lose your ethnic identity – that
you’re not creating a non-Asian eye but a more beautiful eye. This
relates to another comment made later in the film: “It’s not taking
away ethnicity – we’re emulating other Asians.”
Several sets of “before”
and “after” pictures are shown; I notice that
the “after” eyes don’t look much different but appear to be wearing
false lashes. (I wonder if applying false lashes to the heavier-lidded
eye would be painstaking if not impossible.) Overall, the change is
very subtle, sometimes so slight that an ignorant Westerner might
wonder what all the fuss is about.
I worry a little about
our patient when she says things such as “It’ll
temporarily make me happier” and “My taste in beauty may change.” She
does understand that, unlike breast implants, this alteration is
something that can’t be undone. But what if she decides in a few months
or years that she’s not as happy as she had wanted to be; will she need
to have something else done in her quest for perfection? She observes,
“You can always be unhappy no matter how perfect things are.” But what
is “perfect,” and where does it end? For some women, this can be the
start of plastic surgery addiction.
Fortunately, we learn
that (so far) she has had no more surgeries.
She examines her eyes in a hand mirror; again, the effect is very
subtle. She laughs, “I saw my mom, and she said, ‘You should’ve gotten
them bigger!’”
On the way out of the
theater, I overheard an Asian woman tell her
friend, “My mom used to pinch my nose like this and tell me it needed
to be
smaller.”
Dear mothers, whatever
your race, if you are reading this, please
realize that your attitudes about attractiveness will affect your
daughter’s self-image for the rest of her life. She listens to
everything you say. She’ll carry those messages about her nose and her
weight and her lips forever. (It can happen with sons, too; Michael
Jackson’s father used to call him “Big Nose,” and we’ve seen where that
led!) Maybe you’re uncomfortable with your daughter’s eyes or her
ankles because they remind you of your awful ex-husband; if so, KEEP IT
TO YOURSELF. Your daughter could react to your
comments by developing an
eating disorder, or finding a man who reinforces her poor opinion of
herself, or simply distancing herself from you, as the young woman in
this film did with her own mom. Please find ways to help your daughter
feel positive about her looks.
I still feel a rush of
sadness when I remember how my mom, who died
four years ago, used to criticize my long fingers and long legs. “Don’t
talk with your hands,” she’d admonish, or she’d just give me "The Look"
when I’d start
gesturing. “Don’t take such big steps.” The message was clear; she
thought I was too tall. “Your sister is the perfect height,” she once
said of my 5-foot-7-inch sibling. She also said my face was thin and
that I needed to gain weight in my face. How was I supposed to gain
weight in my face? How was I
supposed to subtract height?
Fortunately, I was able
to keep in mind that this was the same mom who
told me not to raise my hand in algebra class so often if I wanted boys
to like me. So I stand tall and wear high heels. And, yes, I love my
mom…but I still talk with my hands.
August 30, 2007
When I was a very little
girl, just trying to figure things out, I
developed numerous misconceptions about the way the world works. Here
are just a few of them:
For some reason, I
thought wars lasted about four years, and then
whoever was “ahead” was declared the winner.
I thought that once a
woman was married and had sex one time, her body
went through some sort of transformation that made her capable of –
surprise ! -- automatically becoming pregnant at any moment. (Whew!
Glad that one wasn’t true.)
I thought that old people
made grammatical errors as part of a kind of
“old person’s accent.” In other words, that was just the way old people
talked. (This must have been because we lived in a semi-rural area with
lots of older people who hadn’t had much education.)
And I thought that the
husband was always older than the wife, usually
by one or two years. (After all, my daddy was about 1 ½ years
older than my mommy.)
On that last one, I
turned out to be almost right! The typical husband
is indeed older than the wife, though there can be much more of an age
difference than my parents had. Ashton and Demi aside, why is it that
most unions happen to fall into this pattern? Why are most variations
regarded with curiosity?
Researchers
at
Vienna
University were wondering the same thing, and now they
say that men have evolved to seek younger women to maximize their
chances of reproducing, while women seek slightly older men.
In examining people who
had changed partners after having their first
child, they found that women looked for men with more resources and
status, so they chose someone a little older than themselves. Men
picked someone younger than their first partner. (Really???)
Researchers
also found that a couple were most likely to have a greater number of
children if the man was about six years older than the woman. Their
conclusion: the age difference is a trait acquired through evolution by
both men and women to help create more children.
Question: how come so
many men will say that their ideal woman looks 18
and is on the pill?
Men seem to have a
curious dichotomy between what their
evolution-programmed loins tell them and what their conscious minds do.
(We could have a discussion right now about the special gift many men
have of compartmentalizing EVERYTHING
IN THEIR LIVES, but I’ll save that for a future rant.) Here are
their loins, whispering to the men, “We must make babies…we must make
babies…as many babies as possible…” (Men also tend to quantify
everything, don’t they?) And, except in the case of rap musicians, here
also are their conscious minds, warning, “We must not make babies…no
babies…too much commitment…too much child support…”
You’d think that,
consciously, the man would be on the prowl for an
attractive babe who’s coming to the end of her childbearing years. But
the loins still win out. This is why humans – with the possible
exception of the Europeans and Japanese -- are still being fruitful and
multiplying even though the world’s population is over 5 billion and
counting! It also explains the staggering backlog of child support
cases.
On the other hand, loins
can be fooled. The right sexy clothes and
strategically-designed lingerie can enhance a woman’s curves and help
create the bountiful breasts and youthful proportions that suggest
fertility. If the breasts still aren’t bountiful, a plastic surgeon can
transform them, and virtually everything else, to suggest that this
woman is a genetically-perfect baby machine. Everything from body
lotions to hair thickeners to lip plumpers is designed to create the
lusciousness associated with a young, fertile hottie.
Thus, the loins are
satisfied. Still, the conscious mind, completely at
odds with the loins but helpless to oppose them, always makes sure the
man is carrying condoms.
********************
The other day, I wrote
about the pressure on Asian girls to have their
eyes “westernized” through plastic surgery. Well, last night I saw “Never
Perfect,” the documentary about a woman who must decide whether “to
crease or not to crease.” I hope you’ll look for my commentary in
tomorrow’s blog!
Orthopedic surgeons in
New York report that they are seeing a growing
number of baby boomers who suffer such severe knee pain and other
discomforts that they can't even walk up stairs any more. (Related
Aging Baby Boomer Story: the trend towards all-on-one-floor living.)
The arthritic finger
points to one person: Jane Fonda! Whether you're a
flower child who admired her anti-war protests during Vietnam or a
patriot who condemned her for them, Jane has brought you all together
in communal misery. She is to blame for your creaky joints and limited
range of motion.
As the reasoning goes,
those wildly popular aerobics videos she made in
the '80s caused people to plunge into high-impact exercise, pounding
their joints on three-tiered steps. (Of course, today, we know better;
we pound our joints on treadmills.) Some of today's sore, arthritic
baby boomers have blamed Jane for their pain, although I'm thinking it
might just be related to a lack of circulation caused by too-tight leg
warmers.
I wonder if their knees
hurt more when it rains. Of course, even if the
weather is a factor, sufferers will still insist that the pain in rain
is mainly caused by Jane.
Jane herself might tell
you that those videos were too extreme. She has
said that at the time she made them, she was suffering from an eating
disorder; it appears she had what we might call an "exercise addiction"
as well. Over the years, she's softened her look considerably.
Of course, Jane can say
from personal experience that it's easier on
the knees to just sit on the turret of a communist anti-aircraft gun,
yet even that can cause strain in the lower back.
********************
This story
appears just as more studies tell us that people of all ages are
getting fatter and fatter and will eventually pop after finally eating
one too many chicken wings. Mississippi - ironically, the home of the
most beauty pageant winners - is the fattest state of all. Hardly
anyone seems capable of pushing away from the table any more, let alone
exercising. What on earth happened to change "Let's Get Physical" to
"Let's Get Liposuction"? When did "lean and mean" become "gross and
adipose"?
It seems that this
problem will only get worse until people can't get
through their front doors to go get more food. Of course, there's
always delivery. But when even the Dominos drivers are no longer able
to fit into their cars, obesity will be halted in its tracks.
By the way, the State
Fair Of Texas opens in a few weeks - I happen to
live in Dallas, home of the fair - and the news
is
full
of
all
the
deep
fried
fattiness that's going to be served
up. Here are this year's Seven Deadly Sins: fried Frito pie, fried
guacamole, fried peach cobbler on a stick, fried sweet potato pie,
fried banana pudding, fried cookie dough, and the most talked about,
the deep fried latte. This is a fried pastry topped with cappuccino ice
cream, caramel sauce, whipped cream and instant coffee powder.
Of course, the deep fried
latte is at its best when served with a
donut.
To my relief, my husband
has said he won't be eating this overpriced
glob of sugar, fat and fried gunk at the fair. But only because he
doesn't like coffee.
Great news for everyone
who eats it: the oil it's fried in is
TRANS-FAT FREE!
Coincidentally, today's
"Oprah"
featured
her
favorite
physician,
Dr.
Oz, talking about how
to eat healthy. He first looked at portion control, comparing today's
typical serving sizes with those from 20 years ago. No wonder our
clothes are straining at the seams! We're used to seeing supersized
food, and if, as our moms used to say, our eyes are bigger than our
stomachs, we solve that problem by gradually stretching our stomachs.
Dr. Oz then looked at the
bad ingredients in processed foods: sugar,
trans-fats (hydrogenated oils), high fructose corn syrup, enriched
products (this means they've been refined), and saturated fats "from
four-legged animals." He cleaned out one woman's fridge and pantry,
taught her how to read a nutrition label and put her on a "diet
makeover" that dramatically changed her appearance, health and outlook.
Dr. Oz's regimen was similar to Dr. Perricone's; he had this woman
throwing out her "fake," sugary, artery-clogging processed foods and
eating salmon, olive oil and fresh vegetables instead. After a few
months on this program, she seemed like a different - and much happier
-- person.
(This might be a good
time to mention that taking fish oil often works
wonders on those joints ravaged by Jane Fonda's exercise routines.)
You may wonder why I'm
spending so much time talking about weight;
isn't this blog about age and looking young? Yes, but when I say that
"age is the last big culturally-acceptable bias," I'm talking about the
age one is and the age one looks. We associate a slim,
healthy body with youth. With few exceptions, a woman who carries extra
weight is judged to be considerably older than she would if she were
slender and fit. She's dubbed "matronly" and placed in the same
category with women who have wrinkles or gray hair. (Of course, it's
also possible to go too far the other way; the starving, sinewy,
anorexic look - think Victoria Beckham - is unhealthy, unflattering and
extremely aging.) Yes, the overall issue here is age and ageism, but I
consider age, beauty and weight to be just different sides of the same
three-sided coin.
According to the Reuters
news service, German music fans are being
subjected this year to a deluge of older acts from America: Aerosmith,
Genesis, The Stones, The Who, Black Sabbath, Lou Reed, Meat Loaf, the
Police, and more. Critics admit that some are still making good music
but say that others should give it up and retire. They say Peter
Gabriel needed a TelePrompter to remember the words to his own songs,
and one critic complains that Ozzy Osbourne kept screaming, "I can't
(bleeping) hear you!" over and over. He writes, "You felt like shouting
back, 'Buy a (bleep) hearing aid, and maybe you'll realize you're
singing everything off-key!"
Of course, younger
singers don't sing off-key; the tracks they
lip-synch to are always perfectly in tune. And you know, that critic
wasn't being fair; Ozzy couldn't hear the audience not because his ears
are shot but because there wasn't one.
Fans were especially
upset that Steven Tyler of Aerosmith had lost his
boyish good looks.
August 28, 2007
No long essays today,
just two silly news items and a video from my
show, "My Ship Has Sailed."
They claim they
calculated that what makes a woman sway when she walks
is the ratio of hips to waist size, and the perfect ratio for a sexy
walk is 0.7. (This just gets more and more scientific as it goes
along.) That would be, for instance, 36 inch hips and a 25 inch waist.
Marilyn Monroe was very close with a 0.69 ratio, but after a no-doubt
intensive study of photos of Jessica Alba on the Internet, the
mathematicians said Alba is a perfect 0.7.
Okay, so explain Beyonce.
I have a feeling there is
much more to learn in this vital field of
study, such as the impact on the walk caused by the length of the legs
or the height of the stiletto heels; but that would require advanced
calculus and possibly quantum mechanics, so they'll need a few more
years to work on it.
****************************************
Meanwhile, researchers at
the University
of
Wisconsin-Madison
found that Viagra not only improves a man's
sexual performance, it can also boost levels of oxytocin, the so-called
"cuddle chemical" produced by the brain that promotes bonding and
romantic feelings. They say this means Viagra not only can help men get
erections but also make them more loving.
This must be why gobbling
all that Viagra has made Hugh Hefner stop
sleeping with five girlfriends and bond to only three. And they're all
virtually identical, so it's practically like he's monogamous!
****************************************
Finally, speaking of all
the ways that science has enhanced our
attractiveness, I thought I'd share this with you so newcomers can
learn what I'm all about. It's a clip from one of my live performances
of "My Ship Has Sailed," a song I wrote that marries a popular melody
to the names of some of the many, many anti-aging products that promise us the glow of eternal
youth. Enjoy!
August
25, 2007
If ageism is so much a
part of our culture that it simply doesn't seem
all that bad, check out a few nightclub reviews and see how they hit
you. These reviews, in addition to rating the quality of the sound
system, the strength of the drinks and the general vibe, typically go
on to describe the clientele in terms of looks, fashion sense and, of
course, age. This is necessary so that people can be with others at the
same level of coolness. If a club "skews old," it's automatically less
hip. In fact, its hipness rating varies inversely with the average age
of the patrons - the lower the age, the higher the rating.
I've just learned that
this attitude may be primarily an American
phenomenon. The following excerpt from a review
by
Lesley
Tellez of a downtown Dallas club called the Mambo
Café speaks volumes:
"This isn't strictly a
young person's club - we saw patrons who looked
like they could be 60. That's common in Latin cultures..."
See, it has to be
explained to
us that in some places,
older people actually go dancing in nightclubs patronized by younger
people! Who woulda thunk it? Normally, we just wouldn't expect to see
that. We're talking about one o'clock in the morning here, and it's
common knowledge that everybody over about 35 is asleep by nine.
Strange, those Latinos! If you're a non-Latino in your 20s, and you're
uncomfortable with seeing 60-year-old couples dancing, you've been duly
warned.
I've experienced a little
of this prejudice myself as a performer in
nightclubs, not towards myself, but towards some of the older members
of my audience. Of course, my philosophy is to do a show that's enjoyed
by people of all ages, especially women, but one club manager told me
she hoped My Ship Has Sailed wouldn't "skew too old." She explained
that most of their acts draw a younger crowd, and older people -
particularly older women - don't drink. (The bar is their main source
of revenue.) I'm not sure where she got this notion; maybe she hasn't
shared a Happy Hour with some of the "older" women I know, but that was
her perception.
And, wouldn't you know,
that particular night's performance was
attended by a huge crowd of Red Hats. They were a fantastic audience,
but the manager had to notice that they brought the average age up
considerably. She told me afterwards that most of them ordered iced
tea.
The rest asked for water.
****************************************
Let's move on to another
cultural issue, this one involving Asian women.
The Asian Film Festival,
going on in Dallas from the 23rd to the 30th of August, features the
premiere (Wed., 7:30, Magnolia Theatre) of a documentary by Regina Park
called "Never
Perfect," which examines the struggle of a young Vietnamese woman
as she decides whether or not to get blepharoplasty, or eyelid plastic
surgery.
This apparently is a huge
issue for Asian girls, but one that hasn't
often been discussed. After the screening, a panel discussion will be
held on "beauty and the Asian woman." According to Ms. Park, "there is
a question why more and more women subject themselves to
time-consuming, expensive and sometimes painful processes in their
quest for physical perfection. Yet this constant striving to reach a
beauty ideal to accompany their other academic, career, material and
personal achievements is steeped in a profoundly fundamental question
of identity and is not simply a matter of an individual's personal
aesthetic choice."
The film's main character
has been told by her mother that she can't be
beautiful without bigger eyes. How very sad. (I do think that, even
within their wider culture, the biggest message girls around the world
get about their own attractiveness is from their mothers.) This girl
has grown up in the United States, with the American image of beauty
all around her, but she also is proud of her Vietnamese heritage. What
to do?
I don't know what she
decides, but I'll try to get to the screening -
and the discussion - next Wednesday to find out.
The ironic thing, to me,
is that I think the "Asian" eye is exotic and
lovely. Many, many Western people agree. I know men who think a petite
Asian woman with almond eyes and straight, black hair is more beautiful
than a tall, blue-eyed American blonde. An Asian woman, even here in
America, does not have to have 'the crease" to be considered beautiful.
This is something that has become an issue within the Asian community.
The other irony, as a
personal note: my grandmother on my father's side
had eyelids without creases; she was of German descent and my mom
called it "the Germanic eye." My dad's eyelids were a little puffy,
too; as he got older, he probably could have benefited from very
conservative eyelid surgery, just to see better. When I was a kid, I
thought maybe I'd grow up to have "the Germanic eye," too, and I really
didn't want it, not because it isn't pretty - it certainly can be;
consider Ava Gardner - but mostly because I just didn't want to mimic
that particular grandmother in any way (long story). As luck would have
it, though, my eyes developed such well-defined lids and such a deep
crease that the other day, a makeup artist highlighted the crease to
de-emphasize it.
Mike Flynt got into a
fight and was kicked off the football team of Sul
Ross State University in Alpine, Texas, before his senior year in 1971.
He's regretted it ever since, even as he became a strength and
conditioning coach and invented the Powerbase training system. He's now
59, in great shape (I can vouch for strength training as being one of
the best age-fighting methods), and he's convinced his wife to move
back to Alpine, where he is about to become the oldest college football
player on record.
Former teammates told him
he's an idiot and will get killed, and his
wife said she feels like she's married to Peter Pan (that can be
creepy; ask Lisa Marie Presley). But Flynt, a man after my own heart,
believes that age is just a number. He has a surprisingly tight end,
and unlike many men his age, is not an extremely wide receiver. He said
he wants to show others that with the right physical training, you're
only as old as you feel.
Until you get killed.
Anyway, I say three
cheers for Mike Flynt! Let's all hope he isn't
sacked by a bunch of 300-pound 20-year-olds, which can make you feel
about 110.
August 24, 2007
Okay, so many of us are
playing "the numbers game." We think, "I'm 43,
but if I use this product and do this and this and dress like this, I
can pass for 38." Of course, the 38-year-old is thinking, "I'm 38, but
I can pass for 29." Those of you who are single take this strategy into
the dating arena.
But what about online
dating? What if a prospective date isn't looking
at you in person, but only in a digitized photo, which can be enhanced
in any number of ways? Do you go ahead and give your correct age, or do
you fudge it?
"Online dating only
magnifies the issue, because we're given the option
of pre-selecting for all the characteristics we find important,
including age. And we get all this information about a potential date
before we've even decided whether to meet them. So age becomes even
more important, because we're using it as a criterion before a date,
rather than a piece of information we learn on the date itself."
It seems to me that, in a
way, online dating is similar to the idea of
"designer babies." Chances are overwhelming that once her baby is born,
a mother is going to love that baby exactly the same whether it has
dark hair, red hair or blond. But if she has the chance to pre-select
her baby's hair color, she most likely will choose blond hair...along
with big blue eyes, fair skin and a tall, slender build. People looking
for a mate do the same thing with characteristics such as age.
In the old-fashioned,
face-to-face world, youthfulness will definitely
be assessed, but there's at least a chance for something to "click" --
maybe it's pheromones, or a quick sense of humor -- and for the couple
to start getting to know each other before the question, "How old are
you?" is asked.
So, online dating is very
different from the other kind. The New York
Post article asks several online daters how they cope with the age
issue. For example, when asked how many years she shaves off her age,
38-year-old Cozette says this:
"I delete four years.
It's closer to the
age most people guess I am, and it's closer to the age I feel."
Interestingly, she goes
on to say, "When I posted my real age, I didn't
get any emails for the first two months. Not one. So I changed it to 34
and within days I had literally hundreds of responses. So far, no one
has ever questioned it."
We learn from this that
34 is okay, but that 38 is too old, even though
a 38-year-old is dating people who are fine with her just as she is, as
long as they think she's 34. Four little years can apparently be a very
big deal.
Debbie, 53, answers, "I
say I'm 47 because that's around the age I'm
looking for in a date. I've had a lot more emails since I adjusted my
age. Now people I'm interested in - and the ones who are interested in
me - are actually finding me."
Has she considered that
many of the men who find her are also 53 but
passing for 47? Does she realize that when she says, "That's around the
age I'm looking for in a date," she's doing the same thing the men are?
Is the meaninglessness of "the number" starting to sink in?
Fifty-year-old Pamela
reduces her age by three years. "We all discount
our ages - you have to since people are using age ranges as part of
their search criteria. If you're fit, attractive and hoping to meet the
same, you have to lower your age."
I can understand why she
doesn't want to say she's 50. We can talk all
we want about 50 being "the new 30," but that's only true if you pass
for 30. One 50-year-old single friend of mine told me she sits with her
dates over coffee and watches the expression in their eyes change when
she tells them she's 50. These are men her own age and up. It seems to
be something about the sound of the word, and the weight people give to
it when they say it. I'm reminded of Molly Shannon's horrifying comedy
sketch on "Saturday Night Live," in which she plays the frazzled,
potbellied lady in the red jumpsuit who screams, "I'M FIFTY YEARS OLD!
FIFTY! FIFTY YEARS OLD!" Rita Rudner told me she's
writing a book about turning 50 called "I'm
Filthy," which is as close as she can come to saying the word. And I've
heard from many women that once people know you're 50, it's all about
how old you are. If you look great, you look great "for 50" or "for
someone your age."
If you're proud of your
age and want to tell it, fine. I'm proud of
mine, but I still don't tell it, simply because I refuse to play along
with the stupid "numbers game." (Hey, I'm proud of my fabulous bod,
too, but I don't walk down the street naked.) In fact, I've come to
believe that when a woman insists on telling you her age within thirty
seconds of meeting her, it's for one of two reasons. Either she looks
considerably older than she really is and doesn't want you to think
she's that old, or she looks considerably younger than most women her
age and is fishing for compliments. It also suggests to me that she's
been reading too many issues of More
magazine and is absolutely obsessed with the whole age thing.
As the model in a current
commercial for Roc skin products says, "When
you look ten years younger than you are, you're proud to tell your
age." How
confused a message is that??
Dawn Brooke of Guernsey,
England, set a new world record by giving
birth to a son at 59, becoming the oldest known natural mother who got
pregnant without fertility treatment or any drugs (does that include
Viagra?) Brooke gave birth in 1997, and her son is now 10, but she and
her husband Raymond kept it quiet until now to shield him from
publicity. Raymond, who was 64 when his wife got pregnant at 59, said
they're overjoyed to have their son, but the pregnancy was unplanned
and came as a shock to them both. And, I'll bet, to their
grandchildren.
This is all very
heartwarming, but we all know it’s just not natural
for men in their 60s to be impregnating women in their 50s. According
to all the showbiz news outlets, men in their 60s are supposed to be
impregnating women in their 20s.
August 23, 2007
As promised, all my "Age
of Love" recaps are now on one page, in
order. Pour a stiff drink and click away.
And if you'd like to add
your two cents, you can now put comments on my
mirror blog site at LauraAinsworth.blogspot.com...
August 22, 2007
NOT MUCH HAS CHANGED IN THREE CENTURIES
I wonder if there's
anyone reading this who has not yet started
receiving those catalogs -- obviously targeted to women 35-plus -- with
names like "Time For Me," "My Time" and "It's Long Past Time To Take A
Little Time For Myself, Dammit!"
They feature dreamy
bedding, exotic caftans and novel accessories. They
also hawk a numbing array of anti-aging treatments, with ridiculously
unlikely before-and-after pictures of eyes, lips and jawlines; a
variety of Spandex figure-tamers; easy-fitting shoes and padded shoe
inserts; lacy incontinence briefs (these do look pretty sexy!); and
even some very creative and colorful vibrators.
The message: you're
getting older by the minute, every square inch of
your face and neck needs serious and targeted help, your body's
starting to fall apart, you have a bladder control problem, and you're
probably alone.
I've seen some comforter
sets and a few long, imported skirts that were
really pretty, but I have to wonder: if I actually order anything from
one of these
catalogs, what other mailing lists will I be put on? Even now, for some
reason, I'm on the mailing list for the Lane Bryant catalog, when I'm
so skinny that friends are always trying to feed me. I called and asked
them to remove me from the list, and they said they would, but they
never did, so I just keep tossing it in the trash. Another poor tree
lost its life for nothing.
But the main reason I
don't order from those catalogs is my enormous
skepticism regarding many of the products they sell. I know that those
creams that "eliminate cellulite" and "erase spider veins" absolutely
do not work, so why should I believe the claims made about any of the
other products, and why should I respect the company enough to buy
anything at all, even a duvet cover?
You know, as I turn the
pages and examine those anti-aging "cures,"
which I'm sure many women believe in and buy (and when the latest one
doesn't work, try another one), I wonder how a publication such as this
might be viewed in 20 years or so. People will probably roll their eyes
at the phony claims, virtually all of them by then conclusively proven
false. They might consider today's examples of snake-oil-in-a-jar the
same way we look at the skin treatments, female cures and other
"medicinals" in the 1905 Sears catalog, or even in the 1694 manual,
"The Ladies Dictionary: being a General Entertainment for the Fair
Sex," an edition of which is going on the auction block on September
11, according
to
Britain's
Daily
Mail.
This book, described by
book specialist Matthew Haley as "the
Cosmopolitan magazine of its day," devotes much of its content to
beauty advice. I'm not sure how much of this relates to anti-aging, as
the average life expectancy in the 17th Century was probably about 35,
but women had the same concerns about weight, flabby flesh and rough
skin.
Regarding weight, being
too skinny was ill-advised, as one can probably
discern from the full-figured portraits of the day. I love the way this
is expressed in the book: "Bodies that are very Lean and Scragged, we
must own, cannot be very Comely. It is a contrary Extream to Corpulency
and the Parties Face always seems to carry Lent in it." You'd think
they'd been looking at a picture of Victoria Beckham! Poor starving
little wretch. But instead of feeding her, I'll bet Victoria's friends
are having a contest to see who can be the most scragged.
Plumpness was in fashion
in the 1600s, but even then, there was such a
thing as "too fat." (In other words, they'd think Kirstie Alley used to
be too fat, but is perfect now.) To lose weight quickly, women were
advised to bathe in claret wine infused with wormwood, calamint,
chamomile, sage and squinath (the flowers of a kind of rush). Now,
before you laugh, think of all those lavish spa treatments that are
supposed to banish inches, remove cellulite, etc. They're incredibly
expensive - a "series" of them is always prescribed -- and are very
relaxing but do nothing to
solve the cellulite problem! You may feel smoother and perhaps a little
energized for a time, but your cellulite has NOT gone away. I'll bet
those 17th
Century women felt better after bathing in claret, too, especially if
they drank a little of it. Before adding the wormwood, of course.
Today's spas offer an
array of "mineral" baths and facials. A
dermatologist will tell you (as she told me) that the skin does not
absorb minerals. As for "flushing toxins out of the body," those
treatments don't do that, either. If you want to get rid of toxins, try
eating purer food in the first place and drinking a lot of water. And,
remember, many bottled waters are really just tap water. "PWS" on the
label means "public water source." In twenty years, people will regard
old bottles of Aquafina as quaint, humorous collectibles.
Well, back to the 17th
Century. Women in those days had the same
concerns we do about "wobbly bits" - those flabby or saggy areas. They
were told to apply "to the place that Languishes, or does not equally
Thrive" a disgusting mixture of chicken and goose grease, pine, rosin,
pitch and turpentine, mixed in an earthenware pot. Then, they were to
wait until it hardened into a plaster. This might take all afternoon;
maybe girlfriends would meet for "plaster" parties, drink a little
claret, and sign each others' casts!
Of course, this procedure
did nothing but make the woman smell like
rancid fat and gasoline, compounding her lack of attractiveness to the
opposite sex. If Juliet's nurse had treated her with this, Romeo
would've stayed far, far away.
The book also describes a
similar remedy for breasts: "Breasts hanging
down or large; how to make them Plump and Round." No plastic surgery
necessary - and in 1694, going under the knife was not a good idea!
Science has come a long
way in the past 300 years or so, but in many
ways, our wishes keep us willfully mired in the ignorant past. Some of
the priciest spa treatments and face creams offered today are no more
"anti-aging" than goose grease was in the days of yore. If you really
want to feel better and soften those fine lines, take a walk, enjoy
some wild salmon and fresh vegetables, read a good book, and drink a
little claret.
Or if you just want to
feel better, drink a lot of claret.
August 21, 2007
KEEPING YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL IN LAS
VEGAS
What incredible luck! As
I prepare for a move to Las Vegas, with the
goal of singing "Keep Young And Beautiful" on a Vegas stage until I'm,
oh, 90 or so, I find out that I'm relocating to the home of a 21st
Century fountain of youth. Talk about hitting the jackpot.
Cenegenics Medical
Institute, or CMI, in Las Vegas, promises to sculpt
rippling abs, smooth the skin, and "boost performance from the office
to the gym to the bedroom." Over 13,000 clients, including a few Brits,
have made the pilgrimage to Las Vegas to shell out for a $3,000
consultation and up to $13,000 worth of exercise and diet regimens,
vitamins and hormone replacement therapy.
Most patients receive
testosterone, and about 20 percent also are
prescribed injections of human growth hormone, or HGH. The founder of
Cenegenics, radiologist Dr. Alan Mintz, said in an interview last year
that HGH causes a decrease in fat, an improvement in the skin, an
increase in muscle, improved mood and heightened sexual activity. It's
like turning back the clock. "Next year does not have to be worse than
this year," the article quotes him as saying. "How about good sexual
activity with your loved one once a week, twice a week, feeling good
about it?"
Well, how about it? That
sounds great! But Dr. Mintz is not having any
sexual activity now, and even Viagra won't help, because this June, at
the age of 69, he passed on to the Great Gymnasium In The Sky. His
death raises a red flag because normal life expectancy for the average
non-HGH-supplemented man is 74.
How exactly did he die?
Well, we don't quite know. According to Dr.
Jeffry Life (yes that's his name), a CMI staffer and Dr. Mintz's
personal physician, he died from a brain hemmorhage brought on by an
accident in the gym.
My husband just looked at
me from his reclining chair and laughed,
"What have I always said? Exercise is
bad for you." (Sadly, he means that.)
I'm wondering if we'll
ever know the whole story of how this man died.
Critics of HGH injection therapy say there's no evidence it helps and
that it may be dangerous. One of those critics happens to be my
favorite anti-aging doctor - if you've seen my show, you know I worship
him, literally - Dr. Nicholas Perricone, M.D. In his book, The
Perricone
Promise, he says HGH is "the true youth hormone.
It builds muscle, increases the vitality of the body's organ systems,
and decreases the levels of the stress hormone cortisol. It would be
helpful to increase the amount of HGH the body produces; however, there
are many questions and concerns about the safety profile and side
effects of administering HGH directly into the system."
He advises that one way
to maximize the body's own HGH production is to
avoid food that causes a rapid rise in blood sugar. (I suggest reading
all of Dr. Perricone's books to get a handle on how to keep your blood
sugar at a near-constant level. This is the best anti-aging thing you
can do!) The quality and quantity of sleep are also very important;
don't exercise within four hours of going to bed or drink coffee or
alcohol late in the evening. In fact, it's best not to drink coffee at
all; tea is much better. As for supplementation, Dr. Perricone has
developed a thymic peptide supplement; he explains that thymic peptides
work like thymus gland hormones to stimulate the pituitary gland to
release HGH. This also helps the body overcome what Dr. Perricone calls
"thymic menopause," a gradual shrinking of the thymus gland that causes
a weakening of the immune system.
I haven't tried the
thymic peptide supplement and would like to see
some studies on thymus hormones and HGH levels. But Dr. Perricone has
long been on the cutting age of researach on the inflammation/aging
connection and other areas that are just now becoming mainstream. And I
can tell you that I'd definitely try
the thymic peptides before getting injected directly with HGH!
In fact, I'm a little
worried about Debby Harry, the singer for the
group, Blondie. In late July, she talked with The Insider about her
Herculean
anti-aging efforts. First, she admits to "essential" plastic surgery.
Okay, that's not a big deal, especially for performers, but then she
reveals she's also had HGH injections and "cell therapy," which
involves injections from the embryos of black sheep. Hmm, why just the
black ones? Maybe it's to help keep the skin wrinkle-free; after all,
as Oprah has said, "Black don't crack."
Harry said that when it
comes to fighting the effects of aging, she has
tried everything. In her
mind, we have a choice: "What else can one do, besides going out
looking miserable or looking fabulous?"
Well, if we're not
careful and bet on unproven and dangerous
treatments, there's a third choice: we can lose everything. The casket
can be left open for the mourners to admit our smooth faces, and our
midriffs left bare to reveal our rippling abs.
August 19, 2007
THERE SHE GOES AGAIN - Can't
get off the "baby boomer" thing (see
yesterday's rant, below).
Did you know the baby
boomers have a social conscience? They do, really! I know this
because I read it in the paper, in yet another article about those
very-very-special baby boomers. Now that they're empty-nesters and
don't need to make big bucks anymore - never mind the many people
between 40 and 60 who are still paying for their kids' and possibly
grandkids' college - they're devoting themselves to lower-paying but
presumably more satisfying jobs, such as teaching or nursing.
Nothing wrong with that!
We definitely need more teachers and nurses,
and these are noble callings, so a trend in that direction is a great
thing. It's ironic, though, that when the oldest baby boomer women were
preparing for careers in the 1960s, the main jobs open to them were in
- you guessed it - teaching and nursing. Worrking in the lower-paying,
"caring" professions may be something new for most men, but older
boomer women who are disenchanted with their careers and now want to
teach have simply come full circle.
In contrast, it was a
different world for boomer women who entered the
workforce twenty years later and are now in their early 40s. Feminists
-- the older baby boomer women - had paved tthe way for them, and they
took for granted that they could go into just about any field they
liked. Teaching or nursing? Puh-leeze!
But now, according to the
article I just read, all the baby boomers,
disillusioned by their unfulfilling but lucrative corporate jobs, can
finally feel good about going into an altruistic field such as nursing.
In fact, the younger ones had better become nurses as soon as possible,
because the older ones will be needing nursing care from them.
That's because the
demographic category we call "baby boomer" spans
twenty years! Somebody just made it up, you know. (I wish I knew who it
was, so I could find a way to pay him back for all the torment he has
caused me.) All it really means is that parents tended to have
relatively large families during the years they were born, but culture
"experts" have imposed meaning on it that it just doesn't have.
To cite just one example,
in the latest incarnation of corporate
snake-oil, consultants are making big bucks telling clueless business
executives that baby boomers are, let's say, team players who want the
corner office while Gen-Xers are iconoclasts who aren't motivated by
traditional perks. To me, this kind of gross generalization about
individuals of particular ages is nearly as repugnant as saying that
blacks are shiftless but might be motivated by watermelon in the break
room.
And think about it: the
oldest baby boomers were at Woodstock, wearing
tie-dye and listening to Hendrix. Twenty years later, the youngest
boomers were at the mall, wearing giant shoulder pads and listening to
Huey Lewis & The News. Older boomers might even have conceived
their children at Woodstock, who would then have grown up to be the
younger boomers. Even discounting normal individual variation, what can
the two ends of this wide spectrum possibly have in common?
Yet, day after day, we're
bombarded with news stories about those darn
baby boomers - who are "aging," you know, unlike other people, who
presumably are staying the same age - and all the ways they're turning
the world on its head. Seemingly in lockstep, THEY do this, and THEY do
that. Most of all, THEY are getting older by the
minute, and not a day goes by that they're not reminded of it multiple
times, in advertising, in feature stories, on virtually every page of
More magazine, and even in ageist
comments tossed gratuitously into entertainment reviews (see previous
blog entry).
It's really getting,
pardon the expression, old.
And, personally, I don't
see baby boomers as being all that
revolutionary as long as they allow themselves to be dealt with in this
way. The older ones were at the forefront of change: civil rights,
women's rights. Why do they now play along with the push to identify
them with an arbitrary age group and a description that may not fit
them at all, just so some twenty-something Madison Avenue marketing
whiz can more easily sell them things? Perhaps the endless talk about
aging has made them feel too old and tired to stand up and proclaim:
I...AM ...NOT...A
DEMOGRAPHIC!
...I'm saying this only
because I have a social conscience.
August 18, 2007
Here's a pet peeve that
many undoubtedly share: the "boomer rock"
concert review that dwells as much on the aging fans in the audience as
it does on the band.
And when it does talk
about the band, it not only tells us how young or
old the music seems now, but also how well or poorly the band members
have aged. The critic apparently expects them to look like their own
grandparents, and sometimes they fulfill that expectation. If they do,
he smugly points this out to us, and if they don't, he speaks of them
as if they're shocking freaks of nature.
Example (and inspiration
for today's blog): the
review
of
Patty
Smyth's
concert in the August 17 edition of The
Dallas Morning News, written by staff critic Mario Tarradell. Mr.
Tarradell simply cannot believe that Patty Smyth, at 50, can look so
youthful! He writes, "She's almost criminal, that Patty Smyth...(after
23 years) the New York native looks and sounds as if not a day has gone
by. Surely she's made a devious plot for eternal youth with somebody."
And, "Ms. Smyth sang with such joyful abandon. She may be 50, but she
moves like she's 30."
Overall, it was a glowing
review of both her and her band, Scandal, and
she should feel complimented and proud. At the same time, is it not
possible to compliment a 50-year-old woman on her performance without
giving the back of one's hand to the idea of being 50? What was he
expecting, for her to hobble out on her artificial knees and try to
recreate some approximation of her former glory?
How does a 30-year-old
move, by the way? I've seen many who couldn't
dance a lick and some who could hardly get up from a reclining
chair. That goes for some 10-year-olds, too. And the idea that a
performer has to make some sort of pact with Satan to remain attractive
and current really chafes me.
You see, this is why, as
a
performer, I don't tell people my age. I don't want people telling me I
look great on stage "for my age." I don't want them to have "the
number" in their heads constantly and to be filtering everything I say
through their idea of what a person "that age" is. People do this. It's
a
culturally-acceptable bias. I'm sick of it, and I refuse to play the
numbers game.
A female performer
doesn't have to be very old to get sucked into it.
I've heard disparaging age-related comments about the Dixie Chicks (in
their 30s, aren't they?) and the Spice Girls (likewise?), among many
others. Forget Madonna; these are the new old ladies of pop music. It's
the rare review of Sheryl Crow that doesn't make an issue of her age
(early 40s, I think). She looks great not because of any pact with
Beelzebub but because she takes good care of herself and follows the
advice of Dr. Perricone, as do I.
Here's one more example
of ageist music criticism, another
review
from
The
Dallas
Morning
News, this one by staff writer Mike
Daniel on August 13. Now, we have to stipulate that Rush goes back a
long time; indeed, the review tells us that Rush is 39 years old. Not
the musicians, the band. So,
of course, the audience is going to be all grown up. Some - not me --
call them "baby boomers," or just "boomers." Mr. Daniel writes:
"Baby boomers dominating the crowd of 15,000 at Smirnoff Music Centre
on Saturday night may not have looked broad-minded, but in spirit and
action, they were."
Jeez, another backhanded
compliment. You wouldn't have thought people their age would be
broad-minded.
Mr. Daniel, please tell me, what does a broad-minded person look like?
Do you assume he's the young, edgy-looking guy? I'm thinking he might
look more like Drew Carey.
Mr. Daniel goes on:
"Guitarist Alex Lifeson looked the most like he's
in his mid-50s (all members are, in fact, there), but sonically, he was
the most distant from it." Another backhanded compliment. He doesn't
look as well-preserved as the other band members, but his playing, in
contrast, sounded like that OF A
YOUNGER PERSON. The quality of the performance, once again, is
associated with some arbitrary age in the critic's head.
If the guy were of a
really advanced age or had come back from some
debilitating neuromuscular disease or something, I could see relating
the quality of his playing to that. Tony Bennett's singing prowess at
80 does amaze, because it's rare; there are simply not many fabulous
80-year-old tenors around. But critics need to stop talking about
musicians over 35 or so as if they're making their last stop before
checking in at the nursing home. I'm sure these critics think of
themselves as extremely broad-minded people, but they're just showing
some age-old prejudices.
At least they look
broad-minded.
(BTW, to see how
music critics ought to handle this issue, check
out
what
Patrick
Williams
had
to
say about Rush in the Calendar
section of the Dallas Observer. Kudos to him!)
Aug. 17, 2007
I'm now fully recuperated
from my marathon reviewing of "Age of Love"
and once again ready to crawl from my hole and join the world of the
living. I have only one more thing to say about that: after the
show finished airing, the SportsByBrooks website revealed that Jen
Braff, the 48-year-old "executive
assistant" rejected for the young flibbertigibbet, has done semi-nude
modeling, including a 1999 Playboy shoot, and sold autographed
(clothed) photos of
herself at Glamourcon, the L.A. porn convention. I wonder if Mark
would have chosen diferently had he known that.
The
full
story
is
here, along with photos that are really
pretty discrete, but if you're at work, you make the call. I
wouldn't get too worked up about this; the discovery that hot women who
volunteered for a humiliating TV dating show were really aspiring
models and actresses is about as shocking as discovering rampant Botox
use on the "Desperate Housewives" set.
And now, some news from
the age and beauty front...
*****************************************
The British government
surveyed over 1,600 people and found that men
in early middle age are the least happy with their lives.
Respondents were asked to rank their well being on a 1-10 scale. Most
people ranked it fairly high at around 7.3 with a slight dip for women
aged 25-34. But men in their late 30s-early 40s ranked their happiness
at just 6.8, well below teenagers, the elderly and women of their own
age. My theory is that they’re just depressed to discover that the late
30’s are now considered “early middle age.”
The good news for men is
that the mid-life crisis passes (probably
right after that first divorce), and after retirement age, their
happiness rises to 7.8, the highest ranking of all.
And then, they die.
Even more interesting to
me is the finding that there is a slight dip
in happiness among women aged 25-34. And yet, that's the age all
the other women wish that they were. So be careful what your wish
for...
*****************************************
La Stampa newspaper
reports that Italian nutritionist Eugenio Luigi
Iorio has enraged purists of the national dish by developing what he
claims is an "anti-wrinkle
pizza" (although any pizza will help fill in your wrinkles with
fat, if you eat enough of it). He said the toppings, such as
tomatoes,
garlic, basil, mushrooms, carrots and spinach, are high in age-fighting
antioxidants; and the wholemeal crust has magnesium and iron and three
times as much fiber as a typical pizza. Even more, if you eat
the box it's delivered in.
*****************************************
Giving the lie to the
idea that good gifts come in small packages, the
Australian men's magazine Zoo Weekly
is holding a contest in which men
can win
their
lucky
womenfolk
the
gift
of
an
$8400
boob
job. Readers
are asked to
send in photos of their mates' cleavage
and let readers vote on which one most deserves free breast implants.
The government launched
an investigation into whether it breaks a law
against using plastic surgery as a contest prize, but the magazine got
around that by offering the cash value of the operation, so you don't
HAVE to use it to buy new
breasts...but of course, what else would you possibly spend $8400
on?
Health advocates call it appalling, feminists are disgusted, and the
head of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons asked what we'd
think if a women's magazine asked readers to volunteer their boyfriends
to win a penis enlargement (look for that contest in the October
Cosmo).
But Zoo Weekly editor Paul
Merrill said, "It's impossible to think of a
more romantic gift than new breasts. It's the gift that keeps on
giving."
Yes, I'm sure it is
impossible
for him to think of any gift more romantic than that. But then,
men are always giving gifts that are really just things they want
to play with themselves.
*****************************************
Finally, two new studies
prove what many of us have long believed
anyway: beauty does you more good than brains.
First, researchers
from
the
University
of
California divided a set of test subjects
into three groups: the very good-looking; the average,
moderately-attractive people; and the outright ugly. They found that
not only were beautiful people consistently treated better and judged
more positively by others, but they also earned on average 7 percent
more than Average Joes, and a whopping 12 percent more than Ugly
Betties.
One expert called it the
"halo effect." Because some people are
beautiful, we tend to assign other positive traits to them, seeing them
as nicer, smarter or more talented, even though there's no connection
with looks.
I mean, come on: do you really think Angelina
Jolie is nicer, Keanu Reeves is smarter, and Paris Hilton is super
talented?
My
theory is that they got it backwards. It's not that beautiful
people make more money. It's just that people who make more money
can afford a lot more plastic surgery.
Meanwhile, a new Ohio
State University study disproved
the
idea
that
smart
people
make
more
money. A 25-year study of
7,000 randomly-chosen subjects found no correlation between IQ and
income, net worth or level of financial distress. The study author said
that whether you're rich or poor has more to do with luck, timing,
parents, choice of spouse and other factors, such as "Are you Paris
Hilton?"
Personally, I agree with
the second study but I have to question the
first. I know from experience that neither stunning beauty nor
intense brilliance has ever made me any serious money.
AUG. 13, 2007 I make it a point not to get
involved in politics, but I have to
admit we were excited to see the strong showing by former Arkansas
Governor Mike Huckabee in the Iowa GOP Straw Poll on Saturday.
That's because Gov. Huckabee is a fan of our radio service, The
Comedy Wire (he even
wrote a very funny Foreword for our book, Nine Hallmarks of
Highly Incompetent Losers), and he's a fan of my singing. He
personally requested that Michael Gott and I play the two Christmas
galas at the Governor's Mansion last Christmas. And he gave my
husband Pat his assurance that if he is elected president, I'll get to
sing at the White House. I feel that this is definitely a winning
issue for him. I'll let you know if he keeps that campaign
promise.
In the meantime, here at
last is my review of the final episode of "Age of Love,"
and what a relief that it's all over. I will soon put all these
things into chronological order on their own page, but until then,
scroll down to read earlier entries. And what happened in the
finale? Did he pick the 25-year-old? Or the
48-year-old? Or did he pick the 48-year-old, and then Monty Hall
appeared and offered to let him trade her for two 24-year-olds?
Read on and find out... AGE OF LOVE - Finale
Hooray! This is the last night I'll
have to hear those horrible
lines from that obnoxious announcer. "Mark answers the question, 'Does
age really matter?' Will Mark choose a woman in her 20s...or a woman in
her 40s?"
But I rejoice too soon.
This night, in the beginning minutes of the
final episode of "Age Of Love," he outdoes himself. He actually says,
"EVERY WOMAN WANTS TO FIND TRUE LOVE...BUT
WHEN
IS
IT
TOO
LATE?"
(I'll pause for a moment.
Sorry even to have to write that. Yes, it is
a word-for-word quote.)
"Two women remain," he
continues. "A 25-year-old and a 48-year-old."
During a brief recap of previous episodes, he says, "Before long, age
was all but forgotten, and hearts got broken along the way." Of course,
age hasn't been forgotten in the slightest on this show, as the
announcer asks AGAIN, "Who
will Mark choose: a woman in her 20s...or a woman in her 40s?"
They play the opening
theme again, "The Look Of Love." This show is
overwhelmingly about looks, and the 40s are judged not just on their
beauty but in large part by how young they look FOR THEIR AGE. As I say
in my
show, years after the Civil Rights movement, it's still all about skin,
and attractive women over 40 are just "tryin' to pass." I should
mention that it's all about looks for the 20s, too; some women from
both age categories have no doubt financed new surgical wings for their
plastic surgeons and aetheticians with all the work they've had done.
Anyway, back to the show.
They're touching down in Melbourne,
Australia, to meet Mark's family. Amanda, 25, says, "This is it." Jen,
48, says, "This is it." Mark, 30, says, "This is it." (Seriously, they
all say it. These three do have something in common: an uninteresting
way of expressing themselves.)
Elaborating a bit more,
both women admit they're in love with Mark. As
for Mark, he says he first felt chemistry with Amanda, right from the
start. (Cue flashback.) He's found Amanda to be "more in the moment
than the other girls." (Impressions can be wrong. Based on footage the
producers chose to include, Amanda is seriously thinking longterm and
is the biggest strategizer of the bunch.) Mark says he was also drawn
to Jen from the beginning. (Cue flashback.) "It freaked me out that
she's one of the most beautiful women here," he says. "If I'd been
asked to go on a blind date with a 48-year-old woman, I wouldn't have
gone. She's changed that for me."
By the way, that last
remark strikes me as the most honest statement
and perhaps the only redeeming moment in this entire mess. It reflects
something else that I talk about in the show: that once people know
"the number," they automatically have an image in their heads. They
can't help but categorize, even if what they're thinking is completely
wrong. And that can affect a person's life! Mark has hit upon the
reason - the only reason -- I don't tell people my age. If other people
are going to play the numbers game, I simply refuse to play.
Anyway, the time has come
for Jen and Amanda to be introduced to Mark's
family. "It's very important for my family to like the girl," says
Mark. Jen has brought a gift, and she seems so relaxed and comfortable
with Mark's relatives. When asked, Jen tells them her age, and after a
momentary surprise, she gets the usual comments that she's "so
beautiful." His mother offers this: "We have a saying, you can't judge
a book by its cover. I think it's the same with age."
Jen does most of the
talking, while Amanda seems nervous and
intimidated. Jen helps with the salad; Amanda apparently has never made
salad and doesn't know what to do. After a nice Greek dinner, Jen says,
"Absolutely I could see myself as part of Mark's family." The family
likes both women; shy Amanda makes points with Mark's mother because
she is also shy. Another win for Amanda: somebody mentions
grandchildren.
Now, it's time for Jen to
go on her
date with Mark; she says
she's nervous "for the first time." They take a snuggly, romantic boat
ride, during which Jen tells him -- I'm not sure why -- how many times
she's, well, you know, during an intimate encounter. Then, on to dinner
inside the glass-walled Melbourne Aquarium. Now, to me, this is just
about the most astonishing and romantic setting for dinner that could
ever be imagined - although I might have to order something other than
my favorite, seafood.
Jen says, "You're
spoiling me. How can I ever go back to real life?"
Kudos to her for recognizing that this is not real life. I've always
thought that even regular dating was an artificial way to find the
right person.
The un-age-conscious Mark
mentions age again, but at least with a
positive spin: "Jen has opened my eyes and my heart to the fact that
age doesn't matter in love."
Jen wants to know how he
feels about her,
not just the age. (Thank you!!)
They agree that they both feel like themselves when they're together
and laugh a lot. Jen says, "You've given me hope again for love."
(oh, gag) "And I thank you for that." After dinner, they cuddle into
some pillows, talk some more, and look at fish.
After the date, Mark
says, "More and more, I'm pulling for Jen."
After the commercial
break, Mark and Amanda go on their date. Mark
drives Amanda into the country to a wildlife sanctuary, and this makes
her very happy! (Wow, it would make me delirious! As the owner of 16
exotic birds, including cockatiels, a budgie and three different
species of cockatoo, I've dreamed of going to Australia just to see the
wildlife. But, I digress.) Amanda may not have Mark eating out of her
hand quite yet, but she does have kangaroos and koalas doing it, which
for all I know is preferable.
Yet, judging from
comments she makes afterwards, Amanda's mind seems to
be mostly on Jen's date, and how that went. Mark may think Amanda is
"in the moment," but how can he really know that? His impression seems
way off the mark to me.
They move on to dinner,
at a Japanese restaurant that features huge,
explosive balls of fire as part of the décor. Mark says later,
"When I kiss Amanda, I feel something." Well, of course you do, Mark,
and it's probably one of those gigantic fireballs scorching your neck.
Amanda is honest with
Mark about her strong, strong feelings for him.
And after the date, Mark seems to be having a very hard time choosing.
He keeps saying he doesn't want to hurt anyone. I know from experience
that if he likes them both but that "not hurting someone" is his
primary motive, he will pick Amanda. He knows Jen is strong and could
deal with his rejection philosophically, but Amanda would be destroyed
by it and probably go jump off a building.
What better reason could
there be to pick that special someone?
Before Mark tells them
his decision, Jen and Amanda have a quiet
conversation about the elimination and also about their age difference.
Jen says, "You're just getting started...I'm glad I'm 48 because I know
who I am." She's reasoned this out; Mark's choice will depend on the
kind of man he is. Does he want to be able to show someone new things,
or would he rather have someone who will show him things? At the same
time, she
sounds more like one of the 20-somethings when she likens being chosen
to winning "the grand prize." Moony Amanda admits that, for her, not
being chosen "could be devastating."
After the commercial
break, Mark meets Jen to tell her his decision.
Through the magic of editing, he also meets Amanda at the same time of
day in the same spot. The camera cuts back and forth:
"Jen, you blew me away
when you told me your age." (Oh, please. More
about her beauty, yada yada yada.)
Then, "Amanda, from the
very first, we had a connection....."
Back and forth, back and
forth; then he finally tells
Jen that he doesn't
think it'll work out. There's not much more to say. She smiles sadly,
kisses him lightly and walks away.
When Amanda learns she's
been chosen by a man who is still a stranger
to her in many ways, she beams, "I'm the happiest woman in the world,
because I have my man. I have Mark." (Permission to hurl granted.)
Mark says afterwards,
"Amanda is the first one I felt a connection
with...If you click with someone, you click. Doesn't matter about age."
Jen's not so sure. She
says, "We had a very strong connection. But he
got scared. I know if I had been younger, he would've chosen me."
So, I have to wonder.
Though I hate the fact that this show existed at
all, what if it had been set up differently, with the 40s mixed in with
the 20s and Mark not knowing anybody's age, not even being told that
the contest was about age?
The unsuspecting Mark probably would have figured Jen to be at least
ten years younger, and I'm with Jen in thinking he probably would've
picked her. He kept saying that "the number" didn't matter to him, and
he may not have consciously thought it did, but the only way to know
would be to see which woman he picked under these revised rules.
The announcer still
could've asked, "Who will Mark pick...a woman in
her 20s, or a woman in her 40s?" But Mark, oblivious to the social
experiment he was a part of, might have chosen differently.
August 10, 2007
I finally wrote the
synopsis of episode 4 of "Age of Love," the one I
accidentlly skipped over, and my
write-up of the finale will be posted as soon as I can stop
barfing. To make it easier, I've posted it below under July 27, so scroll down and you'll
find it just above Episode 5. After the finale is written, I'll
put all these things in chronological order, place them on their own
separate page, and then we must never speak of this again.
Let's go to the news and
find more pleasant things to talk
about.
The London Sun reports
that Hub Clothing in Scottsdale, Arizona, has
created a revolutionary solution to an age-old problem: it's
the
"Butt
Cam." Co-owner Tom Simon said a lot of people dread
trying on jeans and not knowing how they look from behind, so he came
up with the idea of installing a camera outside the dressing room, set
at butt level. People can stand in front of it, look at their rear ends
in a TV monitor (as if there aren't enough asses on TV already), and
see for themselves if the clothes make their butts look big.
It's been a big hit with
shoppers. And with their husbands, who
literally consider it a lifesaver. Of course, now, the women will be
asking their mates, "Does this monitor make my butt look big?"
*****************************************
Also from the Sun comes news
of
the
latest
diet
fad. It's a book called "Skinny
Bitch," written by a modeling agent and an ex-model who are both
self-proclaimed "Skinny Bitches." They claim the book "cuts out the
crap" and tells it how it is. It's basically a vegan diet with a lot of
attitude and some questionable medical assertions, such as that we get
fat "because we don't poop enough" (except for models, whose main food
source is Ex-Lax). So I suggest you poop more, and when you do, use
this book as toilet paper.
Incidentally, sales of
this book on Amazon.com leaped 674 percent after
Victoria Beckham was photographed last weekend carrying a copy in Los
Angeles. Although by L.A. standards, Victoria Beckham is a fat bitch.
*****************************************
Finally, some grimmer news: The
University
of
Cardiff
in
Wales
found that women in their 40s are
more likely to binge drink than college girls (and not just after
watching "Age of Love"). Researchers breathalyzed 893 drinkers late at
night at the city center and found that 40 percent of men and 20
percent of women were drunk enough to risk injuring themselves. But in
men, the alcohol level peaked at age 29, while in women, it rose with
age and peaked in women over 40 (one more argument for women in their
40s to date men in their 20s). This despite the fact that men buy
so many more drinks for the women in their 20s.
One researcher said they don't know why women over 40 are the
booziest of all, but "we speculate younger women have more
responsibilities at home, and once the children have left home, then
the sky's the limit."
Personally, I speculate that women in their 40s drink more
because their children have moved back
home.
July 31, 2007
Since it's summer, I
should direct you to a couple of
articles
about summer fashion, and the latest beach trend, the "monokini."
This is a one-piece swimsuit with various holes in it, as if moths had
been chowing down all winter long in your swimsuit drawer.
The idea seems to be to create a swimsuit that hides all the parts of
your body that you don't want revealed, then cut out holes over those
specific parts. Here's a New
York
Post
story about the monokini, and just in case you
aren't paranoid enough as you hit the sand, here's
a
feature
from
Britain's
Daily
Mail that not only discusses
choosing the right swimsuit but also offers helpful advice from a
unique viewpoint: two piggish guys who ruthlessly critique how various
female celebrities look in swimsuits. There are no photos of
these guys in Speedos. I have a feeling that's a good
thing.
And while we're on the subject of summer fashions, here's
an
article about how 3-inch heels are yesterday's hominy grits and
the new thing is 4-inch heels or higher (Victoria Beckham looks down on
the help from 5-1/2 inch heels). Soon, women will just be
tottering around on stilts. The article gives some handy figures
on how much you will need to budget to pay for both the trendiest
4-inch designer stilettos and the resulting expensive foot surgery.
*****************************************
Speaking of surgery, do
you know anyone who would get plastic surgery
to look like Courtney Love? I do: Courtney
Love! Love had radical cosmetic surgery and was so
disappointed, she's trying to find a surgeon who can put her back the
way she was naturally (good luck finding a plastic surgeon who has any
experience at that.) Love said, "I'm hating that I did that to my
mouth..I just want the mouth God gave me back. It was perfectly
cute, and I had nice big lips." Sure, it was a bit hard to control in
public, but it looked nice. This is one more sad example how
important it is to think it over and do your research before you get
even minor cosmetic surgery.
*****************************************
Well, I've put it off as
long as possible. Here's my review of
last night's episode of "Age of Love" (BTW, I've realized that I
skipped episode four, so I will write a review of that and possibly
repost all this stuff in chronological order once it comes to its
merciful end next week. In the meantime, scroll down for the
earlier episodes)... AGE OF LOVE - Episode 7 (first aired Monday, July 30)
The ever-more-irritating
announcer intones:
"Two women in their 20s
and two women in their 40s remain...
"The dark side of love
emerges...
"In the end, will he
choose a woman in her 20s, or a woman in her 40s?"
The theme song plays.
Yes, it's The
Look Of Love. For one tiny redeeming moment, a nice quote
comes up:
"We don't stop playing
because we grow old. We grow old because we stop
playing." -- George Bernard Shaw.
And, by God, these women
are playing. Playing rough. Playing to win.
This episode ramps up the tension and jealousy considerably. You might
recall that last week, Jayanna was let go by Mark after Amanda's
"whisper campaign" against her. This week, 38-year-old Jayanna returns
(on video) to warn the other women about the "desperate" 25-year-old
Amanda. But her remarks are so backhanded against all the remaining
women that her words go largely unheeded.
In the words of one of
the 20-somethings: "She's almost 40 - like, get
over it."
Jen, the oldest and
seemingly most sensitive of the group, feels bad
for Jayanna. Her comment: "If I didn't know Mark, I would hate him for
what he did to my friend."
But since she knows him, he apparently can get away with anything,
because she definitely still wants him.
Mark chooses Maria and
Amanda to go on the first date of this episode
with him. "Maria doesn't get stressed about everything," he says. "I
get a very cool vibe from her." And Amanda "is a great girl." After a
commercial for Neutrogena anti-aging products, the three of them go to
a dance club together for private salsa lessons. Amanda brightens at
the idea.
"I know that my age
really gives me an advantage," says Amanda.
In a way, she's right.
The producers have brought outfits for the women
to wear on the dance floor. While Amanda gets to wear a hot, stretchy
little two-piece outfit with long, sexy fringe, Maria is put into a
white, matronly ruffly dress that subtracts three inches of height and
adds 30 pounds. "A woman in her 40s can still pull off a hot little
salsa outfit," smiles Maria, and I didn't do too bad." Maria, dear,
nobody except perhaps Catherine Zeta-Jones could pull off that
dress.
Maria, taking the spirit
of competition a little far, goes completely
nuts on the dance floor. "She just tries so hard - it was pathetic, I
think," says the always-sensitive Amanda in her critique. When Amanda
takes to the dance floor with Mark, she's much more relaxed and
self-assured, secure in the knowledge that her flattering outfit makes
her look slinky and fabulous. "I feel more sexual with Amanda, says
Mark. "She is just hot. Maria was, like, sweating..."
Later in the evening,
while they're just sitting together talking,
Maria asks Mark to pretend this is his last date with her. What would
he want to talk about, to say to her? She's obviously trying this
approach to get him to open up, but Mark says afterwards that it was a
"buzz-kill...Maria's being Maria again. She totally killed the mood."
His next date is with
Megan, by herself. Mark laughs, "She's only 21,
but I do like hanging out with her. She says the funniest things!"
(Yeah, I remember her joking to Mark last week that Jen was as old as
her mom. That was so FUNNY!)
The date is for an
afternoon "high tea." But Megan doesn't care for the
idea. "I feel like my date was definitely more suitable to the 40s. I
don't know anything about tea at all." Tea is for old-maid aunts who
shop together at flea markets, I suppose. Judging from last week's
camping trip, the problem with tea is that it is not booze.
But Mark and Megan enjoy
each others' company and even salsa dance a
little (no music) after nibbling on scones and tea cakes. "I'm
definitely falling for him," she remarks afterwards.
The final date: a call to
Jen to say, "Your carriage awaits. Bring your
swimsuit." The carriage turns out to be a fantasy right out of
"Cinderella." Jen looks completely gorgeous as she heads out the door;
the other women look as though they could rip her apart. Jen beams,
"Right now, I feel like the most special woman in the house. I really
want Mark to choose me." Mark seems smitten with Jen, too; he even
says, "I'm saving the best for last." Jen tells him that this is the
most romantic date she's ever
been on. The implication is that, coming from a 48-year-old woman,
that's saying a lot!
Later, after changing
into their swimsuits, Mark notes that "her body
is just ridiculous. She is in incredible shape." They talk easily, as
always, and get very close. Then it's time for massages, in the dark.
Jen comes back to the suite beaming, and can't wait to recount her date
to the others, who are decidedly nonplussed.
After the date, Mark, who
has commented repeatedly that he's not
thinking about age, says, "Jen, without a doubt, gives the women in
their 20s a run for their money." Jen reports that "tonight, after my
date, I've fallen for him."
Naturally, the other
women are petulant. The youngest, Megan, whom Mark
finds so endearing, pouts, "It SUCKS!
I've always asked that someone take me
on a friggin' carriage ride!"
Amanda is once again stuck on the realization that she's not being
treated as "special" after she's put herself out there.
Maria's talking about
leaving -- again. "I have learned, at 42, that I
need to follow my instincts," she says. The other women have noticed
that she's talked repeatedly about leaving, but she never does.
Mark has a brief
one-on-one with each of the four women. Megan's is
over before I even realize what they've said to each other. Jen tells
Mark, "Now I am definitely in this." Amanda admits it's hard for her to
watch him make connections with the others. For the second time, she
attempts to sabotage another woman - this time, Jen -- saying, "I got a
full report of the massages..."
Finally, Maria. "At 40, I
don't know if there's tomorrow," says Maria.
(Hey, does anyone?) "I get turned off when I'm opening the door and
inviting you in, and you're slamming it shut. So, I'm eliminating
myself." Mark had wanted her to stay; they talk for an hour, after
which Mark says he's "emotionally drained."
Afterwards, Maria says,
"At my age, I just kind of know what I need."
So, for Maria, it is about
age. And even if she knows perfectly well what she needs, she hasn't
learned to communicate it very well, except for some vague idea that
Mark "share himself" with her. I'm not sure what she's been trying to
pry out of him; no wonder he's frustrated. This dynamic, with the woman
constantly demanding that the man talk and share his feelings, goes on
in many households, I'm sure - many unhappy households. Mark is better
off without it.
So he moves on. He goes
to the women's suite and tells them that (1)
Maria has eliminated herself, and (2) they need to pack immediately
for...Australia! That's where his family is, and he wants the remaining
three women to meet them.
How exciting! And the
fact that she is the only 40-something left is
not lost on Jen. "Age is nothing but a number," she says. "I hope I can
be the one to prove it."
But Megan is so severely
flight-phobic that her white knuckles burn out
the camera lens. As they all board the plane and prepare for takeoff,
she becomes increasingly pale and sick. She can't go through with it.
The flight is delayed so that Mark can escort her off the plane, out of
the airport and into a cab. They kiss, actually for the first time.
It's sweet; she manages not to throw up on him. "Why now??" he laments
later. "It shouldn't end like this. I did not want her to leave."
Indeed, my prediction had
been for the competition to come down to Jen
and Megan, the oldest and the youngest in the entire contest. I think
that if Megan hadn't left on her own, that's the way it would've been.
Now Mark will be choosing either Jen or Amanda. I wouldn't be surprised
if it turned out Amanda had spiked Megan's drink with some sort of
anxiety-producing drug. As for Jen, Amanda will probably find some way
to off her during their 14-hour flight. Amanda observes, "I never
thought I'd be vying for Mark's heart with someone almost twice my
age."
The plane takes off for
The Land Down Under, as our smarmy announcer
leaves us with this:
"Only two women remain: a
48-year-old woman and a 25-year-old, and it's
finally time for him to choose between young and old."
If I ever meet the author
of those lines, it's going to get violent.
His arm is going to snap like a 100-year-old woman's.
I think it might have
been inspired by a series of questions in Marilyn
Vos Savant's column. I replied to one of her responses with a
letter about my African grey parrot, Dorian (Dorian Gray...get
it?
See, I had to sneak
age and beauty in here somewhere.) She posted that letter on her
website and referred people to it a couple of weeks ago in her national
column. Since this is now the Parade cover story, I
thought I'd direct your attention to my letter about Dorian, who
makes a cameo appearance via photo in "My Ship Has Sailed." Read
it and discover a parrot who is smarter than the NBC executives who
greenlighted "Age of Love."
July 27, 2007 Some news items on age,
beauty and plastic surgery have been piling up,
and I'll try to get them posted over the weekend. But
first, I have a bitter and unpleasant duty to perform. That's
right: it's time
for the latest installment in my ongoing series of reviews of NBC's
"Age of Love." Grab your Pepto-Bismol and brace yourselves... AGE OF LOVE Episode 4
It's announced that "you
are all going to be living together." Groan.
Until now, the 40s have
been together in a suite on the 40th floor, and
the 20s have been on the 20th floor. Mark is on the 30th floor. (Get
it? The producers are milking this age thing for way more than it's
worth.) From now on, all the women will be on the 40th floor.
"It's our house, and
they're gonna respect it," warns one of the 40s.
"I don't trust these women," sneers a 20. Already, the stage is set for
a "divide and conquer" mentality - one age group against another.
The announcer does his
part to inflame the hostilities between "young"
and "old": "These women are just out of college," he reminds us about
the 20s. As for the 40s, "These women are old enough to be their moms."
Yeah, yeah. Even though the older group starts at a mere 39 years of
age and the younger group includes women in their late 20s, we're going
to be hearing that tired observation many more times before the contest
is thankfully over.
The women do seem to
divide automatically into two camps; it's ironic
to me that they are the ones who think about age the most. Mark, to his
credit, doesn't seem very age-conscious, at least on the surface.
"They're all incredible personalities. They're all sexy."
The competition today is
a Triathlon.
Now, are the producers coming up with all this athletic stuff because
Mark is an athlete and wants a Bionic Woman who can keep up with him,
or simply to make the 40s sweat to keep up with the 20s? If it's the
latter, they must be disappointed, because the 40s and the 20s perform
equally well in these physical contests, and they look just as good
doing it. One 40 comments, "These younger girls are skinny; skinny
doesn't mean strong."
Anyway, the triathlon
consists of biking (teams of two women sharing
bicycles-for-two), running and crossing water on a surfboard to get to
Mark's yacht. Jen, at 48, is extremely competitive here, maybe because
she's conscious of being the oldest woman in the contest, but every
woman is pushing as hard as she can to reach the yacht first, or die
trying. Is this guy really worth such heroic effort? It all seems a bit
pathetic to me.
As if reading my
thoughts, Mark comes on screen, saying, "I felt so
bad. I thought, "I'm not worth it! Go back, go back!"
One of the younger women,
23-year-old Tessa, pushes too hard and
sprains her ankle badly. Jayanna, 39, is the first to reach the yacht.
(She's very skinny, but apparently also strong.)
Unfortunately, no one
comes on screen to mirror my next thought: "Is
this any way to choose someone to date?"
Mark spends some time
with Jayanna and finds her relaxed and easy to
talk to. The 20s are not happy that an old lady of 39 won time with
him. "The 40-year-olds are stepping up their game,” says one. "They're
intimidated by us." Apparently, one skill that younger women possess is
that of mind-reading.
Mark arranges for the
women to meet him at (sigh) the tennis court.
Some of them are dismayed by yet another
athletic trial, especially poor Tessa, who's limping around on
crutches. He has two 20s and two 40s play against each other while he
watches. (Note: if I had to win a contest this way at 20, 30 or 40, I'd
lose and lose big. Not being a sun baby, I just haven't played outdoor
sports at all. My tennis game may have suffered, but my skin thanks me
every day.) The 20s have a much louder, flirtier style on the court,
though all the women look equally fit and sexy in their tennis clothes.
Tessa winces out to the
court and tries to play with her injury, and in
doing so wins points with Mark, who has said he's looking for a woman
who will try new things. He asks her to join him on a date, as the
other women try to suppress their gag reflex. The 40s have actually
played better tennis than the 20s, but the younger women have won more
time with Mark, and that's the important thing.
It's time for more
confrontation, with one of the 20s calling the 40s
"prima donnas." The 40s are struck by the insecurity of the 20s, with
all their whining and pouting. Mary, especially, cries at EVERYTHING.
Tessa goes on her date
with Mark, in a lovely cocktail dress that
contrasts nicely with her Ace bandage. He really seems to like her.
They have a lovely, romantic dinner, during which Tessa tells him, for
some reason, that Amanda has strong feelings for him. "If you don't
have strong feelings for me," she says, "let me know." After the date,
Mark admits to the camera that he is baffled; why would a woman on a
date with him be talking about the feelings of another woman? (I have
to admit that I'm puzzled, too. Perhaps Amanda has hypnotized her into
saying this; she definitely would if she could.)
The date over, Mark asks
for one-on-one time with each woman. Jayanna
feels a real connection with him, and tells him so. Later she says to
the camera, "The 20-year-olds don't have the kissing skills I have. I
left him wanting more." Give me a break.
In fact, Mark would not
agree with Maria's self-assessment. In his
one-on-one with Amanda, he tells her, "You're the first one I've wanted
to "KISS' kiss."
Jen and Mark have a
pretty steamy makeout session themselves. "She blew
me away with her kisses," Mark says afterwards. Jen must be giving it
all she's got; she opines to the camera later, "I'm the oldest
one...time is running out." Jen, Jen! I have to hope the producers
manipulated you into saying that, or that they took you wildly out of
context.
Time for two of the women
to say goodbye. First, poor little Tessa has
to hobble away, but maybe she's on so much Vicodan for her ankle that
she can't feel any pain. Mark says she "ruined things" on their date by
bringing up Amanda.
Then, Kelly, who is 40,
is told it's over for her. She says she feels
blindsided. The show ends with a comment of hers that makes me wonder
why she'd agree to be on this show in the first place:
"I don't need to be
reminded of my age - I know how old I am every
day."
The remaining women -
along with us in the audience - will continue to
be reminded constantly until this travesty is over. AGE OF LOVE, Episode 5
The announcer, who is
becoming the most annoying part of this show,
sets the tone once again:
"It's the biggest dating
experiment
this summer!...Old or young, the women are starting to fall for
Mark!...The competition between the 20s and the 40s is starting to get
vicious!...The claws come out.
"In the end, will he
choose a woman
in her 20s...or a woman in her 40s?"
Are you throwing up yet?
If not, maybe the theme music will do
it: they're playing "The Look Of Love."
By episode 5, all
contestants have been eliminated except for three
women in their 40s and three in their 20s. In order to get to know the
women better, he takes several of them on a date.
Surfing.
You know, I really can't
think of a better way to get to know a woman.
If I were a contestant on
this show, I'd probably be the first to go
home because I'm just not the sporty type. With my red hair and
porcelain-white skin, I'm like Woody Allen: "I don't tan, I stroke."
Though I do work out and am very fit, I don't surf or do any water
sports at all. (Regardless of how well these women swim, many of them
could use their enormous fake breasts as flotation devices.) I don't
play tennis. I don't ice skate, although it might be fun to try that.
On second thought, I'm the kind of hothouse flower that perishes in
temperatures below 68 degrees. Just wondering: Are the women doing all
this athletic stuff because Mark himself is an athlete, or because the
producers want to pit young against old? If it's the latter, I'm happy
to say the 40s hold their own quite well against the 20s - and look
just as hot in their little outfits.
Mark and his "dates"
surf, romp in the sand and get physically close,
but they don't discuss movies, books, or stories in the news. For the
most part, they don't bring up their families. Forty-eight-year-old Jen
does share a little about her son -- but in terms of age, because at
25, he's just five years younger than Mark. He and the women, in
one-on-one conversations, do talk about their feelings and
relationships in general, but they don't bring up religion or politics,
or their opinions about anything potentially controversial. (The only
controversy encountered here is the "older woman-younger man" issue.) I
doubt that a woman vying for Mark's attention would even tell him if
she really didn't like surfing. Jen says, 'I want to show Mark what a
48-year-old woman is all about." Are all 48-year-olds "about" the same
thing? Shouldn't she want to show him very specifically what this
particular woman, who happens,
incidentally, to be 48, is all about?
Only one woman appears
independent enough to be totally honest about
her likes and dislikes: 42-year-old Maria. She seems quite blasé
about the whole process when she says, "At this stage of my life, I
don't chase."
Another woman in the
40-plus group is frustrated and jealous that Mark
has spent so much on the beach with 21-year-old Megan, the youngest of
the group. Her comment: "I didn't come here to meet a man who finds it
titillating to be with a 21-year-old for, like, five hours."
After the beach date,
Mark has (sigh) another
date, with two more women, 39-year-old Jayanna and 25-year-old Amanda.
It's an elegant evening outdoors in a Moroccan tent. (Now, I could go
for that!) He says he has a good feeling with Jayanna; after the date,
she says, "I can't see him not choosing me."
Amanda is already
completely moony over Mark. Her soppiness is pretty
sickening. In fact, the way most of these women are scrapping for a
tiny crumb of attention from this guy is off-putting. It's just tragic
that Mark can't be cloned so that every contestant - except, perhaps,
Maria, who's fine without him - could have him for herself.
48-year-old Jen is
annoyed with "everything" when she's the only one
left who hasn't had a date with Mark that day. But it turns out - lucky
her! - that he's been saving her for last. He's going to take her on a
motorcycle ride! And it just so happens that there's a hot-looking
biker outfit for her to wear. Mark and Jen have a lovely time riding
(and parking) together. There's lots of smooching. We cut to:
...
The apartment, where the
20-somethings make nasty comments about Jen's
age. "That has to be weird...18 years older?? She could be his mom!"
Mary, 24, is certainly
the most immature of the bunch...boo-hooing
constantly because she just hasn't had the chance to get to know the
fabulous Mark. (Believe me, if they don't get together at all, it will
be the best thing for both of them.) I really can't imagine any of the
40-somethings behaving like this, although I can see Mary doing it when
she's 40.
Back to Mark and
Jen. They play pool and have a great time. He
says he feels very comfortable with her. A candid comment from Jen
after the date: "What's most important to me is what I need and what I
want. And I want Mark."
Well, okay, then.
Maria, on the other hand,
says, "I know Mark's not the guy for me, so I
need to be out of here, so he can find the one who is right for him."
She tells the other women that she plans to say goodbye to Mark. They
take the news well.
Now it's time for Mark
and all the remaining women to gather poolside,
so that Mark can tell one to go home. Jen (48) is asked to stay, along
with Megan (21), Jayanna (39) and Amanda (25). (I find it interesting
that in this group are both the oldest and youngest of all the original
contestants.) Then it's Maria's turn to walk to him.
Maria tells Mark that he
hasn't shared himself in the way she had
asked, so she's made up her mind to go home. But Mark makes it clear
that he really wants to have that kind of time with her. He wants her
to stay. She didn't expect this -- what now? She just laughs and
laughs, while the other women steam with anger and resentment.
Twenty-four-year-old Mary
is the one going home. Boooo-hoooo-hoooo!
She doesn't
accept even Mark's gentle rejection well; the way she takes her leave
must make him sure he made the right decision. Afterwards, she pouts,
"The one thing that sickens me is that Jayanna and Jen are going to be
here longer than I am."
I'd like to think that
all the 40-somethings are more mature than that.
Not to mention all the other 20-somethings.
Whom will Mark reject
next? Will Maria change her mind about
him? Can I sit through another hour of this vapidity without
upchucking like a fashion model after brunch? Oh, Lord, I don't know!
But I vowed to do it, so you wouldn't have to. So let's fast-forward
one week, and you can read about....
AGE OF LOVE Episode 6
Here's that annoying
announcer again: "Two
women in their 20s and three women in their 40s remain!"
By now, I've thoroughly
had it with the age references. At this point,
can't it just be about the individual personalities? We KNOW Jen is
(gasp!) 48. We KNOW Megan is a mere 21. WE GET IT. But no, they have to
club us over
the head with it. Sometimes, the contestants are happy to play along.
One of the 40s does sound
a lot like me: "I see a lot of myself in
Mark, but that's not enough to fall in love with someone in such a
short period of time."
Twenty-five-year-old
Amanda, on the other hand, is just a drooling
idiot, with her romantic feelings towards Mark out of control.
Mark announces that
they're (aaauuuggghhh!) ALL GOING
CAMPING TOGETHER.
See, there's another
activity that's just not for me. I've never been
camping in my life. Take me to a movie, or a museum, or the theatre, or
the zoo, or even a romantic picnic to watch the sun set, BUT FOR THE
LOVE OF GOD, DON'T TAKE ME
CAMPING. Not the 20-year-old me, not the 40-year-old me. But
Mark has decided that a camping trip is one way for him to see some
different sides of the women's personalities, and I have to admit after
seeing the show, he may have something there.
Guess what they do on the
camping trip to reveal more about themselves?
That's right - they play "Truth Or Dare!" Somehow, one of the
dares becomes "show your ass." Mark turns his back, lowers his jeans
and does this (pixilated on TV), and Jayanna says with a self-satisfied
smile, "I'm 39 years old...I've got a great ass, and if I've gotta show
my ass, perfect!"
The wine flows, and that
more than anything seems to be the way for
Mark to find out more about these "ladies." Anger erupts among them. I
don't really understand what they're arguing about, but the
confrontation between Maria and Jen gets so heated that Jen walks off.
Mark talks her into coming back and apologizing for whatever it was she
said. It's clear that, when drunk enough, women of all ages can behave
just like
teenage girls.
As Mark says, "When
you're a little tipsy, the truth comes out."
Twenty-one-year-old Megan
has quite a bit to drink, and she actually
tells him she thinks it's weird that he's hanging out with a woman
who's the same age as her mom. At this point, I'm starting not to like
Megan so much. Go home, Megan.
Amanda sees all the
attention Mark is giving the tipsy Megan and
laments that the time she spent with him that she'd thought was
"special" really wasn't. "I'm so naïve, just like always," she
wails.
The announcer poses the
question yet again: "Who will Mark
send home...a woman in her
20s, or a woman in her 40s?"
At this point, I'm
reinforced in my
view that age doesn't
matter, because all these woman are acting like five-year-olds.
Much more immature
behavior follows; it's just too tiresome to recount
here. By morning, it seems that even Mark may be getting tired of some
of the girls' cattiness.
Jen, the oldest of the
group, does seem to be the most mature. But I'll
bet she seemed mature "for her age" when she was younger.
Mark takes each woman, in
turn, on a walk and tells her whether or not
he wants her to stay. Staying: Jen (hooray, and not because she's the
oldest), Amanda, Maria and Megan. Two 40s and two 20s; there's always
that symmetry. Going: Jayanna. It seems that Amanda, while cuddling
with Mark in his tent, told him some things about Jayanna that
disturbed him. Jayanna defends herself; she had given Amanda advice and
support, and it had been used against her in a "whisper campaign." Ah,
the intrigue!
Jayanna says, "I guess I
was duped." She accuses Amanda of immaturity
and concludes, "I've learned that I'm really happy to be the age that I
am, and I don't want to be 20 again."
The show ends with Mark
saying, "One of them could be the mother of my
children."
Please, PLEASE, don't let
that be the focus of next week's show!
Now, where's my bottle of
Pepto-Bismol?... July 9, 2007 Sorry to go so long
without an update but I had a big show to perform
in Denison (it went great, and the people there treated us wonderfully;
thanks to everyone at the Denison Arts Council for
sponsoring it and
for their fine hospitality. To read the review, click here
and scroll down to the bottom); then we
were on "vacation" for a week, which meant we spent a week packing for
the move to Las Vegas. But with episode four of "Age of Love"
looming over me like the Sword of Damocles, I have to catch up with my
reviews
of the last two, so here we go... AGE OF LOVE Episode 2
Episode One of "Age Of
Love (20s vs. 40s)" had me seething, but I
promised to dance to the masochism tango and watch the entire run of
this travesty, just so you wouldn't have to.
You probably recall that
at the end of Episode One, 30-year-old Mark
had met all the beautiful 40-something contestants, only to learn that
he'd also be choosing from a group of foxy 20-somethings. The announcer
ended the show with a warning to hold onto your hats -- the women just
got a whole lot younger!
Episode Two starts
predictably: Mark meets the hot, vivacious younger
women, one by one, and each chats briefly and tells him her age. But
this time, the presentation is very different. The 40-somethings had
been dressed in classy evening wear (introductions took place after
dark, by a swimming pool), while the 20-somethings are flashing their
tans in the bright afternoon sun by that same pool and
wearing...bikinis! These are rowdy girls; they're loud and proud.
Message: These are the fun
babes!
Later, the camera follows
the younger girls to their rooms (on the 20th
floor, natch), where they jabber incredibly ageist comments about
menopause and hot flashes. "Mark is gonna want to be with a younger
woman," says one. "My mom is
40," says another. My hunch is that comments such as these (if they are
not concocted by the producers and put into the girls' mouths) come
from fear; it's probable that these women are already terrified of
looking one day older, so they attack the older women like a herd of
wild animals attacking the sick one.
The 20-somethings are
definitely going for a particular look. Although
there's some variation, the most common body type is very skinny and
hard with huge, obviously fake breasts and fake tans. (If you're
watching the show, think Tessa.) I'd guess that the younger women have
had every bit as much plastic surgery as the older ones have. No doubt
these girls think they're sizzling hot, but I wonder if a guy like Mark
necessarily likes such hard edges - or hard implants.
Mark spends some time
conversing with the 20-somethings, who mostly
talk about themselves. Afterwards, he remarks that talking with some of
them was "like pulling teeth. It felt like I wasn't getting anything in
return." He's noticed that most of them are doing "more than one thing"
and are "still finding themselves." He says he's more attracted to
women who know what they want. "When I'm with the 40s, things are a lot
more relaxed."
"To be 100 percent
honest, I miss the old women." (Yes, I'm pretty sure
he said "OLD WOMEN.")
But he doesn't have to
miss them for long, because he's sent on a group
date with the 40-somethings, at a roller rink. The women are dressed in
fun, flirty outfits and look great. "That statement, '40 is the new
20,' really is true," beams one 40-year-old.
The 40s have to compete
in a limbo
contest to see who gets to spend some one-on-one time with
Mark. Talk about bending over backwards for a guy. (I'd
have lost this contest even in my 20s.) The winner: Jen, the oldest
contestant at 48. They have a lovely conversation, with Mark in
voiceover saying, "The whole time, I cannot believe she's 48 YEARS
OLD."
It freaks him out a
little that her son is 25. But she tells him she was married to a man
18 years older than she was. Coincidentally, the age difference for Jen
and Mark is also 18 years...but, of course, this is older woman-younger
man. Not the same thing at all.
After this date, he meets
the 20-somethings in his hotel room to play a
dance game of some sort. Afterwards, he says, "My opinion of the 20s
changed in a positive way," but for the life of me I can't understand
what has changed his mind.
Later that night, by the
pool, the 20s and 40s meet. The 40s laugh
quietly with each other. "We saw breasts...we saw size 2 waists," says
one.
The announcer explains
(in case some dim bulb still doesn't get it),
"We brought you here because we wanted to see if age matters when it
comes to falling in love."
Mark gets the last word:
"Age and numbers mean nothing to me." Ironic,
since it seems to mean everything to the producers of this show.
**************************** Episode Three
The announcer reminds us:
"These women are old enough to be their MOMS." As for Mark, "He had no
idea
what he was getting into!" But "the 40-year-olds exceeded his
expectations by far!"
Hey, they're old hags.
How high could those expectations have been?
It's explained that at
the end of this episode, one 20 and one 40 will
be going home. (No, it can't be two 20s or two 40s, even though numbers
don't matter to Mark.) The 40s tend to be more philosophical about
losing, with one observing, "The guy who wants the 20-something girl is
not my guy." "You know, I'm 40 years old," says another. "I've had my
heart broken before. I just want to find that someone."
But the stress is already
taking its toll on others. One of the 40s
says, "Whew! I might start looking my age by the end of this!" (Okay,
what does "40" look like? If she's 40, wouldn't it by definition have
to look like her?)
The 20s have quotes of
their own. Whether by their own design or the
producers', their comments are the most ageist of all. Example: "What's
a synonym for 'old'? 'Decrepit.'" There are also references to (yes)
bingo and old folks' homes.
The 40s plan a date for
Mark to go on with the 20s, and vice versa.
They send the 20s on a "play date" with Mark and groups of little kids,
thinking it would make them (the 20s, not the little kids) seem
immature. This tactic backfires; many of the 20s show themselves in a
good light. Then, the 20s send the 40s on a date with Mark at the
swimming pool at the senior center,
thinking it will reinforce the image of them as dried-up old prunes.
This strategy also fails; the 40s look fabulous in their bikinis,
especially next to fat, flabby centenarians. The 40s end up saying,
"Thank you, 20-somethings!!"
One twist: Maria, 42,
decides she will leave. She has sensed that there
just isn't a connection, at least on her part, so she says a
good-natured goodbye. The other 40-somethings, for the most part, also
seem to have this "que sera, sera" attitude, while most of the younger
women see this as a contest to be won at any cost. That seems to be
their approach to life; they do everything they can to reach a state of
what they regard as physical perfection, so they can be Alpha Female
and get the hunky guy. Gee, I'd always heard it was the older women who
were the desperate
ones!
Mark does manage to talk
Maria into staying, but she asks him to be
"more present." It's a good exchange.
Jen, the oldest at 48, is
asked by Mark to stay. He looks at her with
smiling, astonished eyes and says, "YOU
REALLY DON'T LOOK YOUR AGE AT ALL." Afterwards, Jen, newly
energized, makes a comment more characteristic of the competitive
20-somethings: "The 20s better watch out. Game on!"
I can't wait for Episode
Four, in which the 20s and 40s move in
together. Obviously, they've figured out how to take an awful concept
and make it ten times worse. I promise to tell you all about it so you
don't have to watch it, and I've laid in a big supply of barf bags for
the run of the show. Of course, my main problem isn't sitting through
this show - I have a high tolerance for pain -- but just the simple
fact that it exists.
(To wash all this out of
your brain, here is Conan
O'Brien's
parody,
"The
Math
of
Love," in which Max Weinberg
demonstrates all the enlightened sensitivity of the NBC executives who
greenlighted this thing.) June 20, 2007
"Age of Love (20 vs. 40)"
Imagine you're watching
the first episode of one of those "dating"
reality shows.
You see a handsome, hunky
blonde man in a white dinner jacket, waiting
expectantly at the bottom of a staircase for the first of a dozen
beautiful women to walk enticingly to him and introduce herself.
The first woman,
stunningly attractive, descends the stairs. There's a
cut to a reaction shot of him as he suddenly realizes she is black.
She approaches him and
takes his hands in hers in a
confident-yet-vulnerable way. "Hi, I'm Latisha. I'm really looking
forward to getting to know you. Oh, and, by the way, I'm black."
A true gentleman, he
tries to hide his confusion. What has he gotten
himself into? "You look beautiful tonight," he says. "I've never dated
a black woman before, so it'll be a new experience for me. It's a
little out of my comfort zone. But I do think you are absolutely
lovely."
She moves to the other
side of the room, as another gorgeous woman
starts down the stairs. Again, we see his reaction as he realizes that
she, too, is black. What is going on here?
She gives him a friendly
hug. "Hi, I'm Pam. I think we could have a lot
of fun getting to know each other. There is one thing...in case you
didn't notice, I'm black."
At this point, the guy's
mind is racing; he can only say, "You look
beautiful tonight." They chat for a few moments, and then it's time for
the third black woman to walk down the stairs.
By the time he's met and
talked with all 12 beautiful black women, and
after they've all broken the news to him that - yes - they're black,
he's completely open to the idea of dating someone black. He says he
has put the issue of race out of his mind.
Then, at the very end of
a show filled with curves, he's thrown a new
one. A tableau is revealed, featuring the other 12 women from whom he
is to
choose his Special One over the coming weeks. These women are all
classic blonde beauties, and they are presented as the ones to watch,
the real competition. The
announcer says, "Things just got a lot more complicated...the women
just got a whole lot WHITER.
Will he pick a white woman, or a black one?" (He even refers to this
show as "the ultimate social experiment.")
Doesn't this sound
outrageous? Of course it does. YOU
WOULD NEVER SEE THIS!
A show like this would
never be broadcast! Why? Because it's racist and
horrible. Yes, there is still some racial prejudice -- and will be as
long as there are idiots -- but racism is no longer a
culturally-acceptable bias.
Ageism is.
Case in point: the actual
dating show that debuted on NBC Monday, June
18, called "Age Of Love (20 vs. 40)." It proceeds exactly as I've
described above, except the women in the first group are all 40-plus.
(The guy is 30.) I merely substituted "black" for "older" and "white"
for "young."
In the real show, each
woman has to tell the man her age. He registers
confusion and a touch of disappointment at first, but ultimately is
open to the experience. The women are so warm and appealing, and, most
importantly, they look no
more than 30. But then, at the end of the show, he catches a glimpse of
the twentysomething hotties he'll be meeting next week. Wowwweeeee!
They're YOUNG!
I had a much stronger
emotional response watching this show than I had
anticipated. After the first few minutes, I was trying not to cry. Any
hope I'd had that the issue of age would be incidental to the
proceedings was dashed. It seemed to me that each woman was
participating not just as herself as an individual but on behalf of her
particular "number." If the 48-year-old wins, she wins for all
48-year-olds. Because, obviously, 48-year-olds have something to prove.
Although we don't get to
meet the twentysomethings till next Monday
night, the first episode had a few clips of them and some choice
quotes: "The 20s vs. the 40s? You've got to be...joking." "I'm young
and definitely hot. Deal with it." "Men naturally want to date younger
women." "Hopefully, when I'm 40, I won't still be dating. Desperate for
a man...it's pathetic, really."
Now, I don't know how
much of this dreck has been staged. The
producers, if they're targeting a market of over-30 women, may have
deliberately weighted the show with wonderful, worldly-wise 40-year-old
babes and shallow, nasty 20-year-old babes. These are cliches, of
course. If there's a correlation between youth and shallowness, then
I'd say that anyone connected in any way with the creation or airing of
this show couldn't be over 11.
I hope it tanks.
Ironically, by the end of
the first episode, the participant who seems
to be thinking the least about age is the central male character. That
might have led some women to think, "Hey, this is great! This is
demonstrating that older women can compete with younger women, and that
age is irrelevant."
But that's not what it's
demonstrating at all. Just the fact that this
show even exists demonstrates that age is EVERYTHING.
I'll be forcing myself to
watch further installments of this drivel
every Monday night, tissues and barf bag in hand, just so I can write
commentary on it. (See the things I do for you?) I hope you'll stay
tuned, not necessarily for the show, but for my comments!
June 18, 2007 Very busy preparing for
the June 29
Denison show (the photo at right
is from an interview
with KXII-Channel 12,
with
anchor
Ryan
Loyd
(left)
and
Mike
Williams,
a
fantastic
glass
artist
and president of the Denison Arts Council), but I have to pop in
with a
few news items.
First of all, have
you
heard
of
Paul
Potts
yet? He's become an overnight hero in the UK, and clips of
him
are the most viewed videos on YouTube worldwide. I love him
because he's the living embodiment of the message of "My Ship Has
Sailed," that looks and age have nothing to do with how much you have
to offer the world.
Paul is the new winner of
"Britain's Got Talent," the UK parent of
"America's Got Talent." He is a cell phone salesman from Wales,
and he is overweight, has bad teeth, and the humble, slightly-whipped
demeanor of someone who has been dealt a bad hand in life, including
bullying, major health problems and serious financial
burdens. He loves opera but didn't start singing until he
was 28, and he's gone heavily in debt taking classes, even though he's
never sung professionally. He's now 36,
which is eight years beyond the cut-off date for "American Idol," when
people officially become too old to be singers.
Well, Paul walked
nervously out onstage, told Simon Cowell and the
other judges that he was going to sing opera, and you could see them
brace themselves for something putrid. He then opened his mouth,
and this amazing voice filled with overwhelming emotion just poured
forth. By the end, the crowd was on its feet cheering, and there
wasn't a dry eye in the house. Even Simon couldn't hide his
astonishment. Watch these clips, and I guarantee
he'll have the same effect on you. Here's his first appearance,
his
semi-finals
performance and his
winning
performance. He went on to win the contest, a
recording
contract, a big cash prize, a chance to sing for Queen Elizabeth and
the title of "King of the Late Bloomers," which is awarded by me.
I hope that between the
release of the Nancy Drew movie (which finally
gives young girls a screen role model who refuses to display any organ
in
public other than her brain) and the triumph of Paul Potts,
that we are seeing the beginning of a quiet cultural revolution, one in
which we start celebrating intelligence, humility and genuine talent
and no longer turn walking, drinking, snorting, flashing train
wrecks into celebrities. I'm not holding my breath, but a girl can
dream. Personally, if I were one of our current crop of
camera-addicted, talent-deficient celebrities and I saw Paul Potts, I'd
be ashamed to show my face in public again. But then, showing
their faces in public wasn't what made most of them famous, anyway.
*****************************************
And now, a few quickie
news items...
Stanford
University
confirmed
anecdotal
reports that gastric bypass
surgery changes the way alcohol is metabolized in the stomach, getting
it into the blood stream faster and stronger, so that formerly obese
people who've lost weight with a gastric bypass also get drunk faster
and stay drunk longer, sometimes on just one drink. It's just the
gift that keeps on
giving! And women thought guys were buying them drinks because
they were thinner.
*****************************************
Elvira is teaming with
Fox for a new reality show that they hope will
give a bounce to their sagging ratings. It's called "The
Search
for
the
Next
Elvira." Thirteen mammoth-mammaried misses will
compete to become the buxom horror hostess's new doppelgangers (no,
that's not a euphemism for breasts). Only
on Fox would a show in which every woman in sight has giant breasts be
considered "reality."
*****************************************
Finally, from the "What Can
Brown Do For You?" Dept., comes a report by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston
that tanning might be
addictive. They believe the body's process that converts UV light
into vitamin D releases endorphins that make people feel happy, like
morphine. In tests, when frequent tanners were offered two
identical-looking tanning beds, one of which didn't emit UV light, they
unwittingly preferred the UV bed. And when eight frequent tanners were
given a drug that blocks endorphins, four suffered withdrawal
symptoms. They started drinking suntan lotion. The hard
stuff, too: SPF 45. Maybe some sort of Tanners Anonymous
group could be formed with funds raised by celebrity spokesman George
Hamilton.
All kidding aside,
tanning is just about the worst thing you can do to
your skin. I'm glad I knew to avoid it from an early age.
If you think you'd look better in a darker shade, they have some
excellent spray-on tans now (I tried a free sample at a spa last week
on one arm. I was assured it would wash right off. It
didn't, and I walked around for a week looking like I drive with one
arm hanging out of the car.) You might feel like a used car
at Earl Scheib while they're applying it, but at least you won't end up
with skin that looks like a buckskin wallet in 20 years.
JUNE 5, 2007 I'm told that tickets to
our upcoming Rialto Theater performance of
"Cole Porter" in Denison are going fast (the $35 VIP tickets that
include a
post-show reception with private mini-concert by Michael and me are
already over 4/5ths sold), so please make your reservations right away
if
you'd like to come. It promises to be a fantastic evening, and I
hope you'll join us for it. Contact info is here.
And now, a little age and
beauty news...
Britain's
Leeds
University
found that pop videos by skinny, hot-model girl
groups such as the Pussycat Dolls are bad for adolescent girls'
self-esteem (they aren't great for any woman's self-esteem, but we'll
stick with the adolescents for now). Researchers say the videos
glamorize "unhealthy and unobtainable" bodies that are at odds with
actual body sizes in society. Their study found that adolescent girls
experienced a drop in satisfaction with their own bodies after as
little as 10 minutes of viewing Pussycat Dolls videos.
I'll bet their IQs also
dropped 10 points. On the bright side,
after growing up on videos, their attention span is only five minutes
so they probably stopped watching before any damage was done.
No word on whether young
boys who watched those videos experienced a
drop or a rise, but I think we can all guess. Personally, I think
that boys should also be taught that the women's bodies they see in
Pussycat Dolls videos are completely unobtainable. That would
save their future wives a lot of trouble down the road when their
mid-life crises kick in.
*****************************************
As if kids need further reason
to believe their elders are evil, crazy and laughable, a study by
Brigham Young University blames
Disney
cartoons
for
planting
ageism in the minds of youngsters.
They studied 93 characters who appeared to be over 55 in Disney movies
going back 70 years. While a majority were wise and kind, like Geppetto
from "Pinocchio," a significant number were either dim-witted, like
Dopey (personally, I think of Dopey as younger; he just looks older
because he's bald. With a little Rogaine, he could've had a shot
at Snow White. At least he was funny, unlike that stiff, Prince
Charming)...or nasty, like the hag in "Snow White," Cinderella's
stepmother and Cruella DeVil. 15 percent of the films
contained only negative older characters.
The researchers say
Disney cartoons negatively influence children's
view of elders by depicting aged characters as sinister, incompetent,
helpless, hunched, toothless, senile, crazy or laughable, and with
cracking voices and "saggy breasts." Like the Seven Dwarfs:
Creaky, Craggy, Slumpy, Saggy, Wrinkly, Puffy and Oldy.
This just seems to me to
be a reflection of the stories' origins in old
Grimm Fairy Tales. Besides, you can always counteract it by
letting your kids watch live action Hollywood movies, which will teach
them that nobody over 55 has saggy breasts anymore.
*****************************************
A rock group called the
Zimmers has a big hit in England with a cover
of the Who's "My Generation." The band consists of 40 elderly
members with a combined age of over 3,000 years, and a 90-year-old lead
singer (insert your own Rolling Stones joke here). The group was
formed out of a BBC documentary on the problems of isolation for the
elderly and was meant to demonstrate that age doesn't mean people can't
try new things, which I can certainly get behind. And if Pete
Townshend can still sing "Hope I die before I get old," so can
they. After all, they've already outlived 50% of The Who. Check
out
the
video
of
the
song
here, and if you like it, pay to download it. The
proceeds go to charity.
*****************************************
Finally, a celebrity
quote, this time from Ellen Barkin, who was
promoting "Ocean's 13" in Entertainment Weekly:
"Would I rather look the
way I looked
when I was 43? Yes. 33? No. I always thought
women peaked between 36 and 43."
I won't bother arguing
with that, but only because I find that I never
agree with Ellen Barkin's pronouncements on age anyway. She's
the one who set me fuming a few years ago when she said she doesn't
wear slip dresses anymore because nobody wants to see a 50-year-old
woman in a slip dress. I was amused to note that the above quote
was accompanied by a photo of her from the movie in a hot and steamy
scene with George Clooney, and she was wearing...wait for it...a slip
dress!
Quick, everybody: AVERT YOUR EYES!!...
May 24, 2007 MAJOR SHOW NEWS! We
didn't want to schedule any public
shows due to the uncertainty of our schedule, what with having our
house up for sale and preparing to move to Las Vegas, but this was a
booking we couldn't turn down. Michael Gott and
I will be performing "Cole Porter: Elegance & Decadence" at the
historic Rialto Theatre in Denison, Texas, as a benefit for the Denison
Arts Council on Friday, June
29. How could we say no
to such a worthy cause, and to
playing in a theater built in 1920? Denison is a lovely
resort town on Lake Texoma, with lots of gorgeous art galleries.
(UPDATE! VIP ticket buyers can join
Michael and me at a catered reception in a lovely art gallery right
next door, where we will perform a few more songs for you in a private
mini-concert. But tickets are limited and going fast, so make
reservations today! For ticket
info, click here.)
Speaking of great music,
did you see Tony Bennett singing "For Once In
My Life" on the "American Idol" results show last night?
Wow! So much for Simon Cowell's sneering that some singers or
songs are "too old." Let's hope some of that greatness rubs off
on the younger singers on stage with him. Also, if it was once
possible to write songs as terrific as that, why did they have to go
through 25,000 songs to come up with that horrible "This Is My Now"
song? Are they seriously claiming that there are 24,999 songs in
the world worse than that? I have songwriter friends who could
burp better songs than that. They would be catchier and contain
less gas.
Oh well, let's put that
unpleasantness behind us and turn to a little
age and beauty news...
Scientists at McMaster
University in Canada put seniors with an average
age of 70 on an exercise regimen and found that not only did they
become stronger, but gene activity in samples of their muscle tissue
began to resemble that of people much younger. So exercise
can
literally
reverse
aging!
Of course, this is no
surprise to me. I began working out
regularly at Bally's about a year ago, and I not only feel better and
stronger, I look 20 years younger. People now mistake me for
five.
*****************************************
Here's
a
story
about
a
British
TV
presenter who felt insecure after some
louts on an Internet bulletin board insulted her looks so she went in
for what the story calls by the Fleet Street nickname "Botox Lips," but
I assume they really mean Restylane or collagen injections. She
says she came out looking like Goldie Hawn in "First Wives Club" ("You
look like your lips got caught in a pool drain"), and tried to pass it
off as swelling from a riding accident before coming clean. Two
lessons here: be more careful about choosing your cosmetic procedures
and who provides them, and ignore what idiots say about you on the
Internet. If you disagree with me, you're welcome to post a
nasty, flaming, immature reply on my comments page. Oh wait: I
don't have one of those.
See how easy it is to
ignore people like that?
This story from the Daily
Telegraph also includes a slide show of
photos of unfortunate celebrity plastic surgery. If you want to
see it, it's
here. But I warn you: some of the photos are not for the
squeamish.
*****************************************
England's University of
Warwick studied tests of more than 250,000
people worldwide and found that in general, men's
minds decline faster with age than women's, possibly because
they've worn them out filling them with sports statistics.
Participants took four cognitive tests, such as remembering the
location of objects in a drawing and typing the names of as many
gray-colored objects as they could think of in a minute. The
performance of both sexes declined with advancing age, but women
declined significantly slower than men. But then, any married man will
tell you that their wives never forget
anything!
Study leader Elizabeth
Maylor did caution that this is just a general
trend, and said, "You can't sort of say, 'Oh, you're a man, so you're
going to decline faster than me because I'm a woman.'"
Oh, what the heck, go
ahead and say it; the man will probably forget it
anyway...
*****************************************
Finally, from London's
Daily Mail, a
very
interesting
interview
with
Joan
Rivers, in which she talks
about age, body image, the anger behind her comedy and the criticism
she takes for
getting so much plastic surgery, when she thinks everyone else in
Hollywood does pretty much the same thing. A sample in which she
explains the harsh early experiences that still drive her to
constantly tinker with her looks...
"I am not a supermodel. I
am not the
one the men fall hopelessly in love with. I did not come from the lucky
sperm club with all the money."
Is
that why she has had so
much work done? How ugly was the teenage Joan Rivers — or rather, how
ugly did she think she was? Has she spent her whole life — and a chunk
of her fortune — trying to be somebody else? "I was not the prettiest
girl in the
class," she admits. "I was a very ordinary girl. If you come from my
family your mother tells you over and over again that you are the most
beautiful and wonderful thing and suddenly you go to school and you
realise you're a pig."
Ironically, the cure for
looking like a pig: getting injections of
collagen from pigs.
May 18, 2007 I know everyone else has
already commented on this by now, but it’s
taken me all day to quit seething long enough to type and comment on
Melinda Doolittle being VOTED
OFF
OF
“AMERICAN
IDOL!” I think I’m even more upset
than I was when Jennifer Hudson was voted off, and for a couple of
reasons:
First, in this case, the
contestants who remain are so obviously
inferior to the reject in talent (between Jordin's vibrato and Blake's
beatboxing, the finale will come with a warning that epileptics should
not watch it); and second, the handful of people on bulletin boards and
chat rooms who wanted Melinda to go are making a big deal out of her
age being a good reason to kick her off.
Melinda is a geriatric
29, the upper limit for singers, apparently; and
people critical of her are saying that “American Idol” should be about
“youth” (funny, I thought it was about singing ability, but I suppose
that’s been disproved enough times that I really should know better).
They also say that Blake and Jordin’s fans were younger and spammed the
show with text message votes, while Melinda’s
were
older
and
didn’t
vote
as
many
times, what with the difficulty
of having to clear the party line and get Gert the operator to patch
them through to Western Union. And they say that Melinda shouldn’t win
because her style of singing is too old-fashioned (translation: “on
key”) and only appeals to older people, rather than “A.I.’s” young
target demographic. In other words, she’d appeal to old fogies who
still buy CDs instead of those young whippersnappers the record
companies covet, the ones who illegally download music for free. Good
move, "A.I.!"
Oh, well, let’s look on
the positive side: At least Melinda will be
snapped up by some label, and she’ll get to make the record she wants
to make, rather than the treacly wad of poorly-produced corporate yuk
that “Idol” winners are usually forced to put out. And America is a
representative democracy, so I suppose it’s time tonedeaf people had
their own singing idols.
*****************************************
And now, let’s wash
“American Idol’s” bad vibes (and bad vibratos) out
of our minds with some positive news:
University of
Pennsylvania researchers have made
a breakthrough in developing a baldness cure: they discovered that
a protein called "wnt" signals the body to regenerate new skin,
complete with new hair follicles. In the lab, mice that had lost all
their hair regrew fur all over their bodies. And who knows? Maybe
someday, you can, too! Even totally hairless men could look like
Robin Williams!
See, I told you I’d give
you some positive news! May 16, 2007 A couple of quick stories
for your amusement:
Sylvester
Stallone is facing fines totalling over $36,000 after pleading
guilty Tuesday to illegally importing the banned human growth hormone
Jintropin into Australia. He reportedly had 48 (!) vials of it in
his luggage. He must've had to take steroids just to lift his bag
full of HGH. The makers of Jintropin claim that it reduces fat,
boosts muscle mass, improves sexual prowess and regenerates major
organs (but obviously, not the brain).
Stallone swore that if he
ever goes to Australia again, he'll leave his
Jintropin at home. And he'll come home looking like Abe Vigoda.
*****************************************
And
here's
one
from
the
"Duh"
file: researchers at Duke
University have proven scientifically that men like to ogle women more
than women like to ogle men.
Scans of the "reward
centers" of the brains of 20 men and 20 women
showed that men derived the same pleasure from looking at photos of a
sexy woman that they did from eating a delicious curry or making money,
which explains why they are willing to trade money for photos of
attractive women, as well as eat curry off the bodies of attractive
women. However, women derived no significant reward from looking
at pictures of men. Which explains why Playboy has always outsold
Playgirl. That, and the fascinating articles, of course.
In another test, men were
willing to work longer at a computer to
access photos of attractive women than to see neutral or unattractive
women. In fact, many men put in eight hour days at work, doing
nothing but that. May 14, 2007
"It's
a
depressing thought, but most of us look our best at about 21 years of
age."
-- Andy Rooney, making yet another
statement I strongly disagree
with on last night's "60 Minutes"
Once again, apologies for
the long delays, but it's not easy trying to
sell a house and get ready to move to Las Vegas. If you know
anyone who would like to live in a gorgeous Preservation Dallas
Award-winning 1913 home that's priced to sell, please have them contact
me ASAP.
Well, lots of news on the
age and beauty front has piled up, so let's
quickly plow through it...
*****************************************
As long as I started with
an annoying quote from Andy Rooney, I might
as well
stick with the theme and begin with the story that
annoys me the most:
The creators of probably
my all-time favorite TV show "Columbo" say
they finally came up with a script called "Columbo's Last Case" that's
so good, Peter Falk agreed to don the rumpled raincoat one final time.
So they took it to ABC and were dumbfounded when they turned it
down. Despite the fact that TV viewership is down by 2.5 million
since last year and continuing to drop, ABC said the young demographic
they want to attract (you know, all those hipsters who watch Tony
Bennett specials) wouldn't be interested in an 80-year-old leading
man. Apparently, they only like mysteries with no solutions, like
"Lost." All the other major broadcast and cable networks also
passed.
The producers say they
knew Hollywood was rife with ageism, but the
character appeals to all ages and "Columbo" is "a classy, clever, witty
show that challenged you to use your mind." Sadly, they didn't
realize that advertisers are only interested in viewers who are too
young
to use their minds at all. Fortunately, they're not giving up:
Lt. Columbo is an icon all over the world, so they hope to find foreign
financing, even if it means rewriting the script to make President Bush
the murderer.
The mind reels at the
stupidity of network executives who would turn
down a "Columbo" movie for such an idiotic reason. Conan O'Brien
is an icon to young TV viewers, and he recently had Peter Falk as a
guest and raved on and on about how thrilled he was because he's such a
huge Columbo fan. Just two days before this story appeared,
it was our wedding anniversary, and one of my gifts to my husband was a
DVD boxed set of the 5th and 6th seasons of "Columbo." I had no
idea that made us geriatic. I thought it just meant we had good
taste. Come to think of it, why did they even put "Columbo" on
DVD? We "Columbo" fans are obviously much too senile to figure
out how to work that new-fangled DVD box thingamabob.
*****************************************
Continuing our theme of
annoyance, Cameron Diaz told Us Weekly that
she's tired of people thinking she's successful in Hollywood just
because
she's
so
beautiful:
Diaz said, "If a woman
who's a successful actress weighs 300 pounds and
has warts, nobody ever asks her, 'Do you think you made it because
you're ugly?' So why should there be prejudice against someone who's
had some success in films and looks a little better than average? It's
all in my genes, so don't hold it against me."
She's right! It's high time
Hollywood stopped discriminating against the slender and
beautiful! So I promise that if I ever meet a successful movie actress who
weighs 300 pounds and has warts, I'll ask her a different
question. I'll ask, "How come I've NEVER heard of you?"
Bruce Willis said he's
planning to be on the Hollywood A-list for 97
more years until he's 150, adding, "I am counting very heavily on
science to keep me alive." (Really? Science couldn't even keep
his hair alive.) I hope he's right about science boosting
longevity, but if he really plans to be on the Hollywood A-List until
he's 150, he'll need more than genetic engineers. He'll need
Demi's plastic surgeons.
And he'd better hope one of them knows how to write a decent
screenplay with a lead character over 30.
*****************************************
Nobody hates attempts to
suppress freedom of the press more than I do,
but I must admit, this
story
made
me
laugh:
Someone stole 1,000
copies of the Framingham, Massachusetts, State
College newspaper off the stands, but it wasn't for political reasons.
The front page included a photo of seven female students at a women's
lacrosse game, wearing halter tops and shorts with "I (heart) NOONAN"
(a player's name) written across all their stomachs. Police discovered
that two of the girls took the papers because they thought the photo
made them look fat (I'll bet they were the ones with the "OO" on their
stomachs). The paper's
faculty advisor said, "This is the most stupid reason the paper has
been stolen."
The girls may be
disciplined, but not charged criminally. I'm
glad they won't be going to jail. I don't think they could handle
having to wear horizontal stripes.
*****************************************
From the Sometimes, It's
Good To Be
A Lab Rat Dept.:
University of Michigan
researchers say the
secret
to
a
long,
healthy
life
could
be
regular
doses
of
cherry
pie.
They
fed dried dark, sour cherries, the kind used in pies and jams, to lab
rats. After three months, the rats had significantly lower cholesterol
and showed factors linked to lower risk of diabetes and heart disease.
Studies also show cherries can help regulate sleep cycles and relieve
arthritis (the lard lubricates your joints). Researchers pointed out
that only a small portion of cherries is necessary to reap the
benefits.
So no more than one pie per day.
*****************************************
James
McCarthy
of
East
London
was
jailed
for
20
months after he went to a
hospital to stop his wife Kerry from getting her boobs enlarged. Before
you say, "What a sensitive, enlightened man!," you should know that he
has a record of domestic violence, and she showed up at the hospital
with a black eye (you could tell she liked big boobs because she
married him). He tried to talk her out of the operation; and when
she refused, he dragged her out, told her he had a knife and threatened
to kill her. A witness told police, "He said to her, 'I like you as you
are. I will kill you now.'" (He just gets more sensitive by the
minute, doesn't he?)
Kerry managed to break
loose and run away
and has since left him. Incidentally, she decided not to get breast
implants after all, although she could obviously use a pair of big
guns. I'd suggest .38s.
At one Connecticut camp,
the median age is 55, and a spokesman said,
"We don't want the place to turn into a gated assisted living
facility." The problems are that nudist resorts are getting fancier and
more expensive, which young people can't afford; plus, today's young
people aren't interested in nudism (they see no point in taking off
their clothes in public if there's no video camera around). The nudist
clubs are trying everything from youth discounts to hiring
"ambassadors" to pitch the nudist lifestyle to their college
classmates. One nudist said she thinks young people believe nudism is about sex and not just feeling free
and comfortable, and that today's college students believe nudists are all hippies.
News flash: today's
college students don't even know what "hippies"
are. They think that means an old, naked person with enormous
hips.
My question: would
today's college students be interested in watching
Columbo if he promised to keep his raincoat on? May 1, 2007 More stories are coming
soon, I swear. I'm just very busy getting
ready for an open house. In the meantime, here's some more BIG
NEWS: A few months ago, I was asked by a wonderful filmmaker, Kim
Fishman (producer of the movie "Fat Girls") to do an interview
as part of a series for Yahoo Health in which a variety of women tell
their inspirational stories. I heard back yesterday that the
clips are now finished and have just been posted online. They
turned the interview into two segments: one
on
my
ideas
about
age and ageism and how they inform my show, and the
other
one
about
Meniere's
disease and the hearing loss and lost
years of stage time that it cost me. Click on the links and check
them out! While you're there, poke around and check out some of
the other clips. Lots of fascinating women and interesting
stories at this site, and I'm very proud and honored to have been
included. Thank you, Kim, Amber, and everyone else who was
involved!
April 17, 2007 BIG NEWS: As you
might have noticed above, we have decided
to
relocate from Dallas to Las Vegas, which explains some of the long
delays in blog postings. We have been having to get our house
ready to go on the market, look for a house in Vegas, etc. We
hate to do it, since we love Dallas and our historic home that we've
spent so much time working on, but we just think that Vegas will offer
more venues and opportunities for the show. And we can write the
Comedy Wire from anywhere, so it's time to take the leap of faith and
roll the dice (I'm not even in Vegas yet, and I'm already using casino
metaphors).
To tide you over until
I'm able to blog again, here is a mountain of
stories on age and beauty that have been piling up. As my husband
said when I told him to start cleaning out his office in preparation
for moving, "Let's start shoveling"...
*****************************************
Cynthia
Figueroa-Haas, an assistant professor at the University of
Florida's College of Nursing, studied 84 women aged 21 to 57 and found
that in the vast majority of cases, getting breast enhancement surgery
significantly boosted their self-esteem (before the surgery, their
self-esteem levels were completely flat). And it no doubt boosted the
self-esteem of their boyfriends, as well.
Figueroa-Haas said that
despite negative attitudes about the surgery
and the fact that it's not a cure-all for low self-esteem, the average
woman experienced a 20 percent rise in self-worth scores and a 15
percent boost in sexual function (a mix of arousal, satisfaction and
experience) after getting a boob job. She said more study is
needed, but I’m sure that after getting breast implants, those women
will have no problem getting studied much more closely than before.
*****************************************
Sylvester Stallone is shooting
his fourth "Rambo" movie, nearly 20 years after he last played the
role, but he's come up with an easier way to look buff than to exercise
and take suitcases full of human growth hormone. Stallone
hired
a
body
double
who
is
thirty
years
old, exactly half his
age. The double will reportedly handle scenes that Stallone would
find too challenging, such as dangerous stunts, dialogue and any scenes
involving math.
I must admit, this is a
brilliant idea. It's too bad we can't all
adopt this. Instead of worrying about how you'd look in a
swimsuit on your vacation, you could just hire someone young and buff
to go to the beach in your place while you stay home for a week, eating
bonbons and watching TV Land.
Oh, wait: you could just
do that without
hiring a body double! Never mind... *****************************************
For some unexplainable
reason, that Sylvester Stallone story reminds me
that Britain's University of Central Lancashire claims to have disproved
the
existence
of
the
Napoleon
Complex, or "Short Man Syndrome."
(Well, there is a “Short Man
Syndrome,” but it doesn’t refer to height.)
The theory claims that
shorter men overcompensate for their lack of
height by being more aggressive. But in tests, men of different heights
were asked to duel with wooden sticks, and a secret plant cheated by
hitting
the test subject's knuckles. They found that taller men were quicker to
lose their tempers and hit back (possibly because they assumed they’d
win). A researcher said that when people see a short man acting
aggressive, they tend to blame his shortness because it's just what
they notice the most. And that makes him FURIOUS!!
My question: If there's
no such thing as a Napoleon Complex, then how
do you explain Napoleon?
*****************************************
If you’ve seen “My Ship
Has Sailed,” you know it’s not just for women.
I talk about how age and appearance pressures affect men, too. Well,
here’s some good news for men: Reuters reports that Harlequin Romances
are trying to freshen up their novels by featuring
"real
men"
as
cover
models. Research found that the average reader,
a 42-year-old female, doesn't like it when the book describes a brawny,
macho hero, and the cover features a young, skinny, pretty-boy type
(apparently, females over 12 are not reduced to tears by the sight of
Sanjaya Malakar).
At a recent casting call
in Toronto, 200 guys answered an ad for older,
bigger, “Chunka-Chunka Burnin’ Love” style models. A Harlequin
spokeswoman said they were seeking an "iconic look that women go for --
sexy, sensitive, beautiful and fit. We want real men...exactly what you
think in your mind when you're fantasizing or imagining that ideal
man." You know: the Jim Belushi type. I imagine them as not so much
Fabio as Flab-io. Rrrrrrrrrowf!
Of course, all the female
cover models will still be 22 and willowy.
Let’s not get carried away here.
*****************************************
If you’re dieting, knock
it off: The University of California conducted
the largest review of diets ever, analyzing over 30 studies involving
thousands of dieters, and found that for the vast majority, diets
don't
work
and
may
even
put
their
lives
at
risk. More than
two-thirds of dieters quickly put the weight back on, increasing the
risk of heart attacks, diabetes and strokes (usually right after they
look at
the bathroom scale).
After a brief "honeymoon
period," most dieters end up putting on more
weight than they took off. And the average woman dieter will gain and
lose 357 pounds over the course of her life. Of that, she will take off
140 pounds, and put back on 217 pounds. (It's called a "honeymoon
period" because the woman loses 140 pounds for her wedding, then packs
back on 217 pounds after the honeymoon).
It's amazing that the
comic strip character Cathy is still alive.
On a serious note, the
best way to control weight is just to find a
healthy diet and stick with it all the time, not yoyo from one fad diet
to another. I've been loosely following the Perricone diet for
years, and I feel (and I think, look) better than I did 10 years
ago. Granted, it helps if you like salmon as much as I do.
If
you can't bring yourself to eat salmon nearly every day, it might be a
struggle. Also, if you are married to a comedy writer who makes
jokes about your cat food breath, this diet may require more patience
than you have. I speak from experience.
*****************************************
Let's finish off with a
few celebrity items on age and beauty.
First up, former supermodel Paulina Porizkova, who was quickly voted
off of "Dancing with the Stars," won't be dancing around naked anytime
soon either. She told Steppin' Out that women
who
pose
for
Playboy
in
their
50s, such as Jaid Barrymore and
Farrah Fawcett, "looked like train wrecks," and their pictures "gave me
nightmares." Porizkova said, "Somebody should have
told them to know better. I know all about women's lib and we're
supposed to believe we look fabulous at 50 and we should be running
through the world showing our boobs. But I kind of don't agree with
that."
Personally, I thought they
both
looked pretty darn good (yes, I saw them: my husband says he subscribes
to
Playboy for the
articles, just in case they ever print any old Jean Shepherd stories he
hasn't read yet). And I think it should be up to them whether
they want to wear anything or not wear anything at any age.
What's really ironic is that Hugh Hefner is probably more in agreement
with Paulina than I am. I'll bet he also thinks that women in
their 50s are too old.
*****************************************
In a related story, Kate
Jackson said she, Farrah Fawcett and Jaclyn
Smith have been approached about starring in an
original
cast
"Charlie's
Angels"
revival. Jackson said it's hard to revisit
the
past but "if the script was right," it might be fun (this must mark the
first time anyone's ever said a "Charlie's Angels" script has to be
just right before shooting begins). Also, it would have to
include top-flight production values, such as hiring the entire
100-person Botox Team from "Desperate Housewives."
I'm not holding my breath
until this gets made, but if it ever does,
with Hollywood being as ageist as it is, I assume they'll all have to
wear red bikinis and matching Red Hats.
*****************************************
Salma Hayek said she's
stunned
to
be
called
a
sex
symbol in the US because she's 5-foot-2
and dark, and where she grew up in Mexico, “beauty” meant being tall,
white, blonde and blue-eyed (I thought that meant “tourist.”) Salma
said with her dark hair, complexion and shortness, in Mexico, she was
considered deformed.
If Salma Hayek is
considered ugly by Mexican standards, why aren't
millions of American men sneaking across the border into Mexico?
*****************************************
Finally, from the "Too Much
Plastic Surgery" file, the London Daily Mail claims that Tom Jones
was warned by a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon that after years of
eyelifts, chin tucks and other work, if he has any more done, his face
might collapse. (His jaw dropped when he heard that, but the
doctor was able to jack it back up.)
Jones explained that the
doctor told him, "'You've got to be careful
with your eyes.' He advised me against having anything else done. He
said I should try to look as natural as I can."
So he's only going out in
public when he can stand between Michael
Jackson and Cher.
March
22,
2007
Yes, I know a month has
gone by
without any updates, but I swear, it's
been a very,
very busy month,
and there could be some exciting news
coming on several fronts. I'll tell you more about that later so
as not to jinx it. But I am thrilled to report that after
wrestling with endless computer problems, we have finally managed to
get some video clips from the show converted to AVI files and will soon
be uploading them to the site. My husband Pat has also just
uploaded some
new photos of people I've met recently, including Bill Paxton, Lacy J.
Dalton (after a fantastic
concert; and you must get her latest CD, "The
Last
Wild
Place"), Stephanie
D'Abruzzo of "Avenue Q" and the recent
musical episode of "Scrubs," and the hilarious Michael
Urie, who plays the scheming assitant Mark St. James on "Ugly
Betty."
In case you're wondering,
I can
honestly say that every one of them was
incredibly nice. Lacy J. (whom I learned about years ago because
she's Pat's favorite female country singer, and he tries to turn
everyone on to her music) was really inspirational, with the way she's
turned some recent terrible times in her life (her husband, who had
been her creative partner for years, had a mid-life crisis and ran off
with a younger woman) into some of the greatest country songs we'd
heard in years. She also told us horror stories about being a
performer "of a certain age" and how she is treated. For
instance, she recorded at least three albums in Nashville that were
never released because she was deemed to be too old to have radio hits,
but not quite old enough not to be a threat to the lightweight young
twinkies the record companies were pushing. And so, her records
went unreleased, which Pat describes as "a crime against posterity."
In a more positive turn
of events, we
were surprised to discover that
Stephanie D'Abuzzo was a fan of Pat, who doesn't exactly seek the
limelight, to put it mildly. We met her at the Column theater
awards gala, and he gave her a copy of his book about celebrity
records,
"Hollywood Hi-Fi,"
thinking its pop culture hilarity might be something
she'd enjoy. She immediately recognized the cover and became very
excited because she and her husband already owned and loved the
companion CD
from Brunswick and didn't know there was also a book. Pat said
that was a very odd feeling; meeting a stage
and TV star of whom he's a fan and having her tell him she's a fan of
his. Trust me, it's not something that writers get very
often. Anyway, if you'd like to see the photos, they're all here.
And now, let's catch up
on some news
from the age and beauty front...
*****************************************
China's Chonqing Morning
News reports on a
new
use
for
plastic
surgery.
Lang Qiang said he has good luck, but his wife has bad luck: for
instance, he stood on a bench with no problem; she stood on it and it
broke. Then a fortune teller told him that her misfortune was due to
his protruding cheekbones, and they would make her die before him
(possibly by impaling her). To save her life, he told her he was
going on a business trip, but he actually got cheekbone reduction
surgery.
I wonder if it ever
occurred to him that if she broke the bench and he
didn't, maybe she just needed a little liposuction.
*****************************************
A study of 54,000 people
by the Norwegian University of Science and
Technology found that having a sense of humor
helps
you
live
longer. Those ranked in the top quarter for
appreciating humor were 35 percent more likely to be alive after seven
years than those in the bottom quarter (and 100 percent more likely to
be laughing through their friends' funerals).
The moral of this story:
Laugh at my jokes, or you will die.
*****************************************
In a refreshing turn of
events, everyone seems to be trying to put a
new twist on beauty pageants. Here are two that have only thing
in common: Donald Trump will never buy either of them:
In Switzerland, a beauty
pageant called "Miss
Retirement
Home" has been launched. The only requirements are that
entrants have to live alone, be over 70, and be able to walk without an
aid (that would rule out most recent Miss USA contestants).. Organizer
Laurent Rerat invented it to protest society's obsession with youth.
The first pageant was won by Leontine Vallade, who is a gal after my
own heart: she refused to reveal
her age to reporters.
Meanwhile, AFP
reports
that
on
April
18, the small town of Isafjoerdur, Iceland,
will hold an unusual beauty pageant. One of the organizers, a
self-proclaimed feminist, was dissing pageants in a pub with some
friends when they got the idea to hold one that challenges Western
ideas of beauty and changes the rules about what beauty is. Both men
and women can compete, and there is no age limit. Entrants will be
rewarded, rather than penalized, for wrinkles, saggy boobs and other
flaws. The only restriction is that nobody who's ever had
cosmetic surgery may enter, which explains why they had to go to rural
Iceland to find contestants.
First prize: an Extreme
Makeover.
*****************************************
I have more, but it's
getting late, so I'm going to break this up and
add more stories within the next day or so. But I want to leave
you with news of a revolutionary invention that will change your life,
particularly if you're a woman with champagne cup breasts who wishes
you were toting a couple of magnums instead.
The makers of the Beer
Belly, a strap-on fake belly in which men can
carry a secret stash of beer, have a new product in the beta testing
stage: the Winerack. It's
a bra with compartments in the cups that not only hold your favorite
wine, they boost your breast size up to a D-cup. A long, flexible straw
runs up the bra strap, so the wearer can have a drink, or offer a suck
to a man (warning: he will probably misinterpret that invitation).
It's billed as the ultimate way to get a man's attention,
although personally, I think that would probably be a triple-E cup bra
willed with Michelob.
The one problem with the
Winerack bra is that the more you drink from
it, the smaller your breasts get. Fortunately, the more you let a
man drink from it, the bigger they look to him, so it all evens out.
Feb. 23, 2007 - Oscar Weekend!
"It's
nice to see so many new faces here tonight. Same old people, but
they all have new faces." -- Oscar host
Johnny Carson
It's Oscar weekend, which
is always exciting because we get to find out
who won the awards, see the latest designer gowns, and discover all the
newest trends in cosmetic enhancement and face-tightening and
-rearranging surgery. The timing of it all iis a highly critical and
exacting science: everything must be done at the right time and in the
right order, or you might, for instance, end up getting Botox too close
to showtime and find your face still so paralyzed that you can't even
look horrified when Joan Rivers calls you by the wrong name and mimes
sticking her finger down her throat over your fashion choices.
This annual ritual of
orgiastic vanity has become such a major
Hollywood industry that the New York Times saw fit to write an article
detailing it. You
might
want
to
file
this
away, in case you ever have an important
event for which you want to look beautifully and professionally
embalmed, just like the stars.
(If you can't access the
Times site or don't want to register for it,
the Defamer gossip website has a cruelly funny recap
of
it
here.)
*****************************************
Speaking of things that
people inject into their faces to turn back the
years, it seems that one of them actually works, and oddly enough, it
makes you look younger naturally. Studies have found that
Restylane not only fills out wrinkle lines, it makes the cells start
generating new collagen, the way they did when your skin was
younger. I'd already read about this and wasn't surprised, but
it's nice to see a new study confirm it. Read
all
about
it
here, if you have time before you have to leave for
your appointment with the dermatolgist to get Restylane.
*****************************************
A new
report
by
the
American
Psychological
Association not
surprisingly lays the blame for a lot of physical and mental health
problems suffered by young girls on the relentless media images
sexualizing underage girls. Coming in for particular criticism
are Bratz dolls, Barbie's urban 'ho cousins. This prompted the
irreverent London Sun to
create an alternative: "Frumpz Dolls." Click on the picture
to see a larger version of the paper doll and a few of her outfits,
from a nun's habit to granny panties to a chastity belt.
*****************************************
Finally, speaking of
Frumpz, a new organization has sprung up as an
anti-age-obsessed alternative to the Red Hats. They're called the Blue Thong
Society, and they say their mission is "to fight frump." They
have a national convention coming up soon in San Diego, and chapters
are opening all over the country. I might help set one up in
Dallas. They seem like my kind of gals! Check 'em out...
Minnesota
state Rep.
Phyllis Kahn wants to add the state's 6.5 percent sales tax to plastic
surgery,
skin peels, Botox injections, laser hair removal, spider vein
treatments and
all other elective cosmetic procedures.She says it would target the well-off because hungry people
don't get cosmetic surgery (if you want to target people who aren't
going hungry, just tax liposuction) and neither do the homeless,
although it would certainly beautify the streets.
As you might
imagine,
this proposal is about as popular with women as a hockey game that
pre-empted "Oprah." Regular Botox users are furious, although
you'd never know it. And a spokesman for the
American Society of Plastic Surgeons said the tax would actually
unfairly target working
women, since 90 percent of cosmetic procedure patients are women who
earn an average of just $60,000 a
year, and they have to scrimp and save just to do something for
themselves. So perhaps the plan could be scaled
down, so that the tax only applies to men who buy breast
implants for their girlfriends.
Well,
at
least
we
know
this
is
one
tax
that
California
will
never
pass.
Even
Nancy
Pelosi
would
be against this. Come to think of it,
especially Nancy Pelosi.
Feb. 13, 2007
The long delay in
postings has been because my husband Pat, who
does the webmastering, got very sick the day after we returned from Las
Vegas, with what we believe is the same grunge that shut down an entire
school system in the mid-cities. (Don't blame him; he's never
been to that school.) He's still trying to shake off a hacking
cough. I came down with it, too, but luckily, I didn't
get the cough. I have some news stories on age
and beauty to post and will do so as soon as possible, but for now, I
just want to share a few photos.
First
up, here is one of
Michael Gott
and me at the sound check for one of the Christmas shows at the
Arkansas Governor's Mansion. Beautiful place, and those were some
really large Christmas trees, or to be politically correct, "holiday
vegetation."
Next, some photos
from the Las Vegas Comedy Festival, where I did
an
excerpt from "My Ship Has Sailed." I made some great contacts
there with several top producers, so maybe one of them will help me
bring the show to a theater near you soon.
Finally, one of
the great people I met there was Charlie Callas,
who
just before taking this photo graced me with one of his famous
"Vpppt! Vpppt!" sound effects. He spritzed me on the face
just a little. I'll never wash my face again.
During this "Masters of
Comedy" seminar, Mr. Callas told a great story
that I think needs to be heard by everyone who is struggling to make it
in his or her chosen field and thinking about giving up.
He said that back when he
was a struggling comic, he got a gig in Vegas
as the comic for the hit Louis Prima-Keely Smith lounge show. But
instead of opening the show, they had him close it. Of course,
after the headliners finished, everyone left; and he would find himself
walking out to an empty house. He said it was very discouraging
that, night after night, his performance would be canceled for lack of
an audience.
Then one night, he looked
out and there were only two people still in
the house: a man and woman in a back booth, obviously drunk and more
interested in slobbering on each other than in listening to him.
The manager said he was going to cancel the show, but Mr. Callas said
he remembered his mentor once telling him, "Never cancel a show.
No matter how small the audience, you never know who might be in
it."
So he bucked up his
spirits, went out onstage, and did his full-tilt,
wild and crazy comedy act for those two completely oblivious
drunks.
After he left the stage,
he was sitting in his dressing room, soaked
with flop sweat and tears, so depressed that he was thinking he'd
wasted his life and never should have gone into show business. He
was thinking of what other career he could possibly switch to when a
knock came at the door. He opened it, and standing there were Tom
Jones and his agent.
Jones, who was in town
headlining one of the big showrooms, said he was
walking back to his room through the casino when he heard this comic
doing a crazy act in the lounge, so he looked in and was stunned to see
him performing for two people. He said he had to meet the guy who
had so much dedication to his craft that he'd give everything he had to
a show for two people. And he said, "I'm doing a variety show in
London next month, and I'd like you to be in it." His agent
arranged everything.
One month later, Mr.
Callas said, he was standing outside the London
Palladium, looking up at a marquee that listed Tom Jones and a number
of other top British stars, ending with "Charlie Callas,
Comedian" in big letters.
Then he went inside and
discovered that it was to be a command
performance for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip, who would be
greeting the performers afterward! So they gave him a quick
lesson in how to behave correctly when meeting royalty.
Here's the kicker:
As he was standing in the receiving line,
waiting for the Queen and the Prince to make their way down to him, he
said a thought came to his mind:
"One month ago, I was in
a crummy Vegas lounge, performing for two
people. Today, I'm at the London Palladium...and I'm still
performing for two people!"
So when you're feeling
down and ready to give up on a dream,
remember that story and think about how quickly things can turn
around...especially if Tom Jones knocks on your dressing room door.
Jan. 29, 2007 Bleah, it's Monday
again. But I have a few stories to get your motor running...
Well, here's
a
wonderful
use
for
plastic
surgery: Zhao Gang of Chongging City, China, lost his
wife three
years ago in a car crash that he survived, and his parents pressured
him to
marry again. He says he only did it
because his new wife looked a little like his first wife, and "I want
to
have a chance to make up for my mistakes." But he seems
determined to create a whole new set of mistakes to make up for,
since he has pressured his second wife into reluctantly agreeing to
get plastic surgery to look like his first wife (yeah, his first
wife...Morgan Fairchild!
Yeah, that's the ticket!) Zhao, who
perhaps has seen "Vertigo" one too many times, said, "Maybe
it's more or less unfair to her, but she has
agreed, and I will embrace her with all my love" (all the love he had
for his first wife, that is.)
But the
hospital's head of plastic
surgery
insisted they have counseling first, saying that plastic surgery can't
make two
people look just alike and is not the best way to sustain a
relationship, even if it does seem to work for Melanie Griffith.
If I were
the counselor, I think I
would suggest a technique that would not only solve their peculiar
problem, but that has probably saved many a more mundane marriage in
the
past: just have sex with the lights off.
*****************************************
The
British Association of
Aesthetic
Plastic Surgeons reports that in the UK, women are having to wait
longer for breast implants because surgeons are busy with an increasing
number of men
having
their
breasts
reduced. The number of men seeking
to get their man-boobs, or "moobs," liposuctioned nearly doubled from
2,100 in 2005 to 4,000 last year. Some men blame the epidemic of jiggly
moobs on an excess of female hormones in tap water, although some
suspect it might be an excess of beer on tap. Unless they
also plan
to blame their beer bellies on pregnancy.
It's just a shame the
doctors can't set up some sort of
donor-transplant program for boobs and solve everyone's problems.
*****************************************
Finally,
Consumer Reports tested nine popular anti-wrinkle creams, from
inexpensive lotions to $335-a-jar La Prairie (so named because your
skin looks flat and smooth from a distance, but up close, you'll see
the cracks). 200 women used them for
12 weeks, then a high tech optical device measured their skin roughness
and wrinkle depth. The best of the lot was Oil of Olay's Regenerist,
whose entire three-product line costs just $57 total. But even the best
ones reduced the depth of wrinkles by less than 10 percent. So the good
news is, if you buy 10 jars, you'll be wrinkle-free!
The bad news is that the
only creamy substance that reduces wrinkles by
100 percent is spackle. And the only way any skin product can
guarantee that you will no longer see any wrinkles is if you squirt it
in your eyes.
Jan.
24,
2007
OSCAR NOMINATION QUOTE:
"There's
something incredibly sexy about a
Helen (Mirren) or Meryl (Streep), who are the antidote to the Britneys
and
Parises - they are people of real substance and drive...A lot of the
younger
counterparts are going to fall by the wayside. These are women who've
survived,
so therefore, they exude a sense of accomplishment. They wouldn't still
be
there if it was a matter of looks. They've got real talent...
Helen
Mirren is a lock to win... It's the biggest lock since Mother Theresa's
chastity belt. Best Actress has traditionally become an
award for younger people - Reese Witherspoon, Hilary Swank, et cetera.
This is
a great stride where the Academy is finally not afraid to pick someone
of
substance."
But let us not overlook Abigail Breslin of "Little Miss Sunshine," who
at age 10 is still only the fourth-youngest female ever
nominated. By Hollywood's standards, she could go on playing
leading lady roles for another, oh...15 years.
First of all, Vegas was
great. I did an excerpt from “My Ship” on the
Play Vegas stage, got some good feedback from a lot of comics
(including Paul Provenza, Charlie Callas and Pete Barbuti) and top
people in comedy production, and had a chance to discuss my show and
give demos to everyone from the producer of “Defending the Caveman” to
the man who moved Jimmy Kimmel from radio to TV. It was an incredibly
hectic trip (we couldn’t find the car rental return and nearly missed
our plane home; it’s nice to know that you can still sprint through an
airport without being shot by homeland security), but well worth it.
While we were in Vegas,
we got to see the great Penn & Teller (our sixth
time to see them in various locales) and visit with Penn Jillette again
afterward. We also met their pianist, who is amazing and is coming to
Austin for a jazz festival soon.
Later on, we went to
Harrah’s to see one of my idols, Rita Rudner, a
soft-spoken, very feminine woman who does a clean, witty, hilarious
show in a spangled gown (starting to see the resemblance?)
Since Pat and I write a daily syndicated
radio prep service,
Pat was able to arrange a short visit in her dressing room after the
show. She was, as expected, wonderful and gracious. She is also
completely in sync with the ideas in “My Ship.” She told us that she
wants to target the over-40 audience because they are “completely
ignored,” and that her next book will be about ageism and be called
“I’m Filthy,” which was as close as she could get to bringing herself
to say, “I’m fifty.” She even autographed my copy of her novel,
“Tickled Pink,” with “To Laura: How old am I? Rita Rudner.” My only
regret is that I didn’t get a photo to post, but our interview was
rescheduled from before the show to after, and by then, the
photographer had left and she’d changed clothes. Oh well, next time.
And we will definitely be going back to Vegas.
From the minute we landed
at the airport, and I saw all the ads for
shows and heard all the people discussing all the shows they wanted to
see, I knew this was a place I need to be. And on the way to the car
rental, when I saw the billboards for “Menopause: The Musical,” I knew
they need me there to provide the antidote.
*****************************************
Okay, the news is stacked
higher than the mountain of junk mail the
birdsitter brought in and left on our couch, so let’s shovel some of it
out of here:
From the “Defining People
By Their Age” department of Hell, Monster.com
founder Jeff Taylor hopes to cash in on Baby Boomers' frustration with
Yahoo and Google by launching
a
new
search
engine
just
for
them. To
make it less confusing for those poor, buggy-driving, Alzheimer’s
afflicted 50-year-olds, each search will return only four
non-advertiser sites rather than thousands; and they'll be targeted to
the perspective of someone at least 50 years old. It's called
Cranky.com (I expect they’ll get a lot of complaints about that name).
Yes, now you can live forever in a simplified, protected virtual
world...just like Wally and the Beaver!
Let me guess what it’s
like: If you search for “Lawn care,” it takes
you to sites about how to keep those damn kids off your lawn. Search
for “American Idol,” and it returns Bobby Sherman sites. Search for
“Internet porn,” and you get photos of Julie Newmar in her Catwoman
suit. Here’s a thought for the creators of Cranky.com: If people over
50 are cranky, maybe it's because people keep constantly reminding them
they're over 50.
BTW, here's something
that I bet surprised Jeff Taylor: at this
writing, the #1 most-searched-for term at Cranky.com is..."sex."
*****************************************
Speaking of not judging
people by their ages, here’s
a
lady
after
my
own
heart: Maria Milz, age 100, of Blankenheim,
Germany, moved out of a retirement center and went home after just six
weeks, complaining that it "was full of old people with gray hair," it
was boring, and she's a night owl and they kept waking her up too
early. She said, "Who do they think they are?"
The last straw came when they tried to put a blue rinse on her day-glo
pink Mohawk. A girl’s got to draw the line somewhere.
*****************************************
From the “HA-ha!”
Department”:
Turns out 78 is the new 33. The music industry has been routinely
ignoring people over 30 for years, but new research just revealed that
people over 45 bought a quarter of all music sold last year, more than
twice that of any other age group. Oops!
Elton John, Barry Manilow
and Rod Stewart are not only huge in Vegas,
they are again topping the charts (The greatest story of them all:
Stewart was dropped by his longtime label for being too old to sell
records, and his very next album after leaving them was a set of
standards that became his biggest seller ever, followed by several
mega-selling sequels). Even 80-year-old Tony Bennett (whom my late
father used to accompany on sax) sold nearly
650,000 copies of his new CD in three weeks. It’s his hottest
seller ever.
This sudden realization
of the pocket power of non-fetal Americans
prompted the American Association of Retired Persons to
sponsor
Bennett's
concert
tour, saying, "He proves that age is just a
number
and life is what you make it."
I love the sentiment, but
why did it have to come from the AARP, which
tries to lump people into a “senior” demographic the second they turn
50? I’d also like to point out that ironically, what Tony Bennett
proves is that if you really want to stay young, never retire.
*****************************************
The University of Texas
at Austin found that standards of beauty are
always changing, but
one
feature has remained constant for centuries: a slim waist.
Studies of 300 years of literary descriptions of female beauty found
wide variation of tastes in buttocks, legs, faces and other body parts.
In other eras, today's skinny models with high cheekbones would've been
considered ugly, rather than beautiful and malnourished. But across the
centuries, narrow waists that give women hourglass figures have always
been attractive to men, possibly because they're a sign of fertility.
Or a sign that the woman isn’t already pregnant. Or that the grocery
bill won’t be too high. Or maybe it’s just because they make your bust
look bigger.
Question: If fertility
makes women attractive, how come all of today's
sex symbols are too skinny to ovulate?
*****************************************
Here’s a gizmo the Olsen
Twins will have to pick up: a
new
device
called
Accufat was recently unveiled at the Consumer Electronics
Show
in Las Vegas. It looks like a cell phone, but is billed as the world's
first subcutaneous fat analyzer. That means it tells you when you’re
getting fat, thus taking the workload off your mom, husband or
boyfriend. It can tell you the fat count on any specific part of your
body; for instance, you can monitor exactly how much fat is in your
upper arms. Of course, you could do that for free just by applauding.
Don’t most of us already
have a device that tells us when we’re getting
fat? I believe it’s called “a mirror.”
*****************************************
If you didn’t win the
genetics lottery, here’s your chance to win a
lotto lipo: British surgeons are protesting what is believed to be the
world's
first
lottery
to
win
free
plastic
surgery. Europa
International of London is selling tickets for $3 each for a monthly
drawing for $9,000 worth of facelifts, tummy tucks, boob jobs or other
cosmetic procedures, to be performed in Prague.
Britain's Association of
Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons called it
"appalling" to treat surgery so lightly, but Europa brushed that aside,
saying the lottery winners will be treated like any other patients.
Which makes sense, since all their patients come out looking exactly
the same, anyway. And besides, most of their patients are lottery
winners spending their jackpots on plastic surgery.
*****************************************
I drink a lot of tea, so
this
is
something I feel I should pass along
before I have to run to the bathroom: Researchers at the University of
Berlin announced that drinking black tea does improve blood flow and
reduce the risk of stroke and heart disease, but if you put milk in
your tea, it completely negates all the antioxidant benefits. So
Britons should be dropping like flies.
*****************************************
The Federal Trade
Commission leveled a $25 million
fine for false
advertising on the makers of four diet pills - Xenadrine EFX,
CortiSlim, One-a-Day WeightSmart and Trimspa (“Trim the budget, baby!”)
The makers made a variety of dubious claims, including that the pills
contained revolutionary new ingredients, led to swift and permanent
weight loss, and reduced the risk of cancer and Alzheimer's. The FTC
said many of the people in before-and-after photos were actually on
rigorous diet and exercise programs, and that test subjects on a
placebo lost more weight than those on Xenadrine EFX (that should boost
the sales of Placebo).
They added that
endorsements by celebrities such as Anna Nicole Smith
are not a substitute for real science, no matter how much she reminds
you of a science experiment gone horribly wrong. It might be tempting,
but don’t assume that Anna Nicole has experimented with more drugs than
the scientists have. A good rule of thumb is to remember that the only
way a pill can guarantee you permanent weight loss is to kill you.
*****************************************
On the other, more
slender hand, the FDA has approved Pfizer Inc.'s new
drug Stentrol, the first prescription weight-loss
drug
for
dogs that
get too little exercise and too many table scraps (and what else could
possibly solve that problem besides a diet pill? Come on, dog owners:
it’s not like they’re my parrots, who can pick up the phone and order a
pizza.)
It's estimated that up to
30 percent of American dogs are overweight
and 5 percent are obese, which means they’re still doing better than
their owners. A university animal sciences professor told Bloomberg
News that the pill would be helpful, but "it would be more helpful if
people could feed their dogs less. That would be turning off the spigot
instead of mopping the floor."
(HINT: If you're constantly mopping the floor, you're giving your dog
too much water.)
Personally, I can’t think
of anything that those fashionably tiny,
jittery, yappy mini-dogs need more than a fistful of uppers.
*****************************************
Finally, if you enjoyed
that Dove video about the miraculous lies of
Photoshop, check
this
out. Move your cursor on and off the photo to see the
difference between reality and the impossible standards of beauty we're
all
expected to live up to.
Jan. 2, 2007 Happy New Year,
everybody!
Did you wake up on
January 1 and say, "Drat, I'm another year
older!"? You shouldn't do that. That's what birthdays are
for.
Okay, you shouldn't do
that on your birthday, either. On my
birthday (December 4, by the way, never mind the year), I try to keep
in mind that I'm a year younger than
I'm going to be on my next
birthday, so there's no point in putting off anything I want to
do.
*****************************************
When I got up this
morning, I was greeted by a newspaper article that
had been laid out for me in a can't-miss location by my ever-helpful
husband. The piece, by Sharon Waxman and distributed by The New
York Times, was called "Naughtiness
Goes
Gray" and subtitled "Women over 40 are the hot new thing in
porn films."
Women over 40: You've come a long way, baby.
The first thing that
jumped out at me from the page was not that, gosh,
women over 40 are doing porn. This is no big news flash, even to
someone like me who never watches porn. You see, I already knew
-- I make it my business to know these thinggs -- that there has long
existed an entire genre of "older-woman" porn; older women are
considered a fetish -- you
know, like chubbies, little boys and torture. "Age" comprises a
distinct category of porn created to enable young pervs to engage their
lustful Freudian fantasies for mom and, yes, sometimes even
grandma. There are even "niche" porn magazines with titles such
as "Women Over 50." And, no, "50" in this context doesn't refer
to the women's bust measurement, although it probably could.
You know what would be
weird? If "Women Over 50" were actually being
looked at by a man over
50. Think that would ever happen? No, the man over 50 prefers magazines
like "Barely Legal."
And I wonder: if some men
like to wear women's silky panties, are the
men who are attracted to their great-grandmothers getting their jollies
by donning support hose and Depends?
Sorry. Somebody has
to think about these things.
Anyway, the first thing
that jumped out at me from this story was not
that "older" women are doing porn but that the headline writer
automatically associated women over 40 with the word "gray." That
is really getting, pardon the expression, old. Why didn't this
writer just trot out the term "granny porn"?
Still, it does seem from this article that a few women over 40 are
starting to turn up in regular porn, not fetish porn. And that
development, I suppose, is a kind of progress, if we define "progress"
in extremely broad terms.
Perhaps this change was
inevitable; I have to say that many, many women
over 40 or 50 would look fantastic sharing the screen with the likes of
male porn superstar Ron Jeremy and others. Even when Jeremy was
young (he's in his 50s now), he was proof that porn is designed for
men, not women, to look at. I really don't know of any woman who
has a fetish for male porn stars so ugly they make Jon Lovitz look like
Brad Pitt.
But isn't it nice to know that if I suddenly start dreaming of being a
porn star, well, hey, there's still time!
*****************************************
On a much classier note,
I recently returned from a wonderful four days
in Little Rock, where Michael Gott and I performed a version of our
Cole Porter musical revue for the Governor's official state Christmas
parties. The Governor's Mansion was beautifully decked out for the
holidays, Michael looked dashing as usual in his tux (he should wear
formal attire all the time, even to the gym), and I debuted a knockout
sequined gown that unfortunately drove me crazy by repeatedly getting
snagged in my long glove. (Now I know why they have dress
rehearsals.) The shows were elegant and fun, with classics like
"Night And Day" and "Anything Goes" but also lesser-known gems like
"The Tale Of The Oyster."
Gov. Mike Huckabee and
the First Lady were fine hosts, inviting us to
sit at their table for dinner each night, and the governor even invited
us to a formal banquet taking place on the last night of our
stay.
After the banquet, the party moved to a large meeting room next door,
where the governor strapped on an electric bass and played rock n' roll
with his surprisingly good band, Capitol Offense. I twisted and
shouted, and lost an earring on the dance floor.
The staff of the Mansion
could not have been nicer or more
professional. They put us up at the famed Peabody Hotel in Little Rock,
known for its twice-daily duck parade down the red carpet to and from
the lobby fountain. As I had had to leave my 15-member flock of
parrots at home for this trip, and the separation anxiety was severe, I
depended on those ducks for my daily bird "fix."
Just a note: After
serving as governor of Arkansas since 1996, Gov.
Huckabee is leaving office; he couldn't run for re-election this time
because of term limits. He has been an extremely popular governor,
named by Time magazine as one of the top five governors in the nation,
and there's some buzz about him as a possible Presidential candidate.
Though he didn't officially announce while we were there, he did say
that he's contemplating a run for President. Whatever your
politics -- he's a moderate Republican popular with people in both
parties -- I want you to know that my impression is that he is a really
fine person. Besides that, he is a model for taking control of
one's health and fitness; check out his book, Quit
Digging
Your
Grave
With
A
Knife
And
Fork, chronicling his
impressive 110-pound weight loss! Unlike most politicians, he
writes his own material, and he's really articulate and funny. At
the time the book came out, he even appeared on "Oprah." Having been on
"Oprah" can be a good thing if one is running for President. I'm
sure Barak Obama would agree.
*****************************************
I'm getting ready to go to the
Las Vegas Comedy Festival and perform an excerpt from "My Ship Has
Sailed." And I do mean "excerpt" -- Laura is about to have her seven
minutes of fame.
There will be a full report on the festival after I get back to
Dallas. In the meantime, I'm even more jazzed about some of the
extracurricular activities I'm doing on my own, such as seeing Rita Rudner's show
at Harrah's and ACTUALLY GETTING TO
MEET HER!
Ms. Rudner is one of my
comedy idols and has certainly influenced my
comic style, so it's always a compliment when people say I remind them
of her. (I hear this quite often, even from people who haven't seen me
perform.) She makes me laugh with ease; her delivery is
masterful. If she hadn't blazed the trail, it might never have
occurred to me that a feminine woman who works clean and doesn't come
across as "one of the guys" could succeed as a standup, and I probably
would have remained behind the scenes forever. If you get out to
Vegas, be sure to see her show.
All the best to you in
the new year!
Keep Young And Beautiful!
Dec. 13, 2006 Sorry to go so long
between blog posts, but we've been really
swamped with getting ready for the shows in Little Rock and Las Vegas,
among other things. Here's a nice
article about the Little Rock show from Lakewood-Now.
I found a great
celebrity quote on age, from Sylvester Stallone, who talked to
Newsweek about his decision to make another "Rocky" movie. It's
long, but worth reading...
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. "A
lot
of
people
said,
'Just
sit
down,
don't
embarrass
yourself',"
Stallone
says.
"There
is
this
incredible
resistance
to anyone who seems to want a
second
shot: 'You had your moment, now f--- off'." "It nags me that I
took the easy way instead of the high
road," he says. "But everyone makes mistakes. I look around at people
my age, and I can see it in their eyes--a kind of bittersweet
reflection: 'I
didn't live the life that I wanted, and now I've got all this stuff I
want to
say, but nobody wants to hear it.' I was feeling that, and if you don't
get it
out, it can become a beast that tears you apart.”
Over
the
years,
Stallone
often
complained
that
he
wasn't
being
allowed
to
grow
beyond
the
"Rocky"
movies.
Still,
he
kept making them. Then "Rocky V,"
featuring a bankrupt Balboa, flopped. "It was my fault," he says.
"Everything in it was dark and dismal. People came to that movie for
uplift and I took them into a mine shaft and turned out the lights.” “I
don't
understand
aging
gracefully,"
he
says.
"I'll
always
be
at
war
with
that.
I'd
rather
age
ungracefully,
kicking and
screaming. Don't
hand me down my top hat and walking cane. You know, I went to speak at
the
AARP--did you know that starts at 50?--and I said, 'Yes, youth must be
served.
After us. And we're going back for seconds and thirds'.” Nov. 20,
2006 More
updates
coming
soon,
I
swear,
but
until
then,
you
can
celebrate
the
glorious
news that the FDA has approved the return of silicone
gel breast implants after a 14-year virtual ban (but only for women
over 22...women under 22 are too immature to handle all the attention
they'd be getting). Of course, not everyone is happy about this
news: one doctor called silicone implants "the most defective medical
device the FDA has ever approved," but silicone breasts don't need his
support, or any support, for that matter. The chief of medical
devices for the FDA said that years of research had found no proven
link between the implants and disease, and he called silicone gel
breast implants "one of the most extensively studied medical devices"
of all time (they've been intensely studied in strip clubs, porn
movies, Academy Award telecasts...). I
just
think
it's
amazing
that
the
Democrats
were
reelected
to
power
less
than
two
weeks
ago,
and already, big silicone breasts are
back! Man, that Ted Kennedy works fast. Oct. 31,
2006 Happy
Halloween!
It's
the
one
day
of
the
year
when
nobody
can
accuse
you
of
wearing
too
much makeup, so trowel it on if you
like. It's
been
a
very
busy
couple
of
weeks,
so
there
hasn't
been
much
time
for
blogging,
but
I have news piling up that I'll be adding shortly,
and I might have some very exciting news of my own, as
well. In the meantime, I hope you'll make plans to join us
for the live performance of "My Ship Has Sailed" this Friday at Stone Street
Theatre in downtown Dallas. We
are
making
this
the
best
entertainment
bargain
in
town!
Stone
Street
is
experimenting
with
adding
late
shows, so my show on Friday
will be followed by Gary Floyd and his band at 11. Gary is
an award-winning actor whom you've probably seen in various musicals
around Dallas. He was voted the "Best Theater Heartthrob" by the
Dallas Observer, so you ladies will definitely want to hang around for
his show. Then
on
Sunday,
my
friend
Linda
Leonard,
a
terrific
singer/actress
who
has
starred
in
musicals
all
over
the place debuts her cabaret show
"Legends" at 8, followed by eclectic Houston-area singer-songwriter Ken
Gaines at 11. The
early
shows
are
just
$15,
the
late
shows
are
only
$10,
or
pay
$20
and
stay
to see both shows! And as they say on Ronco commercials,
"But wait! There's more!" We've
made
arrangements
with
Campisi's
and
the
Iron
Cactus
to
give
you
a
15%
discount
on
food
with your "My Ship Has Sailed" program, and it
will be good through Saturday night. So you can enjoy a snack
after my show and come back for Gary, then return Saturday night and
enjoy dinner before Linda's show. And in between, you can step
across the street and spend 12 hours in Neiman's. Now, that's a
weekend! Hope to
see you there! Oct. 23,
2006 A
couple
of
caveats
before
I
get
on
the
soapbox:
1)
I
love
the
Red
Hat
ladies
here
in
Dallas;
many
of
them
have
been
enthusiastic
members
of my audience for MY SHIP HAS SAILED.
2)
I
HAVE
ONLY
READ
ABOUT
THE
FOLLOWING
SHOW.
HAVEN’T
SEEN
IT.
That
said,
have
you
heard
about
the
musical
that
just
premiered
at
the
New
Denver
Civic
Theater,
called “Hats!
A New Musical For The Rest Of Your Life”? This
is
a
huge
project mounted by the combined forces of Mitchell
Maxwell, president and CEO of Sibling Entertainment Group, Dick Foster
Productions in Las Vegas and the casino company Harrah’s. They must
have poured tons of money into this project because they hired some big
names – including Melissa Manchester, one of my favorite singers – to
write and direct. The plan is to put a staged version of “Hats!” in New
Orleans early next
year and then in casinos around the country. Apparently, somebody has
just realized that over-50 women are not served by the entertainment
industry (they’ve obviously never seen MY show, which I’ve been doing
for three years), and Maxwell admits he “saw dollar signs” when he
heard about the Red Hats.
My
first
reaction
was,
“Oh,
my
god,
they’re
doing
something
similar
to
MY
SHIP
HAS
SAILED!”
However,
after
reading the review, I realize that not only are they NOT doing MY
SHIP, they are providing me with
yet another example of the attitude towards age that I make fun of in
MY SHIP. It
boils
down
to
a
basic
difference
in
philosophy:
I
believe
that
we
shouldn’t
be
defined
by
our age. “Hats!” believes that we should, and
are. That chafes me, big-time.
Here’s
the
storyline,
and,
no,
I
am
not
making
this
up:
Mary
Anne
is
about
to
turn
50,
and
she’s
not
happy
about
it.
Then
she
meets
a
big-hearted, big-busted MaeWest marionette character named Ruby
(for the Red Hats?) who symbolizes her “inner child” and introduces her
to six Red Hat women with names like “Duchess DeLovely.” Each one tells
the story of how she came to wear the red hat. They sing about their
wrinkles, their attempts at weight control, their empty nests and their
poor memories (though I assume the performers manage to remember their
lyrics).
By the end of the show, Mary Anne is assimilated. (Resistance is
futile.) She is joyfully, fabulously 50.
Now,
there’s
nothing
wrong
with
being
50,
especially
if
you’re
fabulous.
In
a
way,
I’m
happy
for
Mary Anne because if she’s going to
define herself by her age, at least she’s changed the definition to a
positive one. But why put yourself into a category? You can have fun,
feather boas and female companionship at any age. In fact, there’s a local
women’s networking club called “Spark!” for women of all ages that
sometimes does the tiara-and-feather-boa thing. It’s fun! I also know a
few men in cabaret who get into this, too. But I digress.
Anyway,
I
feel
very
strongly
that
I
do
not
want
to
put
myself
into
a
box.
I
truly want to be ageless
when it comes to the way I live my life.
Let
me
tell
you
what
this
reviewer
–
a
man,
John
Moore,
theater
critic
for
the
Denver
Post – thought about the show. I
think his reaction was similar to what mine would have been. On the one
hand, he had to acknowledge that this show went over like gangbusters
with its Red Hat audience. He went so far as to say, “That’s a real
audience emitting real belly laughs and crying real tears, dancing,
singing and celebrating. I have never seen an audience so affected in
the course of watching theater.” Obviously, this show has a spirited,
uplifing message that this underserved audience eats up with a spoon.
And I heard one of the songs over the Internet; it was quite good.
On
the
other
hand,
Moore
describes
“Hats!”
as
“catharsis
and
cake.
It’s
a
support
group.
It’s
a
costume party. It’s Friday-night bowling. It’s
a revival. It’s a rite of passage. It’s therapy via platitudes (‘Grow
up, not old!’ ‘If you settle for what you’ve got, you deserve what you
get!’ and a dozen more.)” He said it "panders."
He
calls
it
“an
affirmative
and
joyful
celebration
of
later
womanhood,
that
just
happens
to
be
presented
in a formulaic, simplistic and
sentimental way that’s as garishly obvious as all those purple dresses
in the audience.”
(NOTE
TO
RED
HATS:
Those
are
the
reviewer’s
words,
not
mine.
Whatever
my
opinion
of
this
show,
I
would never make fun of your clothes. Purple’s cool.)
Here
are
a
few
of
the
ways
my
show
differs
from
“Hats!…etc…”
1)
I
don’t
put
people
into
categories
by
age.
I
want
people
of
all
ages
to
see
this show, because “age” messages start really early, especially
for women. And I believe that our life experiences shape us more than
our chronological age does. For example, you can lose your job, start a
fabulous career, go through a divorce, lose one or both parents, have a
baby, get cancer, lose your sight or hearing (or hair), lose a child or
even go through menopause before you’re even 30. Or you may be
generally unscathed by life until many years later. 2)
I
do
not
pander.
EVER!
My
audience
is
smart,
and
I
trust
you
to
“get
it.”
We laugh a lot
together, but I’m also trying to convey some complex ideas. We all have
different lives and different ways of dealing with the particular stage
that we as individuals are in.
3)
My
show
is
for
men,
too,
and
how
they
respond
to
their
own
birthdays.
Men
have
more and more pressure on themselves to look young,
fit and current.
4)
My
show
is
definitely
not
“Friday-night
bowling.”
It’s
sophisticated
and
fun.
My
accompanists
wear
tuxedos.
I
dress like a diva. And,
musically, I’d put us up against any show of any budget.
5)
Women
perhaps
a
little
too
young
to
get
the
red-hat
thing
(I
think
the
words
they’re
using in advertising now are “thirtyish” and
“fortyish”) will enjoy this show. Though I hate to look at people in
terms of demographics, realistically, these are the women who may “get
it” the most. They’re the ones being pressured now to keep every tiny
line at bay.
The
producers
are
wanting
to
put
“Hats!”
into
casinos,
but
after
reading
about
the
show,
I’m
thinking
Branson
would be the perfect place for it. (Kathie Lee Gifford was one
of the writers.) There’s one song lyric that actually says, and I am
not kidding, “Fifty is the youth of old age.”
I
admit
that
I’m
taking
this
line
out
of
context,
but
I
can’t
imagine
a
context
that
would change my gut reaction. “Fifty is the youth of old
age.” Doesn’t that make you 50-year-olds out there feel GREAT?? How
about you
70-year-olds? We can say “seventy is the vestibule of the nursing
home.” FEEL BETTER NOW?!
See?
I
promised
I
wouldn’t
pander!
The
irony
is,
I’m
wanting
to
take
my
little
one-person
show
to Las Vegas myself. If “Hats!” is there at the
same time,
I may have to bill myself as The Anti-Hat. My husband even suggested a
new title: “Hats Off!” But
at the moment, I kind of like “Stick
It In Your Hat!”
Oct. 20,
2006 SPECIAL
REPORT!
A
VISIT
TO
THE
DALLAS
PLASTIC
SURGERY
EXPO! (Or
“Into
the
Beauty
Jungle
with
Botox
Gun
and
Camera”)
Whew!
I
almost
missed
the
first-ever
Dallas
Plastic
Surgery
Expo,
held
a
few
weekends
ago
at
the
cavernous Market Hall. A large newspaper ad
alerted me to this phenomenon just in time, and, of course, I
immediately cleared my calendar, as it was time to set aside the
frivolity for some serious research. What
a
concept!
I'd
been
to
similar
expos
for
home
improvement
and
design,
landscaping
ideas,
and
even
pet birds (I take in parrots in
need of a home), but the idea of having one for midface rejuvenation
and microdermabrasion seemed a bit surreal (although not dissimilar to
the renovation expo). In retrospect, it appears to have been an
inevitable development, at least for Dallas.
The
most
elaborate
booths
were
for
cosmetic
surgery
clinics.
Huge
monitors
showed
before-and-after
pictures
of
noses,
jawlines
and
breasts (some discreetly covering the nipples with black bars, others
not). Dermatologists were also well represented. Surgeons and skin docs
gave seminars throughout the day on such topics as breast augmentation
(the most popular topic – with both women and men), rhinoplasty and
Restylane. To his credit, one cosmetic surgeon even held a seminar on
the things that can go wrong during a procedure.
There
were
surprised
looks
on
the
faces
of
some
of
the
women
working
the
booths,
so
I
looked around to find out what was spooking them.
Immediately, I realized that these women had seen absolutely nothing to
warrant their looks of astonishment, which had instead been created and
frozen into place by exaggerated browlifts and numerous syringes of
Botox. If they had hoped to be living billboards for the miracle of
cosmetic enhancement, they were just the opposite.
It's
hard
to
know
how
much
blame
to
give
the
doctors
in
such
cases,
at
least
for
the Botox. I've discussed Botox with my dermatologist (though
I haven't used it – honestly, and I say that with a completely straight
face), and she tells me some patients say, "I want you to freeze
everything!" This line is delivered not as a suggestion but as a
command. She knows that if she doesn't make her clients happy, there
are plenty of dermatologists who will. She explains to me that she does
have some control over the level of paralysis - and that's what it is:
PARALYSIS -- because it's partially
determined by the placement of the needle. Fortunately, Botox does wear
off, so, unlike a plastic surgeon doing an extreme browlift, she's not
creating permanent disfigurement.
Still,
with
these
perfectionist
patients,
the
moment
there's
even
the
tiniest
movement
in
the
treated
area,
they're
back for more injections.
They have to spend every moment looking like a PhotoShopped picture -
frozen in time, and just frozen, period. Some of these are very young
people, too, and increasing numbers are men. My doctor told me about
one very strange stepmom-and-stepson "couple" (?) who came in together
and received thousands of dollars worth of Botox and fillers, leaving
with perfectly smooth but totally immobile faces. I'm guessing they
looked so much alike at that point that people would think not only
that they were biologically mother and son, but that she had passed on
some freakish genetic condition to him.
But
I
digress.
There
were
other
women
working
the
booths
who
looked
quite
natural
and
lovely;
it
was only in the context of the event that
I suspected they'd been somewhat lifted and Botoxed. Some would say
that even this kinder-and-gentler improvement is somehow dishonest, but
I have no problem with subtly softening nature's onslaughts. It's no
more dishonest than whitening your teeth, getting highlights, lasering
off that old tattoo of your ex-husband's name or using concealer to
cover a pimple. As I try to convey in my show, we live in a world where
people are evaluated and categorized by their youth and beauty, or lack
thereof. Each of us has to decide how far we should reasonably go to
deal with that reality. And any cosmetic procedure, along with one's
choice of the doctor who performs it, should be very, very
carefully considered.
With surgical alteration, you can't go back. The
expo
also
included
booths
for
vein
therapy,
antioxidant
drinks,
a
variety
of
treatments
such
as
Thermage
and different types of lasers, a
vibrating machine that's supposed to exercise and tone the body (used
by Madonna! Write your own giant vibrator joke), and numerous new
skincare lines. Yes, every week there are new skincare lines. If these
products did what they claimed, why would we keep needing new ones? I
think that, at this point, there must be enough skincare lines for each
woman in America to have two or three of her very own, but still they
come. Several skincare booths at the expo had samples for me to take
home and try.
But
I'm
a
hard
sell.
As
you
know
if
you've
seen
my
show,
I
worship
Dr.
Perricone.
Literally -- I sing an aria in his praise. Of course, Dr.
Perricone does have some very expensive products, but I use only a few
of the basic ones. (I'll have to reach my goal of becoming an
international superstar - any day now! -- before I can afford the
neuropeptide serum.) My advice to you: instead of buying every pricey
new "anti-aging" cream that comes along, go with the
beauty-from-the-inside approach. Eat lots of wild salmon and fresh
vegetables, and avoid sugar and the other carbs that send blood glucose
levels soaring. Put junk food into some other category that isn't food
at all. Buy industrial-strength sunscreen by the case and use it all
the time. Drink water or tea instead of diet soda. I also recommend
weight training, which I've been doing for about a year now, and trying
to avoid stress (yeah, I know, but try). Also, you should discourage
wrinkle-formation by refusing to wear painful shoes no matter how
hot-looking they are. Also, I've finally realized that's it's necessary
to get enough sleep. Try it! Okay,
that's
my
book
of
beauty
secrets,
which
I
guess
is
really
more
of
a
pamphlet.
But
they work; my body is in better shape now than it was
when I was 25, I have much more energy -- including mental energy --
than before, my friends say I'm "thriving," and my skin, though not
flawless, has a radiance that is absolutely not achievable with some
$300 "Botox-In-A-Tube."
Important
note:
"Botox-In-A-Tube"
doesn't
fulfill
its
claims
even
if
the
tube
is
shaped
like
a
syringe.
Marketers
package their products
like this because they think you have the I.Q. of a lawn chair. I have
tested some of these products myself and have read research on their
active ingredients. If any topical skincare product promises to do what
Botox and Restylane do, it is a sham, a scam and a total ripoff of
money better spent on, well, Botox and Restylane, as long as they're
done very sparingly and you don't mind pain. If you prefer to avoid
pain, as I generally do, spend the money on wild salmon and the best
sunscreen you can find. Then, relax a bit about the whole thing. I
think the injection we'd benefit from the most would be the one that
immunizes us against the tactics of professional marketers.
Anyway,
there
were
LOTS
of
new
products
at
the
expo.
Afterwards,
I
tried
a
sample
of
one
new line
for three days -- the trial was supposed to go for four days -- before
running back to Perricone. The skin around my eyes was looking a little
less firm (egad!) and I had a
large zit in the chin-jawline area. Also, the full regimen was very
involved - six steps in the morning, six at night! Are they kidding?
The
expo
seemed
to
be
well
attended,
so
I
anticipate
an
even
bigger
one
next
year.
If
you ever go, remember that having a fancy booth and
sophisticated marketing does not mean a doctor or product is the right
or healthy choice for you. In fact, there was one person at this event
about whom a plastic surgeon friend of mine confided to me once...Well,
I'd better not repeat what he said. I might get sued, and then I
really wouldn't be able to afford Perricone products. ***************************************** Moving
on...Oprah's
October
issue
is
entitled
"AGE
BRILLIANTLY!"
(Coincidentally,
her
October
2005
issue
was
entitled
'AGE
BRILLIANTLY!"
So
if you read that, you're now a year older, and
therefore, a year more brilliant). There's so much information
and insight here that you should just get the magazine and read it for
yourself. That said, I have my usual quibble: obsession with "the
number," one's numerical age. Warning:
You're going to be reminded on virtually every page of this magazine
what your age is, and what every other woman's age is, as if that
number were the most important thing in the world, the one huge,
all-encompassing, self-defining thing. Even on the fashion pages, the
ages of all the celebrity models are given right after their names, as
if this information were part of their identification, like "Jr."
On
page
300,
Oprah
advises
that
we
not
deny
our
age
or
try
to
hide
it,
yet
the magazine overflows with ads for anti-aging products. I say not
being obsessed with one's own age and deciding not to turn it into a
huge deal is very different from
denying it. Dear Oprah, I wish I could sit down and have a heartfelt
conversation with you about what it means to practice the art of living
agelessly. ***************************************** I recently attended a
book-signing in far North Dallas for Robin McGraw, wife of "Dr. Phil"
McGraw, and bought her new book, Inside
My
Heart. She really does write from the heart, and she
fosters that same concept of beauty-from-the-inside. Her own mother
died suddenly in her 50s - while Robin was on the phone with her, in
fact - so she made the decision to care for herself so that she'd be
around for a long time. She encourages women to research healthcare
issues (especially as they relate to menopause), trust their instincts
when they think a doctor might be wrong, and insist on mammograms,
bone-density scans and other important tests. She does not mention that
for some of us, these tests can be prohibitively expensive, but she's
right that we should do all that we possibly can to safeguard our
health. ***************************************** Finally,
here's
something
fun: If you enjoyed the movie "Calendar Girls," you'll
appreciate the story about the Froncysyllte Male Voice Choir of Wales.
These singers, with a combined age of 3,974 years (or as O magazine
would identify them, "The Choir, 3,974,..."), were recently discovered
by Daniel Glatman, who, ironically, managed the boy band Blue. Glatman
attended a wedding a reception at which they happened to be
performing. Now they've been signed to a major record label, and
their story has been optioned by British movie producer Zygi Kamasa,
who also produced "Bend It Like Beckham."
On November 20, their first record comes out. It's called "Voices Of
The Valley," and it proves that it's never too late to make it big EVEN
IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS!!
Oct. 16,
2006 Before
I
start
dishing
the
news,
you
must
see
the
new video from
Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty. It shows a perfectly normal,
attractive young woman being lighted, made up, made over, then
completely remade by PhotoShop before her perfect (and now, impossible
to attain) face appears on a billboard. The slogan is "No wonder
our perception of beauty is distorted." Bravo! This
same
theme
appeared
last
week
on
ABC's
"Ugly
Betty,"
which
is
so
popular,
ABC
just
picked
it up for a full season. The plot
involved the magazine where Betty works insisting on Photoshopping
pictures of an actress who Betty thought looked beautiful
already. But the editor said the magazine isn't about natural
beauty; it was "aspirational." That is, it gave girls images to
aspire to, even if they could never look that way because nobody
can! I
sincerely
hope
that
all
this
media
exposure
of
Photoshopped
images
and
all
the
protests
that
have
suddenly erupted about anorexic models
signal a trend away from some of our sicker excesses about looks and
beauty. But I won't hold my breath. It makes the cheeks
look puffy. ***************************************** A
study
by
the
Berlei
bra
company
found
that
Australian
women's
breasts
are
getting
bigger. Experts believe it's caused by
changes in diet and more women taking the pill (implants couldn’t have
anything to do with it, I’m sure). A company spokeswoman said bra
makers need to offer larger sizes, and for the first time, sports bras
now come in E and F cup sizes. The most popular sport in Australia:
"Watching women jog."
***************************************** From
the
“Never
let
age
keep
you
from
pursuing
your
career;
or
83
is
the
new
23”
file comes
this
story: Police
in
Arizona
arrested
an
83-year-old
American
woman
who
was
entering
the
US
from
Mexico
with
two
Mexican nationals and 10 pounds of
methamphetamines strapped to her body. Of course, if she’s a meth user,
its possible she was 30 and just looks 83. ***************************************** The
London
Sun
reports
that
Playboy
founder
Hugh
Hefner
says
that
at
age
80,
he's
bored
with
sex and has found another pastime. He cut
down from seven girlfriends to three in 1997 and says he no longer has
the energy for all that sex. He said, "I'm bored of the hanky panky.
I'm still active, but it's different. I like to play dominoes with my
girlfriends." And believe it or not, that doesn’t mean he lines them up
and pushes them over on top of each other. No, he actually plays
dominoes with them. Well, what else is he going to do? Have a
conversation with them? Of
course,
he
could
always
play
dominoes
with
women
his
own
age.
But
he
won’t.
***************************************** Here
are
two
stories
from
the
“Secrets
of
Longevity”
Dept.
First
up
is
Ram
Rati,
an
80-year-old
grandmother
from
Chinhar,
India,
who
says
the
secret
of
her
long, healthy life is that she
eats
over
three
pounds
of
sand
a
day. She said she tried it for fun
when she was young, got used to it, and now eats sand before breakfast,
lunch and afternoon tea. Her granddaughter said the doctor told them
that if she has no health problems, then let her eat it. And her health
isn’t eroding: she’s still round, firm and fully-packed. Her only sign
of age is that her voice is pretty gravely. Also,
Cuban
Benito
Martinez,
who
unofficially
claimed
to
be
the world's
oldest man, has died at 126, although he could never find the
records to prove it. He credited his longevity to hard work (he tended
his garden and went dancing almost to the end), fresh vegetables (now
we know he was a liar: he was a bachelor who claimed to eat fresh
vegetables), not too many cigars, a little alcohol, and never getting
married. I suppose that would’ve been too
much work. On the other hand, if he’d had a wife, I bet she
would’ve known where his birth certificate was. ***************************************** Finally,
my
favorite
story
of
the
week.
If you
want to be young again, just move to Kenya: Their Youth Affairs
Minister has proposed changing the legal definition of “youth from
"anyone aged 15 to 30" to "anyone aged 15 to 50." It would enable more
people to apply for benefits from a recently-established government
"youth fund." Since the official retirement age there is 55, you could
officially be a "youth" until five years before retirement! It's
like playing a high school student on "Beverly Hills 90210!" At
the rate Kenya is redefining “youth,” you’ll soon be able to go all the
way from your first childhood to your second childhood without ever
having to make a layover in “adulthood.” And then, we will have truly
achieved Paradise on Earth. Oct. 6,
2006 Sorry
the
postings
are
coming
so
slow.
It's
not
for
lack
of
material,
it's
just
that
my
husband Pat, who is the webmaster and does
all the loading and links, has been swamped with tax filings for Oct.
15 and various outside projects. But he has a little time
tonight, so I dumped some material on him. Here goes... First
of
all,
thanks
so
much
to
everyone
who
came
out
to
the
Cole
Porter
show
on
Sept. 22! And thanks especially to Joseph
Melnicoff, the critic for BroadwayWorld.com, who gave us a
flat-out rave! Michael and I were very grateful and glad
everyone liked the show. We plan to bring it back to Stone Street
Theatre soon, and we are getting offers from other venues. I'll
post them here as soon as they're set. Meanwhile, I hope you'll
join me at Stone
Street
Theatre on Friday Nov. 3, when Brian Piper and I will
present "My Ship Has Sailed." This is the first time we've done
it there, so please come on out for a great night of dining and
entertainment and discover all the great things happening downtown! On
to
other
topics:
Did
you
catch
Oprah
on
Thursday?
It
was
called
"Great
Women
and
Their
Anti-Aging
Secrets" or "how to age
brilliantly!" (That is not a
reference to the blinding light from all the birthday candles.)
Dianne Carroll, Geena Davis and Nora Ephron were the guests, all
talking about how they cope with aging. It was an interesting
show, but one thing bothered me: all the guests were people who'd had
great success at a young age and were now talking about their career
obstacles over 40, 50 or 60. I know their problems are real, but
they already had wealth and fame to help them overcome them. It
would've been nice to hear from some women who hadn't had great success
early on as a launching pad and who were trying to establish a new
career when they were already over 40 or whatever. Surely, there
must be a few of those somewhere... I
wrote
down
a
few
quotes
from
this
show
(Dianne
Carroll:
"I
want
the
world
to
know
I believe in plastic surgery! Oh God,
yes! Wouldn't be without it!") and might write more about this later
on. For now, let's check out some news... Cuba
has
a
large
number
of
people
who
have
lived
to
over
100,
so
they
were
asked
to
share
their
secrets of a long life. To
sum up: they eat a healthy diet, with lots of fish and veggies,
little salt and natural seasonings... They work hard and stay active
physically and mentally...They drink alcohol, but in moderation...and
they really enjoy coffee, cigars and sex. Please don't ask me if
they enjoy the cigars and the sex at the same time; I don't want to
think about it. But it sounds as if the Cuban secret to a long
life is very similar to George Burns' formula. Here's
another
story about a pharmaceutical maker, this time in Germany,
warning people not to rub hemmorroid cream on their eyes to reduce
puffiness. I keep telling you, people: "Use as directed!" Also
in
Germany,
a
plastic surgeon in Cologne was cheated by several women who got
$10,000 breast implant surgery (those must've been some big
implants! Either that, or they were filled with money instead of
silicone), then never returned to pay their bills. He later found
out they'd given him fake names. He never imagined that women
who'd get breast implants would put up a false front. He
now
demands
cash
in
advance
for
breast
implants
(or
"up-front
money"),
but
to
try
to
recover
his losses, he created a poster for the
police showing photos of the bare, enlarged breasts of the patients, in
hopes someone (likely a strip club customer) will recognize them.
The Bild newspaper helpfully printed a five-column photo of the wanted
poster, which the surgeon could probably sell and make more money than
he lost. The police are on the lookout (the strenuous lookout),
and are eagerly anticipating the line-up, which will have a $10 cover
charge and a two-drink minimum. Finally,
as
long
as
we're
on
the
subject
of
implants,
Bulgaria's
Standart
newspaper
reports that a woman in the town of Ruse drove
through a red light, crashed into a car and totaled both
vehicles. But her life was saved because her silicone breast
implants acted as airbags (she must've bought the Pamela Anderson
size). On the minus side, her implants burst from the impact, but
luckily, her car insurance covers replacement of factory-made parts. There's
lots
more
news,
but
that's
all
we
have
time
to
post
at
the
moment.
I
also
still need to write about my trip to the Cosmetic
Surgery Expo, and since the Dallas Morning News never printed it, I'll
post my response to their "Desperate Grannies" article. Check
back tomorrow! Until then... "Keep
young
and
beautiful!" Sept. 20,
2006 Busy,
busy,
busy
recently.
I
have
news
piling
up,
and
I
swear
I'll
get
it
on
here
as soon as there's a spare minute. In
the meantime, here's some great news about the Cole Porter show coming
up Friday, Sept 22: We
made
a
deal
with
Campisi's
Italian
restaurant and the Iron Cactus Tex-Mex
restaurant to give you a discount when you attend our Cole Porter
show! There will be an ad on the back of the program. Just
take the program with you after the show and enjoy 15% off your late
dinner or snack (beverages not included). Or come back to Stone
Street Theatre Saturday night for the Pavlov's Dogs improv comedy troupe
and use the discount before or after the show. It's good through
Saturday night! We hope this will encourage you to come
down and discover the revitalized downtown Dallas area with its cool
shops, lots of great restaurants, and (ahem!) terrific entertainment! And
now,
one
quick
news
item
on
age
to
hold
you
until
I
can
get
past
the
show and blog a little more: The
number
of
people
over
100
in
Japan has quadrupled in the past 10 years, and the
world's oldest woman and oldest man are now both Japanese. This
amazing longevitiy is attributed to their healthy seafood and vegetable
diet, their excellent health care, and a steep fall-off in Godzilla
attacks. (Okay,
that
was
my
husband's
joke.
Direct
your
brickbats
at
him.
I
have
to
go
rehearse
now...)
Sept. 8,
2006 Just
a
quick
note
to
let
you
know
that
this
weekend,
the
Cosmetic
Surgery
Expo
is
at
Market Hall in Dallas. I'll be
heading over there myself, just for research purposes, of course.
If you've been thinking about getting anything nipped, tucked, lifted,
sucked, beached or sandblasted, here's your chance to find out a
lot more about it at no charge. And before you do anything like
that, you must learn
everything you can about the risks! CLICK HERE
for more info. Also,
some
sad
news:
due
to
an
ongoing
lawsuit
and
a
bad
bankruptcy
ruling,
Jeroboam
restaurant
in
downtown Dallas had to
abruptly close its doors. It was one of our favorite "fancy,
elegant" places, and one we recommended to anyone coming to the Cole
Porter show. We were even working on a dinner and show package
with them, so it's very unwelcome news. Still, there are
many other great restaurants in the same block with the theatre, so
you'll have lots of choices, whether you want dinner before the show or
a late snack and nightcap afterward. For a few suggestions,
scroll down to the July 17 entry... Sept. 5,
2006 Sorry
to
go
so
long
between
blog
postings,
but
it’s
been
a
very
hectic
month
between
performing
private shows and preparing a new show, plus
my husband Pat, who is the webmaster who posts these things, is up to
his neck in doing the taxes that he put off until September 15 from
August 15, after putting them off from April 15. I’d ask him to put
them off again and spend more time on this website, but if he goes to
prison, the blog postings might actually be even slower. Anyway,
there’s lots of stuff piled up, so I’ll have to give it to you in
several doses over the next few days. But
business
first:
Please
make
your
reservations
early
for
the
Cole
Porter
show coming up on Sept. 22 at Stone Street Theatre. The first time
we did this show, it sold out and late callers and arrivals had to be
turned away. We don’t want that happening to you, so please RSVP soon
at 469-619-2609. ***************************************** No
word
back
yet
from
the
Dallas
Morning
News
about
the
response
I
wrote
to
the
“Desperate
Grannies” article. If I don’t hear from them soon, I’ll just post
it here, so keep checking back. ***************************************** We met a terrific cabaret
singer/songwriter, D.C. Anderson, during his stopover in Dallas with
the national touring company of “Phantom,” and he just sent us all his
CDs to see which of his humorous songs we can tout to clients of our
Comedy Wire radio service. Pat has been too swamped to review them yet,
but I promise he will very soon, D.C. In the meantime, you should
check
out D.C. Anderson for yourself. What a fantastic talent! ***************************************** And
now
a
little
news
and
commentary
from
the
age
and
beauty
front… It
seems
that
Salma
Hayek
has
turned
40.
I
know
this
because
it’s
worthy
of
a
news
story and headline on the British Ananova.com news site.
Naturally, it’s phrased in that obnoxious, gushing-yet-patronizing tone
of all Fleet Street tabloid reporters, and it includes a rundown of
several other old hags (Sarah Jessica Parker, Liz Hurley, etc.) who are
still miraculously managing to look reasonably tolerable, despite
having “stepped into middle age.” Now, I understand why they outlawed
guns in the UK: to keep celebrities over the age of 30 from shooting
all the gossip reporters. I wonder what these condescending nitwits,
who are stunned that celebrities can still control their bladders past
the age of 39 (Ozzy Osbourne excepted), would think of the following
stories?… The
oldest
man
in
California
has
died
at
112,
and
doctors
are
baffled
as
to
how
he
lived
so
long. He had lots of bad habits,
ate nothing but waffles and sausages, and an autopsy showed his organs
looked like those of a 50-year-old. A doctor said it shows that genes
might be more important than good habits (although to be fair, I hear
he did quit smoking at 102). Or maybe it just shows that we should all
be eating lots of waffles. Britain’s
oldest
worker,
mechanic
Buster
Martin,
who
maintains
a
fleet
of
plumbing
vans,
had
to
be
ordered
by his bosses to take
his
100th
birthday
off. He tried to retire once, but got bored and
went back to work. He said, "Boredom is a big killer. I went back to
work as I like to keep active. If I didn't work, I would become the
most miserable sod you have ever come across, so I don't want to stop
working." He finally agreed to take his 100th birthday off, but he
insists on working on his next 100th
birthday. And
now,
my
“Heroines
Of
The
Day”:
First,
a
profile
of
Doris
Eaton
Travis, the 102-year-old former Ziegfeld
Girl who has been dancing on stage since 1911 and is still dancing. She
must be exhausted by now.
And
my
second
heroine,
Betty
Horton
of
Utah, who is 75 and who chased down a fortysomething man
who snatched her purse, chewed him out, threatened to shoot him, took
her purse back from him and told him to “get the heck out of here.” She
added, “Good thing I had my running shoes on.” I think this story gives
eloquent testimony to how fit and capable a 75-year-old woman can be,
and what lousy shape most fortysomething men are in. ***************************************** I have lots more news to post,
so check back soon. But I want to close by clearing out some of the
celebrity quotes on age and beauty that I’ve been stockpiling in recent
weeks…
First
up,
Sally
Field
comments
to
Ladies’
Home
Journal
on
what
it’s
like
to
be
approaching
60:
"We’re
supposed
to
be
embarrassed
now
that
our
waists
are
thickening
and
our
chins
are
drooping.
I
just feel
really p---ed off about that!" Next,
actress
Lili
Taylor comments on
plastic surgery in Women’s Health magazine: “It’s
getting
to
the
point
where
I
wonder
if
we’re
going
to
even
know
what
an
older
woman looks like. It’s
really upsetting and disturbing to me on so many levels. In 10 or 15
years, it’s going to be really scary because then we’re going to see
what happens after you’ve had all this plastic surgery. We all know it
doesn’t get better, it gets worse.”
Personally,
I’m
not
worried.
In
10
or
15
years,
I’m
counting
on
science
having
perfected
the
technology
of transplanting our brains into the
cloned bodies of 21-year-old runway models. Here’s
a
longer
quote,
from
last
week’s
Emmy
winner
(and
Gwyneth
Paltrow’s
mom),
Blythe
Danner,
expounding
on
the actress’
curse of wrinkles in a high tech age: “I
wasn’t
terribly
conscious
of
it
until
we
did
‘Huff’
and
they
used
this
dreadful
high-definition
which
makes
anybody over fifty look as if they are eighty. So, I got very
self-conscious about that. Yes - we all get a little help, a little bit
of this or that...not tremendous amounts, and I hate the idea of doing
real invasive stuff, and I am not trying to look 40, because there were
some shots on ‘Huff’ I was just appalled. I don’t think I am terribly
narcissistic, but you don’t want to look your worst.”
I
think
high-definition
cameras
were
invented
to
make
everyone
look
their
worst.
Why
do
TV
viewers
want
to see people’s skin pores anyway?
Was there ever a poll that said we wanted
to see Andy Rooney’s eyebrow shrubbery in minute detail? I say let’s
bring back the good old days, when they showed respect for veteran
actresses by filming them through a camera lens slathered in Vaseline
and covered in three layers of cheesecloth! Finally,
a
quote
from
former
President
Bill
Clinton, on the fact that he just
turned 60: “I
hate
it,
but
it's
true.
For
most
of
my
working
life,
I
was
the
youngest
person
doing what I was doing. Then
one day I woke up, and I was the oldest person in every room." I
feel
your
pain,
Mr.
Clinton,
but
I
have
a
hard
time
believing
your
story.
I
have
a feeling that for most of his life, wherever the heck
Bill Clinton happened to wake up, the person in the room with him was
probably younger than he was. Aug. 8,
2006 A
few
quick
items
of
interest...
First
of
all,
an
interesting
article
with
some
great
points
and
a
horrible
title:
“Desperate
Grannies.” I have submitted a guest reply editorial to the Dallas
Morning News and will let you all know if it’s accepted, so read the
original yourself and stay tuned. This ain’t over!!
***************************************** Jeff
Taylor,
founder
of
the
job
site
Monster.com,
has
launched
Eons.com,
which
is
similar
to
MySpace,
except
for people 50-plus. It
has news on entertainment and hobbies for older people, tips on living
longer, a personalized longevity calendar, games to build brain
strength (no job listings, of course, since there are no jobs for
people over 50),
and a charming emphasis on death. Noting that the death rate in the US
is projected to nearly double to 4.1 million annually by 2040 (silly
me, I thought it would always be one per person), Taylor told Reuters,
"The death business is growing" (in fact, Monster.com is now nothing
but a list of jobs at funeral parlors.) Eons.com will offer plans for a
do-it-yourself funeral service and an online obituary database that
alerts you when someone you might know dies (“Welcome! You have 475
messages!") Personally,
it
sounds
to
me
as
if
people
over
50
can
build
their
brain
strength
by
never,
ever
visiting this site. But if you must, then click here. I warn you, though:
the
VERY FIRST THING they ask you to
fill in is your date of birth, so they'll know your age. So don’t
expect to find me hanging out there. ***************************************** From
the
“All
Is
Vanity”
desk
comes
this story: Embarrassing school photos may become a thing of the
past in Australia, where the National School Photography service is
offering to use PhotoShop digital retouching to remove pimples,
scratches, scars, blemishes, Dutch rubs and other childhood
imperfections for an $8 extra fee (just like they do to fashion
models!) If your kid has really bad acne, they'll even go the
extra mile and clear it up for no extra charge (it may take until next
year to finish, but they’ll do it). The
owner
said
parents
demanded
it
because
kids
are
surrounded
with
media
images
of
beautiful
people
and
have become very looks-conscious.
Parents tell the photographers that the pimple won't be there in 20
years anyway, so it's not a part of their kids’ permanent personality,
therefore they don't see why they should have to look at it forever in
a yearbook photo. Although with some pimples, they might want to
wait 20 years to make sure of that. But
hey,
why
stop
there?
Parents
hope
those
tattoos
won’t
still
be
around
in
20
years,
so
remove them, too! Same for the piercings! And in
20 years, the girls expect they’ll have new noses, breast implants and
collagen lips, so why not add them to the photos now so they’ll match
in the future? Personally,
I
don’t
think
you
can
really
call
yourself
an
adult
until
you
have
a
school
yearbook
photo in the closet that you’d be humiliated
for anyone to see. If they can’t use PhotoShop to remove bad perms and
polyester, then I don’t see why today's kids should get a free ride.
Let them suffer like the rest of us, who would be grateful if our
school yearbook photos looked just one-tenth as good as Mel Gibson’s
mugshot. Now
if
you'll
excuse
me,
I
have
to
go
start
a
new
business,
digitally
retouching
baby
photos
to make every baby look like Shiloh Nouvel
Jolie-Pitt. Aug. 6,
2006 Sorry
to
have
been
away
so
long.
I
have
some
stuff
to
add,
but
our
phone/DSL
service
has been out for nearly a week. It
took AT&T three tries to track down the two, count 'em, two, shorts
in our phone line,
probably caused by the intense heat melting off the insulaiton.
As soon as we catch up on our backlog of work, I will upload some
material here. Check back soon! July 22,
2006 Thank
you
so
much
to
everyone
who
came
out
to
the
Cole
Porter
show
last
night!
Bryan,
the
co-owner of the theater, told us that we have the honor of being the
first act since the theater opened to SELL OUT THE PLACE! They
were actually having to bring in extra chairs to handle the
overflow! The audience was wonderful, and it was great to
able to visit with so many other Cole Porter fanatics before and after
the show. And to the very nice gentlemen who gave us the cards:
sorry we didn't know the number from "Can-Can," but I hope you enjoyed
"Let's Misbehave," which I saw was on your wish list. As
always
with
a
new
show,
we
had
a
few
minor
glitches.
At
one
point,
a
marimba
band began playing in Campisi's below, and the
audience could hear them in the back, although we couldn't hear them on
stage (if we had, I guess we could've segued into "Katie Went To
Haiti"). Bryan got them to hold their set until our show ended,
and they'll try to synchronize schedules better in the future, now that
they know
the sound bleeds through. Also, at one point, my monitor
went out when I was singing a very difficult harmony part and suddenly,
I couldn't hear myself at all. I hope I was in the ballpark with
those notes, because I have no idea. Thank goodness, it came back
on after a minute or so. But I remembered all the words of "The
Physician," and in the right order no less, so I have no right sending
any complaint letters to God. We've
also
decided
that
even
though
the
show
runs
a
bit
longer
than
the
standard
New
York
cabaret show, everyone was asking for more, so we're
going to add some more songs and stories for the next
performance. That will be on September 22, and you can click here
for info. Don't get locked out of the next one; make
your reservations early! Thank
you
again
to
everyone
who
came
out,
and
please
tell
your
friends
(tell
your
enemies,
too;
we'll perform for anybody) about the Sept. 22
show. Sorry the August show we had started to advertise had to be
canceled, but the theatre had a booking conflict. Now that
we've gotten our feet wet, the next show will be even bigger and
better, so mark your calendars and come see us. And
now,
I'm
too
exhausted
to
write
any
more,
so
I'll
turn
it
over
to
David
Letterman's
writers. Here are the "Top
10
Signs
You
Chose
A
Bad
Plastic
Surgeon..." July 21,
2006 No
time
for
blogging,
just
a
reminder
that
the
Cole
Porter
show
debuts
tonight
at
Stone
Street
Theatre in downtown Dallas! The theater
is filling up fast, so please call for reservations now! Info on
restaurants is below, and theater info and directions can be found
here. And please dress up (trust me, Michael and I will
be). Let's all put on our fancy duds and have an elegant evening
together. See you tonight! July 17,
2006 Since
the
Cole
Porter
show
is
just
five
days
away,
and
it's
intended
to
be
a
great
date show, I thought I'd give you some tips on where to go
before or after the show. First of all, don't be afraid to go
downtown: the current crime story in the news took place among morons
at a private bar party after 2 a.m. Drunken idiots can come out
anywhere that has bars closing at 2 a.m. The Stone Street Theatre
is in a very nice part of town, right across Main from Neiman's,
surrounded by casual and upscale restaurants, with valet parking
available on the Main Street side. Pat and I go there all the
time; in fact, we've eaten dinner there three times in the past week,
and had a great time at every place. A few of your pre- or
post-show dining choices (with links to Weekend Guide info on each: (Jeroboam
info
regretfully
deleted)
Also
romantic
but
less
expensive
and
with
outstanding
Italian
food
is
Porta
di
Roma. Best of all, the friendly server was incredibly
accommodating of my Perricone-diet-inspired requests, substituting
grilled vegetables for pasta, grilled chicken for breaded chicken,
etc. (and no, I didn't order salmon substituted for dessert). If
you're
in
more
of
a
Mexican
food
mood,
one
of
our
favorite
places
in
town
is
The
Iron
Cactus, right across Main from Stone Street. Great
casual atmosphere and delicious food (we disagree with the Guide
reviewer on this one, and we are definitely connoisseurs of Tex Mex). The
theatre
is
on
the
second
floor
directly
above
several
other
fine
restaurants,
including
the
Thomas
&
Leggett Tavern and Campisi's
pizza and Italian. There are actually more great places than
we've had time to visit, and all are within a few steps of the theater,
so let the valet take your car and make a night of it. In
fact, if you really want to arrive in a good mood, spend the day
shopping at Neiman's, and then make a night of it. ***************************************** And
now,
a
little
news... Did
you
hear
the
story about the Aloha, Oregon, woman whose neighbors called police
to get her to turn down the noise, and afterward, she called 911
herself just to get the cop who'd warned her to come back? She
told the dispatcher, "He's the cutest cop I've seen in a long
time. I just want to know his name. Heck, it doesn't come
very often a good man comes to your doorstep." Asked to clarify
the nature of her call, she replied, "Honey, I'm just going to be
honest with you, okay? I just thought he was cute. I'm 45
years old, and I'd just like to meet him again, but I don't know how to
go about doing that without calling 911. I know this is
absolutely not in any way, shape or form an emergency, but if you would
give the officer my phone number and ask him to come back, would you
mind?" Well,
the
officer
came
back...and
cited
her
for
abusing
the
911
system.
She
could
face
thousands
of
dollars in fines and up to a
year in jail (I hope a jail with a cute warden). If
I
were
her
lawyer,
I'd
argue
that
she'd
been
reading
a
lot
of
women's
magazines
and
thought that being an unmarried woman over 40
really did constitute an emergency. ***************************************** In
an
update
on
the
story
below
about
ever-shrinking
celebrities,
Anna
Kournikova
has declared, with Nicole Richie and Keira
Knightley-like firmness, that she does not have an eating
disorder. She told Elle magazine that since she stopped playing
tennis professionally, she isn't training so intensely and has simply
lost bulk. Sure, we all know how that goes: stop exercising and
the fat disappears from your body. We've all been there,
girlfriend! In
a
somewhat
related
story,
the
Mayo
Clinic
found
that
women
suffering
dementia
experience
weight
loss
starting
up to 10 years before it sets
in. This would explain a lot of Hollywood actresses and
fashion models and possibly one poor demented model who thinks she used
to be a professional tennis player. ***************************************** Finally,
I
caught
a
couple
of
movies
on
DVD
and
TV
over
the
weekend,
and
each
had
a great quote to share. From "Memoirs Of A Geisha": "Agony
and
beauty
for
us
live
side-by-side."
I
think
we
all
can
relate
to
that.
And
from
the
older
movie
"School
Ties,"
Brendan
Fraser,
playing a prep school freshman, remarked
on a fellow student who suffered a nervous breakdown: "I've
heard
of
nervous
breakdowns,
you
know,
but
I
always
thought
they
happened
to
women
who
were
40 years
old." When
I
heard
that
attitude,
I
almost
had
a
nervous
breakdown.
July 14, 2006 Next week's Us Weekly cover will ask,
"When
does
slender
become
anorexic?"
and focus on the alarming trend of
such already size-zero stars as Anna Kournikova, Kate Bosworth and
Keira Knightley (I think she’s now a sub-zero, which means she’s always
cold) withering away to ever-more desiccated proportions. The editor
said, "Stars are just getting smaller and smaller," and their influence
is harming kids. A survey shows 80 percent of 10-year-old girls are
afraid of being fat, mostly because they compare themselves to
celebrities. Or more likely because 80 percent of 10-year-old girls
actually weigh more than Keira Knightley. As do 55 percent of all
four-year-olds. (It's possible I might have made those last two
statistics up, but that doesn't mean they aren't true.) The sickest part of this story:
pro-anorexia websites are springing up
that show girls' attempts to keep up with skeletal celebrities who
provide them with "thinspiration." A European study found that
teenagers with no history of eating disorders suffered a big drop in
self-esteem after looking at the websites for just 25 minutes. Not to
mention a big drop in I.Q. points. By the way, don’t you love the cutesy
“Sex & The City”-style
attempt to create a catchy new buzz word (“thinspiration!”) to describe
a horrifyingly sick trend? I hope that whoever thought it up has to
spend an
eternity in Purge-atory. ***************************************** Speaking
of
sick,
the
AskMen.com
website
is
taking
a
poll
on
which
extremely
siliconed
sex
symbol
-
Pamela Anderson, Jordan or Cindy
Margolis - is the hottest "Plastic
Surgery
Babe." If this is what the men of AskMen.com
are thinking, I'm
sorry I asked. I notice, though, that the three hottest searches
on that site are for "Workout Routine," "Stop Hair Loss" and "Six Pack
Abs," so I doubt the guys who frequent that site would be too
interested in a poll on which surgically-unaltered woman is the most
scintillating conversationalist. ***************************************** You
know
how
much
I
love
a
good
celebrity
quote
(or
a
bad
one)
on
age
or
beauty, and I just found one of each: The bad first, from fashion
forecaster David Wolfe: "The
worst
mistake
women
of
a
certain
age
can
make
is
trying
to
dress
young.
I
call
it 'mutton dressed as
lamb.'" I'll
bet
he
doesn't
call
it
that
to
the
women's
faces,
or
else
he'd
get
a
mutton
chop in the kisser. While I go try on some low-rise jeans,
I'll let you wash that statement out of your brains with a great quote
from Maya Angelou, for everyone who lets regrets about what they did or
didn't do when they were a stupid kid prevent them from pursuing their
dreams today: "You
did
what
you
knew
how
to
do
--
and
when
you
knew
better,
you
did
better."
And
think
how
much
better
you'll
do
once
you're
old
enough
to
have
done
both! July 13,
2006 Thank
you
so
much
to
everyone
who
came
out
to
the
show
on
Wednesday!
We
had
a
surprisingly
big crowd, and everyone was
really nice and seemed to get into the show. Sorry about the
rough edges, but with Brian suddenly being called away, the musicians
and I had just ONE afternoon of rehearsal, and this is not an easy show
to play! But the people who stayed to talk with me afterward
understood and enjoyed it anyway, thank goodness. I'm an
exhausted wreck, but the audience seemed to like it, so that's all that
matters.
I LIVE FOR MY FANS!!!
For
those
of
you
who
weren't
there,
I
did
the
first
half
of
the
show
in
a
gold
sequined dress I've never worn on stage before, with gold
jewelry, gold shoes and gold elbow-length gloves. I told the
audience that I was dressed as the Emmy Award Hugh Laurie of "House"
should've been nominated for. Today came word that Hugh Laurie
has renegotiated his contract and will be paid $300,000 an
episode. I like to think that I somehow had something to do with
that. To thank me, he can send me a mere five percent.
If
you
picked
up
the
program
from
the
Pocket
Sandwich
show,
you'll
notice
the
ad
in
it
for
the upcoming Cole Porter show, which says it
opens July 21 at Stone Street Theatre and returns Aug. 19. We got
word today that the theatre wants to reschedule the August show because
a play is coming in and needs that whole weekend. They offered us
the option of doing a 10:30 show, but we didn't want to start that
late. We are working on nailing down another date in September,
but please come to the July 21 opening night, and we'll keep you posted
on when the next one will be.
Another
nice
surprise:
if
you
have
today's
Dallas
Morning
News,
check
out
the
Guide
section,
and
the
part
on top of the page called "Over The
Top." There's a little write-up about the Cole Porter show and a
picture, which was a surprise and a thrill for us! I told Michael
Gott that this means we have to make the show over the top, and if you
saw my wardrobe last night, you know I can do that. It's a small
theater, so for best seats, make your reservations now by calling
469-619-2609. July 10,
2006 Extremely hectic
time: Brian Piper has
unexpectedly been called
to California for a "can't get out of it" meeting with a big movie
studio, and he can't do the Wednesday show! Fortunately, he has
an excellent pianist to fill in, and we will both be rehearsing
intensely with him for the next two days, so the show will go on!
Still, this is the first time I'll have ever done the show without
Brian, so please be gentle with me. BTW,
thanks
to
the
Dallas
Observer for choosing
my show as one of their Best Bets for Wednesday! I promise I
won't let you down. And
now,
a
couple
of
news
items
worthy
of
comment,
and
chances
are
this
is
the
last
chance I'll have for blogging until after the show... A
study
by
Italy's
University
of
Verona
suggests
that
beautiful
people
might
be
smarter
than plain or ugly people.In blind-graded
tests, good-looking students did better.It
had
been
assumed
that
beautiful
people
did
better
in
school
because
teachers
favored
them;
but
now,
researchers
think
that maybe beautiful people get higher
grades
because they get more attention from parents, have higher self-esteem
and work
harder (except, of course, for when
they're cheerleading or
going out on dates, which is pretty much every night.) Or maybe
it's
just that their perfect blue eyes help them cheat off the nerd sitting
next to them. How fashion models fit into this theory, I have no
idea. The
study also showed that the world's
smartest person isn't Stephen Hawking, it's Janice Dickinson.
***************************************** Last
week,
Patti
Farrant
became
Britain's
oldest
new
mom
after
giving
birth
at
age
62
following
a
controversial fertility treatment. It
sparked a lot of criticism, but UK
Health
Secretary
Patricia
Hewitt
defended
her. She said men have always been able to father children
up
into their 70s or even 80s, so criticizing a woman for becoming a
mother at 62 is "gender hypocrisy." But at least, a baby with an
80-year-old father will still grow up with one living parent because
its mom is 23.
***************************************** This
Dallas
Morning
News
review of the '80s "hair metal bands" Poison
and Cinderella really
cheesed me off. It always annoys me that every review of any band
that is beyond the pimple stage has to make mention of how old and gray
the audience members are, as if that has any connection whatsoever to
the quality of the music. Or as if it matters whether the people
listening to, say, the Moody Blues are 50 or 15. But this one
really goes
overboard. This is the quote that got me: "Yes,
the
usual
midlifers
were
represented
heavily,
arriving
ready
to
sing
along
and
hoot
it
up
as
best they could." "As
best
they
could"?!
If
you
were
listening
to
these
bands
as
a
teenager
when
they
had
their
hits
in
the
late '80s, you might be all of 35 by now. Hope you're
able to hoot without mainlining Geritol first. And God forbid you
should try to dance. You wouldn't want to break a hip. ***************************************** Finally,
UPI
reports
that
after
a
lifetime
of
refusing
to
appear
nude,
Sophia
Loren
has
agreed
to
pose
au naturale for next year's Perelli calendar at age
72. I bet she'll still look better naked than Nicole Richie. June 30, 2006 Exciting day on Friday: I was paging
through the Weekend Guide of the
Dallas Morning News, spotted someone who looked vaguely familiar and
realized: "Hey, that's ME!" On the "Taking A Look Ahead" at July
events section on page 42, they
printed a photo of Brian and me from one of our earliest shows, to
illustrate the listing for "Ship" on July 12. And just to the left of
the photo is the listing for the Cole Porter show on July 12. Thankyew,
thankyew, thankyew to the Weekend Guide editors! This is a red letter
day for me, like going to the Perricone counter and discovering there's
a sale PLUS a coupon! ***************************************** I'm
going
to
be
in
intense
rehearsals
the
next
few
weeks,
so
there
may
not
be
much
blogging, but I'll try to point you to interesting stories
when I have a spare minute. Here are a couple... The
New
York
Daily
News
reports on the tragic plight of women who've spent
a fortune having themselves sand-blasted, stuffed, buffed and
reupholstered to look all shiny and new, only to realize that their
hands are giving away their age. So naturally, there are now
various creams, injections, laser treatments and so forth, costing up
to $15,000, to make your hands look younger. My solution is much
cheaper and simpler: just write a show that requires you to wear a
spangled gown with elbow-length gloves. As
you
know,
one
message
of
my
show
is
that
you
shouldn't
let
people's
perceptions
of
you
as "too old" keep you from doing what you love. And here's
the
poster
boy
for
that...literally. He's an 85-year-old nude
model. Warning to the sensitive: this story is illustrated.
I'll
bet
if
this
story
were
about
an
85-year-old
female
nude
model,
she'd
be
unashamed
to
show
her entire body, except she'd keep her hands
behind her back. June 28,
2006 The
new
Entertainment
Weekly is out, with their “Summer Must List,” or all the people and
things you must see, listen to or buy under penalty of law. I noticed a
recurring theme: people making it despite being pronounced “too old” by
the gatekeepers of popular culture. In their “Stage” section, Christine
Ebersole is hailed for her rave reviews and sold-out houses in the new
musical “Grey Gardens.” She notes that the reason she is on Broadway is
because she was working in TV seven years ago when she began to be told
she was “over the hill,” but she still believed she had "something to
contribute.” That’s hard to believe, considering she was a decrepit 46
at the time. So
she
returned
to
the
stage
and
won
a
Tony
in
2001
for
“42nd
Street,”
in
which
she played – ta da! – an over-the-hill actress. Of course, by
then she was 47, so it made sense. Incidentally, if you’re wondering
how I know her exact age in each year, it’s because her current age is
the VERY FIRST THING given in the article, just as it is in every
profile of every person in the magazine! Grrrrrrrrr!!! The
other
age-related
story
in
“EW”
involves
Scottish
folk-rocker
KT
Tunstall,
whose
debut
CD
“Eye
to
the
Telescope” is a surprise hit, even though record executives
repeatedly told her she was too old to get a recording contract. Her
current age: 31. She said, “Each time I receive an award, I’m just
cackling, rubbing my hands and going, ‘Smell my award!’ Revenge is
sweet.” She says her next CD will have a song about plastic surgery on
it. I may have to buy that. My
husband
Pat
read
this
and
made
a
good
point
about
the
idea
that
only
people
in
their 20s should have recording deals. He said he thinks
Sinatra’s early records with Tommy Dorsey were okay, but it wasn’t
until Frank was in his 40s that he began making the string of Capitol
and Reprise albums that are now universally considered to be among the
greatest pop recordings ever made. If our current youth obsession had
prevailed back then, Frank Sinatra would be known today as that skinny
one-hit-wonder who cut “I’ll Never Smile Again.” ***************************************** We
saw
Kathy
Griffin at the Meyerson Monday night, and she was hilarious.
I get compared to her sometimes because she's a funny redhead with
bangs who talks about plastic surgery, rips on celebrities and has a
lot of gay friends, but that's about the extent of our similarities
(she isn't planning to take up singing, I hope). Still, I'm a big
fan and really enjoyed her show. I especially loved her stories
about going to the "American Idol" finale, and her complaint that none
of the contestants knew any songs that came out before "Genie In A
Bottle." She noted how they always protest, "That song came out
before I was born!" as if we're supposed to reply, "Oh, that's right, I
forgot! The entire world began on the day you were born!" ***************************************** Finally,
the
New
York
Daily
News
reports
that
the
Ritz
Carlton
Hotel
Spa
is
offering
a
$270
caviar firming facial (that would do your skin
more good if you just ate the fish eggs), but Nabi MediSpa in Manhattan
is going them one better with a $250
"Frozen
in
Time"
facial, which consists of having embryonic stem
cells from pregnant cows rubbed into your face. This sounds like
something you’d see on “Fear Factor,” except they’d pay you $250 to rub
embryonic cow cells
on your face. Spa
owner
Ivy
Cho
(who
is
not
a
scientist,
but
does
wear
a
white
lab
coat)
said,
"People are now more aware of non-invasive, non-surgical
procedures that can make them look years younger. And everybody's
interested in stem cells because they have the best (rejuvenating)
properties." Maybe they can even cure facial paralysis from too
much Botox. This sounds intriguing, but I have a nagging fear that even
if it does make you look young, it would make you look like a young
cow. June 19,
2006 The
New
York
Post
reports that Sweden's H&M clothing is getting
flak for signing to provide Madonna's tour
wardrobe because at 47, the poor hag is too old. Ad icon Jerry
Della Femina said kids "trade in stars every two or three years, and
many don't know
Madonna. I could see her signing up with Loehmann's." A
spokeswoman for Loehmann's, the mall discount chain that advertises
"designer deals for
every generation," replied, "We'd love to have Madonna, if we could
afford her." How about
J-Lo? She's sort of a bargain-basement Madonna. Of
course,
Jerry
Della
Femina
is
70
years
old,
so
I
don't
know
why
he
thinks
anyone
will pay any attention to his opinion. In
other
aging
Madonna
news,
Madonna
proved
herself
to
be
a
gal
after
my
own
heart
by
saying that if her body or face start to sag, she
won't
rule
out
getting
plastic
surgery, but "I won't have a press
conference"
to announce it. This would mark the first time Madonna has ever
had any intimate personal secret that she didn't call a press
conference to announce.But I'm with her: I believe that if you want to get plastic
surgery, it's your business and yours alone.Besides, holding a press conference to announce that Madonna had
plastic surgery is the National Enquirer's job. ***************************************** In
case
you
missed
it,
here
is
a
very
interesting
article by Carlin Flora in Psychology Today.
It’s called “The Beguiling Truth About Beauty,” and it explains some of
the psychological reasons why women are constantly denigrating their
own looks and thinking they are not as attractive as other people think
they are. One of the most fascinating tidbits in the article is a
reference to a study in which men and women were asked to do math
problems, and they scored about equally well. The women were then asked
to change into swimsuits. After that, they were so self-conscious about
how their bodies looked, they couldn’t concentrate; and their
math scores fell below those of the men. This is probably why they
dropped the math portion of the Miss Universe Pageant. Apparently,
they
didn’t
put
the
men
into
swimsuits
to
see
how
it
affected
their
math
skills,
but
I have a feeling it would make no
difference. Judging from some of the guys you see galumphing around in
Speedos, they seem more familiar with the concepts of calculus than
with the concept of worrying about how their bodies look. ***************************************** Finally, here’s a great
celebrity quote from this week’s TV Guide. It’s from an interview with
“the world’s first supermodel,” Janice Dickinson. The reporter asked
about the hot-looking photo of her on the cover of her new book on
dating, “Check
Please.” Dickinson, whose previous delightfully blunt
and dishy book was called "Everything
About
Me
Is
Fake...And
I'm
Perfect," replied: “Everything
about
the
cover
photo
is
retouched
and
digitally
enhanced
to
make
me
look
good.
Hey,
I
fool
the camera. I’m a liar, a
magician. I’m 51 years old. Without the fake t*ts, the plastic surgery
and the facelift, there’d be a middle-aged, gray-haired lady staring at
you.” If
only
Simon
Cowell
were
honest
enough
to
say
the
same
thing…
June 12, 2006
Sorry,
I
know
the
blog
is
not
being
updated
as
often
as
it
used
to
be,
but
I've
been swamped. We have private shows of "Ship" and the Pocket
Sandwich show coming up on July 12 (they are now taking reservations at
214-821-1860, so please make
yours early); I am trying to
find times to get into the recording studio with Brian; I will be doing
a song I wrote in the Dallas Press Club Gridiron show at the Lakewood
Theater (which was set for June, then postponed until August); and on
top of all
that, the wonderful singer/pianist Michael Gott of The Mansion and I are writing and
rehearsing a new show to perform for the Stone Street Theatre, a lovely
venue that just opened in downtown Dallas, across Main from
Neiman's. We did four songs at a VIP/media showcase there
on June 4, and I was incredibly sick with some sinus grunge that was a
gift from my beloved hubby. Through a miraculous stroke of luck,
I had total laryngitis the day before, got a 15-minute window at show
time when I stopped coughing and was able to sing, then immediately
started feeling worse. Thank goodness, that's finally going away.
This
new
show
is
the
answer
to
all
of
you
who
keep
asking
me
if
I
ever
sing anything serious. It's
called "Cole Porter: Elegance and Decadence," and I will
be singing major heart-tuggers such as "Every Time We Say Goodbye," but
I still reserve the right to perform silly things like "The Tale of the
Oyster." The goal is to bring an elegant, Manhattan-style cabaret
show to downtown Dallas. We promise the perfect romantic show,
whether you're on your first date, your 50th anniversary, or you just
love the Great American Songbook. The Cole Porter show debuts
July 21, and reservations are highly recommended! Click here for info, or click here to make reservations and learn about the
new theatre, where something fun is now going on every weekend in
downtown Dallas!
And
now,
a
few
tidbits
from
the
news... *****************************************
If
you
ever
wonder
why
politicians
are
afraid
to
cut
Social
Security,
this
should explain it.
Our
age-defying
hero
of
the
day
is
Elisabeth
Rubin,
who
is
86,
has
had
five
strokes,
a
broken
hip and uses a walker.She was waiting for a bus near Madison
Square Garden when a middle-aged Hispanic mugger grabbed her purse.But she held on and began beating him with
her umbrella.She later said she wishes
she'd
thought to poke him in the eye with the sharp end.He got the purse away, saw it held only $5 and some cornbread,
and yelled, "You're a prostitute!" in Spanish.Rubin
snapped
back,
"Your
mother's
a
prostitute."He ran away, but
Rubin is scouring the area with police, looking for him.She said he'd better hope the cops find him
before she does, and she asked the police to let her beat him up.A young reporter asked, "You could do
that?"She replied, "Oh,
yes." How do you think she got that broken hip? Kickin'
mugger
butt! This jerk had better turn himself in now; he'll be much safer
in
prison.
*****************************************
Dermatologist Eric
Finzi has applied for a
patent to use Botox for depression. He had a brainstorm after
he injected it into 10 patients'
facial muscles, making it impossible for them to frown, and they felt
less
depressed. Or at least, they looked
less depressed, and that's what really
matters. My theory is that they
felt less depressed
because they looked ten years younger.
*****************************************
In South Korea, the
latest
gift
trend
for
parents
is
plastic
surgery.
Their Parents'
Day holiday was in May, and clinic appointments for that time are up 50
percent in five years, thanks to
people giving their parents gift certificates for Botox, facelifts,
liposuction, hair transplants and liver spot removal. The parents
are now requesting this and say they're very happy to receive it.
Another upside to this gift is that if you
erase your mom's stretch marks and worry lines, she can't blame them on
you anymore. And if you give her enough Botox, she won't be able
to raise an eyebrow at anything you do.
*****************************************
Let's finish with a celebrity quote,
this time from Jay Leno's monologue...
“The Japanese have
invented a female android
that can make four facial expressions.Which is pretty amazing, considering most women in Beverly Hills
can’t
do that.” May 4, 2006 I always start my show
with a
dedication, and I think I might
dedicate the next one to Wook
Kundor. According to the Harian Metro tabloid of Malaysia,
Mrs.
Kundor, a 104-year-old widow, recently married Muhamad Noor Che Musa, a
33-year-old army veteran. It's his first marriage and her
21st. Now, there's a heroine in the battle against ageism!
Musa
said
he
didn't
marry
her
for
her
money
because
she
doesn't
have
any,
so
she
is
not the Martha Raye of
Malaysia. He said he initially sympathized with her for
being childless, old and alone, but he found peace and a sense of
belonging with
her, and she made him want to stay in one place for the first
time. That's right: he finally found a 104-year-old woman who was
able to overcome his fear of commitment. Naturally,
this
made
international
news,
but
if
a
104-year-old
man
married
a
33-year-old
woman,
it
would
be
just another day in Beverly
Hills. .***************************************** On the
other hand, maybe I'll dedicate the
show to the new poster boy for too much plastic surgery: Kenny
Rogers. Ever since he appeared on "American Idol," Kenny's
unnaturally smooth face and tiny eyes have become the talk
of
the
Internet, and Jay Leno can't stop
obsessing over it. Kenny admits
that
his
surgeon
went
too
far and made his eyelids too tight, but
he
plans to "fix" that. This is where you run into trouble: when you
go too far, but you think, "No problem, I'll just have it fixed."
This is how Michael Jackson ended up "fixing" his nose so many times
that seems to have fallen off.
Of
course,
the
big
question
is
"Why?"
It's
exactly
what
you
might
think:
Kenny
told
People
magazine,
"I
think when you're in the public eye, you feel
a pressure to stay younger looking," adding, "The first six years of my
career, I got more comments on my weight than on
my singing."
The odd thing, of
course,
is that in
recent years, Kenny had carved out more of a career as a grizzed
character actor in westerns such as "The Gambler" than as a country-pop
singer. Now, he has to hope his new records garner airplay (and
good luck in today's youth-obsessed radio market) because there aren't
many westerns being made about grizzled old gamblers who look as if
they share a plastic surgeon with George Hamilton. ***************************************** Finally, I
love a good celebrity quote about plastic surgery, and Russell
Crowe
has
delivered
a
doozy. According
to London tabloids, Russell gave an
interview in
which he allegedly discussed whether his "Quick and the Dead" co-star
Sharon
Stone had plastic surgery for "Basic Instinct 2" (for the record, Stone
vehemently denies having a facelift, and I'll defend to the death her
right to have one, or not have one, or have one and deny she had one).Crowe said, "A lot seems to have
changed," then warming to his favorite subject (rearranging people's
faces), he said, "You can end up looking like a startled chimpanzee.The eyes are gone, the lips are like rubber
tires - or more like an orangutan that has been kicked in the arse." His reps later claimed that the quotes
were
"taken completely out of context."If she heard the whole thing, I'm sure
Sharon would realize
he meant that startled simian simile as a compliment. He'd better
hope so, anyway, or else he might end up on the receiving end of an
orangutan-style arse kicking himself. April 27, 2006 Again, my apologies for going so
long
without blogging. I'm still
reeling from Wednesday's "Dr. Phil"
show, featuring the idiot husband
who berated his wife for not
looking like a Victoria's Secret model (she'd gained 15 pounds and
gotten cottage-cheesy legs after having THREE KIDS!!
Grrrrrr!!! He looked like he'd gained 50 pounds since their
wedding, and I wonder how many pregnancies he's been
through?) Meanwhile, Pat, my husband and webmaster who is
smart enough to have no complaints about my legs but who has to post
and format all this stuff, has been very busy and is just getting some
energy back after being sick for a looooooong
time. He promises he will try to get stuff posted more regularly
in the near future. To tide you over, a few interesting tidbits
from the news...
*****************************************
Who says we don’t
live in a wondrous
new
age?Five doctors in London have
started a
service
called
Botonics
that offers old-fashioned house calls to
provide at-home Botox treatments.For
80 pounds ($142 US), a doctor will come to your home and deliver Botox,
chemical peels, dermal filler injections and other cosmetic
procedures just as if he were delivering a pizza (if you’ve had too
many
pizzas delivered, maybe they’ll offer door-to-door liposuction next.) The only
way it could be more convenient is if the Botox doctor moved right into
your
house and lived there.I think that’s
the arrangement Madonna has. ***************************************** A
new
Zogby poll asked Americans what turns them on and off about the
opposite sex
and got some answers that might surprise plastic surgeons and Hollywood
studio executives.It seems that 69
percent of men say
breast implants aren't sexy, and only 6 percent prefer Botox to
wrinkles.In fact, 70 percent of men don't
even want
women to wear makeup. But then, that could just be because 70
percent of men have never
seen women without makeup. I assume the other 30 percent want
women to
wear
only enough makeup to cover all the plastic surgery scars.
If men say they
prefer flat-chested girls with
no makeup to Pamela Anderson, it can mean only one thing: the poll taker questioned them when their wives were
in the room. On the other side of the
aisle, women said they are turned off by men
with toupees (only 2 percent found those sexy, and they're probably
just the women who really love their pet hamsters), as well as facial
hair and pec implants or other surgical alterations.
The
Alan
Alda
"sensitive
man"
era
also
seems
to
be
over:
most
women do like a man who can cook; but by 2-to-1 margins,
women said they'd prefer a lumberjack to a metrosexual (unless he's a
Monty Python-style transvestite lumberjack). Women also find men
who cry at movies to be
unsexy. Particularly if they cry at Arnold
Schwarzenegger movies. ***************************************** While
Americans worry
that they’re too heavy,
Australians
must
have
the
opposite
problem.British-born Helen Evans moved to Brisbane four years ago to
marry her
Australian boyfriend, but she's facing deportation because she's not
fat
enough.She's always been tiny and
weighed only 37 kg (81 pounds) when she applied for citizenship.She was told she was too skinny and had to
prove
she had no health problems and gain 10 kg (22 pounds) or be deported.This must be why Nicole Kidman moved to
America. After $1300 worth of
tests, she found she had a gluten intolerance and
she's since been able to gain 13 pounds (her Australian husband’s new
motto is
“Throw another shrimp to Barbie!”), but she’s still facing deportation
if she
doesn’t pack on a few more pounds.She
said people think it's laughable when they learn she's had to go
through all
this because she's too thin to be an Australian. Still, there are worse
things:
if she moved to Beverly Hills, she’d be deported for being too fat. ***************************************** Pinup
model
Cindy
Margolis,
who
billed
herself
as
the
"most
downloaded
woman"
on
the
Internet,
has
finally
agreed
to
pose
nude
for
Playboy
on
her
40th
birthday.She said she always
refused because "in the past, it would have been for gratuitous
reasons" (and the star of the "Lingerie Bowl" wouldn't want to
do anything gratuitous), but at 40, it's empowering! Sh
e
said, "Thank goodness for 'Desperate Housewives.' You're
not dead just because you are married
and have children...It will be fun to go up against the 20-year-olds
and show
them that they don't have anything on me."
Probably
because
with
Photoshop,
Hefner
will
make
her
look
19.
March
30, 2006
I
know, it's been forever since an
update. I have a ton of stuff piled up, but we've been very busy
with a number of projects, and there's been no time for blogging.
Also, it's taken us forever to get over the black lung disease or
whatever it was. My husband Pat hasn't felt much like
webmastering, but he's finally vertical again, or at least as vertical
as he ever gets, considering his back problems. I'll try to add
more, but here's a little something to tide you over (some chum to get
the sharks awakened again)...
Susan
Sarandon is considering getting plastic surgery, possibly on the
neck, but not around the eyes because she says that as an actress, "I
need my face to move" (although that hasn't stopped about 75% of the
other actresses working today). Oddly enough, she said she might
also get her breasts enlarged, even though she admits they are already
"at least a C, sometimes a D, depending on the bra." I guess she
wants to go through the entire alphabet.
And
why would someone who's already
famous for her voluptuousness want to make her breasts even
bigger? To keep getting work in Hollywood, of course.
Sarandon said, "Directors cast the men they want to be and the women
they want to have."
Except,
of course, for all those
directors who cast only the women they've already had. *****************************************
The
journal
"Age
&
Aging"
reports
that in one of the first-ever studies of marriage and perceived age,
Prof. Kaare
Christensen analyzed photos of 2,000 twins over age 70 and their
marital and
medical histories.The study found that
on the average, men who marry look two years younger than their real
age, and
married women look two years younger than they really are (Only two
years? If the woman wants to stay married, she'll have to do
better than that!)
Prof. Christensen said it shows people need
partners
to take care of them and
that long-term relationships increase happiness and reduce stress. Or maybe it just shows that married women are so
overworked, they haven't had time to pose for a new picture in the last
two years.
"Stop
The Presses!" Dept:
The
study also
found that having children helps men look
younger, unless they have more than three, but being a mother did not
help
women look younger. Unless
the kid grows up to be a plastic
surgeon.
*****************************************
Here's
one of those "And What Did You Think
Would Happen?" stories...
Sabrina
Pace works in a car
rental company in Cardiff, Wales, and perhaps inspired by modern air
bag technology, she took some time off to have her
breasts enlarged from B to DD-cups.When
she
returned, she claimed her boss told her she should pose for a calendar
and asked her to close her sweater "unless you want me to talk to your
breasts."She was so offended that he paid
attention to her newly-expanded chest, she filed a sexual
harassment complaint. But the
employment tribunal rejected her claim.
Well,
to be honest,
they didn't hear her claim:
they were too busy staring at her breasts.
So
now,
she's
doing
a
calendar.
*****************************************
Finally, a
celebrity quote from Sharon Stone, who is appearing naked all over in
"Basic Instinct 2" and reportedly has been offered $1 million to pose
for Playboy:
"Was the first film
really 1992? God, I must now be 103 in
actress years."
Feb.
28, 2006
Again,
sorry for the
long...............pauses between posts, but just as Pat and I think
we're getting better, this grunge comes back worse. Whatever this
is, half the people I know in the local theater scene are suffering
from it. It's a great time to be an understudy. I can't
even
talk today and am trying not to cough (my singing instructor once told
me that clearing your throat is actually very bad for singers and they
should try to avoid it. Rod Stewart followed this advice and look
how well he did).
Anyway,
I'm too sick for a lot of
commentary, but I'll just point you to a few things that have been
piling up and I promise there'll be more later... I recently discovered a terrific
charity called Doris
Daniely Outreach. They help
women who have had radical
mastectomies for breast cancer and need reconstructive surgery.
It's all-volunteer (no overhead or staff), and since it's such a
perfect match for the part of my show in which I talk about how
"plastic surgery can be your friend," I hope to be able to do a benefit
show for them, possibly at the Women's Museum at Fair Park. Pat
is working on that idea. I'll let you know if it pans out.
In the meantime, please click their link, learn about them, and send
them a donation! Speaking
of ways in which plastic surgery
can be a woman's friend, here's
one I bet you never thought of. Warning: this one is not for the
kiddies. Click at your own risk. I recently stumbled across a terrific
website for objective scientific
info all sorts of skin treatments, anti-aging products, etc. It's
called SmartSkinCare.com. They don't sell, endorse or
advertise any particular products, they just give information, answer
questions, and give you tips on cost-effective skin care techniques
that work. Definitely worth bookmarking. Here's
the
kind
of
headline that really
sets me off. I'm thinking of
putting this in my show. In case it gets removed, it's a picture
of Madonna assuming a feet-behind-the-head yoga position (at least I
assume it's a yoga position, but with Madonna, you never know).
The headline from the chirpy British tabloid is, "Not Bad For 47,
Madonna!" Because when anyone over 29 does anything at all, the
story is never about the person or the accomplishment, it's about her
age, right? Well, I guess it's not too bad for a headline writer
with an IQ of 47. The Dallas Morning News dives
headfirst
onto
my
latest
peeve with this article, ostensibly about
food trends, but of course, it's really all about age, and that cliche
that puts my teeth on edge, "aging baby boomers." Here's the
first sentence: "As the first baby boomers start hitting 60,
prunes are enjoying a comeback." It goes on to talk more about
"wrinkled rockers" and other standard "aging baby boomer" article
bullet points than it does about prunes. Apparently, when we ate
prune danishes at 25, we were just eating prune danishes, but now we're
declaring that we're aging baby boomers in solidarity with Danish
newspaper editors. As Freud might have said, "Sometimes a prune
danish is just a prune danish. So get over yourself.
That'll be $200." Finally,
Crunch
gym
in
Times
Square, the gym that introduced "Cardio
Striptease," has a new workout for women, and, I suppose, really
dedicated drag queens: "Stiletto Strength." It's designed to get women
into shape for wearing high heels and
to make their legs look good.It starts
with aerobics in sneakers, to strengthen abs and legs, then the women
don six-inch heels and do exercises such as walking while holding one
hand above their heads, as if moving through a crowded bar and trying
not to spill a
drink (this should be called "The Paris Hilton Workout"). A podiatrist asked to assess the class
said, "Women shouldn't wear high
heels," but a Crunch spokeswoman said
they're going to wear stilettos anyway, and this will at least make it
less painful. Although it will certainly destroy the gym mats. That's it for now. More coming soon
if I can ever vanquish this
nasty bug.
Feb. 10,
2006
Sorry for the long
lags
in blog postings.This sickness that's
been going around is really tenacious, what little energy it's left me
has had
to be expended on personal issues(getting our house reintiated into a historic district, etc.),
planning
the CD, and working on materials that I hope will get the show into a
major
theater festival this summer.We do
have a local public show set for July 12 at Pocket Sandwich Theater,
but we
hope to schedule others sooner, as soon as we can get a few problems
ironed out
with the venues.Meanwhile, let's catch
up on some news from the age, beauty and health front.
Here's
some
good
news:
the University of Rochester Medical Center found that women who begin
suffering
memory lapses as menopause approaches are probably not suffering from
early
Alzheimer's.It's just that they are
under so much stress, from jobs, kids, husbands, etc., that their
brains can't
learn the information well enough in the first place for them to
retrieve
it.They said women should relax and
stop worrying that they are losing their minds.
Yeah, relax: you're not
losing your mind, you're just being driven out of it!That's a vast improvement!
***************************************** Several new medical
studies have come out proving that everything you thought you knew
about
dieting is wrong.For instance, a
massive eight-year study of over 49,000 women found no link between
eating a
low-fat diet and reducing your risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes
or even
weight gain.That's right, you can
force yourself to eat a low-fat diet and still not lose weight.Man, is Oprah having a lousy month! Of course, this really
isn't surprising for those of us who follow the Perricone Diet.It's not how much fat you eat that matters,
it's the kind of fat.I went on that
diet not for weight loss but health reasons, and I eat plenty of food,
but I
actually have to make an effort to keep my weight up!That's what tends to happen when you eat only healthy food.The hard part is learning to enjoy eating
salmon more than fudge. Another study disproved
the notion that if
you
eat
after
8
p.m., you'll gain more weight. The
study on
monkeys found that the time at which they ate had no effect at all on
weight
gain.The lead researcher said the body
can't tell what time it is (then what good are those damn biological
clocks?),
and it's not "when you eat" that matters, but "how many
calories" you eat. So eat at any hour.Just don't eat at
every hour. **************************************** Miramax
Films co-founder
Harvey Weinstein claims that the "Today" show, "Good Morning
America" and "The View" all rejected Dame Judi Dench for
interviews about her Oscar-nominated role in "Mrs.
Henderson
Presents" (a wonderful movie, by the way) because she's too old to
appeal
to their target demographic-- an
odd statement coming from a show that stars Barbara Walters, who is
older
than Judi
Dench. Weinstein said his own
mother was offended by the snub, saying, "What do they think,
25-year-old people
can't watch 70-year-old people? The insanity of youth. It also assumes
none of
us like our families."Spokesmen
for the shows denied snubbing Dame Judi, noting that she had appeared
before (of course, she was
younger then),
but they were simply unable to accommodate an appearance for her at
this
time.They were too booked up with more
scintillating conversationalists, such as Dakota Fanning and Paris
Hilton. ***************************************** Beverly Hills
dermatologist Dr. Vail Reese announced his annual
Skinny
Awards for the
best
and worst celebrity skin.His kudos go
to Joaquin Phoenix for becoming a leading man despite not covering his
lip scar
with a mustache, and Reese Witherspoon for not getting Botox, "knowing
her
forehead muscles convey emotion even as they slowly produce aging
furrows."Of course, next year,
she'll be on his worst list because of her repulsive aging furrows.I recommend the Perricone Diet, Reese.It keeps my skin remarkably smooth and
unlined, and I express emotions two, sometimes three times a day. Dr. Reese's disses
include Katie Holmes for going out in public with a nasty cold sore
(no, not
Tom Cruise) and "Lost" star Evangeline Lilly for displaying the
cellulite on her rear.And here's a
shocker: His worst skin list is topped by the multiple epidermal woes
of
Brad
Pitt (severe acne scars) and Angelina Jolie (acne, moles, abdominal
scars,
tattoos and puffy lips, which Reese believes are not collagen-enhanced).Turns out Angelina has so many moles,
those
aren't tattoos: they're the result of Brad playing connect-the-dots in
bed. The good news here: no
matter how bad your skin may be, count your blessings that at least you
don't
look like those horrible mutants, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie! *****************************************
Finally,
the
big
news:
"Skin
Deep," the first glossy magazine devoted to "image
enhancement" -- i.e., plastic surgery -- is about to hit the stands
(wait
a minute: aren't all glossy magazines devoted to the effects of plastic
surgery?)The publisher said it will
focus on the "fascinating, everchanging world of cosmetic plastic
surgery,
skin care, anti-ageing and health and medicine."The
New
York
Post
says
articles
in
the
debut
issue
tell
what
it's
like
to
be
a
collagen injection junkie and declare, "In general,
looking
older is not welcome in most social circles."("Astounding
deduction,
Holmes!") The editor said this
subject deserves its own magazine because society discriminates, not
only
against the obese but "just against those that aren't seen as
attractive.I'm not saying you have to
be stellar, but if you look like someone they have to look at and then
look
away..." My question:What if you have to look away
because their
intensely white bleached teeth are blinding you? I suppose I'll have to
pick up a copy of the debut issue of Skin Deep (Motto: "Beauty
is...Skin
Deep!") and report to you on it.Just don't blame me if I look at it, and then have to look away
for
awhile... Jan. 24,
2006
Sorry to be
lagging so much in posting
new stuff, but this grunge just keeps hanging on. I wish it would
go away already. It's hard to sing when you're coughing your head
off, although some of the contestants on last week's "American Idol"
auditions might have sounded better if they'd tried it.
Dr. Phil
had a show Monday
that I had to tell you about, since it was all about age, looks and
plastic surgery. He talked to a woman who can't deal with her
husband's jealousy since
she lost a lot of weight; a contestant from "The Swan" who can't
reconcile her glamorous new looks with her poor self-image; and most
important to me, my new hero, a lady named Audrey. Audrey was on
Dr. Phil because she is 62 but she looks great, has fun, wears sexy
clothes, dates a guy who is 28, and refuses to let age define her in
any way. In other words, she's...
MY TARGET
AUDIENCE!!!
Of course,
she was on "Dr. Phil" because
her wonderfully refreshing attitude naturally caused her to be
classified as insane and delusional. Her daughter was upset
because she refused to act and dress "grandmotherly." Dr. Phil
even joined in a bit, and tried to get her to (to use a phrase that
makes me homicidal) "act her age." But Audrey, God bless her, was
having none of it. She said:
"I may be 62
years old, but
that doesn't mean I have to dress like it or act like it. I can
be a grandma and I can be hot as well! I prefer the younger
styles and looking young. I enjoy being sexy."
And what
thrilled and amazed me even more was the
studio audience's
reaction. They didn't tsk-tsk or shake their heads or stand up to
tell her to "get real, girl." Instead, they applauded her.
Wildly! More than that, they loved
her!
Sometimes,
in
this
age-obsessed
culture
we
live
in,
I
start
to
wonder
if
the
message
of
"My
Ship Has
Sailed" really resonates; if anyone gets what I'm saying and
agrees with it. But this show gave me new hope. It told me
there really are women out there who agree with my philosophy that age
is just a number.
And dammit,
I'm not an accountant!
*****************************************
Incidentally,
to give Dr. Phil his props, he had a great quote today, to the woman
who'd had all the plastic surgery on "The Swan." He told
her:
“There
are a lot of
really, really good-looking
people in Hollywood that I just wouldn’t even swerve the car for.”
