Botox For Eyelashes

The lead for this news item today doesn't really come as a surprise:

"First it was frozen foreheads. Now it’s Betty Boop eyelashes."


"Allergan, the company that turned an obscure muscle paralyzer for eyelid spasms, Botox, into a blockbuster wrinkle smoother, hopes to perform cosmetic alchemy yet again.

"At the end of the month, the company plans to introduce Latisse, the first federally approved prescription drug for growing longer, lusher lashes."

Speaking as a guy with a wife who doesn't need this crap to stay beautiful, the surprising thing is buried further down in the article:

An Allergan spokesman said that "many women would not blink at spending $120 for a one-month, three-milliliter supply of the drug. He compared the cost of longer lashes to a daily cup of coffee.

“If you think about it in terms of luxury, it’s four dollars a day,” he said. “We think this is fairly acceptable to a large segment of people even in these times.”

"But one analyst...said the expense of Latisse and the inconvenience of obtaining a doctor’s prescription might deter many women from trying it. Health insurance does not typically cover such cosmetic treatments.

"[He] said Latisse might have more value to Allergan as a gateway drug that brings new patients to cosmetic medicine and leads them to try Botox.

"Indeed, Jennifer Nobriga, one of a pair of stay-at-home mothers behind the Web site beautyinreallife.blogspot.com, said she intends to stick with plain old mascara rather than splurge on the eyelash drug.

“It would not be at the top of my list,” said Ms. Nobriga of Woodbridge, Va. “I would rather spend the money on a good under-eye cream.”

The $120 per month doesn't surprise me either.

What does surprise me is the casual use of the phrase "gateway drug" in the article, in referring to Latisse.

That's scary, just like an earlier Botox post on the Freeway.

United States Of Tara

We watched the first episode of "United States of Tara" on Showtime OnDemand tonight (the formal premiere will be on Sunday night).

It's even better than advertised.

In this episode, we meet two of Tara's four "alters," and Toni Collette is astonishing.

If you like "Weeds" and "Californication," you'll love "United States of Tara."

Here's a little preview:

Andromeda: Trance Gemini

"I am the avatar of a sun, a star.

All things come from me.

You are elements of the sun.

As I make you, I am able to destroy you.

As I destroy you, I am able to create.

Awareness is where we travel.

No path.

I am all gravity, and we exist in all universes and those in between.

What destroys you in this universe will deliver you to the next."
--Trance Gemini

Here's everything else you need to know about Trance Gemini.

And here's how to become Trance Gemini:

Obama's BlackBerry


From today's New York Times:

"Of all the fights facing Mr. Obama as he prepares for the White House, one of the most maddening for him is the prospect of losing the BlackBerry that has been attached to his belt for years.

"It is, he has vigorously argued, an essential link to keeping him apprised of events outside his ever-tightening cocoon."

I love my BlackBerry too, and would miss it. But I'm guessing that many people interpret this as missing the ability to read emails, or to text friends on-demand.

But those are not the primary reasons.

I would hate to lose access to my personal calendar and contacts, and to all of the instant connections I have to media, sports, and other things I'm interested in, through the various BB apps I've installed.

That's the stuff I'd really miss. And I think he will miss them, too.

Maybe, You Know, She Wouldn't Be Too Bad After All...


There is something compelling about Maureen Dowd's advocacy of Caroline Kennedy in today's NYT:

"Ask not, you know, what your country can, like, do for you. Ask what you, um, can, you know, do for your country.

"After a lifetime of shying away from the public spotlight, Caroline Kennedy asked herself what she could do for her country.

"Her soft-spoken answer — to follow her father and two uncles and serve in the Senate — got her ripped to shreds in the, you know, press.

"I know about 'you knows.' I use that verbal crutch myself, a bad habit that develops from shyness and reticence about public speaking."

"People complain that the 51-year-old Harvard and Columbia Law School grad and author is not a glib, professional pol who knows how to artfully market herself, and is someone who hasn’t spent her life glad-handing, backstabbing and logrolling.

"I say, thank God."

The Green Wonderbra

Recycling news from the Wall Street Journal:

"Ingrid Goldbloom Bloch, an artist in Massachusetts, looks for Coke cans and washing-machine-hose clamps, weaving pieces into garters. The red and silver garter is one of 13 items in her line of trashy lingerie, which also employs old dryer vents and, in her homage to the Wonderbra, welded steel."

"The recycling bin at the Springdale Tavern across the street from Chris Tymoshuk's studio in Oregon's Multnomah County is a treasure chest she is mining with particular diligence. Thanks to holiday revelers at the bar -- and fewer profit-minded scavengers looking for cans to redeem -- she has a lot more inventory to choose from.

"I like a long, slender can," she said, preferring #10 orange- and cranberry-juice cans she burns with an oxyacetylene torch and renders into garden sculpture, candle holders and lanterns.

"The availability of so much excess trash has the 47-year-old Minnesota native dreaming of new media to work with. A charter member of Oregon's "Cracked Pots" art-show group -- a loose community of artists who work almost entirely in recycled trash -- Ms. Tymoshuk has been inspired to try her hand with milk jugs and Styrofoam.

I wonder if Ingrid lives in Cambridge?

It's All HGTV's Fault!!

"That's right. The cable network HGTV is the real villain of the economic meltdown."

Finally! The root cause of the economic crisis has been exposed!

All this time, I thought it was just me shouting at the television as I watched whining Yuppies blather on about granite countertops.

"'How much money can these people possibly make?'" I shout at my wife before wrestling the remote from her hand and switching it to the nearest sports program. 'The guy can barely string together two sentences!'"

"And yet on episode after episode for this entire irrational decade, HGTV pumped up the housing bubble by parading the most mediocre, unworthy-looking homeowners into our living rooms to watch while they put their tacky, run-of-the-mill tract homes on the market for twice what they paid and then went out and bought houses with price tags too obscene to repeat."

"You couldn't watch these shows without concluding that you must be an idiot and a loser if you lived in a house you could actually afford."

(Photo: Kendra Todd, host of "My House is Worth What?")

Chains


The sideline chains used in all NFL games are a little more tricked-out with color and plastic coverings, but they are essentially identical to the ones used when I played high school football fifty years ago.

In the extreme high tech world of the NFL, this analog anomaly is still around because nothing has been found to improve on it.

“There must be a better way,” said Pat Summerall, the longtime N.F.L. player and broadcaster. “Because games are decided, careers are decided, on those measurements.”

Ideas have come and gone, but "inventors like Alan Amron, a 60-year-old from Long Island, plan their extinction."

"In 2003, with the help of Summerall, Amron presented a sophisticated laser system to the competition committee."

"Using lasers permanently mounted into stadium lights, a green line — visible to players, coaches and fans in the stadium, and to television viewers — would be projected onto the field to mark the line for a first down."

"Amron said it would be accurate to within a sixteenth of an inch."

I'm sure we will soon see a digital alternative to chains, but the game will lose one of its most dramatic rituals:

"[An] official protectively holds the ball against the ground, because precision is suddenly important. The chains arrive from the sideline. An official slowly pulls the chain taut. Breaths are held."

“When we measure, we make sure the players are clear so that TV can get a good shot of the actual measurement,” [Mike] Pereira [Director of NFL Officials] said."

"Suspense would be lost if every first down were determined instantly."