Manolo says, behold! Cold Plasma from Perricone, the greatest and bestest $155 per ounce skin cream of all time!

The reviewers all agree, it provides the unforgettable experience!
1.

I got this as a sample. I put it on and my face felt so nice right after, I really wanted to like this but the smell!!! It was so bad it was making me gag. I had to wash my face 3 times to get rid of it. Ever walk by a little fish pond on a hot day? And you can smell the fish in the water? Thats what this smells like.

2.

It’s just disgusting, the smell is simply wrong, but the results are right! I’ll try and suffer through gagging and nausea for the better skin I wake up with using cold plasma. I quickly top with a moisturizer to try and cover up the putrid stench, then I wash my hands. I don’t know if I can keep it up though, it’s a struggle to use.

3.

I couldn’t tell you if this works or not, because I had to return it. I used it a few times, and yes, my face did feel firmer and more moisturized, but it also stinks to high heaven. It’s like some ungodly combination of fish, wet dog and raw chicken. It could be the fountain of youth and we would never know, because this stuff literally smells that bad,

4.

This could have been water from the fountain of youth, and I wouldn’t use it…smells like raw chicken or chicken fat. Disgusting! I threw away the sample after 2 uses.

5.

After using this for a few days, I decided to read other reviews to see if anyone noticed the particularly foul smell of this product. I’m currently a med student and gagged the instant I put this on my face – it smelled distinctly of anatomy lab, something I’d prefer not to revisit on a regular basis. While it DOES feel great on my skin, and the smell gets a little better over time, I would never buy this product simply due to the smell. Whether it’s linked to an unpleasant experience or not, it seems that most find the smell fairly objectionable.

Rarely have product reviews been so amusing, and at the Sephora site there are plenty more just like these.

P.S. Now that the Manolo has thought about it, this cream, it is the sort of little league version of the myth of the vampire, no? The vampire is granted eternal existence, but in exchange he becomes the soulless, undead creature of the night. In the Perricone Cold Plasma version of the myth, your laugh lines are smoothed away, but you smell like afternoon low tide in Mumbai.

Manolo says, and for that we should be thankful.

Perhaps it is the power of the modern multivitamins, or has the makeup gotten so much better over the past 40 years? Maybe it is the old-lady hairdos, or are we taking better care of ourselves?

Whatever it is, most of the 46-year-old ladies of the Manolo’s current acquaintance look much, much better than this.

The Manolo wishes his dear internet friends the joy of this wondrous day!

omgwtf playing billiards in high heels

I began playing pool at eighteen. By nineteen, in all my ungainly glory, I had the brilliant thought that I should become a professional player.

I had ZERO skills. In fact, I had problems with the first shot of the game, the break shot.

The break is where you break the racked object balls apart with the cue ball. When done right, it’s as impressive as one of Tiger Woods’ long drives – all power, accuracy, and grace combined in one seamless, flawless, fluid motion. The key words there are “when done right”.

I had power but no grace. When I broke the balls (arms flailing, feet tripping), more often than not, I slammed my hand into the side of the table. Having swollen knuckles on my right index finger became a normal thing until a fashionable friend suggested I try wearing heels – being taller might help my hand miss the side of the table during my swing to break the balls.

I’d been a competitive runner almost my entire life and had never owned a pair of shoes that wouldn’t allow me to flee authorities at top speed in relative comfort (I was somewhat of a delinquent in my younger years). So, I bought a cheap pair of chunky-heeled loafers at a swap meet which made me three inches taller.

Soon, I was breaking the balls successfully without breaking my knuckles.

In hindsight, heels were not the solution. They were only a quick fix. What I truly needed was practice to improve my technique. I did improve to where heels weren’t necessary, but, by then, I was used to playing at a five-foot-four height.

I began to play competitively in tournaments.

Many players dismissed me as non-threat once they saw my choice in footwear. I didn’t blame them. Billiards was a game of finesse and how a player balanced herself (or himself) was very important. Solid footing meant more consistency in the execution of movement. Solid footing also generally meant having one’s entire foot on the ground. No serious player would risk teetering around the table in high heels. I took advantage of being underestimated and translated those instances into wins.

In the often dark-clothed and flat-footed world of pool, more people began to take notice of the “little girl in high shoes”. As more people associated me with my high heels, I took more notice of shoes in general. I became aware of the truly staggering variety and styles of shoes in the world. I no longer bought shoes based on height alone. I looked specifically for unusual, eye-catching shoes that could handle a fourteen-hour tournament day. In a predominantly male game populated by flat shoes, I had stumbled upon a way to be stylishly different.

I got better at the game and began to gamble at it.

The amounts I wagered varied from your average pair of Stuart Weitzmans to a few pairs of Christian Louboutins. Even when four-digit sums were at stake, I continued to play in heels, to the surprise of many. People asked, “Why? Why would you play in heels?” My standard answer: “Why not?” All that mattered was having solid footing and I had that, even in stilettos. Besides, my wins and losses were never due to the shoes I wore, but to me, the player, and how well I played.

Eventually, my collection of shoes became a sort of savings account. When I needed funds for tournaments or a stake for gambling (I gambled exclusively with my own money), I would look through my closet and sell off pairs as I needed. This was a convenient and practical way to thin out my herd of footwear. If I won, then I had room for new shoes. If I lost, then I had more closet room. It was a win-win situation.

In all the long years I’ve played this game, shoes have run the gamut for me. They’ve been practical. They’ve been beautiful. They’ve given me a unique identity in an often boring game and culture. They’ve even funded my adventures. But, there’s one more thing.

Pool has always been seen as a “man’s” game and any woman who plays will inevitably run into sexism about how “girls can’t play pool”. Therefore, I get a certain indescribable satisfaction when I beat a guy who proudly says, “I’ve never been beat by a girl before”, while wearing strappy green suede stiletto sandals adorned with a delicate feather pouf at the toes. That satisfaction increases exponentially when his friend looks at my shoes and tells him, “Dude. You just got beat by Tinkerbell.”

Over the course of this conversation, the Manolo has stated the few of his beliefs, which he will now deliver as the set of provocative Don Colacho style aphorisms:

1. Beauty is not negotiable.

4. Great beauty can make you the icon, but beauty is neither necessary nor common among icons.

****
And now, for the explications:

Beauty is not negotiable

'Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety'... ORLY?

The rules of feminine beauty cannot be changed, no matter how much we may wish that they could be. They are as immutable and as fixed as the stars in the heavens: youth, fecundity, symmetry, and the pleasing hip-to-waist ratio.

We may try to convince ourselves that there are other standards of beauty, but such attempts are pretty lies we tell ourselves to make us feel better about our relative lack of beauty.

As cruel as they seem, such statements say nothing about our worth as individuals, or our goodness, or our merit to our family or the world.

Physical beauty is the gift given without reference to merit.

Although, it is the strange gift that inevitably dissipates with age. And one may still be compelling even into oldest age, but one should not be confused: compelling and beautiful are not the same thing. Beauty is compelling, but often the compelling is not also beautiful.
.

Gloria Swanson, First Beautiful, then Compelling

If you are not blessed with beauty, change the game.

Voted Least Likely to Date James Brolin

As youthful beauty fades, or was perhaps never fully present, this is where the art and magic of contriving the desirable is found.

If you are not objectively beautiful, or are imperfectly beautiful, make the conversation about the beauty of your clothing, or your striking personality, your beautiful singing voice, or your intellectual merits. Change the game to more fully favor that which you possess or can acquire through canny means.

It is the opinion of the Manolo that making yourself desirable from the less than ideal position is much more interesting and intellectually satisfying than raw beauty itself. Although, sadly, perhaps never as innately appealing.

The Game Has Been Changed.

3. The best way to change the game is by being very different.

Shocking Schiaparelli

By adopting the pose of radical difference, by seeming to reject the immutable standards of beauty, or by rejecting the conventions of society itself, one may achieve the sort of hocus pocus transmutation, one that convinces others of our desirability even as the level of our objective beauty remains unchanged.

This is the secret of most of the fashion icons that our friend Miss Eliza has cited in her post Thou Shalt Be Iconic…

As the Manolo has said, great beauty is inherently compelling. It stands out from the crowd and calls attention to itself. If one is not blessed with great beauty, one must seek other means of differentiation.

This is where fashion and the development of personal style can help.

Wallis Simpson wears Elsa Schiaparelli's Lobster Dress

.
Great beauty can make you the icon, but beauty is neither necessary nor common among icons

Isabella Blow, not beautiful but iconic.

The Manolo has in the past cited the curious example of the indisputably iconic Elizabeth Taylor, the supernal beauty who has the abysmal taste in clothing. Her iconicity has nothing to do with the clothing she wears; at the best, such things are merely the adjunct to her iconic beauty.

However if you are not Elizabeth Taylor, not even by the wildest stretch of the imagination, and you wish to become iconic, what must you do?

Try putting the lobster on your head…

Iconic!

Iconic!

And now to address the special problem of Lady Gaga, the Manolo will quote the Salvador Dali.

“The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.”

Possibly the Idiot

The reason why the Manolo is hesitant to declare Lady Gaga the icon is that so much of her work is so identifiably derivative. First she was the Madonna, then she was the Roisin Murphy, and now, this week in Vogue, she is Isabella Blow, and for the Grammies it was back to Madonna.

The problem with the Lady Gaga as both the fashion icon and the pop star is that she clearly suffers from the Anxiety of Influence.

I get a lot of people who ask me how I manage to have the things I do –particularly my shoes– with the job I have. Now ignoring for a moment that it’s kind of a rude question, I do have a bit of wisdom to share as to how I managed to amass a shoe collection worth more than what I earn in a year without hooking, selling my kidneys or getting into credit card debt. While finding thousand dollar shoes for a hundred dollars is a bit on the ambitious side of things, if you follow my lead (and learn from my mistakes) you will be well on your want to your own enviable shoe salon.

But you must immediately go and read the whole thing.

Manolo says, Queen Ida, because it is the middle of January and the world looks gloomy, therefore we must brighten our day with song..

…and because we hope we can still be this super fantastic when we are in our 80s.

Manolo says, if you were wondering what became of Virginia…

Virginia O’Hanlon as an adult embraced the recognition and modest fame that came with her part in inspiring “Is There A Santa Claus?” (She once said in jest that she was “anonymous from January to November.”)

The editorial, she told an interviewer in 1959, when she was 67, “gave me a special place in life I didn’t deserve. It also made me try to live up to the philosophy of the editorial and to try to make glad the heart of childhood.”

She occasionally read the editorial at Christmas programs, as she did in 1933 and 1937 at Hunter College, her alma mater. Virginia earned a bachelor’s degree there in 1910 and a master’s degree two years later at Columbia University.

She was a teacher in the New York City schools, and became a principal at a school for handicapped children after earning a doctorate from Fordham University in 1935.

At her retirement in 1959, the New York Times observed that Virginia was “one of those rare persons whose given name alone has instant meaning for millions.”

There is yet more at the New York Times, including this charming picture of the young Virginia…

Virginia O'Hanlon

Manolo says,

Merry Christmas!

The Manolo wishes you the most super fantastic of holidays, warm and happy, with friends and family, good food and wonderful gifts!

“Yo Ho! my boys,” said Fezziwig. “No more work to-night! Christmas Eve, Dick! Christmas, Ebenezer! Let’s have the shutters up!” cried old Fezziwig with a sharp clap of his hands, “before a man can say Jack Robinson. . . .”

“Hilli-ho!” cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk with wonderful agility. “Clear away, my lads, and let’s have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Cheer-up, Ebenezer!”

Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn’t have cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life forevermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ballroom as you would desire to see on a winter’s night.

In came a fiddler with a music book, and went up to the lofty desk and made an orchestra of it and tuned like fifty stomach aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Misses Fezziwig, beaming and lovable. In came the six followers whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In came the housemaid with her cousin the baker. In came the cook with her brother’s particular friend the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from his master, trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress; in they all came, any-how and every-how. Away they all went, twenty couple at once; hands half round and back again the other way; down the middle and up again; round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping, old top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; all top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them.

When this result was brought about the fiddler struck up “Sir Roger de Coverley.” Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple, too, with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and twenty pairs of partners; people who were not to be trifled with; people who would dance and had no notion of walking.

But if they had been thrice as many, oh, four times as many, old Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. If that’s not high praise, tell me higher and I’ll use it. A positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig’s calves. They shone in every part of the dance like moons. You couldn’t have predicted at any given time what would become of them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance, advance and retire; both hands to your partner, bow and courtesy, corkscrew, thread the needle, and back again to your place; Fezziwig cut so deftly that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again with a stagger.

When the clock struck eleven the domestic ball broke up. Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side of the door, and shaking hands with every person individually, as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas!.

Manolo says, one of the most delightful scenes in all literature.