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A New Wrinkle: The mad craze for Botox - latest face-lift solutionNational Review , June 17, 2002 by Rob LongThe Academy Players Directory is a huge, multi-volume set of soft-backed books, each containing hundreds of small, passport-size head shots of pretty much every working actor in the film and television business. If you`re an actor and you`ve ever had even the tiniest role, you`re in the Academy Players Directory. The books are organized along the most rigid principles. For women, there are the "younger leading woman," "leading woman," "older leading woman," "ingenue," and "comic" sections. For men, roughly the same. Children get their own special volume. And because the directory is used by casting directors, the effect of all of those little head shots staring out at you is pretty much that of going to the local pound to pick out a dog. The "older leading" male dogs give smoldering, James Bond-ish looks into the camera, while the "older leading" female dogs try the slightly rueful half-smile. The "younger leading" dogs of both sexes pout dramatically or smile with such vitality and desperation that you want to take them all home, give them water and treats, and take them to the vet for shots and neutering. Ironically, it`s the comic section that`s the saddest. These are the mutts -- the droopy-eyed types with weight problems and lips that curl down instead of up. The comic actor and actress sections of Academy Players are a checkerboard of what casting directors euphemize as "interesting looks": too fat, too skinny, no hair, too much hair -- and always, male or female, squinty lines around the eyes and a foforehead striated with wrinkles. Comic actors laugh, you see, so it`s only natural that they have laugh lines. In real life, though, no one wants to be in the "comic" section. No one wants to star in the comedy version of his life. We don`t want to be thought of as having an "interesting look" by our loved ones and co- workers. We all want to be in the "younger leading" section of the Academy Players Directory. Some of us may not be able to pull off the "younger" part, but, given the choice, we`d all rather smolder sexily or smile seductively than put on a funny face and slip on a banana peel. Now, of course, we have a choice. The newly saucer-eyed Greta Van Susteren, when making the trip from CNN to Fox News, made a brief stop at the plastic surgeon`s for an eye-tuck and a general face tightening. She reported to work not looking like the old, sleepy-faced Greta with the wrinkly eyes and the lazy mouth, but as something and someone else -- the "leading woman" version of her old face. She had "a little work done," as the kids say. She took a lot of grief for it -- and, truthfully, she ended up looking pretty weird -- but it`s not like she`s the only one. Anyone who has looked on the shiny, strangely embalmed face of Al Pacino recently knows that there is such a thing as "too much work," and don`t get me started on Mary Tyler Moore. But these are people in the public eye. They look at themselves in photographs (and the mirror, let`s be honest) pretty much all the time. It`s probably an occupational hazard. They spend so much time scrutinizing the individual parts of their bodies -- the eyes, the forehead, the flabby arms -- that it`s only natural that they would eventually lose sight of the whole package -- the way the nose sits on the head, the way the eyes crinkle expressively, the way the mouth seems to relax into a grin -- and instead try to clip that nose shorter, stretch those eye-wrinkles tighter, and trim that mouth into a more rounded curve. The results look less like younger leading versions of their old comic selves and more like computer- animated versions of their old comic selves. All of this cutting and pasting is expensive, and that, until recently, has kept most of us from turning ourselves into "younger leading" faces. A few years ago, if you saw some bug-eyed, fish-mouthed character walking down the street, well, you knew they were doing okay in the money department. But recent developments in personal image enhancement have put all of this within reach. I`m talking about Botox, which, of course, is the newest form of non- surgical make-me-look-younger face-fixing. It`s pretty simple: The doctor injects a small amount of liquid in which is suspended a tiny, non-lethal amount of botulinum toxin -- that`s botulism, to those of us who are sticklers for this kind of thing -- and the toxin deadens and paralyzes the tiny muscles around the eyes and face that create wrinkles. Shortly after injection, the wrinkles relax and disappear, leaving a smooth, young-looking young leading face. The only trouble -- if you can call it that -- is that the tiny facial muscles are paralyzed for six months or so, at which time the toxin wears off, and you`re back to the tiresome and exhausting process of brow- furrowing when perplexed, eye-crinkling when laughing, and, in general, expressing on the face what`s in the heart, or mind. Take a quick trip back to Dr. New Porsche Every Few Months, MD, FACS, however, and you`re back to numbed normal, for another six months. Sounds for sore eyes - types of music favored by artistsArtForum , Feb, 1995 by Jeffrey SlonimRemember Martin Scorsese`s take on the art world in New York Stories: Nick Nolte-as-macho-painter aping neo-Expressionist brushstrokes - Chuck Connelly`s canvases were used as props - to the deafening strains of "Whiter Shade of Pale" while Rosanna Arquette shrieks to be heard as the beautiful-but-neglected female-artist love interest. We often picture artists blasting a stereo while they work. Some do, of course - novelist Kathy Acker cranks tunes while she writes - but most of the artists and writers we talked with this month don`t seem to pump up the volume with abandon. Still, they are much involved in music. Wolfgang Tillmans snaps pictures in dance clubs; Stephen Prina plays in the band called Red Crayola; Barbara Ess` collective Drum Core put out a bootleg of women musicians; Kathy Acker continues to embrace rock `n` roll as a rebellion against her parents` entire world. Though they may not spin vinyl while they work, this group listens to a great deal of fabulous music. Tillmans recommends Hildegard Nef, a vintage German chanteuse. Ess grooves on Moroccan trance music. Critic Tricia Rose recommends Hole`s Live Through This. Stephen Prina`s professional approach to music has him hankering for old Fassbinder soundtracks. And these days Karen Finley likes a Hungarian rock star named Marta Sebastian. Sadly, after hours on the phone with these artful CD and vintage-vinyl junkies, I was all too ready to hemorrhage cash reserves at a choice used-record dive. CHRISTIAN MARCLAY (artist): I buy lots of records that I use in my mixes. I like a lot of strange, easy-listening music that people find a little tacky: Ferrante and Teicher`s prepared piano, Esquivel, Martin Denny, that type of thing. I also listen to a lot of downtown people I work with, like Elliott Sharp and Bill Frisell, and some string music, like the Soldier String Quartet; also a little jazz - Butch Morris, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Miles Davis. Sometimes I might just listen to classical - Schubert`s string quartets. I don`t play much music when I work. When I listen to music, I really listen to it - it`s not just background. If I`m tired and I want something to relax to, I won`t put on music, I`ll turn on the TV. KATHY ACKER (writer): I can tell you what I don`t like, though friends have tried to teach me otherwise: opera. I listen to old jazz stuff - Charles Mingus, Miles Davis - and right now I basically listen to girl rock: 7 Year Bitch, L7. I adore Sonic Youth. For the last month I`ve been obsessing about P.J. Harvey. The people I`ve listened to longest in rock are Van Morrison and Tom Waits. I probably know the words to three-quarters of Van Morrison`s songs. I love Motown. Whenever I`m down, that`s a flag waving in my inner mind. When I was a kid, there was my parents` world, which I hated, and then there was rock `n` roll. When I hear rock `n` roll, I still think of everything that isn`t my parents. I often write to music. Sometimes, lines end up in my books that I don`t mean to happen; like a kid, I repeat everything I`ve heard during the day. At the moment I have to write some songs. I told some friends of mine who have a band that I`d write some stuff for them. WOLFGANG TILLMANS (artist): I like pop music. I like house - harder house, techno house, electronic dance. I listen to old German songs, what we call Schlager, like Hildegard Nef, who`s a chanteuse from the late `50s and `60s. The other thing I come back to are French monastic songs, which are not like Gregorian chants but sound like new mantra singing. New Order and Soft Cell influenced me most in the `80s; "Blue Monday" and "True Faith" were like works of art. And all these anonymous little house techno tracks that never get much attention, I often think how much they function like an artwork. BARBARA ESS (artist): I`m part of a collective with a couple of other women, called Drum Core, and we put out a zine about women and drumming. We also put out a bootleg of music by women, and I really listened that into the ground. I usually fix on one thing and listen to it over and over again. A long time ago it was Patti Smith`s Horses; I actually wore my first copy out. I`ve gone back to listening to that record. I listen to a lot of Arabic music. A friend of mine gave me some trance music from Morocco. Then he gave me this tape of Persian love songs. I also got a ton of tapes from a Sufi teacher who`s in town now. But the tapes don`t really have much information. They say things like Good Songs Iran, #2. I took up running lately, and I`ve been listening to Hole and L7 when I run. I always go back to the Pretenders, Sonic Youth, Glenn Branca. I also like this Minneapolis band Hammerhead. I`m always listening to music in the darkroom, but I`m surprised to notice that when I`m trying to develop an idea it`s usually in silence. When I`m alone and feel like listening to music, I don`t have standards. I`m not ashamed of listening to Slayer or Sade. STEPHEN PRINA (artist): Lately I`ve been listening to Peer Raben`s soundtracks for Fassbinder movies, because I`m working on a music project that has something to do with them. I just ran into a CD rerelease of Suicide`s Suicide; I had been looking for "Frankie Teardrop" for a long time. Fassbinder used that song in In a Year of 13 Moons. Suicide really set the foundation for a lot of music that has now become assimilated. Eyes relaxation index
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