Wonderful as John Kerry’s acceptance speech was last night, the real star of the Democratic National Convention was perched atop his African mask of a face. The hair was, in a word, resplendent. As far as I could tell, Kerry followed the advice of the Washington barbers and trimmed the height of his coif. And boy, did it work! In the way his salt-and-pepper do held form, yet didn’t appear stiff or crunchy from hairspray, I felt America becoming more and more magnanimous with each rhetorical flourish. Even with sweat glistening on his face (he really should consider endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy surgery, by the way), Kerry still appeared radiant. His supporters seemed to bask in the reflected glow, and I could swear that for a second Michael Moore looked five or six pounds lighter. Much of the credit for all this must go to Olive Benson and Connie Sullivan, the two high-end stylists hired by the DNC to oversee convention hair care.

Clearly, with them backstage, help is on the way. (Or wait, was it “hope is on the way”? Oh, I can’t keep the speeches straight anymore. Let’s just all agree that, above all, hair is on the way!)

From an article in the Boston Globe, which came out right before the convention:

Sullivan and Benson relate that they’re ladies of a certain age; they won’t give specifics. But they have more than 60 years of hairstyling experience between them. Both are accustomed to exacting clients with particular tastes. …

“We will comb, gel, mousse, anything to calm that texture down, whatever it takes,” said Benson, who was voted ”Hairdresser Most Likely To Succeed” at her Cambridge high school.

The two women were chosen for the convention job by a New York publicist who the convention committee tapped to handle all hair and makeup needs for podium speakers. …

Avowed Democrats who will donate their time, the two women came close before to being stylists to the Democratic stars. …

Both Kerry and Edwards have grappled with their appearances and how much to respond to critics’ arrows. Kerry has clipped his hair slightly shorter in recent months, but dismisses allegations that he underwent Botox treatment to eliminate wrinkles. Edwards has resisted change for the most part, keeping his hair in a far side-part, one that some say makes him look boyish.

Sullivan and Benson have their own ideas for the men.

”They both have fabulous hair,” Sullivan said, before allowing that Kerry’s thick salt-and-pepper hair could be served by ”a certain amount of product, to hold it.”

Benson said both men’s hair could stand to be neater and fuller.

”There is better,” she said. ”And then there is the best.”

Bravo, ladies. You truly are best that America has to offer. Bravo, I say!

Contrary to what you might have read in The Devil Wears Prada or Love Monkey, there are plenty of benefits to a low-level job in publishing. Even if my job as an Acquisitions Assistant at the Penn Press is essentially that of a glorified secretary, I still get my share of perks: dental insurance, unrestricted high-speed internet access, free Penn Press tote bags, a one-block walk to work, and of course, whole heap-loads of free books (albeit ones I’ll never read—but still, nice bookshelf filler). Some people might question the financial compensation, and whether a job that pays in the mid-twenties makes the late-night shift at McDonald’s attractive. And these smug bastards are dead right. But when a Penn Press book like Understanding Terror Networks is featured prominently in a New Yorker article on al-Qaeda, or Negro League Baseball gets the cover of the New York Times Book Review, I put all thoughts of McGriddle flipping out of mind. Call me a sucker for the passing interest of high-brow intellectuals.

So, by and large, I’m proud of my job, of my honorable duty to bring recycled dissertations to the masses. But if there’s one thing I’m not proud of, it’s that the job has turned me into a compulsive coupon clipper.

I used to recoil in disgust at the nincompoops who present $2-off Swiffer coupons in the check-out line. Now, I fear, I’ve joined their ranks. It all started with the successful purchase of our car, a Pontiac Vibe, which, through the use of umpteen rebates and discounts, I was able to get for $6,000 off the sticker price. Soon, deals that hadn’t seemed intriguing before—when I was living in New York, earning twice what I am now—suddenly became irresistible. Furniture sales, free movie-ticket offers, obscure marinade discounts. These days, when marketing with Ana I’ll always reshelf the preferred brand in favor of the two-for-one option. I make the woman at the cash register wait in constipated agony while I rifle through my pockets for the latest Listerine voucher. In only a couple months, this practice has become something of an obsession. No, I haven’t just joined the nincompoops’ ranks; I’ve become the skipper of the S.S. Coupon Clipper.

If you need proof, look no further than the recent purchase of my honeymoon trip to Belize. In my post about Trip Advisor, I mentioned the destination we’d settled upon, but I consciously omitted the part about how we we’re paying for it. It probably comes as no surprise that I immediately hit up my sister, Stacey, for 60,000 airline miles to get free tickets on American. (Even in my pre-coupon days, I was this kind of mooch.) But it was in purchasing a package to two Francis Ford Coppola resorts that I really exposed my inner cheapskate. On the advice of wedding guru MelDave (aka Melody Kellenberger), I went to a website called LuxuryLink.com, which happened to have the exact same Belize package I was planning on—except it was being auctioned for half price. There’s probably some rule in the wedding handbooks that says you shouldn’t buy your honeymoon on clearance or chance your future on an Internet auction. And if there is, that person never worked in publishing, and they better not show their ass face at a university press anytime soon. I bid on the package, and God help me, we won!

From the Washington Times:

Image is everything

“Nobody asked us, but we felt it was our civic duty to help these [presidential] candidates look their best,” explains Pirooz Sarshar, co-founder of the Grooming Lounge barbershop in downtown Washington.

“I guarantee the ticket that follows our advice will be sitting pretty in the White House this time next year,” he says, echoing this column’s observations that more attention is being paid to the candidates’ looks than their stance on issues.

Without further ado, the Grooming Lounge’s tips:

•President Bush: Cut your hair closer to eliminate excess puffiness and flyaways, which make you look less refined.

•Vice President Dick Cheney: Shave your head or crop your hair ultra close to give you a younger, stronger look.

•Sen. John Kerry: Bring down the height of your hair to create a closely cropped style more in line with your face shape. And trim your eyebrows.

•Sen. John Edwards: Add some texture to your hair to eliminate “helmet head” and make you seem less boyish and more sophisticated.

A month ago our adorable kitten, Fuzzy, undermined his adorability when he started peeing on our expensive leather couches. These acts of madness seemed to coincide with Ana’s decision to let Fuzzy roam in the gardens outside our apartment. “It makes him so happy, so fulfilled,” she said. It also turned him into a peeing fool, I responded. I was sure that the West Philly woods (and hoods) had reverted him to his worst animalistic self.

When we went to the vet, though, this theory was quickly discarded—as was Ana’s smarty-pants med-school idea, that Fuzzy had a urinary tract infection. No, all test came back negative, and Dr. Andeer, DVM, said that in all likelihood, Fuzzy was just bored. The prescription was simple: toys, games, and more toys.

Just about every aspect of planning my wedding—our wedding, I mean our wedding—has been marred by Hamlet-like indecision. Portugal or Philly? Catholic communion service or Episcopal animal sacrafice? Reception at the wacky, fetuses-in-jars Mϋtter Museum or the stately gentelman’s hangout, The Racquet Club? But over the course of the last year, we’ve sorted through the various landmines and come to some kind of group-think consensus on each item. Each item, that is, except the honeymoon—arguably the most important one.

It was only when we found tripadvisor.com that things came into focus. The website’s basically a vacation research portal—but one of the best I’ve seen, hands down. Some of the key features are: links to published reviews of vacation destinations and hotels(Conde Naste Traveler, Travel and Leisure, etc.), guidebook reviews, and web comments (from the tripadvisor site and other trustworthy boards). They also combine all the reports in a funky Netflix-like matrix to generate rankings (e.g. 5 articles, 2 guidebooks, and 3 web comments = #4 hotel in area).

Ana and I had been juggling a bunch of honeymoon options for the past six months, but Trip Advisor basically sold us on Belize within an hour on the site. We decided to split our time between the jungle and the beach, and ultimately settled on two resorts run by Francis Ford Coppola—Blancaneaux Lodge and Turtle Inn. Between the coral reef (2nd largest in the world, next to Australia’s), the Mayan Ruins, and the hybrid-mascot-name wildlife (howler monkeys, whale sharks, Coppola Cages), it should be every bit as cool as a scene from “Apocalypse Now.” Way more than a honeymoon! Let’s get out there!

Okay, I’ll stop imitating the Royal Caribbean ads here. Do you have the theme music in your head yet? Can you siren call of Iggy Pop, luring you to Central America?