On growing older:

[calimary]

104. Yeah, I know what you mean about "simply letting gravity take charge."

Every time I find myself looking in the bathroom mirror and pulling my checks back a little to tighten things up, INVARIABLY I'll see an older woman in the neighborhood, just a few minutes later, who's had too much work done. The skin is artificially tight over the old facial bones, sometimes it's shiny and too ruddy in spots. Sometimes you can see very tiny, fine broken capillaries in the cheeks. It just doesn't make sense. Maybe in the first few months after a facelift you're fine, but time marches on and your skin elasticity starts to give way again, and then you start looking like some strange bird-ish gargoyle. So, how ever much I was tempted, that temptation was short-lived. And hey, if I'm too busy and too cheap to stay on top of my spreading gray/white roots every six weeks like you're supposed to, how on earth would I ever keep up with something like that?

When I was a reporter, one of the things we covered every year, along with events like the Oscars and stuff, was the American Film Institute tribute to some leading Hollywood light, who was given a lifetime achievement award because he or she usually had a LOOOOONNNNG list of accomplishments spanning many years - to earn the right to be an honoree. The AFI tributes always brought out Old Hollywood. MAN we would see such eye-brow-raising raised eyebrows and other assorted eye lifts! And facelifts. And chin lifts. Male and female versions. And neck jobs and boob jobs, toupees and hair transplants. You name it. We always had fun with this one, in the press area along the red carpet which is where you covered the arrivals. Always made me think it just wasn't worth it to have to keep pouring all that money down a bottomless pit of surgical upkeep. 'Cause regardless whatever work you had done - then you have to maintain the damn thing so you don't start getting saggy again and you stay pert and perky-looking. Costs a bundle or three. And eventually it just doesn't work anymore. For example, I think Demi Moore has taken it as far as it'll go without just totally blowing it. Which is really a shame! She was simply glorious-looking when she was younger!!! On the other hand, I just saw Judy Colllins in a PBS clip, with her white hair pinned up in a bun. She's gotta be, I dunno, in her 60s or even maybe 70s (?) and she IS glorious-looking!!!