Deepak and Me

This story falls under the category of, "Another good reason why we don't murder our children as babies." When my children were babies, there were moments, usually at 2 a.m., when I'd look at my screaming infant and think, "and you wanted this child why?" Thankfully, that thought was quickly replaced by visions of what my wonderful child might become one day. Maybe a doctor, diplomat or dare I...the president of the United States. Since I already have a reputation for bragging about my daughters ad nauseum, I won't bother to offer a fake apology for what I'm about to say. I'll just say it. My daughters are fantastic people and if I ever had moments of doubt about the people they would grow up to be, they have been put to rest by a singular event.

Never mind that they're both bright, intelligent girls attending good colleges. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, that's great but my oldest girl fullfilled my highest expectations recently while in college in L.A. It is safe to say that more than anyone, the spiritual teacher Deepak Chopra has had the most positive impact on my life. No disrespect Martin Luther King Jr., Prophet Muhammad, Buddha, Jesus or my third grade teacher Mrs. Smith.

In addition to the standard fare of fairy tales and other children's books, I read Deepak Chopra books to my daughters. Afterward, we would usually discuss the concepts and how we could apply the principles to our daily lives. Imagine my excitement when my daughter told me that she was going to attend a presentation on her campus by the one and only Big D as I affectionately call him. "Remember every detail I told her, and go early to get a good seat." If you're like me you're tingling with excitement as I recount this story. According to my daughter, the lecture room was packed with students like her who were devotees. The lecture was inspirational and the room was silent as the audience held on to his every word. Then came the question and answer session and my girl was selected to speak to the Big D! She told him that her mother had tried to teach her to meditate but because of her ADHD it was very challenging. I don't remember his response, it was less important to me than the fact that she mentioned me to Deepak.

If that was the end of the story, my life would still be complete; it gets better. Later, my daughter went to the book signing where he remembered her and offered to dedicate an autographed copy to, (gulp) me. I'm sure 2011 will hold many memorable moments for me, but my almost close encounter with the Big D will be hard to top.

And If You Believe That..

A friend of mine texted me today and told me to quickly turn on the Dr. Oz show. As it happens, he's an avid fan of the show so I wasn't entirely surprised by this. So what was the topic that sparked the text? Cheap beauty and anti-aging dollar store products that work as well or better than the department store brands. Oh bother.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a marketing consultant and while I know that we have been blamed for everything from creating Christmas to kidnapping the Lindberg baby, I don't think we can take full credit for this particular sleight of hand. Besides my day job, I'm also a consumer who has to stretch her dollars and make smart purchasing decisions. Once I bought a no name eyeliner pencil that was so oily the black pigment was absorbed into my skin and disappeared in minutes and a face powder that made me look like a black Geisha. I'm not trying to trash drugstore products but are any of them truly as good as the department store brands? Probably, but I frankly don't have the time or inclination to sort through them all and deal with the hits and misses.

Which brings me to my point. Could it be that the reason Tide is the number one laundry detergent instead of Gain is because it works better? Are consumers so dense that given the chance to save money they will chose a more expensive brand simply because the commercial told them to? Perhaps Tide became number one through a process of trial and error. Someone bought the cheaper brand, discovered it didn't work well then ponied up a few more dollars for Tide and as they say, the rest is history.

My drugstore successes (and there have been a few), include Almay eye make-up remover which according to the bottle is the best selling remover in the country. Also Oil of Olay makes wonderful skin care products but please don't try to take away my Prevage. And for the life of me, I don't get the mystique behind Maybelline's Great Lash mascara. It didn't do a thing for my thin, wispy eyelashes, (thank god for Latisse).

Don't hold me to this but I believe the formula for product pricing is based on more than packaging costs and a desire to fleece consumers. Research and development don't come cheap and acquiring effective, quality ingredients can be expensive and time consuming.

Of course there will always be people who believe they can get something for virtually nothing. They are the folks who, like my mother, believe that there is a giant conspiracy on the part of big business to keep us from everything good including generic products. They're the folks who keep con artists and infomercials in business. The Dr. Oz guest demonstrated how tea bags and other products from the dollar store can achieve anti-aging results similar to more expensive products. I watched as Dr. Oz gleefully slatherd a can of dollar store pumpkin on an audience member's face using oven mits also bought for a dollar for extra stimulation. Sure, oatmeal, avocadoes etc. will exfoliate and the acids in some foods simulate a mild facial peel. But will they really make you look significantly younger? Your shinning clean skin will still sag and your jowls while having a certain glow, without the benefits of cosmetic surgery, will still point southward. I say use the green tea bags on your eyelids and definitely drink a cup and when you're finished, call the local spa and schedule a botox treatment, microdermabrasion or injectable session. Oh, and tell Mrs. Oz when you run into her at the cosmetic surgeon's office that I love her husband's show.

Deja Vu All Over Again and Again...

There are so many benefits associated with getting older, not the least of them are widsom and patience. Even the annoyance of the occasional new gray hair or sagging body part is offset by the joy and inner peace that comes from a long life well lived. But as the great sage Buggs Bunny once said, "I can't say it's been a slice of heaven, cause it hasn't." Surprisingly, one of the downsides of aging stems not from any physcial source but from Hollywood. Apparently, Hollywood, in its desire to keep the world supplied with a steady stream of movies has forgotten that some of us over the age of 30 still have functioning memories. How else can you explain the plethora of movies that are nothing more than pieces of other movies hastily thrown together and repackaged using contemporary themes?

Do you need examples? Oh where do I start or more appropriately, how much time do you have? Let's begin with a movie that I recently saw over the Christmas holiday, The Town. Shame on you Ben Affleck. If you didn't have the time to create an original movie or actually act as though you wanted to be in it, you should have said so. Please don't make me go over the entire movie, suffice it to say it was about a band of Boston, Irish-American bank robbers. In a different movie, Shawshank Redemption, Tim Robbins buried some cash and a note containing a clue to his whereabouts for Morgan Freeman. That's exactly what Ben Affleck did for his girlfriend. And just so you know that I'm not splitting hairs about this, both Freeman and the girlfriend discovered their hidden treasures while a narration voiced by the protagonists droned in the backdground. There's more. Tim Robbins' character was raped in prison, in The Town, Affleck's imprisoned father suffered the same fate.

Don't feel bad if you didn't know any of this and thought The Town was an original piece of filmmaking. My 20 year old daughter who is a movie buff and attends the number one film school in the world, USC in L.A., didn't know she was being duped either. In all fairness, there was one glaring distinction between the two movies -- ShawshankRedemption was an inspirational movie featuring great lines and standout performances by its main characters and The Town, well, it had one heck of a bank robbing scene.