Word: skins
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This is what it takes to be a modern metrosexual: I'm lying on my side on a black leather lounger, dressed in a yukata robe that ends about mid-thigh, soothing New Age music on the stereo, a burning candle jammed in my ear. My skin care specialist explains that the hollow candle will create a gentle vacuum to draw out excess ear wax, impurities, maybe some loose change. I'm somewhat dubious-with a 20-cm candle sticking out the side of my head, I feel less like David Beckham than a human birthday cake-but this technique...
...haven't always wanted to be pretty. I was always taught that pretty was reserved for girls, and possibly men named Giorgio. But there is a new breed of guy out there, men who stock their medicine cabinets with skin creams and exfoliators, unlike the rest of us who use them to store excess beer. I'm the type of fellow whose relationship with cosmetics began and ended with Clearasil, but I can sense when evolutionary winds are shifting...
...Hong Kong men's skincare center, figuring I can undo 27 years of neglect in about two hours. Upon my arrival, the receptionist hands me a glass of lemonade (I wonder briefly if I am meant to splash it on my face) and a detailed questionnaire about my skin type. Surprisingly, "dull and pasty" isn't an option, but I fill out the rest. Do I have oily skin? Check-during adolescence my forehead was practically a member of OPEC. Enlarged pores? You bet-I've named some of them after lunar craters. Of course, I hadn't realized large...
...Then it's into the salon, with the mood lighting and the mini-yukata and the music that was apparently written and performed by hobbits on Valium. If you listen closely, you can actually hear my Y chromosome unraveling. After the candling, I receive exfoliation and rejuvenation treatment. My skin is doused with gentle citric acids. I feel a deep, satisfying tingle; I haven't been this relaxed since I accidentally mixed Ambien and Taiwanese cinema...
...Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's top deputy. He supposedly had been killed in December 2001, and buried in an Afghan riverbed. With a $25 million bounty on his head, Afghan tribal chiefs provided the jawless head to the U.S. military. The skull, Suskind reports, still had a bit of skin attached to its crown when the container finally was opened inside a room at Dulles, and its forehead had an indentation, consistent with a lifetime of pressing one's head against stone or dirt to highlight one's commitment to Allah. "If it turns out to be Zawahiri's head...