Will This Madness Ever END???

Ignore the Tom Cruise for a moment there. Scratch that, ignore the Tom Cruise altogether. You all know why I'm posting this.



The Hotness, in all his potato-faced glory, stuffed into a white dress shirt with his sleeves rolled up. Do I have to repeat that? Because I would totally marry make out with him if he keeps dressing that way. Damn.

(You know you have it bad for someone when even the sight of his forearms makes your ovaries start to quiver. Trust me.)

Still doesn't mean that I take back all those karaoke-related things I said in the past week, though.

The Case for Your Dermatologist, Part 2

Dear members of the male species - and especially every single member of The List, because we all know that you need to hear this:

It has come to my attention that there has been a lot of speculation about certain habits and predilections that you prefer to keep in secrecy. We know that you have not, and will continue to refuse, to address these matters in public when pressed for comment. We also understand that you need your privacy, and you in turn would understand that, in a fair and just world, we ladies would never judge you at all for being up front about this matter, so to speak. In fact, after all these years of waiting and wondering, we may even applaud you for your refreshing candor.

But seriously, we just want to know...

Are you really, truly, honest-to-Dog taking care of your ACNE????


Dudes, we're not telling you to take your cues from Justin Bieber; that would be creepy. But let's be honest here: it's one thing to figure out why your hormones are betraying you at 17... and another matter altogether to get past your 30th birthday by refusing to acknowledge your ongoing love/hate relationship with those angry red spots on your face.

What we're trying to tell you here is that none of you - repeat, NONE OF YOU - are too macho to deal with your own damn pimples. Acne, in other words, is God's way of telling you that you are NOT Chuck Norris.

What's Your Fantasy: Trend of Two

Okay, so The List just got reconfigured.

I've already said everything that needs to be said about my new blog-boyfriend, so please don't disabuse me  of my notions by submitting more evidence to the contrary.* As far as the Meimei-verse is concerned, The Current Hotness is a lovely gentleman who showers with shampoo and good soap every time, and uses toothpaste on a daily basis.

(*T'hough, to be fair, I will accept blackmail-quality videos of him singing karaoke. Especially if his song choices involve the greatest hits of Burt Bacharach and/or Bruno Mars.) 

So I'll just go ahead and bring up Nathan Fillion.

Seriously, folks - don't you think he and The Hotness could almost pass for brothers?

Putting aside whatever rant I have about Fillion's career going into dormant mode when he should be getting the Statham-esque roles currently earmarked for The Hotness (dammit), or how Fillion has dealt gracefully with both his fans and personal life in ways that The Hotness should know best to emulate (double dammit), or even the fact that Fillion is definitely taller than The Hotness (come on, have you guys seen The Town? I rest my case)... well, I think that it's time for me to make a concise argument on why those two pretty much belong on the same page here.

When Meimei Disappears

You might be worried about the title up here, after all the disturbing blog entries that I've been putting up lately. And no, I'm not talking about running off to Canada, even if it means better Food Network programming and even better potato chip flavors.

(Also because the alleged future father of my supposedly ramen-haired children has now moved to Los Angeles, which I am trying my best not to take as a sign. Or something.)

ANYWAY-

Two things: First, I have become invested in the World Series of Baseball lately. As much as I like the Rangers for their pwnage of the Yankees (who I still hate, in spite of the pretty that is Derek Jeter), I'm totally rooting for the Giants because 1) I have a lot of friends in San Francisco right now who want to end the torture, and 2) George W. Bush, which goes without saying.

And besides, the Giants has my part-Pinoy homeboy Tim Lincecum, even though he really needs to cut his hair if he wants to be taken seriously. (Seriously, Tim: You sort of have the Joseph Gordon-Levitt thing going on. Win Game 5 already so you can finally visit a barber in the off-season!)

And second:

It's my first time doing NaNoWriMo, and already it has taken over my soul. Never mind that I'm a sworn writing geek when it comes to these things, and never mind that I have lost enough of my mind to describe one of my characters as an angry blogger and another as this guy playing the part of this guy and this guy, but more Irish.

(Horrors! Meimei has based a character on ANTHONY FRIGGING BOURDAIN! Run for the hills!)

(...No, I definitely was kidding. Please don't sue me, Tony. But do send me the home addresses for the other two, if you have them lying around and/or your lawyers don't mind.)

The whole novel's been mapped out already, though, and I'm thinking about getting 20% done before work starts and I lose more of my mind. Assuming, of course, that the World Series doesn't go into Game 7.

Okay, that's enough writing for now. I'm going downstairs to check on the game. And by "game" I really do mean Game 5.

EDITED @7:03 PM to say GIANTS WIN! GIANTS WIN! GIANTS WIN! And also that I'm using this guy instead as the physical prototype for my lead male character. I love you, Gerard, but I figured that Jeremy would make a more convincing pancake-flipper.

Video Style Moments, Part 2: "Closer To The Edge" by 30 Seconds to Mars

I'm posting this for my brother, who remains traumatized by the Jared Leto archive on The Internet Never Forgets.

(And for longtime My So-Called Life fan Scribey, who might be traumatized to see Jordan Catalano sporting a gigantic red mohawk here.)

(And also for my niece, who I think would like this song as much as I do... even if it makes me feel old to explain the concept of Jordan Catalano to her.)

For the rest of you reading this blog: Mohawks! Nail polish! Guyliner! Anything less would be a letdown.

Because It Just Had To Be Said

And because I'm more excited about the Winter Olympics than I should be at this point...

Hair like THIS?

Deserves a hair-care system like THIS:

I kid, I kid. (What can I say, the Seventies came pretty late to the Philippines when I was growing up.)

Credits: Greenopia.com (Shaun White) and Vermont Country Store (Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific... yes, they still sell that stuff online, folks)

The Hair. THE HAIR.

You may have probably noticed that some of the male "hotties" that I often mention on this blog share a vaguely similar trait: wavy, messy, slightly grungy hair. Peter Sarsgaard, in Shattered Glass? Guilty. Simon Baker, in The Mentalist? Doubly guilty. Rafe Spall, in the entirety of that placeholder post from last summer? Definitely guilty on all counts, and should be sentenced to several weeks' worth of deep-conditioning treatments if he didn't know what was best for him.

[/still bitter because I've watched Hot Fuzz a billion times on TV, and yet nobody has taken my idea of casting Andy Cartwright as Patrick Jane's brother in The Mentalist - okay, not really, but still]

Let us not even forget the glory that used to be Gerard Butler's hair in the otherwise craptastic Dracula 2000...



...to say the least of my long-standing, old-guy crush on Jeff Bridges and his glorious head of hair, which not even the all-over grunginess of Crazy Heart could obscure. (Yes, it broke my heart when he had to go bald for Iron Man.)

(And, at this time, we should point out that Jeremy Renner has responded by thanking Colin Firth, Jason Statham, and Gilles Marini for reintroducing him to the concept of soap and water. Heh.) 

I mention this because I have been following the men's speed-skating events in the Winter Olympics, which means that I have been regularly exposed to THIS: 

 
Ladies and gentlemen, Canadian short-track speed-skater Charles Hamelin: frequent record holder, and one of the few folks outside of Team USA or the South Korean team worth betting on during the heats.

Here, the hair looks pretty good... but on the ice, when it's barely concealed by that speed-skating helmet? Good grief. Frizz everywhere, with the woolly beard hair sticking out like overgrown moss from under the chin strap and over the collar. Every single time that my Dad and I watch speed-skating, I always point to him and say, "Hey, it's the Canadian guy with Jesus hair." (No offense to my own Lord and Savior, but... really.)

The crazy part of it all is that the combination of all that grungy hair with the helmet, rainbow-tint Oakleys, and full-body spandex uniform takes so much of the pretty away from poor Charles. In fact, as I was sizing up the competitors for speed skating based on how they looked on the track alone, I actually thought that Francois Hamelin looked much, much better than his brother. (Never mind that, outside of the uniform, Francois is basically the French Canadian version of B.J. Novak.)

Eye candy factor aside, I like watching short-track speed skating because it's not that hard to watch: everyone skates fast, and whoever gets to the finish line without tripping over the other person or falling on one's rear end wins. And while I have a lot of respect for les freres Hamelin and the South Korean skating team, I also have to give a shoutout to Team USA - not just for my mestizo homeboy J.R. Celski, but also for Apolo Anton Ohno... who will always have my undying love and respect, just for THIS:



Credits: anthonygeorge.wordpress.com via Google Images (Jeff Bridges); Le Blogue de Le Point via Google Images (Charles Hamelin) 

EDITED @ 2/27/2010 to differentiate between speed skating and short-track speed skating. BIG distinction. Also to fix some major punctuation issues. 

Domestic TV: People who Need to Shower Edition

- Okay, this question would never, ever, have occurred to me if I didn't spend all day on my knitting, but... seriously, what is up with all the ugly hairdos on As The World Turns? Not that I care about anything or anyone else about the show - except for that gay-couple storyline, only because those boys are cute - but I can't help but be distracted by the Blagojevich-level haircuts that some of these actors are sporting. Ew.

- Speaking of knitting: I'm so tempted to watch Dancing with The Stars tonight because all my other "shows" are on reruns and I can't help but watch all those pretty people dancing in pretty little costumes... yet, the mere mention of Gilles Marini makes me self-combust. Perpetually shirtless and sweaty eye candy: good for TV, definitely not good when you're trying to finish a complicated sweater sleeve.

(Yes, I've already seen the Sex and the City movie. In the theater, mind you. So you could imagine why I kept giggling and couldn't look anyone in the eye when Mr. Scribe asked me how I liked the film.)


- Moving away from the eye candy: This weekend, at a party, we were just talking about Russell Crowe showing up on Letterman, and the consensus I got so far is that the guy has gone off the deep end. It's an opinion that I don't share, though - not because I don't think he's crazy, but because at least he turned out to be pretty articulate and charming in his own way. (As opposed to, say, Joaquin Phoenix.) If I do have a bone to pick, though, it's with whoever styled his hair for State of Play. Come on, folks - John Simm may have played a disheveled reporter in the BBC original, but at least he managed to look handsome by keeping his hair short. Crowe's character, on the other hand.... I don't care if he's supposed to be playing a hard-boiled American investigative journalist if he'd been combing his hair with margarine. No. Please, no.

- And now, some more hotness:

Jeremy Renner: attainable-hot, and possibly the only reason why I watch The Unusuals.

Randomesticity: Downward Spiral, Upward Crawl

So this week has been very cruel to me. I don't want to get into the dirty details, but I will say that I'm a bit emotionally spent from all the hand-wringing and spontaneous crying, and I've already called it a mental-health week to recover from all the insanity.

Not everything, however, is pure insanity.

Take, for example, the story ideas that I've been kicking around in my head: a fashionista moment I had over the weekend during the Valerie Joseph anniversary party at Ala Moana Center (bring on the fall clothes, I say!), tips on business-casual dressing that I've picked up from a career fair; and - just in time for Election Day! - a roundup of Honolulu Anchorwoman Hair.

I've decided to pass on the fall makeup collection coverage because I am SERIOUSLY broke-da-broke, so you won't hear any ooh-ing from me about the new MAC stuff. I'm also passing up on the Halloween revelry due to a seminar that I have to attend first thing in the AM on the Leeward side of Oahu. What I won't be passing up on, however, is a chance to dress up - and you can bet I'll be writing about that as well.

In the meantime... how about some eye candy to tide us over? (And, yes, les fragrances pour homme count towards this blog.)

The Case Against the 'Stache, Men's Edition

Dear Daniel Radcliffe:

Friends don't let friends drink milkshakes with Daniel Day-Lewis.

(Yes, I know, it's for a role - and how could this be any more different than getting buck nekkid for Equus? - but still and all, y'know?)

Luv ya,

The Readers of Domesticity

Domesticity for the Men: Or, The Case for the Shared Bathroom

Sorry, folks: What started out as a week-long blogging project has been, sadly, cut short by a number of things - namely an unexpected family crisis and a research paper on which I've been procrastinating like crazy. This also means that there are a few entries that have been banked until further notice, so until I get around to posting them, I'll go ahead with this list-type thing to tide us over.

Beauty Products In My Closet that I Will Be More Than Willing To Share With Another Guy (besides the lip balm and the exfoliating scrub)

- Anything with verbena in it, because it's so fresh and herbal and won't put anyone to sleep. The men in my family seem to share my affinity for L'Occitane Verbena Body Milk and anything from Bath & Body Works' Coconut Lime Verbena line (although my Dad will be perplexed to hear that they've gotten rid of the creamy hand sanitizer), which I do not mind at all. And if you want the best of both worlds, check out Le Couvent des Minimes Verbena & Lemon Hand Lotion.

- A light moisturizer without any bells or whistles. And by this I mean Prescriptives' All You Need+ Moisturizer. If you're going to cockroach one product from my closet, this will be one that I will be willing to share. The SPF 15 version isn't too bad, either.

- Cuticle cream. If your man has a thing against nail salons (and that means you, Dad) hand him a tin of Burt's Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Creme and tell him to rub it in after cutting his nails. Result: softer fingers and less snaggly toes.

- Also good for those work-beaten hands: hand cream. Our friends in the medical field would like you to know that Gloves in a Bottle is fantastic for those days when that puny bottle of lotion isn't enough. For those of you who blanch at the thought of pulling out a girly-looking tube at your cubicle, there's C. O Bigelow.

- Pomade. Your grandpa will say that our hairdressers stole the idea for us, but you can't argue with the fact that no other hairstyling product has evolved so much since getting co-opted. I, for one, will be way too happy to share my Garnier Fructis Surf Hair Texturizing Paste with just about anyone, because it's such an effortless product to use - just a dime-sized dab of product raked through the coif goes a long way, no blow-drying required - and the "matte" finish does give you the day-at-the-beach effect.

- Tea tree oil. One drop on a Q-tip takes care of zits, insect bites, and other sources of inflammation. Not bad for just $6 at most health-food stores.

- Biore Blemish Fighting Cleansing Cloths. For those moments when you haven't taken care of your skin like you should. Salicylic acid is practically a cure-all in this case: Use the soft side on your T-zone to tame pimples, and use the scrubbier side for those ingrown beard hairs. Follow with a moisturizer on the dry areas, and you're done.

Domesticity for the Men: Or, The Case for the Scrubby Scrub

Okay, guys, I think it's time I did my own take on the whole men's grooming thing. It's not like I'm going to nag you into picking up the GQ or going to Sephora with me. And don't even think for a moment that I will use this as an opportunity to buy something for you; even if I wasn't broke, I trust that you're old enough to make your own purchasing decisions on toiletry products. Which is good, because this post is all about the choices that you will have to make when you do put your own spending power to use.

My inspiration for this post comes from the makers of Axe, who have recently come up with a product that I will best describe as an exfoliating shower gel and body wash. A great idea, since an exfoliating product can help you take care of things like ashiness and body acne... except that this product is sold by the equally lovely name of Axe Snake Peel. SNAKE PEEL?!?

Don't get me wrong; it's still an okay product, and if you're into things like “desert minerals” and earthy, musky fragrances, you can do worse. Let me put it to you this way, though: If I was your bratty little sister, and I found this in your shower, not only would I take pictures of the bottle, but I'll devote an entire MySpace blog to said pictures of your Snake Peel, for all the girls to see. And you don't want that to happen, do you?

That said, if you're looking for another way to get your scrub on, we here at Domesticity are way too happy to help you out. And we can do this without having to drag you all the way to Sephora.

Mild to moderate scrubbing: No need to switch your soap yet. Just pick up one of these scrubby Japanese washcloths - we call them “goshi goshi” 'round here - and lather 'em up in the shower with your favorite soap or body wash. They're flexible enough to pull around your back, but soft enough to use on most days. Just be sure to use a moisturizing and gentle soap/wash with the cloth, though, or you'll end up with tight, dry, itchy skin all over.

Advanced scrubbiness: If you're the type who could use more exfoliation and are willing to go upscale, you're in luck - a lot of major cosmetics companies are doing body scrubs that are gentle enough for your body without the cloyingly sweet scents. Men's Health recommends the exhiliratingly sexy scrub from Molton Brown; Allure gives Bliss' minty formula the thumbs up; and Lush has a citrusy Ocean Salt scrub, which shares similar ingredients with the Sea Vegetable soap that's (allegedly) favored by Jude Law. Bonus: On top of the un-cloying fragrances (good enough to use without cologne) and handsome packaging, none of these products are named after molting reptiles.

Intense scrubbiness: There are some times when certain parts of your body - and by this we mean your hands, feet, and other easily callused parts - will need more scrubbing than your average scrub can handle. No, we're not recommending busting out the steel wool and going all Norm Abram on your calluses, but we do recommend scrubs that have an extra kick to them - like Origins' Ginger Body Scrub, which has bits of real ginger to warm your limbs and scrape up more dead skin cells.