Facebook is a bizarre land.  My new found friend Eric, for instance.  We knew each other in high school quite peripherally.  He was a year younger than me, he went out with my neighbor for a while, I suppose he came to our house but I can’t really remember. To say we knew each other would be a huge stretch.  HUGE.  He, too, read the blog and “friended” me.  He, too, I suspect, thought I was an idiot in high school.  And, after he friended me, he was so nice I decided he might be a stalker.  Who else could be so nice?  And so different from what I barely remembered of him from High School?  Except in Eric’s case, it turns out he IS funny and interesting and much more than I remembered from good old Wachusett Regional High School, although aren’t we all.  Unlike all of my physically present friends, we don’t speak on the phone, I don’t have the foggiest idea what he sounds like,  or, frankly, even looks like, but every so often, out of the blue, he’ll send me something smart to read or point me in the direction of something that is interesting or new(like a band called The Propellerheads…don’t ask…just listen…and with your kids).  I’m glad that I know him now even if I didn’t know him then. And don’t really know him now.  Although I worry a bit that while we correspond cleverly by email and Facebook, the person he thinks he’s talking to does not have the age spot with the forehead on their forehead and still has an ass the size of two small but perfect canteloupes.  But I sound bitter.  And I’m not.  The ass has to go for the intelligence to increase.  Everyone who’s anyone over forty knows that.  You know what I’m saying?  And who cares if his image of me is of me at 18.  It’s common ground we both share.

But Facebook.  What a brilliant idea.  Everyone is always wondering what happened to their past, or in some cases, in their past.   And Facebook has found a way for those of us muddling around middle age trying to find our glasses to find our past.  Or at least a few chuckle worthy little parts of it.  I’ve been Facebooked by almost everyone I’ve ever slept with for more than one night and if they didn’t Facebook me, I  Facebooked them, just to spy .  There are a few I’m missing, like the dim restaurant chef with the mohawk and the tongue piercing from ’86 or the drummer from the rock band who had me hook up with him for a six month period of intermittent tour dates and then disappeared off the face of the earth.  Or at least I told myself he’d left the planet. He doesn’t seem to be on Facebook although he gets more Google hits than imaginable.   But then again, if he left the face of the earth, his presence on Facebook would be unusual but at least his Google presence indicates that he was real.  Facebook works better for people with fine lines as opposed to kids with baby fat who have barely left their past long enough for anyone to be in it.  My stepdaughter is Facebooking from a semester in Italy and I love to hear her tales of time in the Alps and cheap Florentine dinners and to spy on her budding long distance romance with a boy on the Indiana border.  But when my first NY city roomate, the woman with whom, at 20, I shared a seedy hotel room on 28th street complete with a paranoid schizophrenic neighbor, mice running across our beds while we attempted sleep and the incredible wonder of being grownups (so we thought) in New York, found me this week and it was like finding gold.  These great, self proclaimed middle aged, sisters from Texas who have a hilarious blog http://www.themidlifegals.com/ Facebooked me cause they had read my blog and liked it.  I was so proud.   Friends of mine who have stores send messages to tell you about some cool sale, a friend who’s an opera singer just Facebooked me an amazing event she’s performing in at Lincoln Center.  Politicians and politically active friends post good stuff to read to help you figure it all out.  My friend Mary posts versions of her “To Kill A Mockingbird” documentary, a work in progress, for everyone to comment on.  She even posted the story we wrote about sleeping with Tiger Woods, something I never would have thought of.  Oh, you didn’t know we slept with Tiger?  He didn’t mind the fine lines.But, then again, he wouldn’t.

Now I’m not saying Facebook is a perfectly oiled machine.  Facebook keeps suggesting I friend a fellow I have known for years.  What Facebook doesn’t seem to know is that he died eight months ago and so I’m not going to friend him.  Doesn’t seem like a good use of time.  Facebook also allows people to imagine that you are a little more interested in their lives than you really are.  GQ this month has a brilliant piece on this.  www.gq.com/entertainment/humor/201001/scary-facebook-friends-profiles#slide=1The people who give you the day to day, moment to moment, synopsis on every cup of coffee and bit of exercise they’re indulging in.  Now I can see if they were letting you know every time they were getting a blow job, a colonoscopy or if they hit a wild turkey with their car.  It’s not that I WANT to know this but at least it’s sort of interesting information.  ”I’m getting ready to go ride my bike in the rain” is not interesting.  ”I’m having my second latte of the day” is not interesting.  ”I’m getting a blow job from a hooker near Times Square.” may be too much information but at least it’s interesting. Particularly since there are no visible hookers in the Times Square neighborhood anymore.  Occasionally Rich will leave his Facebook up on the computer and he is Facebook ‘friends” with a huge number of attractive twenty somethings, not cause he’s Tiger-esque even though he might want to be, but that’s who he works with.  They update him on cool twenty something activities that they all are indulging in and fab new twenty something songs and their lives don’t ever involve updates on kids school plays, exercise routines or clips from old near obscurity musicians.  I point this out as a downside of Facebook NOT for him, but for me.  Because, unlike me, they all still do look like what my old but new Facebook friends imagine I look like.  Although I would NEVER post about my kids school play.

It’s a new communication world out there.  I don’t actually have an ipod but I think I might want an iphone.  ipods just get in the way of hearing properly, which seems to be increasingly difficult enough,  but that iphone is full of cool things that i still think i can figure out with a good tutorial from my kids.  ee cummings would have thought the ipod people rocked.  And I love Facebook.  How else would I know that a woman I logged more naughty all-night behavior with in my twenties would grow up to own her own mega business and live a respectable Philadelphia life.  Last time I’d seen her, her drunk boyfriend was peeing in the sink and she was crying because she never imagined she would work in a bank.  Or have a boyfriend who peed in the sink.  How else would I know that someone I know now, lived with someone I knew then.  Two people from two different worlds who popped up as mutual friends in that weird little Facebook box to the left of your screen.  How else would I know that a Canadian boy I once thought was dreamy would move South and marry a Texas girl. Or that my next door neighbor from childhood is still grieving her mother, long gone.  Or that my other next door neighbor Pattys uncle still feels guilty about the time he dropped us at the entrance to Dulles for a plane from DC  to Boston and we couldn’t have been much more then 12.  Dropped us at the door?  I guess I had repressed that. The only thing I remember is that we saw the real Colonel Sanders.  Who remembers we were all by ourselves. Or that a friend who I’ve thought about often over the years just became a dad for the first time at our VERY advanced age.  And twins, no less.  Congratulations.  Facebook is really fun.  Facebook is really great.  Whoever invented Facebook deserves all of the millions of dollars that they have surely made and will continue to make.  And now a suggestion.  If they can figure out Facebook, they can surely figure out a way to deliver at home, do it yourself wrinkle filler that doesn’t involve a press conference.  And a little something for the age spot with the forehead?

So down below, so to speak, I take it all off just to show you the power of good lighting.  And retouching.  The first pic is a snap from the nice family camera with a flash.  The second, a picture with lighting but very close from my spouse who makes thousands of dollars a day filming anyone from Angelina Jolie to Ann Curry and Stephen Colbert.  And they always look good.  Particularly Stephen. And the last was sweetly retouched by my friend Rob, an extraordinary photographer(www.robfortunato.com) who has, according to my kids, somehow shaved fifteen years off my life by eliminating anything that might show I had lived on the planet.  And it took him less than an hour.  My boys actually looked at Rob’s picture when I asked if it looked like me and they said “Yeah, mom.  How old were you when they took it?”  The were shocked when I said that the pic was an hour old and not from nursery school.  It’s pretty interesting to look at the three.  Deep, no.  Interesting, yes.

So here’s the deal.  Unless you can travel with your retoucher or only hang out with people who are not wearing their glasses, don’t go bare.  Or go bare but know that people will think you’re sick.  And they’ll count your wrinkles.  Or do what my friend Jean Godfrey June suggests.  Jean is the ultra talented beauty editor of Lucky Magazine and the author of the book “Free Gift With Purchase”.  Jean knows everything there is to know about looking good.  She’s not twelve and she always looks beautiful. Jean is one of these natural San Francisco beauties, all fresh faced and seemingly bare save for what appears to be a slick of Vaseline on the lips.  But as Jean will tell you, it takes some very artful makeup application to look like you aren’t wearing anything.

Here’s what she swears by:

I say use Jeans tips.  Then no one will ever say you look tired or sick.  And they will think you are perfectly preserved.  And that you “Dare to go Bare”.  Somehow that get’s me thinking about clenched butt cheeks again.  And I would rather NOT think about butt cheeks, particularly with bathing suit season here.  The other thing People and other magazines seem to be really attentive to are celebrity weight issues.  Once again, back to the butt cheeks.  Stop me.  It’s like a bad dream, the clenched butt cheeks in my head.  Next week:  Reality Shows we’d(those of us of a certain age) ACTUALLY watch.  And magazine headlines that would make us buy. And we’re not talking celebrities yoyo dieting or willingness to go makeup free.  Or Jon and Kate, whoever they are.  We’re talking things that WE care about.  Like “The Chardonnay Diet…Lose Pounds and Inches by Giving Up Food”.  Or “Survivor: Suburbia”.

Which brings me to todays topic HOW NOT TO LOOK OLD.  For obvious reasons I’m somewhat concerned, or, perhaps, obsessed with staying young.  Like, really young.  That was the subject of a Time Magazine article from a few weeks ago.  The article was pointed out to me by my friend Christina who called howling with laughter while waiting at the neurologists with her husband wh’d been experiencing some scary neurological symptoms.  How, you  ask, could some one call from the neurologists laughing while her husband is experiencing scary neurological symptom?  Did you read my opening paragraph?

The article discusses a recently released study by some doctors at Case Western who took a look at a bunch of photos of identical twins to see how they were aging.  They came to conclusions, some of which seem obvious and some of which confuse me.  I’ll begin with my concern about the two photos at the beginning of the article.  Two sisters, side by side.  One looks good, the other, not so much.  But here’s my question.  The one who looks good has a sly sweet smile, some pink in her cheeks, a light in her eyes.  I look at her and wonder, maybe she really does look younger in real life.  Or maybe she’s a woman who, just before they snapped the shot, had a nice glass of a red wine with a good friend (thus the pink in the cheeks)and had, immediately afterward , been pinched on the bottom by the UPS man delivering her package from Victorias Secret(both resulting in the sly smile).  Her sister on the other hand looks at bit scary.  Downturned mouth, sagging cheeks, a deadness behind her eyes.  But here’s what I wonder.  What was going on in her life that day?  Was she jealous her sister had gotten the pinch and the thong?  Had she given up wine for Lent?  Had she been at the neurologist waiting for bad news or good news about her husband?  Or perhaps a five foot ten, twenty year old had just left a script for her husband in her mailbox.  I don’t know?  I’m just saying….

Let’s talk about what the Case Western docs discovered.  Okay the first one is shocking.  No smoking.  Duh.  Smoking in your dreams, imagining you are smoking, pantomiming you are smoking or using your straw from your drink as a cigarette are okay.  But no real smoking.  It’s power to age trumps the happiness factor you get from doing it.  Sunscreen.  Use it.  Although I always think a tan makes someone look younger? And then there’s this astute observation. Fatter people look younger.  At least from the neck up (see Face or Ass blog). Therein lies the rub.  Apparently a little fat rounding out those cheeks and naturally filling those wrinkles helps.  BUT your ass will suffer.  There will be no Victoria Secret deliveries by UPS men for you because they don’t make thongs in your new size.  And no pinches from the UPS man because, truth be told, your ass will be too scary.  And everyone will say “Too bad, she has such a pretty face.” And then won’t understand when you start screaming in confusion. Face or Ass.  It’s a regular Sophies choice.

But the final point of this study made me smile.  It made me think of my friend Susanna who just did the ultimate in Spring Cleaning.  She unloaded approximately 150 pounds of useless material that had been lingering around her house for, oh, 24 years or so.  I don’t know how to best describe what she got rid of so for ease’s sake, I’ll call it her husband.  Now Susanna looks better than she has in years.  Soft, rested, calm. And without an ounce of additional fat on her body but a fathead excised from her life.   Which is what they discovered in the study.  No husband is better than a less than great one.  Divorce ages you but getting rid of a bad husband will make you younger. And never marrying at all, well, ask Christina how funny that news was.  Never marry, and Christina and I both believe we’re reading this important study properly, your face will remain as soft as a baby’s bottom and you can continue leaving scripts in married men’s mailboxes until you’re seventy and you’ll still piss off their wives.

Now just to clarify a few things here.  Christina’s husband did not have a horrible neurological problem.  And she is, I must admit, thrilled about that.  And my husband is a sweet, funny fellow who only has eyes for me.  And I’m sure that he would offer to script read for anyone, even young men with coke bottle glasses who spit when they talk and women with mange who haven’t bathed in six weeks, or old people in an advanced state of dementia who write scripts that don’t have any real words, just clumps of letters or small animals who suddenly find their voice.  He would script read for anyone.  It just so happens that, in all his years in television, the first person who asked was twenty four, five ten, with a perfect set of bow lips framed by waist length un-dyed blonde hair and a body that seems to be unwilling to not only quit but is something of a workaholic.  Yes, he’ll read your script.  Just don’t leave it in my mailbox.  I’m a little tense these days.