Sparks Ignites

  Six weeks ago, I awoke to find myself stuck to my living room floor covered in pine sap and tinsel.  Two squirrels were giving me the stink eye and clutching their nuts. I felt shock and awe when I realized I’d ripped my neighbors pine tree out of their yard and brought it home to decorate. I’d never sleep walked before, so a major concern was my neighbors would follow the trail of dirt from the hole in their garden to the front door of my house. Several nights later, I was startled awake by the smoke alarm blaring. My head was stuck in a mixing bowl of cookie dough and there was an oven mitt on my foot. Evidently, I was baking cookies in my sleep and a timer was not part of my stupor. With singed eyebrows, I doused the fire and threw out the charcoal briquettes I’d lovingly baked. Over a mug of hot chocolate and sixteen sugar cookies, I put on my Nancy Drew thinking cap and tried to figure out what was happening. My Christmas mojo was in extreme overdrive. “I’m holiday unhinged,” I

  In Hollywood, beauty is not skin deep. It’s lays on the surface where it’s been pulled, tucked, plucked, plumped and botoxed. Adoring fans don’t look at a star and say she has a kind personality. It’s more of, “look at those cheekbones and perky nipples.” Her face is a relief map of silicone and her nipples designer branded. With so many bits of epidermis nipped away each year, celebrity skin has accumulated to the point that a Frankenstein-style entertainer could be pieced together. Celebrities are a commodity so everything about them has value–– from public appearances, autographs, clothes that have touched their bodies to the extra skin they’ve discarded. Instead of disposing the by-product of a new imagined beauty, a corporation, Dermatron, has been born. This company sells the excess skin of the stars to patients in need. “There’s suddenly a huge demand for well-known flesh. We’re going to change the complexion of reconstructive surgery techniques,” advised Aretha Alopecia, CEO