[bounce] omgcurling!

The Inaugural bonspiel begins this evening! [bounce] Am v. 'cited. I must count on my fellow citizens to drive with their heads not in their collective ass this evening, so I can get up to the club on time. Yes.

And, as usual, I am intrigued to discover what the theme of the Hanging Chad event will be. Four years ago, at the first Inaugural (the Inaugural², if you will), it was the original Hanging Chad event; three years ago, it was the California Recall event. I haven't been there for the past two years, of course, but the theme of the whole spiel this weekend is the Midterm Elections, so there are a hundred ways they could go with the HC. The races for governor in Maryland and Ohio; the races for senator in Maryland and Virginia; the whole wretched Mark Foley thing. And on and on. Whatever it is, it should be amusing.

product rec

So the folks at Herbal Essences have changed their approach -- gone, apparently, are the original formulas and the fruit fusions (which I rather liked) and, thank god, the "totally organic experience" ad campaign, which was played out years ago (if in fact it was ever cute, which is debatable); now there are new "collections" with names like "None of your Frizzness" and "Drama Clean" (that one makes me smile). I'm here to tell you about "Break's Over", the one in the blue bottle, which is supposed to be strengthening.

I don't like that the copy on the bottle is written in first person ("I surround each strand with my luscious conditioning formula with an anti-breakage potion"), and I could do without the whole hair=relationship metaphor, but the name itself is okay, and more importantly, the stuff works. Smells nice, rinses clean (I'm not convinced there's a complete lack of buildup from the conditioner, so I'll have to keep something alternative around for weekends or something), really does seem to be stopping my hair from splitting and breaking any more than it has been. To the extent that it's possible to do this from the outside, of course, which is limited but not non-existent.

I'm less impressed, for what it's worth, with Pantene's new "Ice Shine" formula. Feels to me like it leaves my hair stickier than I'd like, and doesn't make it appreciably shinier. Of course my hair has no texture of its own and therefore reflects a good deal of light already; it's possible that it was silly of me to think a product designed to boost shine would have any effect over here at all.