Lips

Just in case deciding whether to tan hasn't given us enough skin-related beauty dilemmas:The Food and Drug Administration recently told a congressional subcommittee that it is investigating the use of collagen for lip enhancement, any use of liquid silicone injections, and the use and promotion of Retin-A for wrinkle reduction.Should we be concerned? You bet those newly lush lips we should.The FDA has approved the use of injectible collagen (extracted from cowhide) for acne scars, but not for lip augmentation.

Oh, the physical sacrifices I make for my job as a journalist. True, I have never been assaulted by a mob in Cairo's Tahrir Square, as CBS' Lara Logan was. And I've never been injured by a bomb, as happened to ABC's Bob Woodruff and CBS' Kimberly Dozier in Iraq. In fact, the last time I left Maryland for an assignment, it was to cover the Philadelphia Flower Show, and that's not exactly hazard duty. But I am recovering from injuries suffered while writing a food story for our Wednesday Taste section, and I'd like a little more attention to my suffering than I got in the emergency room.

Read My Lips is an unconventional and engrossing French thriller about a man and a woman who elbow in on a big-money crime. It's not about the blind leading the blind, but the deaf leading the debased, and vice versa. Carla (Emmanuelle Devos) can't hear without two hearing aids. A secretary in a property management company, she faces the condescension of other employees as she attempts to work her way up in the business. Paul (Vincent Cassel) is a blunt, violent parolee being forced to pay off an enormous debt to a crooked nightclub owner.

Is this really the best anyone in Washington can do to avert sequestration? President Barack Obama's call for delaying the automatic spending cuts past the March 1 deadline would seem reasonable enough, except he hasn't really offered up a specific plan to do so. Instead, he's recommended that a few months of delay might be achieved through a "smaller package of spending cuts and tax reform. " Republicans are flatly rejecting any form of tax increase (and, apparently, ending a tax break on corporate jets is regarded as just that by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell)

Take close-ups of several pairs of brown lips humming a sweet, sad song, arrange them in a rectangular grid, five down and three across -- some of the lips are duplicated -- and add sound. That's the recipe photographer Lorna Simpson followed to make Easy to Remember, her new installation at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the first major video work ever to enter the BMA's permanent collection. Easy to Remember, which made its debut at the Whitney Biennial in 2002, takes its title from a 1930s Rodgers and Hart song of the same name.

At the fall runway shows, one beauty message was clear: Pretty is passe. "Sexy and smoldering were a common thread in hair and makeup," says Kristin Perrotta, deputy editor and beauty director for Allure. "Not overly perfect. It looked like the women had snuck backstage and were rolling around with the male models. Lips looked like everyone had been kissing a little. Updos were haphazard." Runway designers set the trends, and makeup companies are never far behind. Translation for women who wear makeup in the everyday world: Eyes and lips have high drama this fall.

It's hard to say what's most striking about Chicago showgirl Velma Kelly -- the bright red lips, the smoky eyes, the short dresses with sequined strands that seductively dust her behind, or the fact that she shot her husband with no regrets. The combination of elements, however, makes for a stirring, dangerous beauty that men want to touch and women want to possess. Velma (played by Catherine Zeta-Jones) and her Chicago showgirl-inmate counterparts are the latest permutations of femme fatales on the American big screen.

A singular piece of metal is the only evidence that it ever existed; a small, dull, jagged, piece of red hardware."These were the lips," he tells me. "Each time, I've kept the lips."Take these lips. Build a blue-black face around them. Add some big white eyes. Embellish with a cap of wiry dark hair. Put that head on a squat compact body with an outstretched arm.Now, you have the thing this used to be.This used to be a lawn jockey, an accessory of the most manicured American front yards.My visitor and I spent nearly an hour trying to agree on its worth.

On May 15, 2004 EMILY (Nee Lips) MORGAN of Sudbrook Park, beloved wife of Harold Leonard Morgan, mother of Elizabeth Morgan Flynn and Kenneth Whittington Morgan, sister of Kenneth Everett Lips and the late Robert Whittington, John Bernard and Walter Mc Caulley Lips, grandmother of Christopher Morgan Lewis and Megan Elizabeth Kersch, great-grandmother of Samuel Morgan Lewis. Funeral services from the Eline Funeral Home, 11824 Reisterstown Rd., (at Franklin Blvd) Tuesday 12 noon. Interment Druid Ridge Cemetery.

Mmmmm. Snack fish. An Asian short-clawed otter is smacking his otter lips over a fish treat in its enclosure at the Chester Zoo   in Chester, England. The smallest of the world's otter species, the vulnerable short-clawed otters are part of a breeding program at the zoo.

Pop icon Beyonce didn't sidestep the lip-sync controversy that erupted after her performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at President Barack Obama's inauguration. She embraced it. Before she took the podium to talk about Sunday's Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show, she walked onstage at the Earnest N. Morial Convention Center with a hand-held microphone and belted out a flawless version of the National Anthem. "Any questions?" she said. It wasn't the most dynamic lead-up to the halftime extravaganza.

(Note: This post has nothing to do with Baltimore other than the fact the performance discussed took place sort of close to it. And, Beyonce is performing at the Super Bowl this year -- where the Ravens will take on the 49ers. This is more of a rant that I felt needed to be said.) Congratulations Lance Armstrong and Manti Te'o, there's a new national nightmare for everyone to debate ad nauseam . This one, at least, is simpler: Beyonce. Inauguration. Lip-syncing. Huh, really?

John Harbaugh is well-renowned for keeping his cards close to the vest. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that the Ravens coach was coy about revealing his plan for the team's preseason opener against the Atlanta Falcons on Thursday night.   “The game plan for Atlanta, we don't have one,” he said after Friday's practice at the team's training complex in Owings Mills. “We will not have one. The game plan will be to run our offense, defense and special teams - pretty basic - and evaluate guys and try to execute.

As excitement builds for this week's opening of the Summer Olympics, many an armchair athlete may yearn to hop a transcontinental flight to London. But if a trip overseas isn't in the cards right now, why not discover a taste of jolly olde England closer to home? The nation's capital offers its own brand of proper British attractions, dining and lodging, say experts, suitable for even the most discerning Anglophile. "There are actually quite a few similarities between Europe and Washington, D.C., and one can certainly discover elements of British culture close to home," says Georgia Johnson Kicklighter of American Express Travel.

Eileen M. O'Hagan, a homemaker and advocate for children with cleft lips and cleft palates, died of cancer May 18 at her Cockeysville home. She was 73. Born Eileen Gayo in Baltimore and raised on Eierman Avenue, she attended the Shrine of the Little Flower School and was a 1956 Catholic High School graduate. She was active in the schools' alumnae groups. She worked briefly for Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. before her marriage to John P. O'Hagan, a civil engineer she met in 1957 at a square dance at the downtown YWCA.

America was built on the ideas that one could work hard, sacrifice and save, to have a better life. I worked hard for years and years in school, I sacrificed and saved, and now I wake up early every weekday and many weekends to go to work, where I provide services to the public at a very high price to myself, and often to the recipients of my services. As our lawmakers embark upon the first day of this special session, I wish to call to their minds the very purpose of their being there: to formulate laws.

Singer Katy Perry might have done a service for her country by giving a concert for the Annapolis Naval Academy the other day. But she gave one midshipman a little more -- a kiss right on the lips. The proudly smooched one was a happy-looking fellow named Nicholas "Tanner" Beasley. The singer gave the private show for the Naval Academy on Friday. The lip lock came while Perry, dressed in a midriff-baring, quite short, sequined sailor outfit, had Beasley on stage -- while his peers hooted, whistled and otherwise went wild.

Hinder Hinder, whose album Extreme Behavior is gathering strength on the popularity of the single "Lips of an Angel," hits Washington's 9:30 Club tonight at 7:30. Eighteen Visions and Lynam are also billed. Tickets are $20; ticket availability may be limited. The club is at 815 V St. N.W., Washington. Visit 930.com or tickets.com.

Singer Katy Perry might have done a service for her country by giving a concert for the Annapolis Naval Academy the other day. But she gave one midshipman a little more -- a kiss right on the lips. The proudly smooched one was a happy-looking fellow named Nicholas "Tanner" Beasley. The singer gave the private show for the Naval Academy on Friday. The lip lock came while Perry, dressed in a midriff-baring, quite short, sequined sailor outfit, had Beasley on stage -- while his peers hooted, whistled and otherwise went wild.

Throughout the season, it seemed as if Terrell Suggs was making a conscious effort to keep Tom Brady's name out of his mouth. While spouting out sound bites on other NFL quarterbacks, such as Ben Roethlisberger and Tim Tebow, on the Ravens' long road to the AFC championship game, the linebacker randomly tossed in vague references to his longtime nemesis from New England. Suggs once mentioned "the pretty boy from up north," and earlier this month, he commented about "the nephew of God," a nod to a recent "Saturday Night Live" skit where Jesus confronts Tebow about having to bail him out in games.