Lips

Vice president. Who among us can contain their excitement? Not me. I can't wait to hear more from the man for whom brevity is a Rubicon he will not cross. Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you something about Sen. Joe Biden, as Joe Biden himself might say: Joe is the guy who will tell the hard truths, say the unsaid things - literally, not just figuratively - to ensure that he has gone the extra oratory mile in service to this great cause, America, for which he will give not merely his last breaths but an unknowable number of breaths in service of the country he loves, never once tiring or being distracted by the grammatical ballast of the period, the wedge issue of the paragraph break or the thud of his audiences' heads soporifically smacking the tables in front of them.

Hey, breast augmentation. Meet the lip implant. A new procedure called FulFil Lip from California-based Evera Medical, has just been approved for testing by the Food and Drug Administration. Much like a breast implant, the FulFil Lip is a balloon that can be filled with saline and then inserted into the lip. A micro-valve prevents any fluid from leaking. Now that could be embarrassing during a first kiss. Outside the U.S., the company already markets VeraFil, a saline implant that plumps skin around the eye. Right now, there are myriad ways to inflate your pucker - from injecting collagen from a dead person to grafting fat from your caboose.

The 800 drummers weren't the only highly synchronized performers at China's Olympic opening ceremony. Less well-received: the lip-syncing pigtailed girl in the red dress. A collective boo/hiss moved across the globe yesterday as word spread that the sweet-voiced cherub actually didn't sing the song spotlighted during Friday's event. It was actually another, supposedly less photogenic, child. According to the Associated Press, the government made the call to pull the chubby-faced tot with crooked teeth but an angelic voice and bring in the pixie ringer who became a national celebrity after the show.

The doors of Tony Hopkins Jr.'s white Dodge Charger open Lamborghini-style: They swing up, not out. The white car has four TVs for watching DVDs, exterior speakers mounted on the rear and 24-inch rims. But the 25-year-old Pasadena resident still has about a month's worth of customizing work left to do. This is not a car he'd give up without a fight. So it seemed natural that Hopkins slugged a would-be car thief and took his .380-caliber handgun when two men tried to rob him outside his apartment in the 8100 block of Elmberry Court on Thursday night.

White House Ghosts Presidents and Their Speechwriters From FDR to George W. Bush By Robert Schlesinger Simon & Schuster / 579 pages / $30 Warren G. Harding "writes the worst English I have ever encountered," H. L. Mencken opined, after the president's inaugural address. "It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. ... It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash." Little wonder, then, that Harding was the first president to hire a full-time speechwriter: Judson Welliver, a reporter and editorial writer for The Washington Times.

OH, I LOVE film. D.W. Griffith, Hitchcock, William Wellman. I know my movies. I mean, should I go on?" That is the weather-beaten cineaste, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, talking to Entertainment Weekly. Who'd a thunk it? Well, here's another unusual celebrity guest for Turner Classic Movies guy Robert Osborne to persuade to sit down with him. Wouldn't you love to see the vintage guitarist and the urbane Mr. O. chatting about -- say, Kim Novak in Vertigo? Some days, I think there's nothing left to anticipate in show business, but then I hear something like the above; I can go on. Scholarly competition Microsoft titan Bill Gates gave England's Cambridge University $210 million to set up a scholarship that will rival Oxford's trusty old Rhodes, except Gates wants to identify and nurture networking-friendly global citizens who want to save the world.

In my opinion, there is nothing that says, "Look at my NOSE!" like a glittering gemstone in a pierced nostril. I see a lot of adorned noses, but I can't imagine getting one. Not that they are not attractive on the rare individual with flawless skin and a sculpted proboscis, but the Janet's World Institute for Facial Statistics reports that, for 71.9 percent of us, the nose is not our best feature. If anything, I might consider getting some other part pierced to divert attention from my nose.

The first day of workouts gave Orioles players one chance to break the club's facial-hair policy. That's it. Relievers Jamie Walker and Chad Bradford sported full beards. Relievers George Sherrill and Ryan Bukvich wore goatees. And manager Dave Trembley wore a look of amusement that isn't going to last through the weekend. A long-standing team rule allows only mustaches, and they can't extend past the corners of the mouth. "I told them that I'm not old enough to play golf, but they have a mulligan today," Trembley said.

The lip gloss industry has gotten downright kinky. What was once called mauve, bronze and mocha is suddenly Purr, Brick House and Melt My Chocolate. "Quickie!" Kristen Mallonee hissed through cherry pink lips. "This one's named Quickie!" "OK, you have to buy it then," Allison Morris said. And yet tantalizing men was not really what these college students had in mind as they browsed the pots and tubes and palettes of lip gloss at the new Sephora in the Westfield Annapolis mall. Other women pouted and preened into the cosmetic store's many mirrors, perhaps imagining an admirer's gaze, but Mallonee and Morris spent much of their time among the makeup samples looking at each other - and cracking up. Morris, 25, had painted her eyelids in thirds, each with its own electric streak of shadow.