#tbt - Discontinued Beauty Products I Loved

Cosmetic companies are sadists. They love, love, love to get us hooked on a product and then discontinue it. It's metaphorically them bending us over a mini-bar or pinball machine and fucking us senseless, and all we can do is take it in the ass, because they're a big corporation with all the power and money, and we're just modest consumers at the mercy of their decisions on what we can and can't  buy from them. There's nothing you can do but, I don't know cry I guess.

Over the years there have been many wonderful products that I've loved that have been axed for one reason or another. Maybe they wanted to revamp the formula or it wasn't selling as much as they wanted, whatever. It's stupid! Here are some products I fondly remember.

Lancome Primordiale Cell Defense Serum

I don't know if it defended any sort of cells, but it was a stellar serum. Lancome is always messing around with their formulas, claiming that the current formula is the BEST, MOST EXCITING formula EVER, only to turn around and reformulate it a few years, or months, later. It's super annoying. This made my skin silky smooth and made my pores invisible. It's long been replaced by like a million other serums, mainly Genefique which is an absolute disaster of a formula. It has alcohol as it's SECOND ingredient. It's just dumb.

Benefit Cosmetics Dear John - a Movin' On Facial Cream

Benefit has always been one of the WORST brands when it comes to discontinuing their products. Never, ever get attached to something Benefit puts out because it'll just be gone within a few years, though they have kept a few products around, I look for them to get rid of them and bring something else out any day. Benefit has always been a kitchie, tongue-in-cheek brand. As far as I can remember, none of their product packaging matched, each product has always had it's own theme. This was the case with their Dear John face cream. 

It was a beautiful formulation. It was thick and luxurious, but didn't feel heavy on the skin. It sank right in leaving your skin feeling baby soft. The campaign for this cream was so clever and fun. The idea was to ditch your old face cream as you would a bad lover, and move on to this one, a face cream that could satisfy you better. From what I could tell, the cream sold great and had a following. Unfortunately, Benefit decided to do away with their old skincare and come out with fancy new packaging. I wish I could say the replacement face cream was just Dear John in a new jar, but it's not, it doesn't even compare. 

Prescriptives All You Need+ For Eyes

I literally cried when this was gone. Estee Lauder, who is the mother corporation of Prescriptives, decided to pull the plug on this brand. All the counters closed, but their was such an outcry from customers that Estee Lauder decided to produce a select few products that were fan favorites and relaunch Perscriptives as an online only store. I was excited that I would finally be able to purchase my beloved All You Need For Eyes again! Unfortunately, it's not the same formula. The original was far more hydrating and soothing, the new one... I don't know. It just leaves something to be desired. I think they reformulated it when they relaunched, and it so sad. Oh well, you can't win em' all.

Estee Lauder Sparkling Clean Purifying Mud Foam Cleanser

Goddammit Estee Lauder! This was an AMAZING cleanser! It was a thick, mud-like(hence the name) goop that you squeezed out of a mint green tube. It smelled of freshness and deliciousness! Once you added water, it foamed up into a luxurious, but not overly-bubbly lather. It left skin feeling refreshed and clean, but not dry and tight. For one reason or another, Estee Lauder hates me and decided to revamp their cleansers. The new ones, while with a shorter name, pale in comparison to this lost love.

Redken No. 8

OH DEAR GOD WHY!?!?!? It was such a tragedy the day I went to my hair salon and found out this was gone. I would mix it with Redken For Men Get Groomed Finishing Cream for the perfect hair style! NOW IT'S GONE! They replaced it with this weird gel that's disgusting! I HATE IT! No. 8 was just the tits in the mouth! The best gel there's ever been and probably ever will be again! BITCH!

Wella Lifetex Wake Up Call Hydrating Purity Wash and Big Splash Rinse

I can't even begin to tell you how hard I looked for this stuff EVERYWHERE once it was chopped from Wella's line. These were the most amazing shampoo and conditioner I have ever used! I have yet to fine something that made me as happy as these. The way they felt, smelled and made my hair silk-like. If you remember this stuff, you know what I'm talking about. Unfortunately, it was expensive and the bottles were much smaller than normal shampoo and conditioner at the time, which is why Wella got rid of them. Truly sad. But seriously, go fuck yourself Wella. 

Flash Shiner 3 Way Nail Buffer

This have me the prefect manicured looking nails. I've always had deep ridges, and this just made them disappear. It left behind the most epic shine! It didn't look like polish, it just made your nails look clean and well-kept. I have no idea what happened to this buffer, but I've never been ablet o find another like it. BRING IT BACK!!!

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Benefit Cosmetics Smoooch 

The one thing I'm probably the most upset about on this list is Smoooch. If you never used it, then you wouldn't understand. It was THE PERFECT lip balm. As soon as it hit your lips, it moisturized them. I remember initially getting it because the name sounded adorable! It came in a lip gloss packaging. so it was a little awkward putting it on in public. Each tube was $20, which also probably had something to do with why it wasn't selling. 

When I heard they were discontinuing it, I freaked. I went out and bought as many as I could, which was like 6. My last one. unfortunately, was found by my little sister who used it over her lipstick and ruined it. *Pours one out*. Benefit replaced Smoooch with something stupid called California Kissing or something like that. It's horrible. #BringBackSmoooch! That's never going to catch on. 

*******

This is how I felt when Smoooch was gone forever. 

Let me know what products the cosmetic companies have so viciously snatched away from you.

#tbt - My Middle School Necessities

Hi kids! Grab a Capri Sun, a handful of Teddy Grahams and come sit on the rug criss-cross-applesauce! It's show and tell day! Not really, I'm just talking about the shit I HAD TO HAVE in middle school. Speaking of rugs, remember those rugs that EVERY elementary school class room had that looked like a neighborhood with streets? I mean, it was a good idea because if you playing with Hot Wheels or any other kind of toy car, you had a little street to go down, but we never did that because all the other kids would be playing with blocks and shit on the same rug and completely block the "road". Am I making any sense? Am I still typing? Why am I talking about rugs. Well that was stream of consciousness writing if I've ever seen it! Anyway, let's talk about some of the shit I liked in Middle School! YAY!

Altoids

GOOD GOD! These things were like crack in middle school. Especially the Sours, remember the Sours?! Yeah, if you had a tin of these in your pocket, you were set.

Clinique 3-Step Skin Care

I had a REALLY bad dry skin phase in 6th Grade. My skin was flaky and tight. It was real real bad. My mother took me to the Clinique counter and got me the Mild Facial Soap bar, The Mild Clarifying Lotion and The famous Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion. I later added the All About Eyes eye cream to the mix. My skin was awesome! Every morning and every night, this was my jam! Since then I've moved on to much more heavy-duty skin care because aging is a bitch.

Portable CD Player

I'm not sure if iPods had come out yet or not, but I remember having a portable CD player along with my CD case. I had Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clarkson, No Doubt and a WHOLE lotta Country Music. I was obsessed with Country Music, mainly Reba, Martina McBride and Chely Wright. Garth Brooks, Johnny Cash and Jeannie C. Riley were my other staples. I also loved Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Elvis and of course Judy Garland. I was very eclectic. Kids now days will never know the struggle of a portable CD player. They were the worst! If you moved it the wrong way, or jerked it, it would stop playing in the middle of your song! It SUCKED! Thank you Steve Jobs! Thank you so much for being a fucking genius and realizing how fed up we were with that fuckery!

Woods cologne for Men by Abercrombie & Fitch

This stuff was amazing. It was spicy and woodsy, but at the same time it had citrus notes in it. It smelled clean, something in a musky cologne, such as this, is hard to achieve. I always got complemented when wearing this. They discontinued it in 2005, I guess because it smelled too classy for the A&F brand. They re-launched it in 2010, but it was limited. STUPID! I still have my last bottle saved for nostalgia purposes.

Smoooch by Benefit

The best lip balm EVER! It moisturized your lips IMMEDIATELY on contact. Because cosmetic companies are sadists, and love to play god with our lives, Benefit discontinued it and I was so distraught! It was my holy grail lip balm. No other has ever matched it. I always had one in my pocket at school, the only downside was it had an applicator like lip gloss, so it looked a little weird for a guy to be putting it on. Oh well, my lips were fucking soft, so S mah D!

Bed Head Manipulator

Looking back, this stuff was just GROSS! It was sticky, gunky and tacky! For some reason, I loved it! It kept my hair in place, smelled really great and it was blue! What more could a middle school kid ask for!? It didn't really leave my hair greasy feeling, just kinda... weird. It left a weird texture in my hair. I outgrew it and found other products that made my hair feel not weird and styled it at the same time.

Hand Cream

I always had hand cream in my pocket. I applied it A LOT. I used to have really bad eczema on my hands. It would be so bad that the skin on my hands would actually crack and bleed if I didn't keep them moisturized. I got a lot of hell for it. Some girl even told me that she would "go out" with me, or be my girlfriend or whatever, but only if I didn't put lotion on my hands. I was all like BYE FELICIA!!! I'm gonna do what I want to! My favorite hand cream was Satin Hands by Mary Kay, it was easy to get because TONS of people sold it. Back then it was an awesome hand cream, today, not so much. They changed the formula and scent and now it's just blah. 

Journal

I had multiple "fancy" journals. These journals usually were high quality ones I'd get at book stores of a paper store. I would sketch, write weird ass short stories and poems in it, but NEVER share them. It was my personal thing. I always kept it close.

Pens

I was a pen-a-holic. I had SOOOO many pens. I loved the ball point ones that were gel-like. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I had a lot of fucking pens.

 Ralph Lauren Hoodie Jackets

I had like seven of these, all in different colors. I usually matched them with whatever I was wearing that day. I remember some of my girl friends would wear them because it was so cold in our school sometimes. It always made me feel even more obese seeing my big ass hoodies on these petite girls. And yes, they had to be Ralph Lauren. I was a label snob in school. EVERYTHING I wore had to be designer. I had a helluva lot of Eddie Bauer shit too,. Don't judge me! Eddie was popular at the time! Remember the stupid Ford Explorers that were Eddie Bauer Edition?! Yeah, I thought that was the coolest thing ever. *eyeroll* I was a dweeb. 

Yes. I actually had this sweater in green. DON'T JUDGE ME!

What were some of your must haves in middle school?

#tbt: A Little Princess (1995)

Director:

Alfonso Cuarón

Writers:

 Frances Hodgson Burnett (novel), Richard LaGravenese (screenplay), Elizabeth Chandler (screenplay)

Stars:

 Liesel Matthews, Eleanor Bron, Liam Cunningham

Cinderella!!!

Sara Crewe (Liesel Matthews) is forced to leave her beloved India after her father (Liam Cunningham) enlists to fight for the British in WWI. He moves Sara to New York to attend the same boarding school as her late mother attended, in hopes she would have the utmost care. Sara's creativity and kind-nature soon lead her and the head-mistress Miss Minchin (Eleanor Bron) to clash. As Sara continues to struggle staying true to herself and trying to follow the stifling rules of Miss Minchin, tragedy strikes. Now Sara must find away to believe in her dreams, while dealing with the harsh realities of the cold, cruel world. 

What do these girls even talk about? "Oh I like your green dress!" "Your's too!"

I kinda made this movie sound more depressing than it is. Sorry. It's really not! It's actually an amazingly positive and sweet movie! This movie is so ingrained in my childhood memories, it's right up there with Wizard of Oz, Sleeping Beauty and Steel Magnolias (Yes, Steel Magnolias was one of my favorite movies as a child, we'll talk about it later.). I would watch this movie over and over. It's very much a modern fairy-tale, except it takes place in 1914, so it's not that modern. 

Someone's wearing their fancy-pants today. 

I got HBO last weekend as some special new year promotion, and I saw this was coming on. I hadn't seen it in YEARS. It's probably been a good ten years, which is surprising considering I have two much younger sisters, but they were so into Hannah Montana and High School Musical shit, I guess this masterpiece somehow fell through the cracks for them. Anyway, I decided to watch it, but I was a little scared that I wouldn't be able to make it all the way through. You know how you re-visit a childhood movie or cartoon and it makes you cringe SO BAD and you hate yourself for ever liking it in the first place? That's happened to me a few times (Ahem, Ed, Edd and Eddy), but with this movie it wasn't the case. 

How did her father know to dress her like that? I mean, I know he's British but... still.

I LOVED IT! It made remember being a kid again! I always wanted to be a little princess like Sara Crewe! Looking at it as an adult, I can so appreciate this movie for what it is now. The costumes, the set design, the lighting, the script, the acting... everything is just perfect. It's one of these rare movies you come across that just work. The directing is absolutely superb. I looked up Alfonso Cuarón and saw that along with this movie, he's also directed Great Expectations (1998) and Children of Men. I'm not in the least bit surprised. Though this movie is a intended for children and has a whimsical, almost dream-like vibe to it, it's still very dark and stylized. The green hues and drab, muted earth tones that come into play after Sara moves to New York, starkly contrast the world she once knew in India, where the film opened. This really helps us see things through Sara's eyes, and helps us relate to her. Little things like changing the color scheme is such a nice touch in a movie like this. Alfonso Cuarón did something very similar things in Great Expectations. 

"I have to fight a war now, I'm just gonna leave you hear with the weird bitch lady. PEACE!"

Now lets address the elephant in the room. The story. It's messed up. In case you haven't seen the movie, SPOILER ALERT! Sara's father is presumed dead and she's left alone in the world. Not only is Sara's father taken from her, but the British government seizes all his wealth and property. WHAT? Is this for real? After a man signs up to help YOU fight in a vicious war and "dies" you're going to take all his shit and peace out leaving his little girl, the only family he has, NOTHING?!?! 1914 ethics were FUCKED! I never understood that part as a child. I was always very worried about the financial situations of my fictional characters when I was young. To me, a happy ending = money, fame, marriage or all three. 

Someone "Arms of an Angel" these children! 

Watching this movie again as an adult, I still found myself feeling HORRIBLE for Sara. Not only did she lose the only person she had in the world, she also lost all of her assets. Miss Minchin, supposedly being in a financial rut because of Sara, takes almost everything she has and forces her to move to the attic and work as a servant girl. It's very Cinderella. Despite everything, Sara never gives up on her fantasies and imagination. She still believes everything will turn out for the best, despite what Miss Minchen preaches at her. This movie may very well be why I was (and still am) kinda delusional and imaginative sometimes.

What a fucking bitch!

The acting was spot-on. I haven't really seen any of the actors in this film in anything else that I know of, but they were all great! I have to give a special shout-out to Liesel Matthews. She was incredible! She played the President's daughter in Air Force One along side Harrison Ford, but after that she seemed to disappear. It turns out, Liesel's real name is Liesel Pritzker Simmons and she's an heiress to the Hyatt Hotel fortune. When she was a teenager, she found out that her father's relatives were secretly swindling money from her and her brother, Matthew (Where she got her stage last name.). Liesel hired a lawyer and sued them for her and her brother's rightful inheritance. It was an ugly battle. It was found out that the family memeber Liesel sued were actually stealing her inheritance and dividing up the money amongst themselves. Under the settlement, Liesel and Matthew each received roughly U.S. $280 million in cash and were given more control over other trusts valued at about U.S. $170 million each. Liesel now does charity work in Africa along with her husband, and dabbles in business. I'm happy for Liesel and her charitable projects, but I feel like she would be one of the top actresses in Hollywood today if she had stuck to it.

Guuurl! You gonna get pneumonia! That's dangerous in 1914!

I know that was not really a part of the movie, but I thought I would share it because it's super interesting. Anyway, the movie is awesome, and if you haven't seen it... what's wrong with you? Go watch it! This cynical, negative world we live in these days, really gets me down sometimes, so this movie was perfect for me to re-visit. The movie teaches that magic is real, and that real magic is within all of us. Those who believe in magic will find it, and those who follow their dreams and stay true to themselves will have their happy ending. 

some little boys are too... just sayin'.

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I'm just gonna say it: black women pull off hats better. That's not racist, it's SCIENCE!