NYTimes Has Nothing Better To Write About

The NYTimes has not one but two articles today about lip products. The first is about Lil' Mama (is it just me or is that just a smaller, cuter Lil' Kim?), a sassy teen rapper, Avril Lavigne collaborator, and erstwhile Sephora promoter who has a bangin' new hit single called "Lip Gloss". I like the way the NYTimes explains it:

Lil Mama is rap’s newest product placer. But instead of promoting cars or clothes or cocktails, she is glorifying something a little more innocuous in her hit song, “Lip Gloss.”

Lip gloss.

Over a spare, double-Dutch-friendly beat, Lil Mama, a Brooklyn-bred 17-year-old with sass to spare, rhymes: “I said my lip gloss is cool/My lip gloss be poppin/I’m standing at my locker/And all the boys keep stoppin.”

Holla. It's actually quite catchy. I'm already in the process of downloading it. It alarms me that I sometimes don't know about new hits like this until I read about them in the Times. What am I, 40?

The second article concerns more of what we're into, which is lip balm proper. This time it's the men folk who are getting the attention in this Fashion & Style article about guys who *GASP!* wear lip balm a lot. Another choice excerpt:

And every morning after he brushes his teeth, Mr. Yeager, 27, puts some of it on.

Since he started using Jack Black Intense Lip Therapy Balm about five years ago to soothe lips frequently chapped from airline travel, Mr. Yeager said he has been hooked on the “cool mint feeling.” So hooked that for his wedding last year he included the balm in a cosmetic gift pack for his groomsmen.

As the men’s market for moisturizers and sun protection has grown, so has the market for lip balm. Besides longstanding unisex standards like ChapStick, Blistex and Kiehl’s, macho choices like Jack Black, a line that exclusively targets men, are proliferating.

According to a 2005 report by Packaged Facts, a publishing division of MarketResearch.com, lip care products “are performance orientated, and chapped lips are a rugged sort of ailment that men can treat without feeling effete.”

Snoozeville. And since when are chapped lips a "rugged sort of ailment"? Oh, I guess when guys have chapped lips it's rugged, and when girls have them it's...just that time of the month.

Note to the Times: from now on hire us to do your lip balm coverage. I promise we won't make it sound so freakin' precious.