Putting your best face forward, Consistency

Good week for:

Putting your best face forward, after the musical director of the Olympic opening ceremony revealed that a 9-year-old schoolgirl who captivated the audience with her performance of a patriotic anthem was lip-syncing. The real singer was a 7-year-old who was deemed not cute enough to be seen.

Three-hour tours, after a Canadian entrepreneur announced that he was almost finished restoring the original SS Minnow, seen in the opening of Gilligan’s Island, for tourist excursions.

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Understanding your customers, after an upscale Manhattan spa began charging $180 to smear clients’ faces with dried nightingale dung. The special Japanese facial, the spa says, gives you skin as flawless as a geisha’s.

Bad week for:

Consistency, after a Kentucky woman was kicked out of a mall for wearing a short dress that security guards called “provocative.” Kymberly Clem, 20, had purchased the dress at the mall the day before.

The Olympic spirit, after the Spanish basketball team posed for a photo kneeling on a Chinese dragon and pulling back their facial skin to mimic Asian slanted eyes. The gesture was “affectionate,” one player said. The Spanish then beat the Chinese team, 85–75, while being booed throughout the game.

Modern art, after an inflatable dog turd the size of a house, created by American artist Paul McCarthy, came loose from its moorings at a Swiss museum and knocked down a power line. The piece is called Complex S--t, though it might be properly renamed S--t Happens.