…the elixir that makes me look at least 30 days younger.

I demo and use what Amazon, TikTok, and Yahoo—my top beauty advisors—tell me is good for my beauty regimen. One exception would be recommendations from women’s magazines, but I’ll get to that shortly.

In this capacity I consider myself an unofficial “you’re getting older, let’s see if you can get better” product tester.

I rather enjoy—and am open to—trying out new offerings. This hobby facilitates the location of interesting finds like the highly recommended face cream I recently acquired made from moose antler, an orchid that blooms once every thousand years, and eye of newt.

As it turned out, this quality stuff eventually soaked in as swiftly as did the realization I’d just paid as much for this liquid fountain of youth serum as I had for my kid’s first semester of college tuition.

Overall, the results were pretty “meh” for how pricey the tincture was.

Because of my belief that other countries have better skincare cred than we do, I’m more likely to demo a product concocted in another country.

This is what led me to procure the French moisturizer that seemed to work brilliantly at first and was probably about as French as the spring water that spells “naïve” backwards.

It’s likely the product I convinced myself was “the one” can be traced to a storage unit just outside Fresno, California, where it’s distilled in a claw foot bathtub.

This dalliance was followed up by my exploration of Korean skincare products. You’ve heard of K-pop? (If not, it’s short for Korean pop music.)

Now there’s something called K-Beauty, an overarching term that refers to skincare products made in South Korea.

They manufacture snail mucin serum, which is all the rage. (I’m not making this up, once again, proving real life is often so much funnier than anything I can come up with.)

I was intrigued, but I couldn’t shake the visual of snail trails, those yucky, pooey, goopy rivers of slime with the viscosity of snot. How would I feel applying that to my face?

Yeah, so I bought it.

I mean, why not? Have you ever seen a snail you thought looked dehydrated, old, or in need of a good anti-aging treatment?

I’m guessing your answer is “no.” You have not.

In fact, I began to realize this mollusk is the epitome of a youthful-looking creature.

Before you begin fundraising for the “Save the Snails” campaign I want you to know I did my due diligence. I learned snail safety is of the utmost concern when extracting snail mucin.

We’re assured snail mucin is easy and safe to collect.

(I’m guessing this is according to the snail mucin collectors and not the freaked-out snails that excrete more mucin when they’re stressed. All they can rely on is madly waggling their antennae to telegraph their extreme discontent.)

This resultant emollient—I use the term loosely—possesses a texture you might expect. It was gloopy.

Ironically enough, the snail mucin results are fast—you know, because snails aren’t—but minimal.

I used it. It was weird and sticky. I moved on.

I had just about given up hope I would ever find my skin saver and savior when it appeared to me in a vision.

That vision consisted of me googling “inexpensive skin products manufactured in other countries and good for older skin,” and then watching the results populate my computer screen.

My newly discovered magical preparation has the exact right consistency of axle grease, which is necessary for rubbing out lines while also cementing in my newly ironed out wrinkles for a good 8-hour hold.

And no snails were corralled for collection nor stressed out for production.

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📙For more sit-down standup humor check out the book by the same name: BANGS ‘N’ BOTOX: My Aging Journey Into, Through, and Beyond Denial, Fillers & Human Preservatives

▶️Amazon link🛒🛍 https://bit.ly/47Gqxu0