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If you watch a lot of late-night infomercials, you'll start to believe that maybe you could come up with the next "million-dollar idea."
Or you might end up buying a salsa chopper. Which is what I did.
But that was a long time ago, and while the salsa chopper really only squished tomatoes instead of chopping them, it was probably more effective than trying to buy a house with NO MONEY DOWN. That's another late-night infomercial offering.
You'd probably have as much luck buying a house with a salsa chopper as you would buying a house with NO MONEY.
Now I have the next million-dollar idea, the next fad, the next big thing, the next craze for administrators to ban from schools.
It started when I noticed the hair salon down the street, Terry's Hair Studio, put out a banner advertising "Air Brush Tanning."
The process saves you the trouble of lying about in the sun, developing a tumor in the name of looking outdoorsy and healthy.
And I got to thinking.
Young people have taken to putting bolts through their noses and rings through their eyebrows, lips and, er, other places. And then there's the funky-colored hair and the explosion in tattooing.
And people are getting spray-on tans ...
Well? Why does a spray-on tan have to be, you know, tan?
Why couldn't someone walk into Terry's Hair Studio and get a spray-on blue?
Michelle Combs, who does the spraying at Terry's, said the request has never come up. So far, she only has tan tans to give. The tanning goop is airbrushed on with a compressor. Produced by Healthy Tan Inc. in Hilton Head, S.C., the product uses a government-approved chemical called dihydroxyacetone to trigger natural skin coloration, according to the company brochure.
The brochure adds, "DHA reacts with wool, nylon and silk." So there's that.
A $30 treatment lasts up to 10 days, Combs said.
Hmmm. How about 10 days of purple skin instead of tan?
Healthy Tan Inc. vice president Pat Farrell said his company hasn't dabbled in colors. The chemical works, he said, by drawing out the skin's own pigmentation. Unless you have naturally blue amino acids, you're not going to come out blue.
Darn.
Developing the spray-on tan wasn't easy, Farrell said. Company founder Ken Rank had to overcome earlier problems of streaking and a bad smell some predecessors left. The old dyes turned people orange.
Maybe that orange thing was ahead of its time.
In seven years since its founding, Healthy Tan Inc. has expanded. The spray-on blend is available at more than 1,200 salons across the country, Farrell said.
So who's to say my idea isn't next?
Would it be different? Sure. That's the idea.
Would it be allowed in school? Probably not ... Or maybe, just maybe, it would.
"I learned long ago, never say "absolutely not,"' Pasco County school superintendent John Long said. "If it's disruptive, if kids are coming out of class to see someone who's pink or green, it might be a problem until they got used to it. ... Quite frankly, if they took us to court, they might well win that battle."
Kids, you've got to fight for your rights.
I would regret dropping that kind of legal issue at Long's feet, except that he retires Nov. 15. That makes him fair game for most of my musings for the next six months or so.
While Combs explained the spray-on process to me, client Jan Enstein waited patiently, halfway through her hair styling appointment.
Maybe Enstein would like an all-over blueing?
"I don't think so," she said.
Enstein was wearing a plastic cap on her head, with tufts of hair pulled through little holes all over the cap. Not sure what that was about, but if we're willing to sit while someone pulls tufts of your hair through a plastic cap, then maybe a greenish body tint isn't as out of the question as it sounds.
Combs said after getting a spray-on tan, your skin might feel a little sticky for a while. But by the next day, everything's back to normal.
Except for the healthy bronze glow.
Combs is available for home tanning parties. No blueing, yet.