'Plastic wives' defend 'beverly hills' decisions

Thursday, 7 February 2013

Washington, Feb 2 : Breast augmentation, Botox, liposuction. Almost no cosmetic procedure is off limits for the four Hollywood women who are the stars of TLC's new reality TV show.

Veronica Matlock, Alana Sands, Danya Devon and Frances Marques are the "Plastic Wives," married to some of the most successful plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills, with all the perks. Namely, free plastic surgery.

Watch the full story on "Nightline" tonight at 12:35 a.m. ET and on "Good Morning America" tomorrow at 7 a.m. ET

Marques said she has had her breasts done four times. For Matlock, three times. Devon said she loves Botox.

"I'm sure this lifestyle seems a little crazy," Devon said. "This lifestyle, look, is crazy. This is Hollywood, though."

Their new show, which premieres on TLC, leaves little to the imagination about what life in and out of the operating room is really like. At home Sands, the wife of cosmetic dentist Dr. Kevin Sands, has three full-time nannies for her two kids, two full-time masseuses and a full-time chef.

"I'm not complaining," Sands said. "I'm not complaining at all."

For these wives, it's a no-appointment-necessary and no-payment-required lifestyle. They have unlimited access to the operating room, whatever they want, whenever they want -- even a personal procedure room at home for a little nip and tuck when the mood strikes them. They are proud of the work they had done, living billboards of their husbands' steady hands.

"I heard some advice a long time ago that has always stuck with me, and it's if you're considering a plastic surgeon, look at his wife," Devon said. "And that's a perfect example of the kind of work he most likely does."

"My husband is doing a consult for a Brazilian butt, he'll tell the women, 'I did it on my wife, here look, look at this picture,' and it does help," Marques said.

And they are quick to judge the work of other surgeons' wives.

"If we don't like them, we don't hang out with their wives," Sands said.

Their husbands might try to get them to stop getting plastic surgery, but they always seem to lose the battle. Matlock lovingly refers to her husband, Dr. David Matlock, a gynecological surgeon, as "the vagina man."

"One way to get exactly what I want is to say, 'All right, don't worry about it. I'll go to doctor so and so," Matlock said. "And he'll be like, 'Oh, no you don't.'"

Even when faced with the possibility of critics saying they are overdoing it, the ladies weren't fazed.

"We're not telling anybody they have to go do this," Devon said. "I'm all about, like, 'Look, here's what I did. Here's the information. Take it or leave it.' If you like it, great. If you don't, great. No worries."

But no amount of Botox can ward off aging and the pressure they feel to stay perfect. Devon, a former entertainment news anchor, recently turned 40 and said she was faced with the reality of wrinkles.

"In any other community in the world, this makes absolutely no sense, but it's Hollywood," she said. "I wanted to continue working in television. I wanted to continue working in front of the camera, and unfortunately, you hit 40, you want to continue working in TV, there are some things that you've got to think about."

So Devon said she asked her husband, Dr. Brent Moelleken, to help with everything from injections to nips and tucks.

"I'll still obsess about an acne scar or something, but I think most women do find things they obsess about. But look, I'm pretty happy," she said.

Sands said she is not addicted to plastic surgery, but in the past six months, she has been in her husband's office "a lot."

"I always see him in surgery doing people's teeth and I'm always like, 'Babe, just please do my teeth,'" she said.

Though plastic surgery is a $10 billion a year industry in the United States, plastic surgeon Dr. Lisa Cassileth said shows like "Plastic Wives" send the wrong message about body image and cosmetic surgery.

"I think if you have something you're walking around with, it's easy to fix, you don't need to live with it, O.K., there's a level where you can fix that," she said. "But for the day-to-day person, I think most people are only going to want to fix something if they wake up every morning and it bothers them and it's worth it. And that's a much smaller percentage than what we see on television."

Cassileth said she often spends her days correcting surgeries that she said have gone too far.

"The insider phrase is 'Beverly Hills,'" she said. "So when people come in and they're overdone, I say to them, 'I'm sorry, you're looking too Beverly Hills, and that's when you stop.'"

She has helped fix patients like Jillian Weisberg, who said another plastic surgeon injected a full syringe of juvederm into her lips and they ballooned.

"When people would come over to my house, they would laugh in my face," she said. "I looked ridiculous."

But some plastic wives can't seem to stop and their lives, just like their faces, seem glamorous, scar-free and flawless -- most of the time. Marques thought she had it all during her seven-year marriage to Dr. Ryan Stanton, until, she said, he left her. They are still friends and they run his plastic surgery business together.

"He got the midlife crisis and he wants to be with a younger women [sic] half of my age and so he left me because of that," Marques said. "Although I have done everything to keep myself young, he just -- I couldn't keep the man."

Even so, Marques said she even loves the name of the reality show, "Plastic Wives."

"I thought it was brilliant," she said. "We do a lot of plastic surgery, but we don't look nothing like plastic, you know, we don't look overdone."

And she still wants more.

"I am kind of addicted," Marques said. "There are so many things coming, so many new technologies, new implants, new Botox, new fillers, laser procedures and all that. And I want it all."

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Coolest new car tech that could be in your next ride

London, Feb 2 : Smartphones, tablets, and computers seem to evolve at a breakneck pace, but the personal technology in cars has consistently lagged behind.

That may finally be changing, though. Touchscreens, futuristic dashboards, and Internet connectivity options are all currently being worked on by automotive manufacturers, and you’ll be seeing these features on new car models starting this year.

Chevrolet is poised to refresh its MyLink media navigation system to act even more like the tablets and smartphones you already own.

Rather than static icons arranged in a specific order, as they are now in Chevys, you'll be able to edit and rearrange each set of apps, much like an iPhone screen. The MyLink update will support streaming radio, weather reports and hands-free calls, and allow you to save GPS directions. The smartphone-inspired software is scheduled to launch with the 2014 Chevy Impala later this year.


If a touchscreen dashboard just isn't your style, you might be interested in something a bit more futuristic. Several car companies have produced their own versions of virtual display technology that overlays information onto part of your windshield, while still allowing you to see the road without difficulty. These systems can give drivers information like speed, direction, and navigation guidance without taking their eyes off the road.

BMW, Hyundai, and Cadillac are a few of the companies working on similar systems, which should make it to consumer models of new vehicles within the next couple of years. There are also a handful of third party companies, like Pioneer, working on their own heads-up displays that can be added to practically any car or truck.

Good music can make a long commute bearable, and ensuring that the tunes pumping into your car meet your mood is paramount. To make the process of striking the perfect note more easy and intuitive, music technology company GraceNote built the MoodGrid. It’s a program that can generate musical playlists based on your feelings.

The grid provides 25 different mood squares which you can tap to activate. The sides of the grid act as specific moods such as Positive, Calm, Energetic, and Dark. Each time you touch a square, the system applies more of that feeling to its musical choices. If you're positive and energetic, the system will play upbeat, fast-tempo tunes, and the opposite is true if you're feeling a bit more mellow. If you’re in no specific mood, tapping towards the center of the grid will provide more of a mix.


The days of finding an address on the Web and typing it into a GPS unit are ending. Porsche's new Harman Aha Web search technology streamlines the process and lets you type your destination directly into the vehicle's interactive dashboard instead of fumbling around for your smartphone. The system then searches the Web for the most relevant results based on your location and presents them to you in an easy-to-browse list.

For example, you want to try out that new Chinese restaurant across town and can't remember the name. Rather than reaching for your iPhone at a stop light, you can simply type the relevant keywords into the Aha system and it will find it for you. It will even automatically program your vehicle's navigation system to get you there. This technology is just one step away from letting your car actually drive you to your destination on its own, but that’s coming too.

Car and technology companies like Audi and Google are getting closer to self-driving cars that could outsmart slow traffic and find a parking spot without human input. The vehicles use radar and camera sensors to avoid accidents and humans alike.

However, driverless cars are legal in only three states Google has pushed California legislators to allow its fleet of autonomous map-making cars to hit public streets, but that's a small victory in what is a long legislative process nationally. Still, most automakers are confident self-driving technology will reach consumers before 2020. Cadillac hopes to launch its "Super Cruise" automatic highway driving option by 2015.

Whether any of these new features make it into your next vehicle, they too will be replaced by something even wilder and unimaginably cool. Or think about it this way: In the 1950s, everyone thought we'd have flying cars by 2000, so maybe touchscreens and connected cars are OK for 2013.

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Biggest dinosaurs had brains the size of tennis balls

London, Feb 2 : An advanced member of the largest group of dinosaurs ever to walk the Earth still had a relatively puny brain, researchers say.

The scientists analyzed the skull of 70-million-year-old fossils of the giant dinosaur Ampelosaurus, discovered in 2007 in Cuenca, Spain, in the course of the construction of a high-speed rail track connecting Madrid with Valencia. The reptile was a sauropod, long-necked, long-tailed herbivores that were the largest creatures ever to stride the Earth. More specifically, Ampelosaurus was a kind of sauropod known as a titanosaur, many if not all of which had armorlike scales covering their bodies.

Sauropod skulls are typically fragile, and few have survived intact enough for scientists to learn much about their brains. By scanning the interior of the skull via CT imaging, the researchers developed a 3-D reconstruction of Ampelosaurus' brain, which was not much bigger than a tennis ball.

"This saurian may have reached 15 meters (49 feet) in length; nonetheless its brain was not in excess of 8 centimeters (3 inches)," study researcher Fabien Knoll, a paleontologist at Spain's National Museum of Natural Sciences, said in a statement.

The first sauropods appeared about 160 million years earlier than this fossil.

"We don't see much expansion of brain size in this group of animals as they go through time, unlike a lot of mammalian and bird groups, where you see increases in brain size over time," researcher Lawrence Witmer, an anatomist and paleontologist at Ohio University, told LiveScience. "They apparently hit on something and stuck with it — expansion of brain size over time wasn't a major focus of theirs."

For years, scientists have wondered how the largest land animals ever lived with such tiny brains. "Maybe we should flip that question on their end — maybe we shouldn't ask how they could function with tiny brains, but what are many modern animals doing with such ridiculously large brains. Cows may be triple-Einsteins compared to most dinosaurs, but why?" Witmer said.

Their computer model also revealed the ampelosaur had a small inner ear.

"Part of the inner ear is associated with hearing, so the fact it had a small inner ear means it probably wasn't all that good at hearing airborne sounds," Witmer said. "It probably used a kind of hearing we don't think much about, which depends on sounds transmitted through the ground."

The inner ear is also responsible for balance and equilibrium, Witmer said.

"Given what we know about its inner ear, Ampelosaurus probably didn't put a real premium on rapid, quick jerky eye or head movements, which makes sense — these are relatively large, slow-moving, plant-eating animals," he said.

Knoll and his colleagues had previously developed 3-D reconstructions of another sauropod, Spinophorosaurus nigeriensis. In contrast to Ampelosaurus, Spinophorosaurus had a fairly developed inner ear.

"It is quite enigmatic that sauropods show such a diverse inner ear morphology whereas they have a very homogenous body shape," Knoll said. "More investigation is definitely required."

Currently scientists are debating whether sauropods held their heads near the ground, grazing on low vegetation, or high up like giraffes to browse on high leaves. "It could be that learning more about the inner ear could tell us what sauropod neck posture was like," Witmer said.

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Calif. couple sues over donations to Scientology

West Palm Beach, Feb 2: Two former members of the Church of Scientology claimed in a lawsuit filed that the church and its affiliates deceived members into donating millions of dollars to misrepresented causes.

Luis and Maria Garcia of Irvine, Calif., filed the complaint in federal court in Tampa, near the church's national headquarters in Clearwater. The couple claims they were duped into giving more than $420,000 for a building campaign, disaster relief efforts and other Scientology causes, only to find the bulk of the money went to inflate the church coffers and line the pockets of its leader, David Miscavige.

"The church, under the leadership of David Miscavige, has strayed from its founding principles," the lawsuit claims, "and morphed into a secular enterprise whose primary purpose is taking people's money."

In an emailed statement, Scientology spokeswoman Pat Harney said the church had not yet been served with the lawsuit, but challenged any contention that money was misappropriated.

"We understand from media inquiries this has something to do with fundraising and we can unequivocally state all funds solicited are used for the charitable and religious purposes for which they were donated," Harney said.

The Garcias were 28-year members of the church, rising to upper levels of Scientology. They left in November 2010 over their disenchantment with its direction under Miscavige, who has led the church since founder L. Ron Hubbard's death in 1986.

The lawsuit names various trusts and nonprofits linked to Scientology as defendants and says they collectively engage in fraud, unfair and deceptive trade practices and breach of contract in their fundraising.

Attorney Theodore Babbitt of West Palm Beach, who is among those handling the suit, said it would be followed by other similar claims from former Scientologists. He said the Garcias still believe in the precepts of Scientology and that the litigation is not a commentary on whether it is a true religion, a question that has dogged it across the world since it was founded in the 1950s. Babbitt said, ultimately, that question is irrelevant when considering its members' donations.

"Whether you're a church or not a church, you can't defraud people," he said.

Harney called the lawsuit "frivolous."

"The statements to the media made today about the church and its ecclesiastical leader by these bitter individuals are blatantly false," she said.

Among the accusations made in the lawsuit is that the Garcias and others were repeatedly approached with urgent requests for funding of Scientology work around the globe, such as disaster relief or campaigns for causes such as ending child pornography. Babbitt said high-ranking former Scientologists would testify that the church knowingly rerouted such collections for other spending, including financing a "lavish lifestyle" for Miscavige, stifling inquiries into church activities and finances, and intimidating members and ex-members.

A common tactic, Babbitt said, when a disaster unfolded somewhere in the world, would be to send a small group of Scientologists with a camera crew that would pay locals in the affected area to appear on camera. A scene would essentially be staged, he claims, in which people would be begging or appear to be starving, even if it weren't the case.

A cornerstone of church practice is personal counseling sessions, known as auditing, in which members disclose many facets of their personal lives. Babbitt says members' own financial status and the accounts they hold would be known from those sessions and then be used in tandem with footage from disaster sites in desperate and urgent pleas for money.

"There's an emergency, we need your money right now, we know that you have X dollars in the bank in Los Angeles," Babbitt said, offering a paraphrase of how a member might be approached.

In the end, little if any of the money collected for such causes reached its intended place, he said. Those contributions, the lawsuit claims, were collected by a Scientology-linked group called IAS Administrations, which Babbitt says former church members will testify accumulated more than $1 billion in contributions.

The Garcias also claim to have prepaid for auditing and training services that were never provided and for which a refund has never been received, and to have given about $340,000 for the church's planned Super Power building for high-level coursework.

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