Makeover

Does this look like the face that wrecked a home? Thanks to a bottle of hair gel and a some lighter makeup, Miss Monica Lewinsky is no longer vampy and trampy, says hairstylist Joyce Kwiatkowski, of Giovanni and Pileggi at 17th and Walnut. HAIR: The staid, parted slicked-back do is reserved for women trying to look more conservative, smarter, more serious - less a vixen. EYES: Monica goes lighter on the makeup. This makes her look more child-like and innocent. LIPS: Blood-red has been replaced with the natural look, more pouty little girl than flirtatious intern.

This is the second in our traditional year-end series of commissioned poems based on recent Inquirer headlines. The article headlined "Makeover for a Kahn masterpiece" appeared Wednesday, Dec. 13, on Page C1. Where starlight consecrates a sky, stairwells and sheetrock load the silence in order to sleep a little. While asleep, it's hard to tell if we fail our surfaces, or whether the heart is just another flexible material. Whether a flower produces a faith in flowers, or in you, we might agree that every April culls its soreness from rough, oblique geometries.

The Grand Old Lady of Broad Street is taking a six-month vacation. The usual May and June graduation ceremonies will have to find other venues, because construction began yesterday on the sixth and final summer of the $35 million Academy of Music renovation project. This major construction, preparing the house for any type of road show, must be completed in time for the Opera Company's early-November production of "Carmen. " The work includes the fly-area modernization of the Academy, one of the last "hemp houses" in the country.

To: Lynn Swann, GOP candidate for governor. From: The John Street Legacy Project: Helping Political Neophytes Have a Great Day. Re: Your Qualifications to Become a Pennsylvania Politician. Dear Mr. Swann: Congratulations! A local newspaper reports that Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street recently declared you unqualified for the office you seek. That automatically makes you eligible to become the first proteg? in the John Street Legacy Project. Our staff of experts is standing by, ready to custom-design a whirlwind political makeover just for you. Just say the word, and we can start you on an exciting tutorial adventure about what it means to be a successful politician in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, just like John Street.

In their annual stocktaking, University City District officials last week made a compelling case for crowing about the West Philadelphia community that's home to universities, hospitals, and research and scientific enterprises. With multimillion-dollar projects like a new Hilton, hospital research towers, student housing, and the University of Pennsylvania's eastward expansion over 14 acres of former U.S. Postal Service parking along the Schuylkill, the neighborhood anchored by Penn, Drexel University, and 30th Street Station may be Philadelphia's busiest development hub. It's particularly exciting to see development like the Penn campus extension that helps to cement the link, both visually and physically, with Center City.

QUOTE "It prepares you for Hollywood, getting all those doors slammed in your face. " "Scary Movie" star Marlon Wayans, in Time magazine, on being raised a Jehovah's Witness Is there anybody you'd want in charge of your beauty makeover less than Cher? Sure, she's an expert, having had a few of her own. But imagine going in a normal-looking makeover candidate - perhaps slightly haggard, maybe with an outdated hairdo - and coming out stretched tight as a drum, sporting a fright wig and a new tattoo.

Marianne Fenimore doesn't exactly look like Cinderella. A youthful 52, she's dressed in jeans and a flowered pullover as she stands in the dress department of the King of Prussia J.C. Penney's, fretting over a zit. A barely noticeable skin eruption just to the right of her chin, it's the kind of thing that might happen to any woman who's so nervous she's barely slept in two weeks, a moment of embarrassment easily quashed by a dot of concealer....

The business community in this 1.2 square-mile borough in southeastern Montgomery County has been dominated since the Depression by large, family-named storefronts: Santerian's, Jules Pilch, Gephart's. To bolster the tradition and ensure its survival, the borough, the Chamber of Commerce, and Main Street Hatboro began a revitalization push in 1997 aimed at drawing foot traffic - and accompanying wallets - back from shopping centers in Horsham, Willow Grove and Montgomery Township.

During the last couple of decades, the Mann Center for the Performing Arts has taken small stabs at freshening the experience - hiring a new food-service provider, installing a better sound system, giving itself a new name, handing out free paper "Mann fans" to help patrons paddle around the warm air. But in the last few months, while the Mann usually sleeps, something closer to real transformation has occurred. Architects from MGA Partners and construction workers have undertaken the Mann's most extensive makeover since the summer venue opened 30 years ago. Many visitors to the opening tonight of the Philadelphia Orchestra's 15-concert run at the Mann may not sense the difference: The hall and the stage are unchanged.

The trouble with nightclubs is that they turn from outstanding to outdated in the blink of an eye. Such was the case with the old Images Nightclub at the Woodbine Inn in Pennsauken, said nightclub manager Robert Terri, where the look had become, well, just too '80s for any self-respecting club in 1996. To keep afloat in the ever-changing world of entertainment, a full-scale makeover - with a $500,000 price tag - was ordered to create the new Club Metropolitan, a cutting-edge kind of place in a world where cutting edge counts.

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. But what if people create a show for ABC called "The Glass House" and it's surprisingly like a show called "Big Brother" on CBS? Can CBS throw stones? Can the network sue? Attorneys for CBS have sent ABC executives a letter warning that "The Glass House" is "strikingly" similar to "Big Brother. " CBS also notes that ABC may be benefiting from the fact that 18 former "Big Brother" staffers and executives are now working on the planned ABC show.

  The Philadelphia School District wants to revamp career and technical education - eliminating outdated programs, beefing up existing ones, and adding offerings in high-growth, 21st century job areas. Officials said Wednesday that to help modernize what were formerly referred to as vocational programs, they have named career and technical education expert Clyde Hornberger to a new job and started a strategic planning process specifically for that area. Hornberger, who has consulted with the district in the past, was formerly head of the well-regarded Lehigh Career and Technical Institute.

The artist Robert "Peanutbutter" Woodward has painted the guests' bodies at Cher's birthday party, played basketball with a French team in Tunisia, regaled Martha Stewart on her television show, exhibited his sculpture in some of the hippest galleries in the United States, and appeared publicly in costumes that would make Sacha Baron Cohen blush. His current project may be one of the most out-there (or rather, down-there) adventures yet. With a $150,000 grant from SEPTA, Woodward is transforming the Broad Street subway station at Girard Avenue into an interactive art gallery.

FAME-SEEKERS know there's no such thing as bad press. As long as you're on a page or a screen, you're making headway. Just ask Kim Kardashian. Or Snooki. But what if you're a chef or restaurant owner? Should you go on a reality show called "Kitchen Nightmares," where hot-headed, food-spitting British chef Gordon Ramsay will rip your menu and then rip you a new one? Do you really want 3 million viewers, including potential customers, peeking into your pantry, watching you lose your cool in the cooler, thinking your kitchen is a . . . nightmare?

EVAN MALONE had it good. His grandfather, Daniel Malone, an engineer for RCA/GE and later a maker of military systems and parts, had a workshop in his home "with all kinds of deadly stuff I tinkered with as a child. That's where I first caught the engineering bug. " Today, Evan Malone is doing unto others with NextFab Studio, a marvel of a shared workspace and prototyping station loaded with high-tech machinery, insights and enthusiasm. Now celebrating its second anniversary in a ground-floor space at the University City Science Center, NextFab has proven so popular it's about to expand into a second location on the west side of Washington Avenue "five times as big," shared Malone last week.

Change is coming fast to the blocks around Broad Street and Ridge Avenue. Restaurant impresario Stephen Starr is opening a kitchen and commissary in the soon-to-be-vacated Ridge Avenue men's shelter. Project H.O.M.E. is building a four-story apartment building on a vacant lot at 15th Street and Fairmount Avenue. Across the street, private developers are replacing a warehouse and taproom with 34 rental apartments. Around the corner on Broad, the Laborers' District Council of Metropolitan Philadelphia is raising a five-story office building.

HERE ARE some tips (and a favorite snack recipe) from Tony Luke for those who'd like to follow his lead and remake their physical appearances in an organic and healthy way: * Understand that it's not about dieting or exercising for a specific period of time. "You will never keep the weight off if you don't make it a lifestyle change and if you don't make exercising as important a part of your life as getting up and showering in the morning. " * Moderation is the key. " 'Healthy' doesn't mean just eating wheat grass and alfalfa sprouts.

The Occupy Philly protesters have worn out their welcome at their tent-city encampment on Dilworth Plaza in Center City. For the Occupy movement nationally, it's also time to reassess its strategy to bring about economic, governmental, and social change. Americans struggling to emerge from a devastating recession don't see how the Occupy camp-outs are making any difference. With their numbers in Philadelphia swelled by the homeless, reports of a weekend rape in a tent, the arrest Tuesday of two men who police say punched others at the site, and with what city officials view as a growing public-health threat from unsanitary conditions and fire hazards, it's clearly time for the Occupy Philly contingent to move on. Beyond the obvious fraying of conditions at the loosely organized protest, the local Occupy folks are standing in the way of a $50 million makeover of the plaza due to start this month.

SUBURGATORY. 8:30 tonight, 6ABC. HOW TO BE A GENTLEMAN. 8:30 p.m. tomorrow, CBS 3.   CHANGE IS HARD. Sometimes it's funny - or can, with the aid of writers, be made to seem so - but it's always hard. Change is what's happening in two new sitcoms tonight and tomorrow: one, ABC's "Suburgatory," a fish-out-of-water tale about a city teen transplanted to the 'burbs; the other, CBS' "How to Be a Gentleman," about an effete advice columnist forced to get in touch with his masculine side.

In their annual stocktaking, University City District officials last week made a compelling case for crowing about the West Philadelphia community that's home to universities, hospitals, and research and scientific enterprises. With multimillion-dollar projects like a new Hilton, hospital research towers, student housing, and the University of Pennsylvania's eastward expansion over 14 acres of former U.S. Postal Service parking along the Schuylkill, the neighborhood anchored by Penn, Drexel University, and 30th Street Station may be Philadelphia's busiest development hub. It's particularly exciting to see development like the Penn campus extension that helps to cement the link, both visually and physically, with Center City.