LOS ANGELES -- My hair is lustrous, full-bodied, glossy. My skin is smoother and my eyes clearer. I'm thinking of registering myself with the American Kennel Club.
For the past two weeks, I've been showering in the blessed rain of the Jonathan Beauty Water shower filter, an absolutely smashing product whose only drawback, as far as I can tell, is its association with the scissors-wielding lunatic Jonathan Antin.
Desperate shut-ins may remember Antin's Bravo channel reality series Blow Out, on which Antin -- who has two salons in the Los Angeles area -- threw epic hissy fits, hyperventilated with self-love and cried like a child. Antin belongs to a category of reality-show characters I think of as "meta-egotists" -- Bret Michaels, Donald Trump, the departed Anna Nicole Smith -- whose talent, as it were, is to be the worst versions of themselves for the benefit of cameras.
In the course of writing a magazine story about Antin three years ago, I sat for a $500 haircut. Let me just say, as whack as the man might seem, he is freaking Michelangelo with a pair of scissors.
Thanks to the TV series, I know -- we all know -- the backstory of the Jonathan Beauty Water shower filter. One day, Antin discovered the water was cut off to his house. Leaving home without washing his hair would be as unthinkable as Bret Michaels appearing in public without his codpiece, so in desperation Antin washed his hair with bottled spring water. The filtered, pH-neutral, chlorine-free water ginned up a fine head of shampoo suds and rinsed perfectly clean.
"My hair never looked so bangin'," Antin said, memorably.
The idea of a beautifying shower filter seemed a natural for Antin, who has his own line of beauty products.
As you may have heard, California is in the midst of a drought. The Metropolitan Water District, the agency that supplies Southern California with its drinking water, recently said it may have to reduce water deliveries to the Los Angeles area by 15 per cent to 25 per cent. Now, while this is disturbing news that threatens the region's economy and very ecology, more critically, it spells trouble for your coiffure. The reason: As drought conditions persist, water agencies have to rely on secondary water sources with lower-quality water. In the case of groundwater supplies, the situation is precisely like that of a car's fuel tank: As the water table drops, the water is increasingly contaminated with impurities that settle towards the bottom.
Angelenos may confront, in addition to brown lawns and empty swimming pools, the spectre of increasingly frizzy hair, dull skin and split ends. Oh, the humanity.
According to the packaging, the Jonathan Beauty Water filter removes more than 90 per cent of the chlorine, heavy metals, volatile organic compounds -- stuff like benzene and solvents, known as VOCs -- and more than 70 per cent of lead and copper. These numbers put the Jonathan filter among the most effective shower filters on the market. It has a maximum flow rate of 2.5 gallons per minute.
Now, the moment of truth. I get naked, heaving my gloriousness from the surly bonds of clothing, and step in the shower. The first thing I notice is the water smells better -- and it's not as if Altadena city water is so bad to begin with. The chemical tang of chlorine is largely eliminated.
The other nice thing about filtered water is that it makes soap work better. A tablespoon of shampoo blooms into a sudsy white mushroom on top of my head. After a minute or two of scrubbing, I rinse off, squeaky-clean.
If you visit consumer-review websites such as Amazon, you'll see people raving about the difference the Jonathan filter makes with the texture of their hair and skin. This could be because they live in some Godforsaken trailer park with water drawn off a stagnant bass pond -- I don't know. I wasn't exactly reborn in the baptism of the Jonathan filter, but I did notice my skin was softer and my hair felt, um, silkier, which is saying something for a guy who has been known to brush his teeth with Dial soap.
Is the Jonathan filter worth it?
I think so. What is perhaps even more worth it is the Aquasana AQ-4100, which is the same filter without the co-branded Jonathan name. The Aquasana typically sells for about $70. But somehow, that one doesn't seem as bangin'.
(The Jonathan Beauty Water shower filter is available in Canada at Holt Renfrew and Sephora stores.)
-- L.A. Times
