We Always Knew Boys Ran in Packs

Young girls already waste too much time obsessing over boys, and a trading card game set to debut Jan. 15 could make it worse.

Boy Crazy! is a collection of trading cards, each with a photo and personal profile of a boy. The 362 faces immortalized on the cards ($3 for nine) were selected at open casting calls at malls and schools throughout the U.S. in an attempt to draw a national sampling of “regular boys.”

“Some of the boys have braces, some have glasses and some are handicapped. They are from every background imaginable,” said Leslie Hellerman, a spokeswoman for Decipher Inc., the Norfolk, Va., company that created the game. “A lot of them are gorgeous, and look like they could be on one of those big TV shows on WB Network.”

An accompanying Web site already up and running at https://www.boycrazy.com provides a forum to chat with the boys pictured on the cards, and a test girls can take to find the boy with whom they are most compatible.

Aimed at girls ages 10 and up who are past Pokemon, Boy Crazy! is being billed as a way to encourage healthy and realistic attitudes toward dating. The Web site claims the cards will “empower” girls “to make choices by using real boys from diverse cultures in lieu of celebrities.” Our reaction to this is, unfortunately, a compound word that is unprintable. Boys and dating should not be a girl’s primary focus at age 10. Adolescence is a time to develop a self, not a self as it relates to boys.

But back to reality: The Web site has had more than 10,000 hits since it launched last week.

“Boy Crazy! is giving girls what they want,” Hellerman said. “Boys are what girls are talking about anyway.”

Maybe so, but do we really need trading cards that encourage it?

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The celebrity pamper palace du jour is l.a. vie l’orange, an “all natural” hand- and feet-only salon hidden in a bucolic courtyard on Robertson Boulevard.

Sugar Hare and her daughter Kelly Brown (who worked at theCaliforniaMart from 1985 to 1989) created the tranquil salon, which smells not of acetone and formaldehyde, but of sweet oranges.

“We are all tired of breathing bad air,” Brown said. Our products are “as close to natural as you can get in a nail salon.”

Paula Abdul, Jennie Garth, Alfre Woodard, celebrity fitness guru Kathy Kaehler, celebrity hair guru Philip Berkovitz and L.A.’s first lady, Nancy Daly Riordan, have taken turns in the tented “cabana” chairs, which allow clients to remain incognito while their feet are exfoliated with orange slices and sand.

Hare even serves butter cookies in the shape of hands, fingernails lacquered with red icing.

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With a nod to the film “EdTv” and MTV’s “Real World,” two college students are to leave tomorrow on a cross-country tour that will be broadcast live on the Internet at https://www.washingtonautoshow.com.

The journey begins in Torrance, when Mike Machiran, 20, and Todd Pivec, 21, will take off in a 2000 Toyota Echo followed by a chase car full of cameras.

Pivec, who is from Baltimore, told us he doesn’t envision things getting too wild. “Just curse words.” He won’t misbehave, he said, “because my mother would die.”

The duo will stop in six cities to distribute toys at children’s hospitals, and arrive at the auto show in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 1.

A 2000 Toyota Echo will be awarded to the Web watcher who guesses the total mileage driven on the weeklong trip. It shouldn’t be too difficult since there are dozens of Internet sites that, when provided with an itinerary, can calculate distances down to a 10th of a mile.

Booth Moore can be reached at booth.moore@latimes.com.