Our San Francisco market research firm said it could help. It designed a phone questionnaire, known as a "screener," intended to roust our quarry out of his saunas and his treatment rooms and into our facility. There, we would delve beneath his polished surface to discover his inchoate needs and cravings, his unredeemed hopes, his price ceiling for a Dead Sea mud wrap.

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At that point, our market research firm commenced what I assumed was an exhaustive survey of the citizenry. To pass muster, respondents had to be receiving at least some of the following services: hair coloring, massage, tanning, teeth-whitening, liposuction, hair implants and laser hair removal. They also had to answer "yes" to such questions as "I am very concerned about my appearance" and "I often read magazines like GQ, Esquire, Men's Health, and Vanity Fair." Respondents who passed through the screen were asked to show up for a focus group on "personal grooming services." In return for their participation, they were told, they would receive dinner and a $60 honorarium. If a respondent disdained dermabrasion, eschewed GQ, or otherwise fell short of our lustrous ideal, the phone recruiters were instructed to "Thank and Terminate."

A week and a half later, as I sat behind a one-way mirror and watched the group in progress, it occurred to me that our trusted research firm had not quite delivered the gleaming phalanx of golden-boy financiers we'd had in mind. "Do any of these guys even have jobs?" wondered the CEO of the company, distractedly flipping through the bios of the respondents. "'Motivational speaker‚' 'numerology and intuitive work‚' 'unemployed paralegal‚' 'spiritual readings' ... What the hell is this?" She pointed to a tall, pale man, rawboned and strained, sitting with his fists tightly clenched. "Look at Frank," she said miserably. "Frank just put his mother in the wood chipper."

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