Nice Or I Wouldn't Use It ... Easy Or I Wouldn't Know How
Wednesday, October 17, 2007 at 11:02PM First I shroud my hands in disposable gloves that feel like cheap shower curtains with digits. Then, channeling a fiendish scientist, I add the caramel-colored contents of the cobalt-blue bottle to the whitish contents of the white bottle with its convenient applicator tip. I shake and shake and shake and shake (the white bottle, that is) until the newly-formed pale-gold gelid mixture appears blended. I shake some more just to be sure. I rake all my hair to one side of my head and, starting at the temple just above the left ear, use the pointed tip to part the hair at one-inch intervals (approximately; I don't measure as this is not an exact science) and place a line of the goo into the salt-and-pepper crevices. Eventually all of my hair, root to tip, is wet and sticky with the stuff. It begins to look as if I've been tarred but not feathered. The spent bottle is re-capped and goes upside down in the box like a drained magnum of champagne upended in a silver ice bucket in a Fred Astaire movie while he's about a mile across the polished dance floor, waltzing with Ginger Rogers. I wait 25 minutes.
Carefully researched and meticulously planned chemical reactions -- like dark forces -- have been put into motion. As the color develops on my head, it also develops everywhere I put it that I didn't mean to. Chocolate-brown splotches and dribbles appear on my face and my hands and my old hair-coloring robe and my vanity surface and mirror. I have even found it on the back of the bathroom door! Later, more will turn up in my shower stall before I wash it down the drain where it will no doubt harm the environment. Then ... VoilB! ... or for the un-French, Wah Lah! ... upon blow drying, my hair will be gloriously -- or dubiously -- restored to whatever shade results from putting Light Medium Neutral Brown onto once-dark and oft-color-treated hair. Some sort of ersatz brunette, if you must know, found in nature on at least one creature: me.
My original hair color was so black that when I was growing up, I sometimes got credit for being Italian ... although anyone who cared to think about it for very long would have to know that the "Mc" on the front of my back name meant I was the indirect product of some (I hope happy) long-ago union of a hotheaded, glib Irish person and a thrifty, practical Scot. (How's that for profiling? Don't look at me; I don't make up these stereotypes but merely do my best to perpetuate them.) Most likely the Irish gene comprises the topnote in my personality because I certainly have a temper and am impulsive and emotional to a fault. Also I love nothing better than a good gab. On the other hand, if there is a frugal bone in my body I have not yet located it. But then, I haven't tried all that hard! Perhaps it's the wishbone that will remain on the plate after I'm devoured by life and whoever is left gets the spoils. By all means divvy up whatever thriftiness of any kind that remains of me after I am gone, and have fun with it.
~~THINGS I LEARN QUITE BY ACCIDENT WHILE WAITING FOR MY HAIRCOLOR TO DEVELOP~~
On Fox News, FIVE ... yes, I said a panel of FIVE professional and well-compensated broadcast journalists today sat in a newsroom in New York, on live television, debating loudly, furiously, relentlessly, and simultaneously (reminds me of my job) whether Ellen DeGeneres should or should not have been pilloried -- and forced to lawyer up -- (as apparently she was, or will be) for the dastardly deed of giving a dog she got at a shelter to her hairdresser's children, after the shelter dog allegedly did not "get along" with Ellen's preexisting pets. Poor Ellen had a public breakdown over the whole thing (easy since she has her own TV show). I ask you: IS THIS REALLY NEWS? The question was meant to be rhetorical but I'll answer it anyway: No. I know a news item from a non-news item, and Fox News is on the con with that "story" that they have been "reporting" ad nauseam all day long. What little intelligence I have has been insulted. I'll tell you what is news: someone needs to hide the blue eyeshadow from Fox News Correspondent Harris Faulkner's makeup person. Just saying. Mercy. Harris is a lovely woman and no doubt excellent at what she does, and I'm certainly no Carmindy but I recognize too much blue eyeshadow when I see it.
Unbelievably, this same cable news station (which I like ... really I do ... most of the time) later went on to "report" that in Pennsylvania, within the last few days, a woman got in trouble with the law for swearing at her toilet. Apparently it had overflowed, causing her temper to follow suit. Her neighbor, I assume via open windows, was privy (pun intended) to the invective hurled by the woman at the uncooperative commode, became offended by it, and called the police on her. The pottymouthed potty owner has to pay a fine and may even spend some time in jail. There is a moral in here somewhere and honest, I've tried hard to find it but I can't. Perhaps you will succeed where I failed.
All I can say is, I hope you enjoyed my detailed narrative (I dare not presume to call it reporting) of how I colored my hair today. On a sluggish news day I figured it was the least I could do. At any rate it's just about all that was happening here! Tomorrow should be more exciting ... if I forget to turn to cable news, that is.
Reader Comments (2)
Fascinating insight into keeping time at bay, Jen. I don't watch the news at all. The last time I saw a bulletin was about fifteen years ago. Perhaps because I once worked in a newsroom and know what happens on slow news days - they make it up. Well, not exactly make it up, but certainly embellish some very bare uninteresting facts in the hope of filling up some time.
I confine myself to the radio but have been known to utter a swear word or two at it if I hear something I don't like. I shall check in future to make sure my neighbours can't hear me!
Yes, do keep those windows closed, Depps! Wouldn't want to see you hauled off in the paddywagon ... but then, that would spice up a slow news day!