Why I Hate Men: Mountaintop Removal

My sister had a show at Animals coffee house a few months ago. It was great, she did a lot of figures and kind of modern portraits with bold and simple geometric backgroungs that jumped out against the predominantly black and white portraits. From this show, she garnered several comission peices which is fantastic, really. Its what you hope for from a show, I would imagine. But, both these people gave her photographs of family members that they wanted her to paint likenesses of! like they saw her paintings of people and were like "hey! i would like a picture of my son/auntie dorothy/me and craig at the boonstra luncheon on that kind of background!" The picture of the kid is wholly unremarkable and the other one is of three people in dark suits at some event, one recognizable as female only by the tall blonde coif. Ive never seen a drier, less inspirational photograph. How you could look at that and think "Im going to get this immortalized and hang it for all to see" is totally beyond me. The whole comission based on prior work is a weird concept anyway. I mean, Ariel isnt really a portraitist in the while-you-watch-next-to-the-sno-kone-vendor-on-the-boardwalk kind of way, so what if you pay her 300 bucks for a likeness of little bobby and it comes out looking like a beautifully composed, flawlessly executed portrait of chairman mao, or maybe you just dont like the colors she chose, can you say you dont want it? What about artistic license? The upshot is that she's holed away painting all the time in her studio nee my old bedroom at moms house. I went over there to visit and make dinner after work last Sat and sat on the floor while she painted, accompanied by the narration of the PBS special on Appalachia. It was a great program. It showed all the condescending coverage by the news stations in the 50s at the beginning of the "war on poverty" which posited appalachia as the face of poverty in america. They made their mountain culture look so pitiable and run down, showed so many pathos shots of kids with deplorable dental care and women raising water from wells (gasp!), when Urban America sighed in pity, the Appalachian people were like "Fuck off!! We might be poor and if you want to help us build some shit we can use, then great but quit making fun of us on TV!" Then, and this is the part that has kind of changed my worldview, or at least my understanding of gender and male female composition, they talked about the destruction of the Appalachian landscape due to mining and dam building. They interviewed this BLM (bearau of land management) mining specialist who set about talking about the practice of MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL. In order to get to the ore and coal and all that good stuff that makes industry and environmental degradation possible, you have to take the top off of a mountain. I thought to myself, that is the most profoudly male concept and practice I have ever heard of. No woman would ever look at a mountain, even knowing that there was something useful within, and see removing the top of the mountain as a feasible possibility. THE TOPS OF MOUNTAINS ARE HUGE AND PERMANANT!!! YOU CANT REMOVE THEM!! Theyre obviously there for a reason, and if there is something that is inside a mountain, and you want it, well thats just too bad!! Make the factories run on grass, pine needles or flipping daisy chains because those are the only things that can really be removed from a mountain in my worldview. Then they talked about how all the indigenous farmers land was covered in water when they dammed the rivers to make MANMADE LAKES! Here we are again, no woman would go outside, look at a pastoral scene, farms, rolling hills, houses, animals and think to herself, "this area would make a nice lake, there should be some body of water here." If there is no lake, how does it occur to you that you have the ability, let alone the right, to make one? Even if there is tourism money to be gained through boating were boating possible in that area, IF YOU CANT BOAT IN A CORNFIELD YOU CANT BOAT IN A CORNFIELD. Most ironically, these are arms of the same government which promises the war against poverty and vows to help the poor, adorable, pathetic, hungry, white children of the romantic mountain people at all costs. To that end we'll be removing all means of income available to you and either plunging your families identity; the land you've inherited from your forefathers for generations, under a quarter mile of H20 or blowing it sky high. Great music though, love that sweet, sweet banjo. I started this week at Robert Leonard. I was there Wed and Thursday. I dont have too much to report yet...I cant actually do any cutting or services there so I do a lot of shadowing and standing around watching. Which is cool, I have A LOT to learn, which becomes more obvious the more I watch Becca and Robert and all the other stylists who turn out absolutely flawless heads in record time for 8-9 hours a day. Its very slick in there, but everyone is nice and welcoming in their own way. A couple of the younger girls ignore me completely, but theyll come around. Or not, whatever. Theres a lot of diet talk in the back room. Its pretty annoying. In fact taped up by the computer in the back theres a little blurb from one of those starfucker mags that talks about how even the stars have to starve themselves to be thin. It quotes elizabeth hurley talking about how her diet regime requires her to go to bed "quite hungry and crying." And Carmen Electra says at the end of her little interview "in fact Im starving right now!" I dont know if thats supposed to be inspirational to us as we fold foils and formulate color but I find it pretty freaking sad. I watched Becca cut Mom's hair and it looks about 500 times better. Moms got bangs now, its a family affair! Its just practice, she didnt do anything earthshatteringly different than I did, she just knows hair so well and never gets lost. Ill get there. I watched the "I cant beleive hes not gay" man-ceptionist get melt on extensions, like I saw at the hair show. He wanted fuller hair. So rediculous. I dont think I could be attracted to a man in a weave. I dont want to test the waters either. I took a makeup class which was fun, then one of Becca's clients, a very cool Altzheimers specialist from UW who was getting some funky color done, let me do her makeup. That was great. I was glad Becca trusted me enough sight unseen to let me do it. I was also glad I had just taken the makeup class cause my foundation skills are...sub-par. THere are a lot of assistants there, you have to assist for two years before you can be a stylist if youre just outta school. I think thats a similar truth at most really upscale salons...i have got to figure out how to get around that...I started the week with a funeral on Tuesday. It was a wonderful service for a man whose kids went to school with Ariel and myself since first grade. He founded the WA state chapter of the ACLU and did a lot of legal work for the black panthers in the 70s. In the last part of his career he did defense for people with drug charges and long incarcerations for small offenses. There were about 300+ people at his service including ex panthers, amazing civil rights lawyers, foodies, starbucks founders, half the mount baker neighborhood, countless old school seattle families and their kids Ive known forever and all the teachers Ive ever had give or take. It was very inspirational and very grounding. I hope that when I pass over, people come out in numbers and are able to speak as well about me. Even more I hope I'm able to have enough faith and love to do as much for the human community as he did. We didnt have school on Friday so basically I wasnt in there all week, the distance from it combined with the classiness of RL made me realize that school is actually really fun, and Im going to miss it. I love being around all those people and all that weirdness. Its one of the most hilarious and fun things Ive ever done, and I take it for granted in my hastiness to move on. Mission: be mindful of what is really good and enjoy everything while it lasts. OH NO!! Be here now; its a Ram Dassism!! Soon people are going to be asking me to speak about death!

One More thing...Benicia Del Tora confirmed!

Ariel saw her! And I didnt have to say anything. The greatest part is that the existance of God was confirmed at the same time!! How else would Benicia be the only person sitting eating lunch with me in the breakroom right when Ariel dropped in to give me a present?? I took her in there to meet Abena and it dawned on me that she would see Benicia too, I said Ariel-Abena, Abena-Ariel...and Im sorry, whats your name? "She" looked up and said her name, Naomi or something. She was on the phone. She is always on the phone. Probably talking to a Kevin Spacey look-a-like about some superb heist, a truck full of missile parts bound for Pakistan.
Ariel looked at me, her eyes wide and full of hilari-tears. We havent spoken of it since. Theres no need. It was a perfect moment. Im getting a camera tie.

Community Service, Snoop's Backup Singers, My Bad Hair, Luck With Men, and That's All.

When we were in New York, we stopped on the street to by some huge beautiful shell earrings for Frances. Not the round pearly ones everyone seems to be wearing these days but ones the size of whole abalone shells on each ear. Only one as alien-giraffe gorgeous as Frannie could pull them off. In any case the man who was selling them was, and god willing still is, an old rasta named Inde with big locks in a hat, teeth few and far between and a real gift for the psychic arts and astrology. He asked me my sign and I told him Gemini. He looked at me and said without flinching " you are very loving and you have bad luck with men." He went on to tell me that I needed to be more discerning about who I chose to bestow my affections on because I often throw pearls before swine and get taken advantage of. I hadnt said a thing. He said a lot more too, and everything was right on but I was too thrown after having him read me like a book to remember what else he said. Let me tell you, its a real hurter to think youre just purchasing some stylish accessories and have your whole unlucky life summed up for you before you even hand over the crumby 17 bucks. I dont want to have bad luck with anything, i had been trying to look at these things as isolated experiences, Inde! Theres no pattern here! I just havent found my niche...? Oh well. Its better than having bad luck with...infectious disease, parasitic larval hosting or high risk stock market moves.
Its worth mentioning, considering the supposed topic of this blog, that my hair is growing out and it looks really bad, which may explain some of my continuing " bad luck" with men. Not really, its not THAT bad, that's just my astrological karma working itself out apparantly, but the hair is really dense. I have had my hair so layered out and choppy for so long that I had completely forgotten how annoying and thick my hair really is when its all one length. When unflatironed it is rediculously wiggy, and even straightened is pretty shapeless. Rachael A. Peacock and I were discussing (over sushi at musashi which was great, not only beacause they have great sushi but because it gives you a wonderful opportunty to try to observe your fellow man and see what kind of people close the door behind them when walking in/out of a small and densely populated public space and what kind of people, after finishing their time in an area are immediately unconcerned with the atmosphere in that area. its quite enlightening. and rather chilly...) how in the 80s, or maybe its just a certain age of your life no matter the era, everyone was always talking about how lucky you are to have really thick heavy hair and now we cant razor it out enough, we want wispy!! straggly! flat! Mod! Honky! My hair looks like freaking lop rabbit ears. I want it longer cause I feel kinda stodgy with it above my shoulders and it falls out of my wraps in dance all the time and drives me crazy, but the growout stage is a bee-yatch. I feel like Candace Cameron on whatever that show was, before she got anor-sexy-a and a curly perm.
On tuesday we all went as part of our community service program, to a place in Wallingford called Family Works. It is run by the Fremont public association and provides a place for job searching, a food bank and some other various services that I didnt really get a chance to find out about. We brought all of our stuff to cut hair, do manicures, and facials. I did haircuts all day cause there were a lot of them and Im comparatively fast and confident. I lost count, I think I did about 10 in 4 hours. One beautiful egyptian woman with huge curly hair, an elderly latina lady with soft thin wavy hair who made me give her a mullet. I tried with everything i had to get her to describe somthing else but she kept saying "Chort please on de size an'top but leeve de back longere." What does that sound like to you?? Its a mullet. It pained me to do it, it really did. But, thats what she wanted. She didnt want the top to blow in the wind. I told her she looked like a rock star (like Nikki Sixx) and she laughed and said "eeksackly!" She seemed so pleased with that idea that I put gel in her hair and blow dried it into a stick-up flat top look. She was delighted and I was beside myself. I gave a young woman with a little baby a six inch trim off her 3 foot hair. She had a sweet and gentle way about her, weighed about 300 pounds and was tossing her baby fruit snacks like mackerel to a seal before he could even choke down the oatmeal creme sandwich cookies she had placated him with moments before. I cut an older woman's hair who had been giving herself haircuts...i cant really describe what the bangs she created to " soften her face" looked like but they were very very weird, very short and nowhere near enough hair to really be bangs. I made them longer an heavier and told her to let the little ones underneath catch up and theyd look great. I did some short mens cuts, one guy had had the same barber for 55 years and he said the guy finally hung up his clippers in december when he went blind, so he hadnt had a cut since then. I like doing community service. Its cool, people are really grateful and they get to have a few minutes of focusing on themselves and thinking about what theyd really like to look like, no strings attached.
Not that we dont do community service in the salon too. We get some really great street outreach services characters, for instance Shi'Lana had the prestigious honor of cutting the hair of a young woman who by all outside apperarances looked like a white meth addict but was apparantly one of Snoop Dogg's main backup singers!! Boy, I guess you cant judge a book by its cover, even if its cover is twitching and picking its nose and running its snotty fingers through its hair as youre cutting it. Some of the girls were so mean to her, in such a way. Like "wow, we've never had a celebrity client here before!" They actually went as far as to get her autograph. I am SO glad I didnt have to make it through public high school. I would have either kilt m'self, shot up the lunch room, or turned out to be meaner than a mongoose.
Last night I went on Ms Alexander's invitation to the Ebony/Jet Fashion show. Its sponsored yearly by the United Council of Negro Women. Negro? Why? Tradition: it aint just a jewish thing. So anyway, shes been on the board for thirty summod years and she invited me. Abena was supposed to go with me but, her husband had to go to a homeboy's mistress' funeral and stuck her with the kids. Next time YOU think youre having a bad day...
I invited Patrick to come with me, after he wrote honky lips in soap on the windsheild of that stupid stupid SUV I was driving this winter, Ive decided that he makes every situation more hilarious, and this one seemed like it would be funny enough on its own. So ms alexander had told Abena and Me that we could get in for 25, which is half price. I thought she would have bought the tickets already so I had to find someone to take Abena's place. We didnt see her on the way in and she had told me in advance not to mention the money to the ticket people but to just pay her directly. So halfway through the first act she comes into the theatre and calls me to come out of my seat and meet her in the aisle. I was sitting in the middle and had to walk accross the whole row to get out. Perhaps it would sharpen the image for you if I point out that I was one of three white people in the whole audience at benaroya. And I didnt know why she was calling me so I didnt bring my purse and had to walk back to my seat and get my purse and patrick so we could pay her right then. Whats more, she wasnt about to cut a deal for Patrick, no sir. If it wasnt abena, he had to pay the full 50, and right then. So hilarious and embarrasing. It was like a drug deal. Thank god Patrick was so gracious about it, and that he had it to give her, that would have been the worst. The fashion show was alright, there were some nice dresses, Christian Lacroix, Issey Miyake, some black designers I havent heard of and some other big names that slip my mind. They had one plus size model, one male model who was so incredibly corny I couldnt even pay attention to the clothes, and about six rail thin black women models whose WMI (thats weave mass index) greatly outnumbered their weight. They were not particularly graceful, but they all had a playful, audience concious attitude which made the show more fun to watch than the traditional "I am haughty and frigid and I see none of you" model countenance. There were lots of men in jewel tone suits with long jackets and matching hats. The hostess/emcee was a woman with a striking resemblance to Beyonce. She had an AMAZiNG figure and wore skintight sparkly evening gowns while she sat in a directors chair and described all the looks in a voice pitched exactly like that of the guy who announced all the prize packages on wheel of fortune.
Then we went to the reception where everyone was clamboring to take pictures with the corny male model guy who was wearing mustard slacks and a tight mustard colored sweater. Yuck. Just because you can doesnt mean you should. Ms Alexander made me take several pictures with him. Thats of HER with him mind you, not me. I was taking the pictures. I guess he was cute. He was just tooooo smmoooooooth. There were chicken skewers and ham sandwiches. I met Ms A's daughter and her white suitor, he looks like Preacher Kane from the Poltergeist movie. She took a picture of me on Patrick's lap and took to calling him Mr Lucky because he was "lucky to have me on his arm." I let her have it. It was pretty funny. We left
Then I went to Moms house to have dinner with Ariel where I dug out a whole bunch of my parents old songbooks (Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel) and sang until my voice was tired. It felt good. I never sing. I hardly had to look at the lyrics cause I can hear them all in my head from years of listening to records and, for the old folky stuff hearing my dad sing them to us. I even made a couple stabs at playing the piano. I will certainly be keeping my day job. Singing is great because it fills your head and you cant think about anything else.

Celebrity part Deux

I held my tongue when one of the first quarter students last quarter bowled me over with her (HER) striking resemblance to Samuel L. Jackson. If Samuel L Jackson plastered his hair to his forehead with enough gel to form a protective helmet, youd be hard pressed to tell them apart. But I have to break my silence as there seems to be a disturbing trend of female cosmetology students resembling large and remarkably masculine actors. I looked around the small crowded room the first day back, taking stock of who was still there, who was back and who had gone missing. Paris, the froggy crack-starlet who left and tried to go to some school closer to her Auburn homestead has returned. So has Jamaa, Ruby and Nathan's friend from my class, who left after annoying troubles with financial aid, she has to go back to third quarter instead of staying with our class. VON and LAURIE the special twelvesteppers from the second quarter class have held on and are beginning their time on the floor (be afraid, be very afraid.) Tamara, Abena, Camille, Ms Dolores, Lourdes the mexican girl who hates me, Benicio del Toro....BENICIO DEL TORO??????? You heard me. There is a woman, with long purple acrylic nails, and a terrible quickweave who looks EXACTLY, unnervingly, distractingly, like Benicio del Toro. I cant look at her. When ever I do, i cant tear my eyes away. For the first few days I didnt say anything. Then, since Abena was the only one I said anything about the Samuel L Jackson woman to, I pulled her aside and told her about Benicio. She was confused for a moment and then this look of amazement came over her face. Ive told one or two other people about it and they cant argue with me. Its absolutely incredible. I will make it my lifes work this quarter to get pictures. I dont care if I have to get a camera tie a la austin powers, you guys HAVE to see this to believe it.
This week was alright. It had some ups and downs. I had a woman with really short overprocessed hair who wanted tight marcel curls and i really couldnt do it, especially not as fast as she wanted to get out of there, so I had to have ms V finish it. I gave a couple of Mom's friends some good cuts, then cut moms hair which is the hardest head of hair Ive ever worked on in my life. Its like three heads in one, three coarse and obstinate inconsistantly wavy heads. It looked cute at the end but it was SO EXHAUSTING, and I needed a lot of help. I kept getting lost in it. On wed afternoon, I went up to the desk to see what my thursday was going to look like. Camille, who was working the front desk said "oh, I booked you a haircut in the afternoon, i can take it if you cant but she specified that she didnt want an asian person to do her hair and youre so good with the crazies..." Great. I have a rep for being good with the crazies, so anyone weird gets automatically referred to me. So I ask the woman's name; Irene Jew. Of course. Camille was like " she might not be Jewish, it could just be her name!" I didnt think that was too likely, why would anyone have the burden of the name Jew if they werent of the chosen people? I resigned myself to having someone effectively cut her own hair using my hands and complain incessantly about asian drivers or people who have the nerve to come here and not learn english. Imagine my suprise at two when I called her name in the waiting room and a blind chinese woman got out of her seat and moved towards the sound of my voice. At first I was nervous. But she was amazing. She can see shapes, and though she is deaf in her right ear from years of working as a Boeing Machinist she hears decently from her left one and is sharp as a tack. She knew exactly what she wanted done, she had let her hair grow all winter since it was warmer and she wanted it cut a lot shorter. She knew all the terms, she had had a hairstylist tell her how to say what she wanted so she asked for layers, tapered at the nape and fringe. Her hair was snow white and coarse like piano wire, and it grew in a strong pinwheel whorl in the back. I adapted to talking into her ear, guiding her at my elbow to and from the shampoo bowls and taking her gnarled and tiny hands up to her hair to check the length (which I had to recut to make it short enough.) She told me stories about being born on a ship from china just over the us line making her a citizen while her brother remained chinese as he was born on the chinese side of the waters. Mostly she told me recipies. Steamed fish braised in oil and green onions, tofu soup, zucchini, and long beans. All with a close eye on bargain ingredients. She gave me her phone number and permission to call her anytime and she would tell me how to make any chinese food. She was very concerned with people who ate too late at night, supposed to be bad for the heart. Her son came to pick her up. He was beautiful and looked like he might be homeless. He complemented me in a staccato nervous way and said his moms hair looked great and that he might come in for a cut soon. I told him he should, and Id look forward to seeing him. Then I walked back to my station and cried. I wish you had seen them, standing in the wind waiting for their cab. During a haircut you get this little snapshot of someones life and sometimes its exihilerating and sometimes tragic, even if theyre not sad or their life isnt tragic that vision of the human condition can be an emotional experience. Its funny because I know people have had that experience with me, through my conversation or even just energy vibration during massage appts, haircuts, doctors visits, laser hair removal. Pay attention next time you have some kind of appointment like that, how your mood expression or life condition at the time effects that person who is taking care of you. Its pretty amazing, I wonder how Ive affected their days long after I left their physical presence. It can be very profound.
So yeah, the hair show was good. I guess. I learned that I dont love hair shows. Theyre gay, and corny as hell. Its really a trade show, everyone is trying to sell something and that means they have to out-glitz each other, which makes for a glitz-a-thon of staggering proportions. Everyone has a headset mic on, its a goddam din in there. You cant hear one person over the others, especially since the center stage show is playing wack gay club music as they cut hair with ludicrous speed and drama, creating some of the least wearable hairstyles ive ever seen. I like the classroom pace a little more, although if the classes were more hands on, like on a manniquin head or something, I think I would learn a lot more. Its like, yeah, great, you do that really well and im sure if I tried it at home it would look like a suck and cut job.
We watched a class with Madrid, a black haircare guru out of Arizona who gave Shi'lana a rediculous orange and yellow weave with an asymmetrical cut that didnt fit her face or her style at all. His daughter did a beautiful flat twist updo on Abena's mom, who looks about 32, but used a funny yellow color of hair that I wouldnt have chosen unless I couldnt afford anything else. Madrid is a charismatic speaker and a pretty good educator, he knows his stuff and if he would skip the low budget dance music in the background of his videos, I might have bought them and learned quite a bit.
We got our schedules for our externships which start at the end of this month!! I will be at Robert Leonard two days a week starting on the 27th. I will have to give up some of my clients, or fit them in at home but I am so excited to not be in that school every day and to have some new teachers and new techniques that it will be worth it.
I guess Ms A, my friday rollerset regular, went to hong kong with her disgustingly rich, white, pacemaker having, suitor. I cant wait to hear about it!

Celebrity: NYC, Spring Break and Coming Back

After the end of the quarter, I had two days to recoup, socialize and pack before going to NY. I also had about ten people who "needed" to get their hair cut or colored or twisted or whatever before I left. I tried to get everyone in but I can see that I will be needing to take a long, hard and potentially very unflattering look at my organizational system soon, i wont be able to maintain any kind of client base with the devil-may-care approach I have had with my time up to this point. Its the 9th of April, I havent done my taxes and cant find one of my W2s. I have misplaced both my tuition check and my registration form, and I have to have paid by the 10th day of the quarter (this coming tuesday)or ill be unenrolled. See what I mean by unflattering? I think Im actually going to get with a consultant and have some outside intervention in implementing a successful organization system for me. I just dont have the neurological pathways to develop efficiency on my own. I took a class at pacific salon systems on that Wednesday morning before I left. It was free and we could count the hours for makeup hours. It was only mildly educational, but provided some ample comic opportunity. I went with Abena and Sha'lana. The rest of the class was made up of students from some beauty school in wenatchee. Its a sad thing to try to participate in fashion and style and be in somewhere like wenatchee, seattle is bad enough but youre bascially screwd once you cross the mountains. They looked terrible. We watched a presentation in cutting from a Rep from the "sexy hair" line. this line was started by a white south african guy who is apparantly something of a guru figure. this young woman spoke of him with such reverece you would have thought she had an audience with ghandijee. So, because the guy is "african," (afrikaans is more like it but...i digress) theyve made up this gimmick using the Zulu word for "to do something with purpose," UBUNTU. To that end, anytime someone participated in the class they received a bracelet with a silver charm on it that said UBUNTU. Now, let me remind you that I am talking about a product line called Sexy Hair. Totally outrageous. So I got one of the stupid bracelets, even though I tried to give it back to her, she gave me such sincere what's tape? face that I just kept the damn thing to avoid further eye contact. The three of us had lunch at Baja Fresh and I gave my ubuntu bracelet to these two rentony looking white ladies on the way out. Abena killed me talkin' 'bout "you probably just changed those womens lives, you shouldnta did that. now its gonna become office slang, "You did a great job on the Johnson file sandra, I really admire your Ubuntuosity" and shit." THis led to all kinds of riotiousness, ubuntupupuity, ubuntuency, the list goes on. We were hysterical. Then I went and met with Dr Brooks, the president of SVI. He had told Ms V that we could only do 80 externship hours in 5th quarter(its supposed to be 10 percent which is 165) and that we couldnt make up extra hours in our externship salons rather we have to come to school. That struck me as completely unacceptable and stupid so I made an appt to talk to him about it. He acted like an 80s movie high school principal. I think I was a little uppity for his taste and he felt like he had to put me in my place. When I explained that we will still be paying for our hours but we wont be using any of the schools water, electricity, products or most importantly, space as the floor is already getting very crowded with a new class every three months. He said "a better way would have been not missing any hours in the forst place." I just let it wash over me and kept going. Point taken, I told him but be that as it may, our whole class has about a month to make up after we graduate and it would be better for us and the school if we could do it in a salon. He made some other smart remark and I finally said "I dont understand, I feel like Im proposing something that is in both of our best intrests and Im getting a really negative reaction" "well you seem to think this is a right, and its a priviledge, we dont HAVE to do any of this for you." I was really taken aback actually. I was. I guess Ive never been intimidating to an authority figure before. I think he felt crunchy after he said that, I didnt respond personally or argue with him about it I just kept repeating that it would be beneficial for us and for the school. So finally he says "so youre really talking about sixth quarter students here, so youre not scheduled to be on the floor anyway, that shouldnt be a big problem, I think we can make you a deal on that one." I thanked him and made hime feel like a big beneficiary and that he was really making a difference in my future and left, thinking about the detention monitor in the breakfast club. "if i have to come back in here im crackin' skulls!"New york was a blur. Fran threw up out the cab door en route from JFK to chinatown where we fell into Stephens bed and slept like rocks (after eating russ & daughters bagels and lox) until 4 when we checked into the hotel. the hotel is great, its right in times square, and really clean and reasonably priced. kinda one of those rooms where you run the risk of banging your shin on the dresser when youre walking around the bed but, its ny, who needs a lot of space?We stayed there for three nights, went to a couple really disappointing dance classes at the Mamounia Keita conference, saw a lot of old friends and dance partners, went to a soiree senegalaise which was wonderful. It felt like senegal, the drums were amazing, everyone was dancing, smiling. It was one of the best nights ive had. we were supposed to go to the tanebere that was the celebration at the end of the conference but since the Senegalese dance community there is so fragmented, the other drummers who hadnt been invited to play threw a seperate party and the guys we were with wanted to go to that. Thank god we did, we went to the tanebere out in Bklyn at about 3am when the soiree broke up and it was very different, not many senegalese, mostly african americans, very competetive atmosphere,everyone sitting in a circle watching the few who did have the nerve to brave the stank eye and get up to take solos. It was brightly lit and crowded. No one smiled. I was really glad we had gone to the party instead. Hairwise, I have never seen so many locks and twists and fros in my life. There are more black folks in NY who dont relax or press their hair than there are black people in seattle period. All through brooklyn and harlem there are hair shops that only do natural hair. its lovely. im sure i will have a tough row to hoe getting one of them to let me apprentice when I get out there but if at first I dont succeed...I did Mahdis hair which was fun. It was a cool style which I originally conceived of for her friend Neda but didnt have a chance to do. Good thing too cause I think its Mahdis new signature look. Its a corn-hawk. Cornrows down the sides and back with a mohawk in the middle. We did it to go out to this proportedly great dancehall night which actually SUCKED!!! It was worse than the baltic room and i gave the dj a small peice of my mind concerning my disappointment and his lack of alibi in playing the same tired ol 1994 tracks i hear all the time over here. He has no excuse. Dummy. I sat next to Conan O Brian on the plane on the way back. I didnt really know who he was, he looked familiar but I couldnt really say why. But he was friendly and we started chatting. He was reading a book that i really want to read about the hostage crisis. So we talked about that. Somehow it got around to the what do you do in your destination/departure city and when he said he was in television, in fact had a talk show that went on before Jay Leno, i figured it out. It was Frances, Me and Conan in 16 D E and F. He's cool, smart funny and laid back. I fell asleep and he woke me up pointing to his little personal screen and then back to himself and then back to the screen. He was on the little tv, interviewing pamela anderson. "now thats narcissism!" he said. I put on my little cheapy jet blue headphones and we watched him together. He looks a lot better in person. Not nearly as pale. Hes very very tall. Hilarious. I got the number for the NBC stylist so hopefully I can go watch him get done up for the show. That hair! It was alright to come home. I had Sat off, which was great, then went to the hair show on Sunday...To be continued (my carpal tunnels are acting up, crap!)