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.