Unbeweaveable! The Joys of Artificial Hair

I will never understand how writers swill scotch and whiskey and turn out masterpeices, just churning out the writing with every icy clink of the glass. Ill tell you what, four makers rocks later, AFTER a night's sleep (albeit short) and Im wondering if maybe Tagalog wasnt my first language. The party was fun. The beautifully legal graduation party that is. Chloe and I pooled our resources and threw a joint grad party at lo fi. It was great to see so many people from so many places in our lives all together in the same room. At the same time, it was a little nostalgic, knowing Im going to be leaving and also seeing the large holes in my social fabric left by the NYC brain drain. Oh, yeah, for those of you who havent already noticed, bulletin: by 2010 Seattle will be a dune style wasteland populated only by wealthy plastic people driving huge space-ready utility vehicles and totally unreliable yet somehow employed neo-hippies (think fremont) with enough leisure time and expendable income to start "reggae bands" which are booked and attended only by other neo-hippies who dont give a rats ass about expertise or authenticity. There will still be a film festival.As for New York you wont be able to spit without hitting a Seattleite. Just a heads up. Anyway, I looked like a Mexican talk show hostess at the party. The other best comparison (however hurtful) was from my sister's friend Dawn who told me I looked like I should be singing with Pavoratti. You know how you see those operatic sopranos (at least my sister and I see them, being that my dad is the last living subscriber to Gramophone Magazine) with all that hair and think "Damn! how did she get all that into that dress!! And where do you get sparkly dresses like that anyway?"
Abena did my hair. We had an artificial hair class last week where she and Shilana taught a bunch of different kinds of weaves. It was fun and I feel like given some practice I could really do most of them. On me, because she knows im not going to be wearing the thing for three weeks, not washing my hair or being able to get to my scalp, she did a cap weave. A cap weave is like a wig, but its on a very fitted stocking cap and you lay the tracks on the person's head so that it fits them exactly. So she made me this gorgeous huge curly wig. She used three packs of hair, without splitting the tracks (the hair comes on a weft which is made up of two thinner wefts stiched together, you can split them apart for cost effectiveness or for a more natural, flatter look) which means it was very full. It was really nice, human hair that we had bought at the hair store (!) on 23rd and Jackson the week before. Very soft and shiny, nice texture. She braided my hair underneath the wig so that it would be compact and so it would have some texture to keep it from slipping. Which it did not. It was very comfortable and secure. The braiding was a hilarious experience in and of itself. She had never braided white people hair before, and seldom works on it in any other capacity either, so she was appalled by how slippery it is and how hard to braid. Her braids looked horrible. I had told her to use some product to get it to have some grip, and she finally believed me. So she scoops out the pomade i gave her and starts pressing and smoothing it into my hairline. I was like I had nappy edges and needed a touchup. I set her straight about where the stuff had to go and how my hairline stays flat all on its own! We were rollin'. If I were as bad at doing black hair as she is at doing white hair we'd be in a lot of trouble.
I was the first white person she had ever invited to her house.
I have to find someone to pass Ms Alexander on to when I leave. I tried out this third quarter woman Jackie who is admittedly rather odd. She is older, like mid thirties. Very overweight in a disproportionately stomachy way. She once told me that her fat protects her and if she was my size (!) she would get in all kinds of trouble. Like I can just roam the streets in a bikini. She was a stewardess and always makes these flight attendanty comments, supposedly humorous, like "Your Moet is on the way," or "Would you like the Chicken Kiev?" I think she was created to be an assitant of some sort, she seems to love going and getting stuff, making peoples tasks easier, handing you things just generally making sure everyone is taken care of. Its odd. But she is funny and has very good attendance and manners and I thought she and Ms A would hit it off. Well they didnt. She drove Ms Alexander crazy. and she made her look like a puffball. there were peices of hair hanging out of her rollers. Yeeeh! I havent talked to Ms A yet but I know she's gonna ream me. I left her a message on her machine while she was in the girl's chair apologizing. Now I have to figure out some kind of way to tell Jackie that she isnt going to be passed on to her without totally crushing this woman's feelings. Good times.
I did Chieni's hair on friday after giving Delphine a great haircut. Chieni's hair didnt turn out how I wanted it, its cute but im gonna redo it so its what we meant to get. The foils are nicely placed and everything but the teachers bamboozled me with conflicting ways to do the thing (she wanted purpley red highlights in her jet black natural hair) and I ended up second guessing what I knew would work and making some mistakes. I knew I should use a low level developer so that it would lift slowly and id have more time before all the red pigment lifted out, since we were going for a red result. Ms V told me I should use 30 because it wouldnt lift easily since it was so dark, which just doesnt sound right to me, but I didnt want to question her. So of course i didnt even see the red stage before it went to orange and gold. So she told me to just spray the bleach down and wipe it off instead of shampooing, which also sounded strange, how can you get even color penetration if some parts of the hair still have bleach residue and 30 vol developer on them, which is unavoidable without a thorough rinse, So it didnt take evenly, either some of the strands didnt get into the packets somehow, which I doubt because I triple checked, or didnt absorb the color. Whatever happened itll be easy to fix and it looks kind of cool and sunbursty but it was frustrating to know I knew how to do something and doubt myself to where i end up doing things wrong. I guess its a lesson learned. Other than that, we did the practice test for the beauty bar on Tuesday, it was super super annyoing but, thats the nature of the beast. Our final is tueday and we have to do the test again exactly as it will be administered. Then we have to take a mock written exam like the written practical. Graduation is on Wednesday. Good lord. I cant wait for the pictures. One more costume opportunity taken full advantage of.