Go, Be, Do.

Have you heard that phrase used? Man. I'm just hearing it now really, its asinine. Go, Be, Do... as in Stylist; "Is this about the pant?" Nanny creative director; "This one is totally editorial, we aren't selling anything so Go, Be, Do!" like we don't have to make that sweater look good so finally you can do whatever your heart desires with the hair! Ive heard it used offset too and it just rubs me the wrong way. Its like quoting an inspirational mug.

Its impossible for me to be on time to the salon on Sundays if I take the bus cause the schedule changes and it either drops me off 20 mins before anyone gets there to open the door or ten mins after we open. I can take the train but I have to walk a few long blocks and when its really cold that sucks. For that reason, and because he took pity on me on my 11th straight day of work, Ben took me to the salon yesterday. And its a good thing he did, because we were privy to a very interesting slice of the Brooklyn pie on our way. Its very hard to find parking in our hood, so we were walkin the couple blocks to his car when I noticed a crowd of people holding signs up ahead. As we got closer it looked like they were all Orthodox Jews! Which makes everything so much weirder and more entertaining. I was ecstatic, protesting Hasids on our block; pretty much the best day ever. They were chanting something unintelligible but to get on the right street we were going to have to drive through the crowd. Sure enough, they were all orthodox (or Hasidim I'm not exactly sure which) chanting "Shlomo Blumenkrantz Shame on YOU! Shlomo Blumenkrantz Shame on YOU!" and holding signs that read "Shlomo Blumenkrantz stop abusing halakha." Which Ben thought was his wife, but I informed him was Jewish law. Thanks Prof Jaffee. So they re all on one side of the street and there are a couple of private rent a cop types on the other. I asked one of the security tools what this was about, he said "they re protesting." No shit Sherlock, what are they protesting? "This guy." He said and motioned towards the large house across the street. What did he do? 'You gonna havta aks dem!" I turned and looked at the angry bewigged and bespectacled mob, was suddenly overcome with guilt for driving on shabbos (i forgot Shabbos was over on sunday, even worse) and decided id better get to work. Luckily, Ben is the king of Internet research and sussed out this info on shlomo. Apparently there is a rising problem in "the community" with women who are seeking a get, a Jewish divorce, from their husbands and are denied,even if it was the husband who left! This leaves the woman alone but technically married and therefore untouchable by any other man, an agunah or chained woman. Of course in the USA anyone can get a divorce in a civil court but without the get, no other marriage is halakhically recognized and the the successive children will be considered bastards. Poor bastards.

The rabbis of the couples community are supposed to decree a Yeger Seruv, a social castigation technique supposed to coerce the man using pressure and shame, excluding him from community events and ignoring him in synagogue (who needs the death penalty? we can just start ignoring people in synagogue! man, what century are these people living in?) but, surprisingly, this method no longer seems to work, either the community doesn't exert enough pressure or the man just doesn't care.

Now the other part of the problem is that there are a few rabbis who ENCOURAGE men to deny their ex-wives a get, stating that women who do not fulfill their marriage vows are wicked and do not deserve a second chance. This lovely position is where Shlomo Blumenkrantz comes in. He is one of these fine men of the cloth whose misogyny extends even beyond that of regular hasids, who are up in arms and seeking, rather successfully, human rights concern even outside the immediate community.

for more info check out these links.

http://www.forward.com/articles/11989/
http://users.aol.com/agunah/plight.htm
http://www.lilith.org/blog/?p=108

Good times in kensington. Imagine what their Bangladeshi and Mexican next-door neighbors must have thought being awakened on Sunday morning by a mob of angry Jews calling for shame!!?? Brooklyn is amazing. In other seemingly impossible and hilarious news, Ben spent last evening helping our landlady (the obese and somewhat nutty Jewish woman who works doing animal therapy with kids, court ordered crazy people and at nursing homes and who used to play drums for Lionel Hampton but now takes 15 mins to walk up a short flight of stairs) by re hooking up the speakers on her computer so she could listen to this one song that she had had a hankering to hear. She had been calling us to help her with it for DAYS...take a guess. Turns out its Gangster's Paradise by Coolio. Shes dying to listen to Gangsters Paradise. For the next couple hours after he came up we could hear the bassline over and over. I mean, imagine the stuff that goes on around here that we DON'T know about??
Brooklyn, Go, Be, Do.

Merry Christmas! Remember, Buy nothing and vote for Obama!

hooliday!

Ach, consistency. The thorn in the side of the writer. Last night I watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Its a wonderful and devastating film, the story of which is true and based on the life of Jean dominique Bauby. Bauby was the editor of french Elle, creative genius, father, philanderer and hedonist, who suffered a massive stroke at the prime of his career and was left with his brain totally intact but with only the movement of one eyelid under his control. Prior to said stroke Bauby had signed a book contract which, apon devising with his therapist a way to spell out words through one eye blinking, he fulfilled. The film is based on this book which he wrote from his hospital bed, telling the story of his life and the feeling of being submerged in a diving bell with no way to surface. He managed to write a book with an eyelid. I dont think i have to detail just how inept and worthless that makes me (and perhaps you too dear reader! Whens the last time you were totally paralyzed and fulfilled your hopes and dreams???) So, instead of lapsing into my safe haven of self deprecation, I will pose this question: Why is it so hard when you have all your wits and capabilities about you to engage fully, to be consistent? Why is it so hard to start things, and furthermore to finish them?? what is it about the human psyche which feasts and revels in under achievement and inactivity? We know how good things like exercise and sleep or reaching a goal feels but we don't do them, we stand in our own way, hem and haw, make excuses. ANd why, when those wits and capabilities are injured, taken away or limited in some way do we suddenly feel capable, indeed driven to complete our intentions, enabled by our hardships to finally do what we wanted to do all along but couldn't find our way to doing? Like computer programmers who lose both legs in a car accident and then take up cycling and compete in the special Olympics. Why not before? When you had legs? Is it that you are freed from the fear of failure? Your impediment is already the failure so there is nothing to follow but success? Anything you do is better than doing nothing no matter how able bodied and sound of mind we are, yet it SO hard to convince yourself that doing something imperfectly or worse, god forbid than someone else could do is even worth trying. Its interesting. And discouraging. Lets see what we can figure out.
I have fallen back into the breakneck pace of NY, not just any time of the year either...but that time dreaded by working parents, garishly prepared for by ad agencies and graphic designers, and ghoulishly droolingly anticipated by retailers great and small; the holidays. Everyone wants their hair done, new clothes, new pots and pans. Good lord. Its nuts. Though I have to say, i feel like people are doing it less. I dont see a lot of shopping happening. True I dont subject myself to malls and stuff but I dont feel the fever pitch that I have in years past.
Its freezing, literally, the sky is steel grey, fruit dwindles and guilt for buying unseasonal produce burgeons. Macy*s however, churns out "book" after "book" (which is what creative directors are calling catalogs these days. They dont call em creative for nothin.) and visions of "tiny head huge pony" dance in my head. They finished the christmas book this year and are now shooting all the asanine Easter clothes and spring collections. Kids dressed as bunnies lots of painted wooden eggs and balloons, you know the stuff. We had two straight days of kids last week. Ugh. We shot swimsuits last week, they created a huge fake rain contraption in a studio in chelsea. It consisted of a five by two wooden box with plastic over the bottom which was rigged up on two iron poles with a pole in the middle and they poked holes in the plastic with sticks to make it "rain." Very lo-tech. But the rain produced by the holes was too fine to see on camera. So we have this wet emaciated swedish model in a skimpy suit with mascara and gel runnign into her eyes, a bellowing italian photographer who wants to see more water falling, the creative directors Nanny and the galumphing boss snickering offset and the prop tech guys madly trying to keep the box full of water and shopvac it out of the plastic on the floor before the model slips and breaks her neck. Finally they take a drill and drill through the bottom of the box so that the water can just fall straight through. Fine, except that they forgot to tell the model to move so shes standing there with sawdust and woodchips and tons of water falling all over her and embedding in her fine hair. It was a comedy of errors. Eventually the pictures looked great but i just CANNOT believe that with everything that is possible in post productions that there was no easier way to acheive that result. But who asked me? Im just a hair assistant. Thank fucking god! Oh btw the photographer's name is Tiziano, which everyone pronounces Titsyanno. Nanny actually uttered this sentence "Gasp! Oh marvellous! Stunning! Beautiful work Titsy!" I almost couldnt hold my composure. Titsy looks more like an auto mechanic than a fashion photographer, hes weathered, nearly bald and has a voice that belies every cigarette hes ever smoked. But, he takes AMAZING pictures. He knows every trick in the book, he gets the models to do exactly what he needs immediately, he has such an eye. He can take a picture of a pair of mirrored sunglasses with no shadow on the face and no reflection in the lens in about 15 mins. Which is amazing. And his eye for compostion in the shot and when we have the perfect one is infallible. When you work with people like that you can really see why clients will pay any amount to get them, comparing the hour and a half it takes the incompetant staff photographer at the in house studio to get one pic (that may or may not end up cutting the mustard with galumphine) and the lack of self confidence in whether we have the shot or not versus knowing that you have EXACTLY what you need with no callbacks or reshoots, its worth every penny, not to mention the morale onset. Ill be with them M T TH next week. Ill let you know how it goes. I sure get to go a lot of fantastic places in NY for these shoots. The studios are amazing! Huge and with gorgeous views of the city. So fancy.:)
The salon is booked solid, which is great. I am in high demand!?!?!? who knew! My color skills are really shaping up, my timing on highlights which previously held molassess in january status, is shaving off minutes by the week. Time is money in the salon darling!! Im having fun and my clients are so great. Half of them know each other so thats fun, and makes for good conversation since we can talk about all these people we know in common. I think im reaping good karma for sending everyone I ever met to Becca when she was building her clientele. Whatever it is Im really greatful to be busy and enjoying my clients. I think ive decided (though I am still going to pursue set hairdressing) that I like salon work and want to continue working with real people throughout my career. Its just too much BS onset, and I want to be an educator eventually which means I have to have lots of color experience.

We made a lovely hanukkah dinner for our landlady. I made a pretty good facsicimle of my moms sweet and sour red cabbage, made applesauce, roasted squash, and gingerbread molassess cookies. Ben made delicious latkes! I was so proud of him, hes really been showing his kitchen skills. Hed kinda been holdign that card since he didnt cook AT ALL the first year and a half we were together, but lately hes really made some impressive stuff. The latkes were perfect. It was a very nice dinner, she is a very interesting woman who never happened to have kids and wouldn't otherwise have anywhere to go for these stupid nostalgic holiday times where you feel like everyone else has tons of plans and love and you dont. Feh.

Ok. gotta get out of my pjs.More later!! Happy holidays! Buy nothing and vote for Obama!