I'm Goin' With It

Yesterday saw such a tropical wind-driven rain around here that people’s hairdos were all over the place.My own hair, curly by nature anyway, was practically in the next county - EVEN THOUGH I had duly blown it dry and flat-ironed the daylights out of it, as is my custom.

The moisture in the air, driven by strong spring winds, was so extreme the TV reporters on scene all over the area were apologizing for their coifs. They looked like the utterly bedraggled news anchors in the first Batman movie, remember? After Jack Nicholson's Joker poisons the makeup supply to give people that same frozen smirk he has? I don't have a still image of the funny cameo when you see a pair in the days afterward, on camera without their usual buffing up, but let's say they - and all of us yesterday - looked like Sofia Vergera on one of those mean 'Celebrities WIth No Makeup' sites:

(Hard to believe that even IS the hot Latin wife from Modern Family, huh? "Mahnny! Dj'you loook so haaaandsome!" )When I got home last night my hair was so wildly tentacled I decided to do something new: I decided to stop fighting it. I put it in a few small rollers and 20 minutes later it looked like  this. I'm thinking of going with it. All these years I've had this curly hair, why NOT set it free at long last? I'm no Sofia Vergara to begin with and thank the good Lord for that.  

Playdate

On bright days like we've been having I want to be like those lucky housepets who spend the day moving from room to room in pursuit of each warm pool of sunlight.

Here's a sunny room above.And here's a cat who knows just what to do with it: I want to go down on my stomach and rest my chin on my paws too - ah!This winter sun is still slanty enough so that it’s right in here with us, like that warm light on top of your fish tank.It’s more than 'in here' with us; it came expressly to spend the day with us, as with a playdate arranged by unseen parents. It makes me want to put on skates and hold a roller derby zooming around the rooms. It makes me want draw 50 pictures and tape them to the wall going up the stairs like my sister and I did that Saturday morning our mom dared sleep until 8.She was pretty mad when it turned out to be a permanent exhibit.(Who knew the tape would take the wallpaper with it when we pulled it off.) We kids didn’t mind it; so for us it just made a nicely unusual art gallery, like the kind Jack Nicholson-as-the-Joker makes when he and his goons come calling at the Gotham City museum. (That's below if you want to take a peek.) But listen the sun really is getting stronger every day, can't you feel it? And yet it's still so close to us. It likes Earth better than those other planets, that's all. Yeah I'll say it again. A day like this just wants to make you stretch right out. Now for some weird late-80s pop and Jack Nicholson with the ultimate Face Lift Gone Wrong. :-)[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-c-pRsZR9g]

Makeup or No Makeup

It’s probably best to let yourself be photographed warts and forget all vanity. My Sixth Grade school picture showed me with such a bad case of chapped lips I looked like a circus clown. I didn't care. I had just gotten a dog  and that dog was all I thought about.I think of Martin Schoeller who does these outsized close-ups of people, using none of the tricks photographers usually use to soften the blunt facts of the human face. They’re fascinating. Take a look at Christopher Walken here. The key to so many of his roles has to be that upper lip that Nature hiked up crookedly on him.And was Bill Murray actually trying to be funny in all his movies or did we laugh because of the odd mixture of that tentative smile and a certain hapless look signaled by the tilt of his eyebrows?I put Martin Schoeller’s photo of Brad Pitt up here a few days ago and now here’s his lady:Look at that face! She is one beautiful woman and kind too, as I hear (and to  those people who nastily suggest  say she is working out old issues in rearing six children under ten I say  what is anyone doing but exactly that?) As a child she wasn’t all that pretty as you can see . It just goes to show you: by the time you're a grownup you really DO have the face you deserve.