Magenta

      I went to Toni & Guy today to get highlights and a cut. These are beauty academies across the US and there's one right here in Santa Monica. They offer incredible value, especially for someone like me with out-of-control curly/frizzy hair for whom haircuts are not really a thing. Color has become a thing for me, though. I am a redhead. All my life I've had wild, fiery hair. This informs so much of your life and personality, you'd have to be a redhead to really understand it. In the last few years, however, my hair has gotten darker, so much that it's hardly not red anymore. Until a few years ago I had never died my hair, except for one film role. I mean, why would I? But maybe 10 years ago I discovered highlights and really came to like them. Just some blondes and reds here and there to punch things up. So a few months ago I bought a Groupon for Toni & Guy. If was $75 for two highlight/cut services. Highlights themselves are usually about $100. I got the first one in October and it was great, really lightened things up. This time I was going for sort of the same thing, maybe even lighter. I showed my stylist a photo for the cut, but we ended up going for the color as well, which was kind of dark with bright highlights in the picture. If there's one thing I'm really not going towards it's artificial looking color, like magenta or burgundy, or blue. In my younger days I was definitely one of those gothy, combat boot types. I’ve been trying to purge myself of all that and move into a more sophisticated, elegant style. But here we are. This is nothing against my perfectly lovely and devoted stylist, who spent 6 hours with me. Just a lack of communication I guess. It really is pretty, I just don’t think I can pull it off. I'll have to see what my girlfriends think and take it from there.

     On a positive note, I was in the chair so long that I was able to finish Life After Life, and get well into Apple Tree Yard. Life After Life was a really confounding book for me on several levels. I wanted to read it because it was on so many best-of lists last year. It was on the top of many lists. When you keep seeing something being held up as the best fiction of the year, there has to be something to it, but I just did not get it. First and foremost, it did not bring the feels. I mean, no feels for me. I'm always ready, willing and able to get emotionally swept up in a book, movie, situation, anything really, and this book was about war, and death. Nothing. And it was pretty boring. There were no compelling characters, or situations, or surprises, or life lessons. I gave it 3 stars because the writing was lovely, and it was pleasant enough, but it was 529 pages. At that length you really need to be saying something, and packing an emotional wallop. I got through it because I didn't hate it, and I kept waiting for something to start happening. I was waiting up until the very end. I really don't know how to avoid this. I made this same mistake with two books I read recently, The Execution of Noah P. Singleton and Defending Jacob. I won't link to them because I don't want you to read them. They both got a lot of hype. The former was just bad and the latter was disturbing. I mostly get my book recommendations from reviews, podcasts, Amazon and Goodreads. I think I'm pretty discerning and I have to be because I am not a speed reader, and I already own a literal crap-load of wonderful books that I'll probably never get to, and there's new ones coming out all the time. When I spend so much time on something that leaves me cold, I just don't know what to do. I will however probably give this to my mom because I think she might like it. I pass a lot of books onto her. Some of my most cherished ones leave her confounded, but you know, everyone's different.
     Lastly, it's day 3 of the Australian Open. I don't know how this happened without me noticing, but it's probably because of all the traveling and the TV not working. I've been a tennis fan since 1991 and the first slam of the year is something that I usually greet with a lot of anticipation. There was time when I would watch every day of the 4 televised slams, each one lasting a fortnight, which if you do the math, is 2 months of TV and it's on 10 hours a day. I can't do it anymore. I think it started changing with the advent of laptops, then mobil devices, and suddenly there's so much distraction. Also, the major part of my fandom was the days of the giants, The Sampras/Agassi 90s, Then the Federer/Nadal 00s. There's been a real changing of the guard in recent years and it's hard to keep up with it. Having said that, as always I will be pulling for my all-time favorite player Roger Federer to win his 18th slam, and my girl Maria Sharapova to win her 6th.

     There are so many reasons why I love these 2 players. Hopefully they'll be playing till the end of the fortnight and I'll be able to expand on that.