Need your beard trimmed? (HipstaPrint courtesy of Mark Howard)
Phil ran across this scene, while I was out doing my usual walkabout. He told them that I would kill for a picture of this. Mark whipped out his iPhone and kindly obliged, taking the time to email it to me before catching his plane to the mainland. When I came home Phil just said that I would find a surprise in my email. Sure enough, a fabulous surprise! 10 points to Phil for thinking of me and 100 points to Mark for taking and sending me his HipstaPrint! Thank you, Mark!
Somewhere (where oh where?) I have pictures of our Ubud neighbor, Herman Suhendro, cutting Phil's hair out on the lanai of our bungalow. One time he came over at sunset on the day of our weekly power blackout (every Monday 6:00-9:00pm), which is not so good for making pictures. I had to hold up a lantern to Phil's head so Herman could see what he was doing. He had been the assistant to Vidal Sassoon. Yes, the Vidal Sassoon. After decades of cutting hair, though, Herman changed professions and went into the custom-made furniture business. He has an enormous work space in the village of Mas, just south of Ubud. His wife Retno used to be a model.
Phil, Herman, Retno and their adorable daughter Elena
Back in the early Eighties, I had a chance to spend a week in New York City and booked myself an appointment with Vidal Sassoon. He was the hottest thing in hair then. I didn't get the Man himself to work on me, but his top assistant did -- a very fussy, very haute-couture-snobbish kinda guy. With the help of his top assistant, he gave me one (for that time) super radical asymmetrical haircut. I loved it. It was the first time I had been to an uber chi-chi hair salon.and the first time I ever had my hair cut that severely lopsided. I've been lopsided ever since, askew, off-balance, awry. What's worse, 30 years of marriage with a shrink has exacerbated the condition beyond repair. What can I say...
Now how did I get from a third-world sidewalk haircut scene to celebrity hair styling to confessing my deficiencies? Maybe I should finish with something totally unrelated, like the Sheraton Waikiki infinity pool.
Row, row, row your float...
Yeah, tell me about Vidal Sassoon! When I lived in New York City in the early 70s, I went to Sassoon for a haircut. They assigned me to a flunky who obviously was not trained to cut hair. He didn't know what he was doing and his hands were shaking badly.
ReplyDeleteLong story short, my hair was cut down to 1/2 inch all around. Horrible bolo-head, as we say in Hawaii!
The next time I went (my 2nd and last time with a different hairstylist), he had been relegated to a host sort of position -- guiding customers to their respective seats and haircutters. Demoted!