a great restaurant you should know about.
I know I've mentioned my hairdresser here before--the man's a god of hairstyling, and I haven't been able to find his equal since. You'd think I'd be able to find a hairdresser par excellence in LA, but you'd be wrong.
This is, I believe, because I have curly hair.
Many hairdressers say they know what to do with curly hair, but they either a)lie or b)are talking about permed hair, which isn't the same thing as naturally curly hair at all. Most times when I go to see a hairdresser, I say, I don't know what to do with it, and they have no suggestions. None.
Mark, my hairdresser in Northern California, greeted me at the door of the salon and said, "How about golden highlights?"
Mark has curly hair, dyed golden blonde, and an exuberant personality. So exuberant and mannered that you would think, as I did and as everyone does on meeting him, that he is gay. He isn't. He is very energetic and goes a mile a minute.
While I was in the chair, every other word he mentioned was "galaxy," as in my hair will look as though it's from another galaxy. He launched into a free-form description of a TV show, The Galaxy Riders, about (what else?) a band of misfits who travel from planet to planet solving crimes. (Okay, I added the "solving crimes" part.) I asked him if the hype for The Phantom Money Sink hadn't driven him over the edge.
The best part was when I asked him if that was a grey hair I had spotted on the top of my head.
MARK peers at the top of DIANE's head, running
his fingers through her hair.
MARK
Maybe one. Don't worry! You're not even
thirty yet.
I told Darin this and he said, "Oh, this guy is a professional."
The best thing about Mark is that he makes me happy to have curly hair. He makes me feel as though I can do something with it, make it attractive, not just tie it up and tie it away. I always hated having curly hair, because when you're in grade school you get teased for it. (And when you have glasses too, you're just a walking bull's eye.) I paid $100 for a haircut in West Hollywood and left feeling drab; I paid Mark $45 and left feeling like a goddess. It's cheaper than therapy.
He is, I have decided, worth the expense of hopping on a plane, renting a car, and going to his shop (which keeps moving, unfortunately). So when you think about decadence, think about Diane traveling 400 miles to get her hair done.
Darin had a business meeting from 4 to 6:30, so I dropped him off at Pixo and headed out to Coffee Society. He called me at 5:30 or something and said Jimi would drive him to dinner. I didn't think to call Mitch at his office to see if he wanted to carpool to dinner. Instead, I just waited at Mitch's and did not find him or Scott, so I drove to dinner by myself.
Jimi, Renee, Darin, Mitch, Scott, Scott's friend John, Greg, and I met at Hunan Garden in Palo Alto. Let me not beat around the bush: this is the best Chinese food I've ever had. Jimi and Renee eat there about 4 or 5 times a week, and I don't blame them. Jimi knows the owner, who served us a smorgasbord: a little of this, a little of that... I should have stopped early, but everything--the duck, the vegetables, the beef, the chicken, the appetizers, the soup--was so amazing I had to taste everything.
If you're within a day's driving distance of Palo Alto, go.
Lee and Ali joined us late, as she had warned us they might. We had already taken over their space, but then we squeezed back to give them room. We'd already consumed most of the food too, but Lee has returned to vegetarianism (after a visit to the Hong Kong Fish Market, which put her off anything with eyes), so she and Ali ordered a couple of vegetarian dishes.
Lee and I discussed running, as she is in training for the San Francisco Marathon. ("Show off," I muttered darkly.) Evidently joining a training group is the way to go: she actually has different times for her marathon speed versus her 5K speed now, something that had always struck me as impossible.
After dinner I asked if anyone wanted to go to the Prolific Oven for dessert. While I'm on a Greatest Hits of the Bay Area Tour, I had to get to the Prolific Oven. Lee and Ali came with me and the three Adlers to get some high cal cake and chat. There was a lot of chat about the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, since Darin and Scott attended and Ali had been a speaker there. I ate my cake and didn't say much. Hey, I had cake: who needed chat?
|
|
|
|
Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com