Final Rest

It always happens in three's. We lost Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcet and Michael Jackson all in two days. For me, it's the end of an era. Ed McMahon was our last connection to Johnny Carson, whom we all still miss. Not that Jay Leno wasn't terrific, but Johnny was with us every night at 11:30 pm through thick or thin for 34 years. The one constant in our lives was Johnny Carson and his lame routines. He left us way too soon.

Michael Jackson in his early days, when he was black, was a cultural icon. I remember his incredible break out performance on the 25th Anniversary Celebration of Motown. It was the first time he did the moonwalk and wore his sparkly white glove. After that he did the Thriller album, which I still have, he made the first memorable music video on VH1 which was a radical new channel (all music - who'd watch that?) on the still new cable TV. Then he seemed to me to lose his fucking mind, changing his face to a gender neutral mess, and obviously taking female hormones to keep his voice high and to keep his body from becoming more muscular. Just look at his four brothers, all nice looking, well muscled black men. Then he began taking something to kill the melanin in his body. For someone who claimed to be proud of being black, he did everything he could to become white. I saw him in person once, a glimpse as he was passing by, he was as white as a natural albino, no color at all and hypersensitive to the sun. When I heard of his death, I blamed it on whatever he was taking to suppress the melanin because I believe it made his systems fragile, just like an albino. A tragedy, he was a great talent. As the truth comes out, we'll hear that he took something to bleach his skin systemically. And what happens to the kids? I hope they go back to their mothers. The youngest two kids are not Michael's biological kids. He says yes, but I say no. He couldn't bleach his DNA, his two youngest children are not mixed race. That truth will come out too.

Farrah Fawcet is a beauty icon who will live on, like Marilyn or Sophia. Every girl in high school tried to achieve the Farrah windswept hairdo. It was in the pursuit of the Farrah look that I learned lesson that all women learn and the sooner the better. Hairspray.

The "Farrah do" was a layered, frosted ash blonde streaked, wind tossed, but not wind blown look, which was a battle to get. You could get a layered cut at the salon, and a professional frosting, if you could afford it, looked fantastic. Most of us could afford the cut, but not the frosting, so we did that ourselves. If it was summertime, you could buy Sun-In, a spray on bleach that you sprayed all over your hair before baking in the sun at the beach. Sun-In would blonde you up if you were already a dark blonde and would blend in nicely and you looked just lovely. For the auburn haired gals like me, it created bright brassy red streaks that stood in stark contrast to a brunette background and looked just frightening. To correct the Sun-In, we bought a Frost 'n' Tip kit. You put a plastic cap on your head and, using the sharp red plastic crochet hook provided, you punched through the cap where the black dots indicated and if you followed the instructions, you pulled through only a thin amount of hair so the highlights would blend. However, to a teenager, more is better, so you'd pull through a wad of hair to bleach completely white. Removing the cap, I looked at a head of dark brown, bright red, and white hair. I had more colors than Crayola. But, we see what we want to see, so I was very happy to have something akin to the Farrah do. Now I had to master the "windswept all the time" look.

The windswept look was accomplished with curlers and curling irons, and you could get it perfect while standing at the mirror. You had to look like you were standing twenty feet behind a propeller, any closer and the curls would blow out, the problems began when you moved. Windswept hair has to defy gravity. It cannot hang down like normal hair, it must make a right angle turn at the cheek bones and run parallel to the ground after that. How to get it to stay in place, here was the real challenge.

Gels and Mousse's made the hair heavy and pulled it down. AquaNet hairspray said it could hold without stiffness. Nope, it didn't work. I tried one hairspray after another. Finally, I paid attention to my Aunt Margaret, who wore a beehive hairdo. Her hair never moved. She could go on a boat and still look good coming in. Any hairdo, outside of a ponytail, that survives a Boston Whaler, is a serious hairdo. I knew it was one of two things, either she sold her soul to the devil for perfect hair, or there was a magic elixir in her bathroom. I went into her inner sanctum of beauty and there it was, the Holy Grail of hairdo's, Final Net.

Final Net sprays a thin layer of boat grade shellac over your hair. While it's wet, you quickly smooth your wispy ends down and let it dry. Once dry, your hair feels like a smooth tupperware container on your head, a container that is holding a perfect and indestructible hairdo. You hair may break, but it will not bend. Once I found Final Net, I was able to achieve my Farrah do. Layered, dyed, curled, shellaced, I was finally ready to face the world and be mistaken for Farrah.

Over the years, the layered hair grew out and it's no longer necessary for me to buy bleaching agents to streak my hair with white, but the one thing that remains with me to this day is Final Net. Final Net has kept my hair smooth and in place through camping trips, convertible cars, and rides at Disneyland. I'm going to be buried with a tube of red lipstick and Final Net. In the event of an afterlife, I want to be ready for the party.