I’m about to walk out the door for my Queen of Babble in the Big City mini-tour! And by mini I mean mini…I’m going to Miami for one day to do TV satellite.
Yep, that’s right. I’m going to be sitting in a television studio Thursday morning, and different news shows across the country will be dropping in to visit me. It’s great…I don’t have to go anywhere (well…except to Miami). I just have to talk for three hours straight.
But that’s never been much of a challenge for me, strangely.
I wish I could tell you what stations I will be on, but I really have no idea (many of the interviews will be taped and broadcast when the stations have an extra few minutes of airtime to kill). So maybe one morning you will be eating your Cheerios, flipping around, and there I will be…or not.
In preparation for this mini-tour—besides brushing up on my talking points for Queen of Babble in the Big City–like how there are so few books out there about that scary time of life we all go through, right after college, when we don’t know who we are or what we want out of life (or, as in my character’s case, we DO know, but no one will give us a chance to prove ourselves, because we have no work experience, which is soooo irritating)–I’ve dyed my hair red. Check it out:
I will admit this time it didn’t come out very red. Next week, I’m going redder.
I come from a long line of Irishmen and women so red hair is actually in my genetic background. It was only a matter of time until I embraced it. My mom is what is called Black Irish (i.e. black hair and blue eyes), but a lot of her cousins and aunts and uncles are red heads.
I actually don’t care if my hair color looks natural or not (note: for a while I had a pink streak in my hair but it was too hard to maintain). I’ve seen women FREAKING OUT in the beauty salon because they want a “natural look” and don’t want their friends to know they dye their hair. To quote from my favorite book of all time, Cold Comfort Farm: “Nature is all very well in her place, but she must not be allowed to make things untidy.” So my attitude is, natural, shmatural. Who cares if you dye your hair? So long as it looks good. Geesh.
Two blogs I love because they are entirely devoted to keeping Nature in her place are:
Jolie NYC (whose devotion to the facial soap I use, Cetaphil, won me over…If you haven’t tried Cetaphil, I highly recommend it. Forget those fancy soaps you can only buy in department stores! You will find Cetaphil on the bottom shelf of any drug store in the facial soap section. It costs about $4. I recommend the liquid kind. Dermatologists–even the high price Fifth Avenue ones–recommend this facial soap above all others because it’s the most gentle, but also the most cleansing. I never use any other).
The writer of Jolie NYC was a beauty magazine editor who got fired when they found out she was writing this blog that tells the TRUTH about beauty products…so dishy! She has a book coming out later this year and I read a galley and it’s really good. It made me feel better about my neck. And yes, like Nora Ephron and Anne Lamott, I do feel bad about my neck, and I’m only forty. But there things you can do. Girls! Stop tanning your neck NOW! Put SPF 25 on it every day and moisturizer on it every night. DO IT NOW! I MEAN IT!!!!!!! Or you’ll regret it. I’m not kidding.
I Heart Gloss is for teens (but we can all learn from her) and is by a celebrity makeup artist. It is so sweet and just all around one of the prettiest websites out there. I love it because this is someone who is definitely helping teens—and let’s face it, your teen years really are when the battle with nature is at its fiercest—to combat nature and really keep things tidy. I visit www.iheartgloss.com daily just for the tips and to drink in its pinky goodness.
Going on a mini-tour isn’t all about beauty, of course. Most of it is about the room service and pay-per-view in the hotel. I am really hoping they have some movies I haven’t seen. I only have one night so I have to cram a lot in there. He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Blog has already expressed extreme reluctance to go see both Transformers AND Live Free or Die Hard with me. I wish I could get those in my room.
In closing, here are a few facts about (natural) red heads you may not know:
1) It takes more anesthesia to knock out a redhead–sometimes as much 20% more—because redheads are more sensitive to pain than the rest of us.
2) Red hair is the rarest type of naturally occurring hair color in humans.
3) The commonly held stereotype that redheads have fiery tempers is a myth.
4) Less than four percent of the world’s population are natural redheads. One recent study showed that by the year 2057, that number could plummet to as low as less than one percent! Natural redheads are a dying breed.
Well, I’m getting on a plane now (if this sub-tropical rain will ever let up). See you on the news tomorrow morning (maybe)!
More later.
Much love,
Meg
