Welcome new hair colour!

I love it. I've had dark cherry red before, but I wanted to try a lighter, more natural looking one. I know this picture isn't the best one, but at least it shows you very well what it looks like.

It kind of makes me feel like Lucille Ball and Rita Hayworth:

Stay tuned for better pictures!

Know your classic hairstyles, volume 1

From today on, there will be a new series of posts on my blog, showing you some famous classic hairstyles and their backgrounds. Today I'll start with the pompadour.

The pompadour was incredibly popular among rockabilly boys during the 1950s. Elvis Presley was, of course, the most famous person with this hairstyle and copycats all over the world soonly started imitating his look - some more extremely than others - and always carried a comb with them to keep their hair in the right shape.
One might wonder why this hairstyle, that seemed to be founded in the United States of America has a French name. An English name would be much more practical, wouldn't it?

No, in fact the hairstyle got its name from Madame de Pompadour, the chief mistress of Louis XV of France. She used to wear many wigs that looked like the picture above; it was volimunous at the front and framed with ringlets.
Although not backcombed with pomenade like the 1950s hairstyle, the resemblance is rather big if you ask me.

The pompadour, however, was not only a hairstyle for men: there was also a version for females available. This is a version in which the hair is turned back off the forehead in a roll. This hairstyle is still popular among a lot of girls with a slight interest for anything retro or rockabilly. In case you are one of them, or would just want to give it a try for fun; here is a nice tutorial on how to do it:

I have personally never worn this look for two particular reasons:

Reason 1: I practically always have a fringe that is not long enough to roll up.

Reason 2: I have a big forehead and have an updo on the front of your head makes a big forehead appear only bigger than it already is.

And throughout history, there have been several periods in which the pompadour made several comebacks:

Julia Louis-Dreyfus sported a wide reverse pompadour in the late 1980s / early 1990s series Seinfield.

Mike Score, vocalist of the new wave band A Flock of Seagulls, was famous for his extravagant own version of the classic pompadour, in which he only backcombed hair on the sides of his head, and left it straight at the front.

Dita von Teese is wellknown for her vintage inspired looks and creates a pompadour every now and then.

 And of course, the pompadour is still popular in the modern rockabilly/psychobilly/whateverbilly scene as well!

Being for the benefit of mister Kite.

This story is an own interpretation of this Beatles' song that appeared on their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Enjoy!

The enormous multicoloured circus tent was empty yet filled with sound when mister Kite's voice scattered through the space. “Where is Henry?!” he yelled, with his reddened face hidden under the inseperable old black hat. A deformed echo was his response.
Upon his arrival outside, Henderson had appeared, accompanied by one of the fiels of dark clouds the group had had to deal with for weeks in a row already. They seemed to follow mister Kite's grumpy head in order to pour rain on it and cool him down. Mister Kite, who had become so used to the darkened sky, didn't mention anything about the upcoming rain, but asked Henderson whether he had seen Henry the horse. “Henry?” the man asked and shrugged before he walked away. Henderson loathed the old mister Kite as much as he loathed Henry; both of them were old enough to be brought to the slaughterhouse, but unfortunately, the ethical laws of mankind did not allow a deed so cruel.
“And the band! Where the bloody hell are the band?! Those sons of a camel are supposed to start at ten to six!”, mister Kite raged to no one in particular. The lack of an answer encouraged the man to provoke his tirade to higher levels, and whilst mister Kite's blasphemy on the Sabbath continued, the laws of nature were almost defied - his hat was nearly set on fire by his furiosity, but luckily the rainy clouds had started dropping their liquid passengers. He didn't even notice.
It wasn't until five o'clock that mister Kite finally calmed down. The tent looked marvelous and the overwhelming scent of money sent mister Kite right to the cash deck. The customers approached his shelter slowly and after they had paid, Kite's greedy hands brought the coins to his mouth, in which his golden teeth were hungry to test whether the given money was real. He relievedly had to conclude that tonight's spectators were neither coin forgers, nor a bunch of scrooges. Kite, who was stisfied with the money and whose mood had obviously improved, ran to the stables to greet Henry and disappeared to his improvised dressing room soonly afterwards. The public was about to see a splendid show tonight! After months of preperation, Bishopsgate would be the first village to see his new act.
When he entered the tent, the public applauded loudly, as if they already knew what to expect. A smile appeared on mister Kite's face, that had never been as pale as it was now. He waved at the public while the trampolines were carried in. “Tonight, ladies and gentleman,” he announced, “you will be the first ones to see my spectacular new act!” The public started whispering, wondering what the new act would be. “I will jump through a hogshead of real fire”, mister Kite continued and took a large bow before he headed to the trampolines. He did not recall ever having seen an audience so excited. Tonight would be his night and after his big jump, he could compete with the stars that shone above them. “There we go,” he said to himself and casted his body towards the fire.
The audience however, stopped clapping their hands quickly after they saw what just had happened. The old man had set himself on fire and lay on the ground, while the flames pulverized his roasted body. The public flowed through the tent to find their way out, as if they themselves were the blood in the anguished vains of tonight's victim.
Henderson and the others arrived quickly, each of them carrying a bucket filled with water. After the fire had been overpowered, Henderson covered the corpse with a white blanket and whispered: “we both know this was for your own benefit,” before he left.

Story time

Whereas only death was seen as the horizon of possibilities, he spent his life driving across the country in the old car his father had left behind on the day he passed away. The ancient leather roof was not water resistant and whilst driving under rainy clouds, he had to make sure the small metal buckets and plastic barrels were still on their original spots in order to prevent stains from the rain in the smooth blue fabric of the seats. The inside of the car was the only part that still seemed flawless and he wished to keep it that way.
Today, the sun was shining and because of this rare event, he had removed the old parafernelia from his car and placed them on a deserted parking lot. An old man who lived in a flat nearby the parking place looked down upon him from his window, yelled when he saw how he polluted the environment and shook his fist at him while his other hand rested on a wooden cane. One could think of it as an absurd situation, but the young lad did not share this view. He had abandoned realism long time ago and therefore wasn't impressed by this senile Captain Haddock, whose old fashioned gestures were possibly even older than he was himself. The young motorist waved at him and smiled. "Hello there!" he yelled loudly enough to make his words reach the ears of his one man public. The old man stopped shaking his fist and bent over the windowsill, which made his head that was sticking out of the window look funnily small in comparison to the enormous gray building. "You ruin my view by throwing all that garbage on the ground, you scumbag!", he replied.
The young man shook his head carelessly, stepped into his car and drove off without looking back. The elderly had never been his kind of people anyway - they had lived life for so long already, that they had forgotten its actual meaning. He still heard the man yelling, but didn't know whether the sound of the hoarse voice was real or a mere product of his imagination. The only thing he knew, was that he did not want to listen to it and he therefore turned the music on. The waves of sound encircled him in a pleasant way and his vocal chords produced a sound that flattered the tones that already floated around in his car.
His tones became words and those formed a song that started leading its own life. "I opened my eyes and realized it was all just dream," he sang and at that very moment all sounds vanished. His words had pushed a button of reality - as if they had a divine power to control the world. His thoughts twisted within his skull and his brain seemed about to explode. His situation had never been this complicated before. Maybe this absurd world was a dream; but it could just as well be the pure reality. The only question that remained was whether it was the first or the latter. Perhaps he should not care, because it didn't even matter.