Mystic Crystal Revelation

For reasons that will shortly become clear, I've been thinking about Hair, the 1979 film of which has to me always seemed too-little-shouted-about.

Here is its opening, which I probably haven't seen in years, but which when I first watched it this morning took my breath away all over again.  The sequence is dazzlingly beautiful.  Director Miloš Forman sets up shot after shot that propulsively moves the action forward, introducing John Savage as the principal character and laying out the action for the film that follows as efficiently as has ever been done in an opening number.  It's equally driven by Twyla Tharp's deceptively casual choreography, which combines wit - the elegant paired equine-human pas de deux! - and athleticism in equal measure.  Tying it all together is the arrangement of "Aquarius," which takes the original and turns it into a jazz-rock rhapsody, opulently orchestrated and gloriously sung (the IMDb tells us) by Renn Woods.  Enjoy.

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But why, you may ask, should a late-seventies musical be bouncing around in my fevered brain, now of all times?  Well, you see, after great consideration, yesterday I took the plunge.  For the first time in three years, I had a serious haircut.  Longtime Café pals, of course, will remember that this has been a subject of some thought all this time.

I really did like it long - and by the time I motored downtown yesterday to Our Nation's Capital's leading specialist in men's curly hair, it was heading toward the middle of my back when set loose and brushed straight - but it was time for a change.  Now, it's still no stock corporate coiffure, but it promises to be low-maintenance and appropriately adaptable to business and less-so settings.  Last night, falling asleep, I remembered poor Jo March, selling her "one beauty" during the Civil war and briefly regretted not at least taking a picture of the great heaps of long hair all around the chair.

The biggest change, really, is that what's left is so defiantly... silver.  The next time I'm asked, on some official form, to list hair color, I'm not going to get away with "brown," that much I know.