GOING STREAKING

I went and saw Super 8 last night with my friend Tyler. It was not mind blowing, but VERY entertaining and well conceived. The movie itself is about a bunch of kids shooting a movie in the summer of 1979. They witness a catastrophic train accident that unleashes an unknown terror on their town. While all these crazy events are happening they're trying to shoot their film and deal with each other and their parents, plus solve the mystery of what happened on then night of the wreck. I loves me some good old fashioned period piece mystery flicks, and J.J. Abrams is a great writer/director.

Watching the kids in the movie try to piece together their independent film project lit something up in me. I remember being like them in high school, throwing together HILARIOUSLY BAD films with my friends. The scripts were bad and the acting was worse, but we worked hard and we enjoyed ourselves like nobody's business. It was a total blast. I remembered filmmaking before it got complicated by everything. Inciting incidents, crossing the axis, lighting, casting. It was like hitting refresh. Now I want to write a script without worrying about how bad or good it is. I just want to go crazy and write SOMETHING... even if it's silly. Especially if it's silly. ANYWAY.

You know what else I used to do in high school? Dye my hair crazy colours. This included a fire engine red phase, a purple/pink phase, and a bleach blonde phase. Well kids, I'm bringin' it back!

I've been jonesing for a little aesthetic change as of late, so I enlisted Rebekah to help me set about injecting a little colour into my palette. (A big thanks to her for basically doing all the hard work while I sat there and laughed at Batman & Robin.) SO, this is a mini tutorial about streaking-- with your hair that is. (If you want one for the other kind: get naked and run around in public. Now try not to get caught and arrested. Your mother will hear about it or see it on the news.)

It's not step by step because I know you're smart enough to read instructions on the boxes of stuff you buy.

THINGS YOU WILL NEED
1 hair bleaching kit. (I used Manic Panic Flash Lightning!)
1 bottle of eccentric hair colour
1 shower cap (Note: the Flash Lightning kit comes with one, plus one pair of gloves, as well as a tint brush.)
2 pairs disposable rubber gloves
1 comb you don't mind getting messy

Also,
tin foil
clothes you also don't mind getting messy.
bobby pins

PHASE ONE: BLEACHING
Pick the section of your hair you want to streak and brush and pin the rest of your hair away from it. Far, far away...like...the other side of your head. I picked a section underneath, just behind my ear and we went to work. Follow the instructions on the bleaching kit, basically. I'll leave that to the experts.

HINTS
• DON'T be shy getting at the roots, it's important to get them! If it makes your skin itch a little, it's doing it's job properly. If it's BURNING UNNATURALLY, you should STOP IMMEDIATELY, like it's hammertime.

• Keep the gloves from the application handy so you can check the progress without getting any of the bleach on your fingers.

• Check the progress of the bleach under the foil every 20 minutes or so. It took me about an hour to go from my brunette hair to what we thought would be a suitable dye shade of blonde....

PHASE TWO: COLOURING
The nice thing about semi-permanent hair dyes is that they aren't as chemically harsh, so they're less intimidating and kinder to your hair after bleach charges in and takes no prisoners. HOWEVER, they'll stain quickly. Translation: Gloves are a must. Unless walking around with red/blue/green/purple/pink muppet hands is your thing.

We used Beyond the Zone: Raspberry Kamikaze.

HINTS
• Use a comb to make sure the colour gets all the way through and the entire section of hair is saturated.

• Introducing heat to the colour will make it sink deeper. Do this with a hair dryer, then let it sit for as long as the bottle tells you. I only had this in for about 10 minutes, out of a recommended 20. When I get around to recolouring it, I'll leave it in longer.

• Before applying the colour, get some vaseline or some oil based lotion to put on your skin near the hairline site of the dye. It'll just wipe right off without staining.

After that, it's simple. Rinse, dry and BAM. FIERCE.

Have you seen Super 8? What are YOUR adventures in hair colour comprised of, if any?