Hair

Newport Beach salon owner Nazy Curtis had one consolation when she was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago. “At least I don’t have to worry about losing my hair,” she said. Curtis has had alopecia for the past 10 years. The disease causes patches of her hair to fall out. Scientists believe the condition is an autoimmune disorder that causes the body’s immune system to attack its own hair follicles. Today Curtis sports a short, spiky bob — a photograph of an exotic bird with an exuberant crest of white feathers that hangs on one wall of her Newport Center salon was the inspiration for the cut, she said.

Shanghai Salon in Costa Mesa is offering a new must-have hair treatment — the “Brazilian Blowout” to make your life easier. It’s designed to solve flat-iron and difficult-to- smooth-out hair issues. The “Brazilian Blowout” improves the condition of your hair by creating a protective layer around the hair shaft. The result is smooth and shiny hair that is easy to style, with no chance of damage or breakage. The treatment lasts anywhere from six weeks to three months, depending on how often you shampoo.

It all started the morning after the election of President Barack Obama. Let’s just say it wasn’t among Rep. John Campbell’s best days. His party took a thrashing at the hands of angry voters who pink-slipped scores of his colleagues. Since then he’s put away his razor and has been rockin’ the rugged look. “Hey, I’ve had facial hair for half my life,” Campbell said, chuckling as he talked about his beard to reporters in his D.C. office Monday.

Heavy cancer treatment is known for causing hair loss, and Tommy Conforti was no exception. But his friends in school didn’t want him to feel alone, so a group of Newport Elementary fifth-graders got together and submitted to the clippers. Over a single weekend, more than 20 of his classmates went out and got buzz cuts, which they called a way to make him feel more comfortable while enduring tough medical treatment. Tommy, 10, moved to the U.S. this year, and he just started at Newport Elementary in September.

With Tina Fey’s turn as Gov. Sarah Palin on “Saturday Night Live” creating a stir — in part due to her spot-on bouffant wig — we thought it was time to check in with Christopher Hall, the owner of the wildly popular Splitends salon in Costa Mesa. The salon will appear at 5 tonight on the Style Network’s “Split Ends” reality TV show.   What is the most common color or style that people are requesting now?

Trendy clothes, designer hair cuts, plenty of money, not a care in the world. That describes your typical coastal Orange County high school student, if you believe the seemingly endless outpouring of TV shows centering on the beach community. Spurred on by the immense popularity of the landmark blockbuster “The OC,” big networks started churning out shows focusing on the high school-age demographic in Newport Beach and similar areas including “Newport Harbor: The Real Orange County” and “Laguna Beach.

Joshua Blount doesn’t match the physical description of the shooter and was nowhere near the crime scene when 23-year-old Costa Mesa resident Israel Maciel was killed in a drive-by shooting nearly two years ago, defense attorney Barry Bernstein told jurors in the trial’s opening statement Tuesday. Blount, 24, from Compton, is accused of driving up to a group of men in an alley in the 1300 block of West Baker Street and opening fire. Maciel was fatally shot in the upper back.

Go to the barber any day of the week and you might get a decent conversation and a few laughs out of your 10- to 30-minute hair cut, but go to Adams Elementary School for a trim and you might get more than 100 cheering children rooting you on as your locks get snipped. That is exactly what happened Monday afternoon when 21 students and three adults decided to have their hair cut and donated to Locks of Love, a charity that creates and sells hair pieces for children with cancer or alopecia, a disease in which children permanently lose all their hair.

Any parent or teacher will tell you you have to be very careful about what you say around kids. The situation is so bad that for years, teachers have had an unwritten rule about kids acting like magpies. They say to parents, “I’ll believe half of what your kid says about you if you believe half of what they say about me.” But in the case of Sterling Gates, a student at Adams Elementary School in Costa Mesa, he is to be commended for accurately repeating what his fifth-grade teacher, Alison Walske, said.

While feeling good is a common byproduct of doing something good, it isn’t very often that after some charitable deeds one gets to walk away looking good as well. But that is exactly what about 200 visitors to Paul Mitchell Beauty School got Sunday. The school hosted a special charity event where various hair stylists from Orange County turned out to cut hair for OC AIDS Walk. Hair cuts were $20, facials were $15 and all the money was donated to the foundation, which will have its culminating event Saturday at Angel Stadium of Anaheim.