CHAZ!

So lately I've been unhappy with my hair.  I've also had a root canal in the last week.  These two events are related, I promise you.

Because the root canal meant I was on painkillers, and up late at night whimpering on the couch.  And INFOMERCIALS are on late at night.

Hence, I ordered some weirdo conditioner-only haircare line from an informercial.  I blame the drugs.

It's called Wen (what this means, I don't know).  The guy who designed it is apparently a friend of the guy from Flipping Out, which is a show I have never watched, so it's irrelevant to me.  But he was mesmerizing at 3am while I was f*cking high on Vicodin. 

Anyway, it came yesterday.  The cleansing conditioner, a deep conditioner, a styling cream, and texture putty.  Oh, and the comb.

The brochures are AWESOME.  They are covered with CHAZ! (which I say while imagining jazz hands.)  You can see for yourself how soulful and deeply concerned CHAZ! is about the dreadful, unenlightened state of my hair. 

But he promises a "transformation," and I feel kind of like I'm being indoctrinated into a cult.

After gazing zen-like into CHAZ!'s eyes for a while, I broke down and headed for the shower.  First of all, they tell you to thoroughly rinse your hair in "cool water."  Which is not all that conducive to the shower, because it means you're shivering like a f*cking maniac while whispering "CHAZ!" like a mantra.  So I opted for hanging my head over the tub instead, which worked a lot better and was actually kind of refreshing.

That done, I went about applying the cleansing conditioner.  The smell is really quite pleasant.  It's a little herbal, but not medicinal, and a little sweet, but not cloying.  I dutifully separated my hair into sections and went to work.  They tell you to use a SH!TLOAD of this stuff, but I'm trusting CHAZ! here, so I did as I was told.  Next, you have to "massage vigorously" for 1-3 minutes.  Seriously, your hands kind of start to get tired of this. 

Then you comb.  Which I admittedly skipped, because my hair is kind of fine and I'm scared of ending up with bald patches or something, so I just finger-combed and hoped CHAZ! wouldn't be too disappointed.  But I could feel his disapproval from the brochure on the bathroom counter.

Next step:  Leave on for 3-5 minutes "or longer."  So I put on a shower cap and a towel and headed out for a few minutes.  The stuff sort of tingles on your scalp, not unpleasantly, but I'm imagining that in the dead of winter this will suck between the cool rinse and the cooling tingle.

Then it was back to the tub for the rinse.  The rinse takes a while, because your hair basically feels like a big slippery mass of goo.  But the slipperiness does go away a bit. 

The aftermath:  After rinsing, I towel-dried it and applied a little of the same cleansing stuff as a leave-in.  The texture of my hair is interesting.  It feels squeaky, which is nice because it feels clean; and I was worried about it just feeling like, well, conditioner.  But while it's squeaky, it's also not a tangled mess -- it's almost totally detangled without having to do anything to it.  My scalp still feels a little cool, which is nice because it also adds to the sensation of having actually shampooed. 

I'm letting it air-dry, so we'll see how it dries; but for the first application, I'm pleasantly surprised.  It's a lot more work than regular shampooing/conditioning, but the result feels, thus far, like your hair does when you have it washed at a really nice salon.  Maybe CHAZ! is really more than a pair of gentle eyes and a head of tumbled, artful hair. 

P.S.  I have spent the last twelve hours randomly sneaking up on my husband to yell "CHAZ!" and do Fosse hands.