EPTA little background first, I've been doing hair for about 13 years, it wasn't any thing I ever saw myself doing while growing up. I never played with dolls, I grew up poor so the only exposure I had to a "Salon " growing up was going to go see the local barber who charged $6 for a haircut. He also wore prosthetic ears like earmuffs (Wasn't sure if it was a war injury or a horrible barbering school accident)
I had never done very well in school, I would usually read through whatever text book I was given at the start of the course and never touch it again for the rest of the semester. I would get A's and B's on tests but absolutely REFUSED to do homework, my NES was way more fun than that. Needless to say most of my teachers saw this as a problem and most parent- teacher conferences ended with the phrase "He has sooo much potential"
By tenth grade I decided school wasn't for me anymore. I had discovered drinking and punk rock. Seriously, at 16 years of age what more did you really need anymore? I spent the next 7 years sleeping on couches, touring the west-coast playing to literally tens of people. But mostly I was drunk. I don't think I would ever trade those years for any other life. We didn't accomplish much, but, the experiences I had and the things I saw were like an after school special on steroids. I look back sometimes and chuckle, "How the fuck did I make it through all that without being killed or committed?"
Eventually the party has to end, I have a genetic condition known as the "Fuck-Its". I had grown bored with being poor, barely making enough money from a show to buy a bean and cheese from Taco Bell. I had gotten sick of being cramped up in a van with four guys I didn't even like anymore. On New Years Day 1999 I packed up all my belongings and moved for the first time from Santa Cruz to Sacramento. Some girl that had booked us shows let me stay on her couch and eventually I got a place of my own I had a shitty part time job calling people asking them if they wanted to participate in a political poll, yeah, I was that guy, the guy that calls ya during dinner time causing your Dad to slam down the phone and tell your Mom "Those Gotdam Telemarketers!!!"
The job didn't pay well but was all that I could find. By this time I was covered in tattoos( I was going to be a fucking rockstar right? Had to look the part!) no real skills to speak of, and being a High-School dropout, my grasp of English language was negligible. I wasn't exactly the guy you put on top of the resume pile. I knew I had to get an education but the thought of finishing up my High School credits just to sit through 4 years of an educational institution sickened me. I had thought of going to massage school but the thought of rubbing down fat hairy guys sickened me more.
One night I had met a girl at a local bar, she was covered in tattoos, had short bleached hair and the face of an angel who had been around the block. She bought me a couple beers and I asked her what she did. She told me she was a hairstylist and how great the freedom of making your own hours was. She said that she had made enough money to buy her own house. When I walked out her door the next morning I knew that day I was going to do hair and began looking into it.
"Cool Story Bro, I still don't see what this has to do with Starcraft or TL"
I'm gettin there....Chill man.
I moved to Santa Maria a small rural town in the middle of California and far away from any fun I was used to. Why would I move to a town so far removed from the punk rock lifestyle I was used to? A place were the local watering holes played both kinds of music(Country aaaannnd Western)? Well simple, my dad lived there and I had found a beauty school there that would cost me less $1000 and I would only have to spend 9 1/2 months going to school.
I fell in love with school the first day. Being the only straight guy in a school filled with 70 women was pretty damn cool. On flip side telling your Dad and friends that your going to beauty school and no I'm not gay can be kinda awkward. I loved working with my hands and took to cutting hair immediately. It was instant gratification, you take a pair of scissors to a persons head, the hair hits the ground and there's no turning back. What you leave behind can result in a smile or tears.
Though I loved the 8 hours a day while I was in school, the town was boring as hell. I usually spent my time stealing as much music as I could from Napster. One day I was walking down the aisles of the local Staples and a box caught my eye, StarCraft. The cover art looked cool and the graphics on the back of the box looked Awesome. I went home and installed. That game pretty much got me through 9 months of boredom. I played it everyday after school. I played the single player and dabbled in multi-player on bnet a bit. I was pretty terrible and was under the notion that you didn't have to expand until your main base ran out of minerals, but hey that's how it was played back then LOL. I think if wasn't for that game keeping me occupied during my free time in that boring town I probably would have quit school and gone back to being a couch-surfing scumbag.
"If this was a Replay I would have it on x8 speed by now"
K man I'll fast forward a bit.
About a year after graduating school I moved down to San Diego to work for the Artistic Director of Paul Mitchell. Eventually after 5 yrs I had worked my way up and was charging $70 a haircut, ran a Salon and was traveling the country doing "Platform Work." Being a Platform Artist basically means you travel the country with a team, going to trade shows and conventions standing on stage teaching other hairstylists how to do hair. I put all my time into getting better at doing hair and would often go stretches of 10 weeks at a time without a day off. It was like being in a a band again but I now stayed in hotels instead of vans. It was a lot of hard work for little gratification, but, working around pretty models every weekend was often reward in itself. Needless to say I really didn't have time to play video games anymore.
It was around this time the economy started taking a dive. When people start hearing of an impending economic crisis, what do you think the first thing they cut out of their budget? Thats right, $70 haircuts. My client list was drying up, I hated the pressure of being in middle management telling people what to do and I guess in the back of my mind that little punk rock kid was laughing at me for being a corporate shampoo salesman. I didn't really get along with anyone I worked with and had only gotten anywhere in the company by my hard work alone. I was never the type to kiss-ass or play politics so my head was smushed against the proverbial glass ceiling. My case of the Fuckits kicked in and I just stopped showing up to work one day somewhere around my 30 birthday. Looking back I guess it was some kind of mid-life crises and I'm surprised I just didn't go out and buy a red sports car.
I wasn't sure I wanted to do hair anymore. I know I didn't want to go work for another product company, and working my way up in another salon didn't appeal to me either. I spent the next six months or so making my living by playing limit hold'em at a local card room. Eventually that just became a shitty office job with co-workers who hated you and wanted to see nothing more than you walk out the door broke.
Sometimes being talented at something is a curse. It will claw at you and keep you awake at night until you use it. It can be unrelenting and sometimes can make you psychotic if you try and ignore it. I eventually started getting back into doing hair, drifted from Salon to Salon and teaching at a beauty school here and there. I was making a living but not really doing with anything my career. I had big dreams that never went anywhere and fell into that trap of telling people about these big plans without really executing anything.
"Can we talk about Starcraft again?"
Yes.
I was in the doldrums at this point and pretty depressed. A friend of mine that knew I played Starcraft back in the day sent me an email saying that a sequel was coming out and he had attached a beta key. I downloaded the game and was immediately enthralled with it. While only multi player was available I played the hell out of it, even considering how bad I was. Memorable moments included not knowing about walling off and seeing 40 1 supply roaches unburrow in my main. "What the hell was that I asked!' I also remember being incredibly pissed off the first time cloaked banshees appeared and watching as all my workers got picked off. I was terrible at the game but at least I cared about something again! I was determined to get better at this game and began searching the internet on "Tips and Tricks" for playing Starcraft2. I eventually came across Team Liquid and immediately devoured information. I found that like hair cutting, there are no real "Tricks" it takes hard work and perseverance. If you want to know how the hair industry relates to Starcraft here's a handy analogy I sent to Intrigue. (More on that later)
As far as the hairdresser question I'll put it in starcraft terms for you.
London is like Korea, the best in the industry reside there. The top end salons are like team houses with Sassoon training most of the bonjwas.
Micro would be the way the hair is physically cut.
Macro would be the overall shape of how the hair looks.
Mechanics would be HOW you cut the hair. Where you pull it, elevate it, etc.
Overall taste would be like "Gamesense" not everyone has it, but the people that do are scary!
Mullets, Jersey blowouts and combovers would be considered the hair equivalent of cheese.
At the high levels there's a lot of geometry involved and haircuts are constructed like build orders. Face shapes would be considered the maps. You want the right build to compliment the head shape.
98% of all hairstylist are pretty bad, think of the top 2% who can actually create art like the masters/GM league
So during my time on TL I discovered a bunch of streams and this little thing called the Day[9] Daily. I started watching it religiously to get better at SC2 and was able to improve quite a bit. Then it dawned on me, "I could do something like this with hair!"
I started looking through threads here on TL giving advice on how to do streaming and eventually started looking for models. I started last year and did 3 shows a week up until 50 episodes. I think that I had let it run it's course and was able to build up a bit of a following on a social networking site for hairstylists. It amazes me how far behind my industry is techwise. Out of all the big billion dollar companies out there I was the first hairstylist to run a regular live show. Just like Day, except I was teaching noobs to be better cutters. It was later here on TL when I first saw the "One Minute(ish)" guides posted that I had another idea, I was going to to do "Short Attention Span Haircuts" Most haircut videos are extremely dull shot in a white room with a very droning English voice over. I would always fast forward them anyway so I decided to my own pre-sped versions originally inspired by the One Minute(ish) guides.
Since I've started doing all these videos I have started to get offers to go and teach in salon workshops all over the country. I am often hired by a hair-related website to do video and editing work and not only get to travel over-seas quite a bit but have been getting paid more for that work than actually work in the salon now. I think in a year I will be fully self employed and making a living off of skills that the TL forums have given me. The last time I was in London I desperately needed some music for a video I was editing and had remembered a blog post from Intrigue about his band. I dug up the blog and the music from "Castles" fit perfectly I pm'd him here asking for permission to use his music and he got back to me promptly and agreed! The music totally made the video and the guy I was filming is flying me back to London for more video work. I'll include the video down below so you guys can hear the sweet music as well as one of my short vids.
I know this got a bit long but I just want to thank the community for inspiring me to be someone better than I was when I started playing SC2. All in all I don't think I would be doing all this cool stuff in a industry as far from SC as you can get if it wasn't for you guys. I'm only a simple hairdresser so I don't think I can give much back. Maybe if you PM me I can give you a discounted haircut while in San Diego. But if nothing else you have my sincere gratitude and thanks for motivating me to do better.
TL;DR Thank you Teamliquid.net for helping to ignite my passion again.
Here a couple vids I've done the first is music from Intrigues band Castles
and is video I shot and edited of one of my fav cutters.
this is my "One Minute (Ish) inspired one. I opted just for music since I cant talk that fast
but it is me cutting. My girlfriend did some of the filming
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5SPFS.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Q1jpL.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/cOWn5.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/riptide/liquid/lw11_nada.jpg)
