Gray Hair

We caught up with Jessica Walter at her New York apartment on Yom Kippur and talked about how she keeps her black Lab shiny with a little oil, her recurring (non)-maternal roles on "90210" and "Saving Grace" -- and that "Arrested Development" movie. (Maybe!) The movie is allegedly happening? Are there contracts? Allegedly! I don't think anybody's had a contract. But we're all hoping it happens. I've heard rumors. Well, so have I, but. . . .

IN the afterglow of his win, the newest American Idol, 29-year-old Taylor Hicks, took questions after the show. Inevitably, the subject of his radically unusual hair color was broached: "I didn't have any idea that America would embrace gray hair as much as they have," he told reporters. Gee, where on Earth would he have gotten the idea that America doesn't embrace gray hair? Could it have crossed his mind when he was told early on by Simon Cowell that he was too gray to be the American Idol?

Those annoying gray hairs that increasingly leer back from the bathroom mirror may have some value after all. Cancer researchers have developed a new explanation for graying hair that they hope will also shed light on the most dangerous type of skin cancer. "Preventing the graying of hair is not our goal," said Dr. David E. Fisher, senior researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. "What we really want is to come up with treatments for melanoma," he said in a telephone interview.

Those gray hairs that increasingly leer back from the bathroom mirror may have some value after all. Cancer researchers have developed an explanation for graying hair that they hope will shed light on the most dangerous type of skin cancer. "Preventing the graying of hair is not our goal," said Dr. David E. Fisher of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. "What we really want is to come up with treatments for melanoma," he said.

The idea was to spend some time with Luke the Barber so he could take 10 to 20 years off my life so I could be really sick and blend in with all the other dudes for the opening of the X Games Thursday. So I stopped by LuKaRo, Luke's barber shop in Beverly Hills, to see what he had in mind, and he introduced me to his wife, an experience so frightening -- he was right, it took 10 to 20 years off my life. (Surprisingly, there's no charge for this, even though it's in Beverly Hills.

In Monday's article "What's Not Happening at the Pavilion" (by Mike Boehm), Music Center board of directors chair Andrea Van de Kamp says: "We can serve aging gray hairs or be thoughtful and get the kind of diversity and intensity we want the center to represent." Diversity and loss of hair color are not mutually exclusive, Ms. Van de Kamp. My graying head has seen great "diversity" (ethnic and gender-based) among "aging gray hairs" loyally attending L.A. Philharmonic concerts at the Pavilion for decades.

Playboy babe magnet Hugh Hefner has never done it. "Good Day L.A." anchorman Steve Edwards stopped doing it about a year-and-a-half ago. And fashion critic Mr. Blackwell did it only once and then shut himself in his home, not to be seen outdoors for three months. Never--we repeat, never--say "dye" to these guys. For them, what you see on their noggins is what you get: an au naturel head of distinguished gray hair.

When it comes to the men's draw of the U.S. Open, my objectivity just left on the No. 7 train back to Manhattan. I'm rooting for Todd Martin because he's the only one of the semifinalists who went to college with me--and when you go to a school as athletically deficient as Northwestern, colleagues in the professional sports ranks are hard to come by. Like all the great American success stories, Martin left school early.

Three years ago, Century City accountant Lori Nebenzahl had had it with dyeing her hair. Her thick dark brown hair started to gray in her mid-20s, just like her dad's had, and she had been coloring it ever since. Her hairdresser gave her the option of slowly growing it out, but Nebenzahl, now 45, didn't have the patience. "We decided the most painless way was to cut it all off," she says.