Bob in Los Feliz gave me the best haircut of my life. But it cost: I had to spend two hours of my life with the man. Although he’s a hair perfectionist, he spent more time talking about his styling prowess and worldwide acclaim than he did actually cutting my locks.

My mother—who was visiting from New York—and I admired the autographed photos of celebrities on his wall. Neither of us knows much about The Industry, but we recognized one framed photo. “He cut Leonardo DiCaprio’s hair,” we whispered to each other. We were impressed.

When my mom went into another of Bob’s beauty rooms to get her eyebrows shaped, he asks me what I do. “Journalism?” he says. “Oh that’s good. Everyone wants to get written up, so you’ll get lots of perks.” Human rights journalism is more my thing, but I nodded. In his world, I have a feeling writing about Angelina’s adoptions is the same thing as covering Darfur…

Read more of this week’s “Pushing Off” here.