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I found a high-crowned black hat with a wide fur trim wrapped around its circumference. I put it on, and, oh yeah, let’s just say I bought it on the spot. Later that afternoon, a man with long curlicues dangling on both sides of his face walked past mewearing the identical hat. Shaking his head, he glared at me in an unfriendly manner. When I got back to the hotel, I looked at the label written in Yiddish. Duh. It was what’s called a shtreimel. Shtreimel hats are worn exclusively by married male Hasidic Jews, not thirtysomething female actresses. What the hell was I thinking?
    And what was I thinking when I tried to seduce Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer into letting me wear a couple of hats after I was cast opposite Steve Martin in
Father of the Bride
? Nancy reminded me that it was 1991, not 1976. I was playing the mother of the bride, she said, not Annie Hall. During those fifteen years, I let my hair grow halfway to my waist. Nancy let it be known I needed to get a haircut. So I did.
    I got back, though. Every day at lunch I would don my bowler hat and join Steve, Marty Short, Kimberly Williams, and Steve’s wife at the time, Victoria Tennant, for a plate of spaghetti and some good times. After a couple of weeks Victoria said, “Is every day a bad hair day, Diane?”
    I wanted to respond with my own personal philosophy:
Victoria, my hair is my hat. And my hat is my hair
. But of course I said nothing.
    Sometimes I wish I was joined at the hip to a great hairstylist like Frida Aradottir or Jill Crosby, who did my hair for the cover of
Ladies’ Home Journal
. It’s a shame insecurity doesn’t bring out my best behavior, but it was a cover, so I feltjustified in having a little chat with Jill before the shoot. I began with the bad news.
Ladies’ Home Journal
would not, repeat not, let me wear a hat on the cover. I told Jill I was worried about my hair. It needed more volume. I told her that no matter what the editors might say, I wanted it in my face. All of it. I told her the “truth” she already knew in spades: my hair, euphemistically speaking, was unreliable, capricious, erratic, and faithless. I wondered what she could do to help remedy these problems. On cue, Jill got the extensions out of her bag.
    As an expert, Jill wanted to set me straight as well. Number 1: if you glue extensions to the top of your head, they will pull off what little hair you have. Number 2: extensions can be seen for the fake hair they are, unless placed in the right location. And Number 3: if you set the extensions as high as possible on either side, it will give the hair on top a better chance to appear full, messy fabulous, and in your face, because as with most things, a foundation is essential.
    The cover couldn’t have come out better, especially since Brigitte Lacombe, the photographer, doesn’t care about hairdos. She cares about the moment. So much so, she may have overlooked the obvious. My left eye was covered by hair, while my right eye was hidden behind blue-tinted glasses. Another bonus of more hair? Less face.
    I will say this: the disadvantage of wearing extensionsoutweighs the advantages. The painful ordeal of removing them takes much longer than putting them in, and they hurt. They really hurt. There are aesthetic problems as well. Extension hair is chunkier, and always superior to the less prevalent, real hair. Plus, the good hair (formerly growing out of someone else’s head) won’t do what the “bad” hair (mine) insists upon. The whole thing is an endlessly time-consuming folly. Oh, and to make matters worse, it turned out Jill didn’t want to be attached to my hip.
    At six-thirty Dex parked the Rover in the lot next to the pier where we saw the registration booth. As we walked toward the gathering swimmers, I had the great misfortune to come across my reflection in the window of Johnny Rockets. The news was not good. My hair
is
thinning! And it’s not my imagination, nor am I in the middle of a dream I