This Just Might Be His Unkindest Cut of All

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. So anyone who wants to look younger for an hour or so should stop by LuKaRo’s and ask for the “Rona the Terror Treatment.”)

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RONA ASKED that I arrive having not shaved, so she could fashion a goatee, coloring the gray beard and connecting it with a thin line of whiskers from sideburn to goatee to sideburn. My God, she wanted me to look like Max Kellerman!

I’d rather get on my board and try an acid drop off an alley-oop, resulting in a horrible slam finishing with a face plant, although come to think of it, then I’d really look like Max Kellerman.

Rona showed me a picture of her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend after she had finished coloring their hair. Picture a skunk sitting on top of the heads of two otherwise attractive people, and tell me what you would have said.

“Hideous,” I said.

Now you’ve probably seen Luke the Barber on one of those extreme makeover TV shows or an episode of “Suddenly Susan” a few years back. He has bushy, black, unmanageable, mangy hair, which looks as if it’s never been cut, and he was going to “style” my hair. He also has one scraggily streak of gray hair, to remind everyone, I guess, that he can sit in a chair with Rona coloring his hair for only so long before he has to get away.

As for Rona, she has fake hair. She said she glues hair to her head, I presume because she’s going bald. She told me Jillian Barberie -- you know, the weather girl on Fox’s Sunday NFL show and a LuKaRo regular -- also relies on fake stuff, and I knew that because that’s why they have her on the show.

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THE TIMES sent along a photographer, Richard Hartog, to document the Page 2 transformation from wise old columnist to stud with street cred, but two minutes after his arrival he was pointing his camera at Rona’s assistant, and telling her she looked like actress Diane Lane.

Then he had his hat off and was asking what they’d recommend for a receding hairline, and I know he’s going to tell people that’s when Diane Lane lost interest, but let me tell you, it was a lot sooner than that.

Now here’s the thing, I know a little bit about coloring hair because the wife is a bottled blond. (You can tell that by the line of black roots running down the middle of her head.) But they do it differently at LuKaRo, painting your head, laughing at all the gray in your hair, and then wrapping your head in tin foil to make you look like a big goof so they can laugh some more. I believe that’s the point where I lost Diane.

Luke and Rona, meanwhile, were having a disagreement. Luke thought I’d look better without a purple or orange streak in my hair. Now I can’t tell you if it was the Terror or Diane who suggested I get my nose or tongue pierced to complete the makeover, because at that point I had my eyes closed. The only thing I had going for me was that I knew when I opened them I would never look as bad as Jeff Weaver.

Luke took over, put something like Elmer’s Glue in my hair and made it stick up to look like I just woke up. Now I can’t say for sure that I looked 10 to 20 years younger, but I know when I got home and the wife and daughter saw me, it knocked them right off their feet.

If they ever stop laughing, I’ll let you know what they had to say.

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IT’S BEEN a rough 48 hours. One day I’m wearing tin foil in an effort to be cool, the next day I’m at Staples and being told I’m wearing the wrong kicks. I was still trying to deal with that when I ran into Twitch, a.k.a. Jeremy Stenberg, who competes in Moto X, and was stylishly wearing his shorts halfway down his butt.

I thought about trying it, but I was wearing a pair of undershorts that were washed with the red towels this week. I want to make it clear, though, that I’m not complaining, because anytime the wife gets around to doing the wash, that’s a good thing.

Hey, I was doing what I could to better appreciate the X Games experience, although I had no interest in joining Steve-O of “Jackass” fame, who, along with friends, was smoking something funny in the Chick Hearn Press Room.

An ESPN spokesperson asked that I make no mention of the fellas smoking in the Chick Hearn Press Room. I wonder if Steve-O was the only one smoking that stuff.

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BASED ON the long lines early in the day to get into the X Fest, and the crush to get into Staples later for the evening competition, something popular is going on here. Maybe it’s the ticket prices ranging from only $5 to $15 for a full day of made-for-TV entertainment.

The groms (ask your kids) can get right up close to their skateboarding heroes, and the young athletes, who are always trying to get air (you see, I know more about this stuff than you think), can do their thing.

It continues through Sunday, and I wish I could be there. But given the new look, I thought it might be a good time to take the wife to a hotel, and see if she gets excited at the idea of being with a younger man.

I have a feeling I’d be doing a pretty good soul grind if it was the other way around.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.