It’s Really No Reason to Tear Your Hair Out

So I’m breezing through my July issue of “Shape” when I came across a feature on Luke the Barber, and the makeover he has done in preparing swimmer Amanda Beard for her return to the Olympics.

I was impressed, because they ran a before and after picture of Beard after Luke and Rona O’Connor, the owners of Beverly Hills’ LukaRo Salon, had done their handiwork on Beard, and she looked like a winner in my magazine.

I found this interesting because the wife had paid Luke the Barber for a similar makeover, and she looked just the same when he finished, so I stopped by LukaRo to see if there was anything else he could do to make the wife look better.

Right away I ran into Rona, who was walking around with tinfoil sticking out of her head, and I guess I got off lucky with the way my wife looks.

Then I sat down with Luke the Barber, who looks as if he has never had a haircut in his life. Most of his wild bushy hair is dark, but there’s a shock of gray in the front as if someone forgot to finish the coloring job. Rona & Luke make a lovely couple.

“I could take 20 years off your life,” Luke the Barber says, and I could too, if only I had the energy to go and get a younger wife.

“No, we could color your hair, cut it and have you looking younger in no time,” he said.

Just what Salma Hayek needs -- more temptation in her life.

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I’M GOING to give it some thought, though, because how old is NBC’s Fred Roggin? Something like 60 or 62, and you’d never know it with the dye job he gets every month. And look at Hacksaw Hamilton. The reason he has been on the radio all these years is because of the way he has his hair styled.

I have to consider it, because I’m not going to the Olympics in August, and I’ll need something to do and the X Games are here in August.

Call it providence, but I heard tickets went on sale Thursday for the X Games shortly after being told 20 years could be knocked off my life, which is all I’d need to blend in with the Tony Hawk crowd.

“We’ll spike your hair a little, do this, and do that,” said Luke the Barber, so I’ve made a makeover appointment for August so I can write about the X Games.

“You can’t go to the X Games wearing clothes like that,” the Dodgers’ Robin Ventura said. “You need to wear your pants low like this,” he said. I don’t know the legal definition of indecent exposure, but I’ve now seen it.

I continued my rounds around the Dodger clubhouse, and I’ll say this for the guys, it seemed like every one of them was all for me covering the X Games.

I wonder if they know that means I won’t be able to spend as much time with them as I would like?

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I’M TOLD Magic Johnson remains in Hawaii but has plans to attend a Dodger game when he returns, and I presume, blast them too. I still don’t understand how the great Laker can rip the Lakers -- deserving or not -- and then not position himself outside the locker room door and then at courtside to show his support for them. I’m told he had made vacation plans.

I guess he figured the Lakers would be eliminated by the time his vacation started. Maybe that’s the former Laker way of doing business.

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HAD LUNCH with Bob Arum at the Beverly Hills Hotel -- his treat to help me wipe the sour taste of Detroit out of my mouth, and we talked about the challenge ahead for Oscar De La Hoya.

De La Hoya is scheduled to fight Bernard Hopkins “in what would be the biggest middleweight fight of all time,” Arum said, on Sept. 18 at the MGM in Las Vegas if De La Hoya works himself into shape.

“He doesn’t have a chance if he doesn’t get in shape; none, absolutely none,” Arum said. “He let us down coming in looking the way he did in this last fight in Vegas. It’s time for him to either fight or become a businessman. If he wants to promote boxing shows, go on TV every night and join the board of directors for some bank, he can do it starting Sept. 19.”

Arum said there have been legal papers drawn up and signed that will put De La Hoya’s involvement in a reality boxing TV show on hold.

In addition, he has turned over the work in boxing promotions to others, including Saturday’s “Battle Under the Stars,” featuring Paulie Ayala and Marco Antonio Barrera.

Tickets are still available, or Arum wouldn’t have invited me to lunch.

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IF A trip to Dodger Stadium is in your plans, pack the ear plugs. The new emphasis on noise reminds me of the noisiest place in the NFL: San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium. The Chargers like to turn up the music to distract the fans and keep them from noticing the poor product on the field.

Before the sixth inning, the Dodgers announced a lucky fan would win a “Catwoman Prize Pack,” and then showed a kid about 4 years old on the screen -- sobbing for his mommy. With all the noise, he probably misunderstood and thought he had won a “Dodger Prize Pack.”

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THE NEWSPAPER got a call from someone at USC suggesting Henry Bibby’s name might come up as the Lakers’ new coach. That’d be an interesting switch for Bibby -- instead of the coach playing mind games with his athletes, this time it’d be the pros playing mind games with the coach.

Bibby told a Times reporter, “I have no comment; Phil [Jackson] still has a job.” To get Bibby to talk, I guess, Phil has to go.

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PAUL Lo DUCA owns a horse, and it’s running in the third race at Hollywood Park on Saturday. The horse is named after its owner: Wacky American.

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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.