Salon gets a crack at Ashlee Simpson's locks

Ashlee Simpson was a surprise member of a wedding party that had appointments Saturday at Root Salon in St. Paul.

"There was a wedding party" of 13 members, with Ashlee the unscheduled 14th. "She literally didn't have an appointment or anything," Root manager Jena Garfield said.

And they managed to work her in anyhow?

"Oh yeah," said Garfield, who at first did not believe the sighting of the singer, actor and kid sister of Jessica Simpson, who's expected to remarry this year.

"I wasn't up at the front. The receptionist comes running in the back. She said, I think that Ashlee Simpson is here. I was like, 'No, she's not. I don't think you know who she is. Let's look her up.'"

Garfield said she "Google-imaged her and was like, 'Oh yeah, that is her.' So I went out and offered her a mimosa. We were serving mimosas for the wedding party. Of course, I was like 'SOMEONE has to get her in. Come on!' I texted the owner [Jim Koktavy], who was out on his boat. And he was like, You've gotta e-mail CT from Star Tribune."

Close enough.

Nicole Finn was the name of the bride, said Garfield, who didn't have the groom's name. Weddingchannel.com states that a Nicole Finn was scheduled to marry an Adam Stormoen on Saturday.

Root gave Simpson a shampoo and a blow-out with a round brush on her blond short cut, finished with Shu Uemura's Silk Mesh, a cream pomade. Simpson wanted her hair to have a more sleek look, so Shu Uemura's Liquid Fabric texture spray was used to hold and add a little body, along with Shu Uemura's Essence Absolue oil, for smoothness and shine. "This is known to be one of Jennifer Aniston's favorite hair products," said Garfield.

Although I heard gossip about a chunk of hair missing from Simpson's mane, the stylist who handled Ashlee, Kelly Kuderer, said that was not the case. Simpson had a "bleach and toner earlier, so she was kind of joking about her roots being grown out," said Kuderer. "She's blonde anyway, so it's not a big deal. She had a shorter, more mod kind of Twiggy haircut."

The king and the MayoA new book alleges that the late King Hussein of Jordan was twice misdiagnosed at Rochester's Mayo Clinic.

Page 205 of "King's Counsel: A Memoir of War, Espionage, and Diplomacy in the Middle East," by the late Jack O'Connell, written with Vernon Loeb, states that in 1997, Hussein's doctors wanted his symptoms examined at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York "because of the possibility that cancer had been lingering since his first trip to the Mayo Clinic for surgery back in 1992.

"Mayo Clinic was privileged to care for the late King Hussein," said Emily Hiatt, international relations consultant for Mayo, via e-mail. "The privacy of individual patient care is our highest priority. As a result, we cannot comment on the care he received at Mayo."

While doctors at both Sloan-Kettering and Mayo are world-class, they're not perfect. HOWEVER, you never want to flub the diagnosis for royalty.

Special parade treatment?Q Why doesn't the Gay Pride parade merit the blue parade crowd line that magically appears on streets before the annual Aquatennial Torchlight Parade, which is Wednesday?

A "The city of Minneapolis does it for us because [the Aquatennial is] the official civic celebration. However, we do supply the paint and then their painting crew does it for us because we are kind of a partner, and we do some things with [Minneapolis] and they give us a few things and that happens to be one of them," said Phil Disch of the Minneapolis Downtown Council.