everybody blamed his old man

"Looking in the mirror just now, I realized something. I look kind of like a young Jerry Reed minus the curls."

"Yes," replied the wife, "You do."

Her quick agreement caught me off guard. Maura usually responds to my self-deprecating observations with something along the lines of "Oh, no. You look fine." (Not that my intent is to fish for compliments, mind you, though the pond is well-stocked.) Even more telling was that she followed up her response with an offer to trim my sideburns, despite her long held and deep-seated reluctance about such matters. She has balked on several occasions when I've asked her help in trimming a few wayward hairs missed by my barber; for her to offer her services unsolicited means that my personal style has crossed a line.

Not that I did so intentionally. Semi-intentionally, perhaps. My preference is to keep my hair buzzed short, but the past dozen weeks or so have been rather busy. The weekdays off that I would normally use to visit the barber's have been consistently booked up with other, more pressing affairs like vet appointments for the animals or shoveling out the driveway and walk after an overnight snowstorm.

So my hair has grown unchecked for three months, which isn't that rare an occurance. What made this time different, though, was my decision to not keep my sideburns in check during my weekly shaves. The decision was made to avoid the hassle of trying to keep both sides even while having to clean the clots of hair out the blades with each and every pass of the razor. So I let them grow, and grow they did -- down past my earlobes and out onto my cheeks, and eventually forming little projecting curls.

I was okay with their unchecked development. After all, they were going to be buzzed clean off come the next visit to the barbershop. I didn't realize that it had become a household issue until I was standing by Maura's desk at work, and she reached up and tugged one of the curls while I was talking to her. She said then that they were "kinda funny," though I began to notice a gradual escalation of negative descriptive rhetoric -- nothing directly confrontational, but clear in intent (like "seventies man hair," for example).

If things have reached the stage where she thinks I'd qualify for a quest appearance on the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour or the second season of Alice, it's clearly time for me to take swift action in the interest of keeping the domestic peace. Until then, however, I plan on singing my nasally off-key renditions of "Eastbound and Down" and "U.S. Male" in Maura's presence at every opportunity.

Jerry Reed - Amos Moses (from RCA Country Legends, 2001) - Bitterandrew was a Squarehead, and lived with his wife on a hill/He had a powerful pair of sideburns, but they made his poor sweetie ill...

one hundred hairs make a man

I was flipping though some old comics the other day when I came across this ad:


...and I got to thinking about my ranking on the Machismo Index, and how of late it seems to be dropping faster than this blog's Technorati authority score. Perhaps the addition of some facial hair would be just the ticket to turning things around. The only problem is that while I can grow wiry ginger-blonde stubble like nobody's business, after a week or so my masculine scruffiness tops out and refuses to cross the threshold into true beard and 'stache territory. (This is also around the time when my wife complains about how the stubble causes her to break out in hives when I give her a chaste peck on the cheek.)

So, Masculiner Co. of East Orange, New Jersey, can you and your MODOCRYLIC face toupees help me out of this frustrating dilemma? I'm putting my hopes and the contents of my piggy bank (eight bucks in total; I already have the sideburns covered the natural way) in your able hands.

Four to six weeks later.....


Hmmm... I was expecting a little something more from MODOCRYLIC, but it is certainly trimmable and easily styled with a pair of safety scissors. The verdict is still out on its net effect on my sense of manhood, though I have found myself experiencing random urges to swing by the local Harley dealership (and to send away fror literature about opening a southern fried chicken franchise). I also seem to have acquired a deep intuitive understanding of .38 Special's body of work, and have unconsciously found myself visiting online sporting goods stores to price gun racks for Super Lumina. It's a very curious phenom--

--HEY! ARE YOU LOOKING AT MY WOMAN? YOU BETTER NOT BE, LESS'N YOU FIND YOURSELF FACE DOWN IN THE PARKING LOT, BUSTER, LOOKIN' FOR YOUR MISSING TEETH.

Y'know, I think I'm better off just sticking with the peachfuzz Mother Nature gave me, along with those awkward pauses whenever a male neighbor or co-worker asks me if I caught the game last weekend.

Deee-Lite - You Sexy Thing (from the Dumb and Dumber OST, 1994) - I'd rather watch the Golf Channel than Dumb and Dumber (and I despise golf), but the soundtrack is better and more eclectic than it had any right to be. Echobelly? The Primitives? The Butthole Surfers? This trippy take on Hot Chocolate's signature song? Was there a mix-up in the post-production ADR between Dumb and Dumber and some psuedo-indie Gen X vehicle?

Sparks - Moustache (from Angst in My Pants, 1982) - Unforced idiosyncrasy and pop sensibility come so easily to the Mael Brothers, and make listening to this album a delightful, yet humbling, experience.

Desmond Dekker & The Aces - Fu Manchu (from Action! 1994) - Maybe that's the problem -- I should have checked the "Evil Overlord Variant" box on the order form. That version carries its own set of issues, however, such as the overwhelming compulsion to shout "Kill that meddling fool!" whenever someone pulls into a parking space before you or takes the last jelly donut during a staff meeting. Also: spontaneous outbreaks of maniacal chortling after getting back extra change from a vending machine purchase or unclogging the garbage disposal.