Comments on: What it sounds like inside my head when the hair is being removed from the outside of it

By: Crushing Krisis »

Crushing Krisis » — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 04:31:19 +0000

[...] movie, but just from the marketing campaign this is my feeling exactly. Isoglossia offers a meandering post on getting a haircut, which happens to be one of my favorite topics for meandering posts. Jabberin [...]

By: juliloquy

juliloquy — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 19:08:23 +0000

Like some of the girl friends in your past, I’ve been cutting other people’s hair since college. I now cut both husband’s and son’s. Why I never thought to charge a decent bottle of red is beyond me.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 15:07:01 +0000

MacGregor,
I have two standards when measuring a barber for authenticity:
1) Does he use a straight razor and warm cream to clean-up over the ears and the neck?
2) Does he have Playboys?

Both are musts, otherwise he is hairdressers.

By: sgazzetti

sgazzetti — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 13:35:23 +0000

Matt: you are right, it was shoddy workmanship to post this with no mention of Saul or of the virtues of the straight razor (which Ned used, too, by the way, and I *know* you had some Ned cuts in your time).

So, are you saying that I stole your media/quality theory? It’s an alarming and plausible possibility, and would be just like me…

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 12:58:59 +0000

Dood-
No props to Saul?!?!? No discussion about the straight razor? What about my Playboy Rule?!?!?

Damnit man you are slipping.

By: sgazzetti

sgazzetti — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 09:24:18 +0000

Rashid: I can see that this topic brings out the memories in you, too. And you and I must’ve shared quite a few barbers in our time, I reckon. Funny that none of them have stuck. I can’t even remember the first basic cut, though I pretend that I can. When I picture it, though, I am John Candy in “Stripes” holding his hair in cupped hands and weeping like a schoolgirl. Come to think of it, that’s pretty much what I looked like, minus 300 pounds.

SquamLoon: you’re right about DKE being the hockey frat, but it was on frat row between Lambda Chi and Phi Delta. The Hillside fraternity you’re thinking of was KDP (where ‘P’ = Rho) and they are probably the ones who co-rented your place on Wicked Baked Street or whatever it was called. I still cannot remember the name of the house that was part of “frat row” but was not on the row itself. Picture the path running from Roberts to the art building, it was near that and the big parking lot. As you can see, this is still bothering me. Thanks for trying.

It also occurs to me that I saw you, SquamLoon, like 20 hours before that Nathalie cut. I was arriving from Amsterdam and you were en route there. You loaned us your dorm room and we ate your gigantic jar of Nutella. I had a sinus infection. Bizarre.

Simon: that is so damn romantic that I am going to have to ban you.

By: simon

simon — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 09:21:18 +0000

I met my wife while getting my hair cut. A friend offered to shave my head using her flatmate’s clippers, and Paola was visiting her at the time and offered to help out. It was love at first shear…

By: SquamLoon

SquamLoon — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 05:35:06 +0000

My memory, which of those years is fuzzy at best, tells me that the hockey frat was DKE, and that it was at the top of one of the the "Hillside" buildings next to Taylor. I also have memories of that very same frat's post-abolition clandestine meetings on the second floor of the house whose first floor I co-rented in what back then was the cosmicallly named High Street. The purloined sign for which I still have. On a rafter under my porch. For old time's sake.

By: Sarcastro

Sarcastro — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 16:32:44 +0000

The first real barbershop memory I have is somewhere in Southern California. I was just a little shaver, but I remember distinctly there being Playboy and Penthouse available for the gentlemen. Sadly, once this discovery was made, Mom decided that Fantastic Sam’s was a more appropriate place for her impressionable child to get a haircut.

There was a place next to a video store when I hit middle school that was run by a guy called “Big Mac”. My little brother and I called him that because his name was Mac. Also, he tipped the scales at about 350. He was one of those redneck guys who was so obese that his tongue was fat. His eyelids had cellulite. It made him all squinty and vaguely Oriental looking with his fat tongue unable to fit in his mouth. It poked out defiantly even when he remained mute.

He would recommend “I Spit Upon Your Grave” as an excellent viewing choice to my then six year old brother. This was doubly ironic as his swollen tongue made every soft consonant a shower of expectorant and his gruesome visage was much scarier to us than any horror movie.

In college, I had the great honor of going to Woody’s, Georgia’s oldest operating barber shop. In bidness since 1926. I used to get my hair cut by the guy who had been working there since it opened. He went to high school with Jefferson Davis or something. Much scarier than Big Mac, this fossil had the tremors and would cut hair with the lit cigarette dangling from his trembling lip. The normally enjoyable straight razor and hot shaving cream on the back of the neck became an exercise in fear and fortitude as the potential for massive blood loss was imminent. The old bastard gave a great haircut everytime.

Our basic training haircuts, by contrast, became excellent tools for spotting who was yanked out of the womb with forceps and who was not.