Wednesday, November 17, 2010

I'm also the president of the company......

About 25 years ago (!) a fine actor and a great friend of mine, BVH, played Daddy Warbucks in a production of Annie.

Billy, being the consummate professional, shaved his head for the part. Way back when ,nobody had a shaved head (or to be more technical a baldy bean). People would stop and stare.

I just opened a show last week and half of the men in the show have shaved heads, We have one of the guys wearing a hat and another wearing a wig to try to cut down on the glare.

My hair and I parted company many years ago, good riddance. I had long curly hair back in high school and college and loved it (think Mark Volman of the Turtles) . Never had a problem with losing the hair, oddly enough I was more irked going gray.

I never did the full shave of the head- I do cut it very short though. I got one of those electric hair cutter things about ten years ago and have been DYI-ing it ever since. I even give myself a lollipop after a hair cut.

Way back when we would get our hair cut at Vinnie the Barber in the local shopping center- Saturdays there would be three barber chairs going and still you would have to sit and wait for fifteen or twenty minutes. Plenty of magazines ("Hey Ralph, Esquire! Va va voom") and comic books in the back. I was always spellbound by Vinnie the Barber and his fellow barbers , who would be constantly chatting in Italian, very animated and very passionate. Non stop.

Lots of the shaved head brigade sport a goatee. A very peculiar cut of facial hair if you ask me. I have one right now, mostly because without it....chins....chinese phonebook.

I've worn a mustache since my early twenties- I shaved a few times for a show, but mostly thirty years of stash. I could never grow a beard until about six years ago and since then it comes and goes. I love it until that morning arrives (never planned) when I just shave the damn thing off. A beard is a very demanding mistress, needs a lot of tending or else you end up looking like Hobo Joe.

My Beard- snow white. Yes .I have had it around the holidays a few times and have essayed the role of Santy Claus.

Years ago had one of those three o'clock in the morning conversations with friends about whether it was stranger to have hair on your face or to shave that hair off.

I forget what we decided, it was three o'clock in the morning.

1 comment:

Melissa said...

I always found the irony of my male friends who shaved or buzzed their hair all the time throughout their youth. Then the time came that Mother Nature took what they had been riding themselves of for years. Then they were upset about not having hair.