FINAL CUT APPROVAL

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (04-26-18)

     I get a haircut about twice every year, once on my 401K when the stock market goes kablooey, and once on my head when my hair starts to transition from its Bon Jovi phase into its Foghat phase. I used to get it cut at a barber shop, but one of my co-workers years ago convinced me to "invest in myself," which as a long-term strategy has shown little return. She browbeat me into going to a Vidal Sassoon shop in the city, and the results were disastrous, when I came out looking like a cross between one of Charlie's Angels (not one known for her great hairstyle) and a Papillon. But I settled on a salon, and now a very nice fellow named JD styles my hair.

     The receptionist there waves me on to the shampoo girl, and it's obvious from her look that she remembers that I didn't tip her last time, so she tries to butter me up. She asks me if I want a drink, and I wonder if they have anything alcoholic besides me. Why should I tip her for washing my hair when it's only going to end up all over the floor anyway? She asks me is the water too hot, how do I like the music, and how am I doing today. All of a sudden I'm on a date with my shampoo girl, and I picture us with clean hair, holding hands, running with scissors.

     I don't even need a shampoo; I just washed my hair last night at the gym. The shampoo they have there is called "green tea and lemongrass." I like the smell, but what weird agricultural accident caused those two ingredients to come together? I can imagine the scene in the R & D department over at the shampoo factory. "Smell this. What do you smell? It's called 'kale and lingonberries.'" "I smell lingonberries." "You don't smell the kale?" "Kale has no smell." "Yes, but it brings out the lingonberries." "You don't need to bring out lingonberries, they're already out. If anything, you need some poisonous mushrooms to rein them back in. Wasn't Schneiderman working on that?" "Yes, well, he passed away...." I don't use hair conditioner at the gym. What if it smells like mint? Then I have to spend the entire rest of my shower joking to myself that my hair is in mint condition, and I have to get on with my life.

     I pass a little time by bantering with my hairstylist. I tell him to cut only the gray hairs, then I tell him to give me the same look as Trump, etc. He laughs in a foreign accent, but I'm careful not to say anything REALLY funny, because if he starts cracking up he might snip off my ear. The same thing happened to Vincent Van Gogh, mystery solved.

     Have you seen these 20-year old kids who are dying their hair gray? It's actually pretty smart, because in 50 years no one is going to know exactly when they got old. If they REALLY want to be brilliant, they should get a hip replacement and start complaining about the loud music and blur the generation gap.

     JD starts rooting around inside my ear with an electric trimmer. "What are you in there for, I don't have any hair there," I complain. "If you say so," he says. I add, "If there's anything in there, it's probably from the cat. That cat hair is all over the house. I even have cat hair on my car seat." "You shouldn't let your cat drive your car," he says in a different accent than before.

     When he's done he asks me if I want any product in my hair, and I tell him it depends on the product. Product 19 is a cereal, for instance, and it's the most boring cereal on the planet. Can you imagine what the other 18 products that they rejected tasted like?

     I can see that my visit has started to put the place on edge. I make a mental note to start tipping everybody. This time I tip the stylist, the receptionist, the shampoo girl, the building security guard and also my cat.
 

SAVING THE PLANET

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (04-19-18)

     April 22nd is Earth Day, and to help kick things off, my friend Margaret will be running the annual Somers Recycling Day on Saturday, the 21st from 9:00AM to 2:00PM at the Somers Intermediate School. Electronics, old appliances and even scrap metal will be accepted. Mike and the boys from City Carting will be there, along with Flo, and my wife will be helping out as well. Supervisor Morrissey may even stop by.

     Your donation of $5.00 per car will help the PTA support school functions like guest speakers, scholarships, programs and trips, so bring your permission slip. Back in my day if you had a permission slip you could do just about anything, and nobody took much notice of you after that thing was signed. I would just cross out "Hayden Planetarium" and write in "McSorley's Ale House" and inform the bus driver of the change in plans. But kids, I'm not recommending that type of behavior, because your parents had a GPS tracking device surgically implanted into you after you were born. Scared you, didn't I?

     Anyway, I bet you have a bunch of stuff lying around your house that you don't use. That iron sitting around in the laundry room? I'm looking at your shirt and it's obvious that it has never seen the light of day. I have this gazebo thing with a bunch of metal poles, and that big nor'easter blew it down and mangled everything up. I'd like to make some kind of artistic piece out of it if I was a sculptor, but then again, NO. So I'm bringing it over on Saturday.

     As a planet I know we can do better. We don't want Earth to turn out like Uranus, now do we? My wife was telling me that she read an article about how just a little thing like drinking straws are cluttering up land fills all over the place. Every time we go to the diner we order a drink, and it comes with a straw that the waitress has conveniently removed part of the wrapper from. My wife takes her straw and blows the rest of the wrapper at me. I take my straw and blow my wrapper at her, which flies over to the next table and lands in the soup of a big biker dude. For the privilege of almost getting beat up, we are mucking up the planet with a bunch of junk that nobody really needs.

     I'm doing my part for Earth Day every day, and so should you. I re-use my razor when I shave at the gym, bring it home and scrape it a couple more times over my pathetic excuse for a beard. That's not recycling, you say, you're just a cheapskate. Yes, but how do you explain the fact that I take my cardboard tray from breakfast all the way across the street and use it for lunch? Is it because I'm cheap AND weird? So was Albert Schweitzer, for all I know, and he was hailed as a modern-day hero. I'm certainly not asking that you hail me as a modern-day hero, but it would be a nice gesture.

     I even recycle my old jokes. I don't think it does anything for the environment, and in fact some of my material is probably poking a hole in the ozone layer as we speak. I would like to recycle the funniest thing I ever said for you right now, but it's definitely not suitable for a family publication. The joke involves me, Marlo Thomas and her plastic surgeon, and the funniest thing about it is that no one but me would think that it's funny, with the possible exception of Marlo Thomas's plastic surgeon. So join us on Saturday, and bring a car full of crap. I'll be there at noon with Gidget, the world's cutest dog. It will cost you $5.00 to clear out your car, $5.25 if you want to hear the joke.

A POCKETFUL OF CHANGE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (04-12-18)

     So they renovated the locker room at my gym, and switched everything around. Now, I know that might not seem like a big deal to you, but for those of us with CAS, it can be life-threatening. Change-Averse Syndrome is an affliction that makes every little variation in life distasteful. I just made it up, but I would bet you 10 bucks that it really exists. Evidence: I've had the same wife for 30 some-odd years (to be honest, most-odd), I've worked at the same television network for 37 years, belonged to the same gym for decades and had the same hairstyle since the Byzantine Empire. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

     I don't deal well with change, and it's not always my fault. Often the thing the rest of the world is changing to doesn't seem better to me. Those of us with CAS use the word "new-fangled" to describe things that have been updated and modernized, when they were fangled just fine before. I once had 386 computer with 20 MEGS OF HARD DRIVE! This thing was cutting-edge, and just when I finally figured out how to switch it on, the 486 computer came along and I was back to square one. Even now, a pop-up screen flashes onto my computer monitor, telling me that they have upgraded and improved the very program I am trying to use. The major improvement they made is that I don't know how to use it anymore.

     I only drink Coors Light beer. Perhaps you didn't know, but it's made with "Rocky Mountain spring water." Which is among the most polluted water on Earth, due to the strip mining in Colorado. My friends look at me with disdain and disgust because I won't try their IPA. "Why don't you sample my winter-brewed, blueberry, black and tan, limited-edition, double-overhead cam amber ale?" It turns out there was only one of them produced so I can't try it even if I wanted to.

     Anyway, this situation at the gym is messing up my routine. Where did they put the scale? Usually I jump on and check my weight before I hop in the shower so I don't feel tempted to fudge the results. Then I subtract five pounds for my watch and two pounds for the locker key I wear around my neck. The the final tally still seems a little high, but I think the scale is made in a foreign country, and probably measures in kilometers.

     They put in new overhead showers that rain straight down on you, which I find annoying. There's also still the traditional shower, but that overhead thing never turns all the way off. I feel like I'm being water-boarded, and by the end of my shower I'm starting to crack under the pressure. I'm yelling out secrets that never would have come out except under torture. "I LIKE BARRY MANILOW!" I echo through the locker room. Not ALL of the songs that make the whole world cry, of course, but enough to get me kicked out of my rock band if anyone knew.

     I shave right in the shower to save time. I don't need to look in the mirror, because my beard only grows in certain places on my face, and I know just where my face is so I can narrow it down from there. Why I can't get a full beard growing? It looks a little patchy, like my lawn, only with fewer chipmunks. My neighbor Paul thinks I should cut down a couple trees and get more sun, but I'm not sure if he's talking about my lawn or my face.

      So if all this sounds good to you and you're tired of doing different things all the time, and you're looking for a change, why don't you try things my way for a little while? Or forever? Because once you're on my team you won't be going back, fair warning.

STOP THE MADNESS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (03-29-18)

     March Madness seems to be getting madder and madder each year, and there's going to come a time at which the whole month is given a full mental evaluation and finally committed to psychiatric institution. It's no secret that March is bipolar. One day it's acting like a lion. The next day it's acting like a lamb. Baaa, I say. We celebrated the first day of spring with a nor'easter, so stick that in your generator and smoke it. Add the NCAA tournament into the mix and it's clear that March is off its meds.

     Did you fill out your brackets? This year, in the opening round, for the first time in the tournament's history, a number 16 seed beat a number 1 seed, and 99.9% of everyone in the United States threw their bracket sheet into the garbage can. The other .1% were the Moms of the players on UMBC, a fine academy of learning that I first thought was one of those cable news networks that Trump swears he doesn't watch, then tweets about nonstop on the verge of tears for an entire weekend. 

     The rest of us knew that UMBC would be eliminated the next week. If not in the tournament, then certainly by angry bookies who lost zillions. UMBC was the "Cinderella" team, this year's media darlings. Every year the question looms, "Who will wear the glass slipper?" Without once mentioning how dangerous it is to wear glass slippers if you plan to dance anything more complicated than a minuet. Plus, a glass slipper is REALLY uncomfortable and everyone can see your band-aids right through it.

     Not all of the action is on the court. Some of the more interesting battles in the tournament are contested on the sidelines, between the school mascots. Have you ever seen a Horned Frog get into it with a Gamecock? Neither have I, but it sounds like one of those videos my wife sends me on Youtube. That clip where the wildebeest befriends a baby duck, patting it on the head? What they don't show you is that right after the video ends the wildebeest swallows the baby duck in one gulp, and the patting part was actually him applying salt and pepper.

     CBS network has run into some criticism for training their cameras on children in the stands crying because their team is losing. The executive producer defended this practice in an interview, saying over and over, "We try to strike the right balance." One kid was crying so hard, he looked absolutely balance-stricken. This has led to a whole new trend of over-zealous stage moms stomping on their kids' feet at the end of close games to get them on TV. One kid was bawling his eyes out and his team wasn't even playing that day, turns out the kid is just a whiner.

     You want something to cry about? I'm six-foot two and I can't dunk the basketball. Every time they went to pick teams in middle school I would get picked first because of my height, only to reveal that I while could escort the ball into the general area of the basket, its exact location was kept a secret from me. I would have made all the foul shots if anyone would have made the slightest effort to foul me. By the way, I see this all the time: the kid misses the free throw, and all his teammates slap his hand, thereby rewarding his behavior. I have a dog, and if I gave it a treat every time it bit the mailman I'd never get any mail, and I'd still have a dog with a horrible free throw percentage.

     But in the end, it's all good. The losers are vanquished and the winners are extolled, and they climb up on a ladder and cut down the net, ruining the court for everyone else. In the city they make the nets out of metal, so you have to bring a Milwaukee Sawzall and an extension cord if you want to cut down the net, and if you try that crap in New York, the cops will be waiting to help you celebrate your victory at the arraignment.