INSANE BARBERS AND OTHER THOUGHTS

Much panic or something around this place – I am reminded of the scene in The Russians Are Coming! The Russians are Coming! Where the some of the crew of the Russian submarine that has run aground near an island in Maine are wandering the streets of the town saying in mass to anybody they see “Emergency, Everybody to get from Street.”

The place has that kind of feel. We’re trying to get paperwork together for a project for a State and they do need everything in triplicate – and typed – I haven’t used a type writer in years – or white out for that matter. Takes me back.

Anyway – last Saturday I went to get my hair cut – I needed one and I thought that if I got it now, it would grow out a little for the wedding if it looked like I had been attacked with a weed whacker.

Never much cared for barbershops – I well remember the one my dad would take me to growing up, the odd hair tonic smell and the combs in the blue water and the same couple of old guys sitting reading hunting magazines. (And no I don’t get hunting: shoot a deer, cut off its head and hang it on your wall – what the hell did that deer ever do to you?) The weird need the barbers all had to use their straight razors. I found it very creepy.

I had very long hair in the 70’s but not as a statement, I just hated going to the barbers, still do. But today the salon I normally use was booked up so there was no help for it. I needed a hair cut and had been putting off long enough.

So I walk in as ask for a hair cut, the barber has me sit down asks what I want –
“Just a trim please” I say.

So he starts then asks about the side burns, did I want them short?

“Yeah – it’s a bounce back from when I was young and had them long’

This led to a discussion of hair lengths and then the Beatles. I didn’t say much (I don’t like talking when I get my hair cut because that’s makes it go longer.) and then he said:

“Do you know why John Lennon got shot?” He asked (He had a Russian accent by the by so feel free to added that to your mental image)

“errr why?” I asked, I was puzzled- I should have kept my mouth shut.

‘Because he had said he was bigger than Jesus”

At which point I started sputtering “He said that in 1966, you telling me it took Jesus 14 years to arrange a hit?”

He wasn’t quite sure how to take my reply and then when I explained that John was trying to say “we’re just a band’ he started off on how Rabi Shankar taught the Beatles how to play guitar.

Well that’s it I thought – time to just hmmm and go “oh really” this fellow is a) gone round the deep end and b) has sharp things like scissors and razors, best just to go along with the lunatic and get out as quick as I can before he goes all Sweeny Todd/Monty Python (“Cut cut blood spirt, Pyscho murder”) on me.

Well of course the damn cut took forever and then, just as I was about to sprint out the door he wraps a towel soaked in water on my head.

“The Hell?” I said.

“It is a Russian thing, cools your brain.” He told me.

I was thinking that man needs to spend several days with towels wrapped around his head. And if I get out of here alive I won’t go back - I don’t want to know what he has to say about Jim Morrison.

The President has signed a bill allowing us to torture people and to toss them in Jail without charge forever. Do they hate us because of our freedoms or because we are hypocrites? More people for cold towels round their heads I'd say.