For a brief time yesterday the parade of horribles that makes up the world’s news was interrupted by the delightfully wacky story that all North Korean men have been ordered to get the same haircut as the Hermit Kingdom’s leader, Kim Jong-un.
The BBC, which broke the story in the western media, walked it back a few hours later by amending the headline to limit the Hair Dictum to male students, rather than all men.
It remained a nice frolic for feature writers though, because anything involving the suppression of young people is irresistible eyeball candy for the oldsters who follow news headlines all afternoon.
But sourpuss editors who do not want a good time to last too long subjected the story to some journalistic analysis and concluded this entire totalitarian trim tale was probably a hoax, because real North Korean men who have been seen out walking around in broad daylight recently are not sporting Kim Jong-un’s side-buzzed, floppy-topped do.
What a pity. I had already commissioned an ode to Kim Jong-un’s Hair Order from Trail Baboon Poet Laureate Schuyler Tyler Wyler, who is only capable of crafting juvenile sing-song verses.
And once STW begins a project, he cannot stop until he’s done.
I sat down in my barber’s chair
for one more monthly shearing,
For years Bob cut my thinning hair,
a gradually growing clearing.
“I’ll take the usual,” said I,
“the way I always do.”
“The usual?” he said. “But why?”
“The usual’s not you.”
“For I can cut it how you like.
My stylings are the smartest.”
I said “If you can make it spike,
I’ll know you are an artist.”
“A spike,” said he. “I’m on the job.
Your spike will be sublime.”
“If that won’t work,” I told him, “Bob,
the usual’s just fine.”
He spoke at length to every strand,
he clipped and combed and pasted,
Caressed each follicle by hand.
No single hair was wasted.
But as completion quickly neared
Bob’s face slumped in a frown.
The spike that he had engineered
stood briefly, then fell down.
“That’s fine,” I said, “A noble fight.
The challenge was too tough.
It won’t take long to make it right.
The usual’s enough.”
It only took a little while
A peaceful, quiet respite
But when I saw my newest style
I looked just like a despot.
Hair was collected in a clump
Like a racer’s in the luge is.
As if a wild bear took a dump
on Moe of the Three Stooges.
I looked at Bob. His face was cool.
I said, “This is deranged.
I asked you for ‘the usual.'”
“That’s it,” he said. “It’s changed.”
“That spike was never meant to be.
‘Twas preordained to flop.
All hairstyles now, are, by decree,
dictated from the top.”
What’s ‘the usual’ for you?
Trail Baboon 
Good morning. I assume the question is about usual haircuts. My usual many years ago was long hippy hair. Now I get a “regular” length haircut and I let it grow out a little on the long side before I go for another haircut.
By the time I get around to going in for a trim I look a little shaggy and usually joke with the woman who cuts my hair about my tendency to wait too long to get a haircut. I have more or less left my hair styling in the hands of the woman who cuts it. She seems to have assumed I like it a little long. The style she has chosen for me leaves my hair long enough to comb back just a little on the side. That looks good as far as I’m concerned.
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It seems you need another plan
When you move to the city
or else become a hairy man and that would be a pity
you better do it while you can
Before you start looking
Less than the best you possibly can
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One more haircut in Clarks Grove even if I am not shaggy when I go in to get it.
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Rise and be Bald like our Dear Leader Baboons!
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I can’t answer the question from yesterday on that blog, and it is too wonderful to miss: I want a statue of me posed in the garden, pulling a week. Great possibilities for a yard butt!
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But will you be wearing frilly, polka-dot bloomers?
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yes!!
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Good!
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One of my grandmas mortified my aunt by gardening in a dress. Aunt Leona was so worried that people driving by might see Omie bending over in the garden. Omie didn’t care.
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My mother the passionate and gifted gardener never wore anything but a dress her whole life until she was near 80 and had stopped gardening..
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We used to tease my Grandma about being a “Living Yard Butt.” I don’t think she appreciated our humor all that much!
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I can’t imagine any of the ancestresses gardening in anything but a dress either. I remember walking over to great-aunt Lydia’s once while she was gardening. She was wearing stockings that were more runs than stockings, but I am sure she would have been appalled if we had suggested she simply go without stockings altogether.
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Great visual, Jacque!
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I don’t think I see my stylist often enough to have a “usual”. I believe the actual direction is usually, “just a trim”.
I’ve been avoiding going as I feel bad about having taken the s&h to a barber of late. Our usual stylist was wonderful when he was a toddler, she would get right down on the floor with him and do her best with the scissors on that moving target.
But it was time for a barber. and no, I can’t really explain that.
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My usual style is a bob. My bangs are chin length.My hair dresser, who has cut my hair since 1988, hints about covering up the grey, but I just ignore her. I had second thoughts the other day when I walked into a Head Start classroom and a little girl ran up to me and squealed “Grandma!”.
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The usual today means the winter goes on: that my wife and sister who share today as a birthday cannot get together because Brookings SD is under a 4-6 inch snow warning.
My usual is a quite basic cut which, like Jim, I am slow to have trimmed, but I have a reason for my slowness of going in. Haircuts are hard on me; they activate my fibromyalgia quite badly most of the time because of all that touching, buzzing on my head and right in my ear, and pulling of hair. I cannot get the person cutting my hair to understand I do not want to talk, that having to concentrate to make small talk makes it worse. If I go in on a good day, then I end up making a good day moderately bad. If I go in on a bad day then I make a bad day terrible. Generally I prefer the second choice. Every so often it does not bother me.
I avoid the parlors with all those scents, which are among the worse scents I know, like nail polish and perms. I do have a barbershop very near me. Two times ago the barber suddenly at the end splashed a cologne on my neck, which he had not done before. It had not been a bad day for me until then. I rushed home and showered but it was too late. The last time I told the barber not to put any scents on me, but he forgot by the end of the haircut and I was focused on the bully who had strutted in and was spraying hatred that I did not remind him again and he did it without thinking. So I rushed home to shower but I knew I did not have a chance of avoiding a very bad day because anger triggers my reactions too.
So, I wish my usual could be to go Howard Hughes.
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for 19 dollars the wahl trimmer at the store can solve your problems clyde.
the do your own haircut has been my deal for a couple years now and no one ever comments on how it ok. some one told me years ago that a bad hair day was only perceived by the wearer of the bad hair. my hairdresser made the mistake of telling me i was such an easy haircut a number 2 blade is all i needed. i looked into it as i had been trimming my beard for a couple of years to eliminate the every 10 days i used to get my haircut back in slaying the chick days and so when i pulled out the number 2 blade it was magic. i like it longer than that and kind of go with theeinstein look these days all flying around but the hats i wear tend to tame the wildness a bit.
i would guess clyde that a couple of tries and you would come up with a hairstyle that was livable and you could eliminate the bad day of doing a haircut from you agenda.
and as my dad always sad the difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut is three days.
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Happy birthday to Sandy and is it Clara that your sisters name
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Morning all. I don’t have a “usual” (don’t even have a stylist) but my hair style has remined more or less the same for decades. Bangs, long in the back, wavy but not kinky, rarely curled, even more rarely blown-dry. I cut the bangs myself and co-workers usually trims in back. Teenager has also cut it before.
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This cracks me up, Dale! I mean, Nice poem, Schuyler.
I do some variation on my high school page boy with bangs, until my stylist gets tired of it and convinces me to try something new. Then I end up letting it grow out for a year, until it gets long enough that I don’t have to do anything but put it up in a ridiculous looking “rooster tail” (some of you have seen this at BBC, no doubt), that I can’t see from the front, so this goes on for several months till I get tired of looking silly, and go in for a “back to the usual.”
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I just go to my barber every ten weeks or so, with a wild mop of hair looking like a sheep that’s been run through a blender. They ask me what I want and I say, “Do what you usually do. That isn’t SO bad.” Soon I am sitting in a pile of clippings almost big enough to hide me.
My big issue is that I hate oily hair. When I wash my hair, I want to keep it clean and fluffy as long as possible, so I’d never add gunk to keep it in place. In high school I was a Brylcreem guy, but then one night when I was nervous about a prom date I brushed my teeth with Brylcreem. Blechhh! When you put it in your mouth, a “little dab’ll do ya” for sure.
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Husband used what he thought was his allergy nasal spray the other day that turned out to be enzymatic spray for our cat’s itchy ears.
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That’s how discoveries happen
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My hair has always been really straight. My husband has lovely curly hair, just the right amount of curl. Daughter has long blonde wavy/curly hair that she hates and believes she has to straighten. After she was born a patch of curly/wavy hair appeared growing from my scalp in a patch behind my right ear. My hair dresser accused me of cheating on her for getting a perm from someone else. Now we laugh about it, but I still can’t figure out why my hair did that.
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I should add that the curly patch is still there, 19 years later.
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Getting my hair cut always reminds me of a scene from Northern Exposure where Ruth-Anne gets style advice from a young cosmetologist. The girl keeps poofing her hair and recommending that she “balloonify” it. (Was that really the word she used?) Wish I could find a YouTube video of the scene, but I’m coming up empty.
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Maybe it’s a matter of vocabulary. I apparently don’t know the right words to impart to the stylist what I have in mind for my do. I’ll try balloonify next time and see what happens.
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As long as you don’t end up looking like Kim Jong-un.
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I suppose “the usual” could also refer to a restaurant or a bar… Son Joel used to enter Athens Café, and they would start making his particular Gyro sandwich before he got to the counter.
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i forgot about that. i used to have one at the lunch i frequented. one day a guy at the table next to us asked where that is on the menu. the waitress said it isnt
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I’ve hated my hair since grade school because it’s baby fine and there’s no volume whatsoever. Many years ago, after buying a wig for a Halloween party, I discovered the delight of finally looking like I had hair. I’ve worn wigs ever since, changing the styles/colors over the years. I never have to get up early, curl, spend money on stylists, or have a bad hair day. My hair thinned out even more after chemotherapy, so now I have an excuse to be this lazy. I imagine I’ve saved many thousands of dollars over the years (two wigs a year @ $50) by not getting it done. They look so natural that the handful of folks I’ve told are shocked to learn my “secret”. By the way, this is the very first public admission ever.
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My wife has worm wigs for 40 years. Her hair went very thin after they killed her thyroid with radiation when she was 14. She always thinks nobody knows she wears wigs. She, too, is somehow ashamed of this.
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Like Medusa!
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LOL – “worm wigs”?
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Worm wigs sound very uncomfortable to me. (kidding, Clyde, I know that’s a typo, but I have this mental image of a crawling mass of worms on someone’s head…). I wonder if I wore a worm wig if that could solve my winter composting problems – I could have compost-eating worms right on top of my head.
I’m pretty sure that nowadays the wigs nowadays look a lot more real than the wigs did when your wife was 14. So she is possibly right that nobody knows she wears wigs.
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Well, so much for going public, Anonymous! Your answer intrigues me, as I, too, have baby fine hair with no body whatsoever. Don’t you find wigs hot, I mean temperature wise, especially in summer? Would seem like wearing a warm hat all the time.
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Actually, I’m so used to it that I feel naked without it. Last week, someone came to my door, waking me up from a deep sleep. I opened it up and she said, “Are you sick? Are you OK?” Wearing a wig, of course, means no swimming and a chronic fear that it’ll be knocked off by some drunk man dancing with me!
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nice public admission anonymus
i dont dare guess who this is. im betting its not dale
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My money is on littlejailbird.
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If I wore a wig, PJ, I wouldn’t pick one that looks like this!
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Your hair looks just fine to me, Edith.
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It’s Crystalbay, Tim. I just went through six consecutive steps to recoup my identity – it didn’t work. Maybe the kinds of things I post are so far out there that WordPress thinks I should remain anonymous???
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Yep the drunken dance partner gave you away
I knew it wasn’t dale
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Give me a little credit, tim. Coulda been me.
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Hmmm – I don’t know why my user name & avatar just disappeared, but this is Crystalbay! Any ideas on how to recoup my identity????????
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Guess I lost my nickel! Ask Steve, he claims to have this licked the anonymous blue doily problem.
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Ahem! I do not “claim” to have solved the problem, I’ve solved it! A little more respect here, please!
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But it’s not really a public admission, is it, when you have the name of “Anonymous.”
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Like!
Does that mean you aren’t telling us who you are?
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Oops, didn’t read far enough, CB.
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The usual for me is “short.” My hair is fine, has no body, and grows to a natural point in the back, don’t fight it, go with it, I instruct the stylist. I go to Fantastic Sams these days, usually on “senior” days, because they’re cheap. My previous salon, which I had frequently for years, just kept increasing their fees for the same lousy hair cut until I had finally had enough. At FS I never get the same stylist twice in a row, they just don’t seem to have long tenures there.
Stylists these days don’t seem familiar with the celebrity hair styles that appeal to me. I used to be able to say, please cut it short like Mia Farrow’s hair in Rosemary’s Baby, and they’d have some idea of how short I wanted it. Say that these days and you get a blank stare; they have no clue what I’m talking about. The last time I had my hair cut, a woman entered as I was leaving. She asked the stylist if she or anyone in the salon knew how to cut a wedge. I knew instantly that she was referring to Dorothy Hamil’s haircut back when she was an Olympic skater, the stylist made no such connection.
The last time I had my hair cut at a “fancy” salon/spa, it cost me $50.00 and I came home looking like I didn’t own a comb! Didn’t go back. You just can’t make a silk purse out of sow’s ear.
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i found this guy once at Great Clips that cut my hair in a type of “wedge” haircut and he was the best stylist I ever had. My hair actually looked decent as it grew out, and this at Great Clips prices. Then, naturally, he moved out of state.
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Well, of course!
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Whenever I go to a stylist for the first time, I always bring a photo of something close to what I want, because I do not speak-a da hair language.
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So in a bar or restaurant you say “the Usual” and they know what you mean. That means that 1) you are part of the incrowd, in a place you feel you belong but 2) you are also predictable and unadventurous.
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My usual haircut these days is stand in front of the bathroom mirror and hack it off until it looks better (better than the awful it looks when it’s grown out). Youngest daughter trims the back for me, but with her away at college, I’m going to have to either try to do it myself or go get a “real” haircut. When I try to go to a place that has inexpensive cuts, they invariably do a mediocre to awful job, not a big improvement over what I do myself, with the exception of the guy at Great Clips several years ago. I just can’t manage spending $35 (before tip) every few weeks for a decent haircut. I tried “covering the gray” a few years back, doing it myself, but the problem with that is 1) it’s a pain in the neck to do it yourself, and 2) once you start, it’s very difficult to stop. I tried to transition into going naturally gray by buying a nonpermanent hair dye, thinking it would gradually wear off (as the package said it would) as my hair grew out, but that stuff never wore off, it just changed color, ending up as this awful orangeish brown. It didn’t go away until I got my hair cut very, very short to get rid of it.
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A professor I worked under in graduate school was partly bald. One day the lab technician and I looked out the window and saw him coming toward the lab wearing his brand new wig. We had a hard time holding in our laughter. I suppose some people would be able to try out a wig without causing people to laugh behind their backs at them. Not that guy. It is a good thing we saw him coming and had time to get our emotions under control before he came in the door.
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Reminds of the mail carrier in the Midwest Plaza building when I worked there. He had this incredibly obvious rug, held securely in place with the headphones from his Walkman. I don’t know who he thought he was foolin’, it was so obvious that everyone referred to him as “the mail carrier with the hair.” I’ve always liked bald heads, so I’ve never understood the urge to cover them up with toupees, or worse, comb-overs, but, who knows, perhaps it was for the warmth it provided.
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