December 31, 2006
Topiary Coiffeurs
In belated recognition of National Barbers’ Day, I offer this passage from “Rhinocratic Oaths” (Vivian Stanshall/Neil Innes), Bonzo Dog Band, The Doughnut in Granny’s Greenhouse (1968).
Much as he hated arguments or any kind of unpleasantness, Ron Shirt thought things had gone too far when, returning from a weekend in Clacton, he found that his neighbor had trimmed the enormous hedge dividing their gardens into the shape of a human leg. Enraged and envious beyond belief, Ron seized his garden shears and clipped his white poodle Rex into the shape of a coffee table. “That’ll fix it,” thought Ron — but he was wrong. The following Wednesday his neighbor had his bushy waist-length hair cut and permed into a model of the Queen Elizabeth and went sailing. Everywhere he went, people said “Hurray!” Sometimes you just can’t win.
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“Slick as a billiard ball”–Melanie, 1971
Exchange between two student workers I once supervised:
Graduate student, on tousling multi-colored chemically treated hair of undergraduate: “Tony, your hair feels like straw!”
Undergraduate to prematurely balding graduate student: “Jerry, your head has the sheen of a highly polished bowling ball.”