Does the constant stream of shitty industry news just make you uneasy? Are the recent paper closings, slashing of staff and budgets got you down? Not sure you're going to have a job Monday? Relax. It's out of your hands. Fret about what you, personally, can control. And in the meantime make, pour, and drink several of these. It is your namesake.
From a London cocktail recipe book from the 1930s, I give to you, your drink:
It's named after you. You've earned it, rummies.
Mrs. Chicken loves Valentine's Day. She likes it more than Christmas and her birthday combined. I have accepted this. So, when mid-February comes around, I put in a little more planning effort than usual to make this day a little extra special for the woman who has agreed, legally, to put up with my shit for the next several decades.
I'm thinking this, as a little warmup gift ...
... and then many drinks and fine meat products here:
If you were sent to prison for an undefined amount of time, what would you miss most?
Sponsored by “Inside Guantanamo” on National Geographic Channel. Premieres Sunday at 9P et/pt.
The overlooked freedom I long enjoyed of NOT being forced to take it in the ass under the stairwell. I would miss that greatly. That, and the blueberry scones.
If money didn't matter, what job would you most like to have?
Submitted by Rainbird.
Freelance demolition.
Salvador Dali and Man Ray
Cobain and Burroughs
You, I don't like so much:
1. Tonight's after-work dinner plans with people from Mrs. Chicken's job, along with a bunch of retirement fund jackoffs who are going to blow sunshine up our asses, and the pricey menu at this shi-shi seafood place I wouldn't step foot in normally. If I didn't think it would render my wife mortified, I would start the conversation with "Look fellas, until the market stops taking a dump, your product is essentially worthless to us. MY retirement accounts are essentially worthless. I'm hemorrhaging money by the week. We are actually better off right now, NOT paying into that account and putting that money in the bank. But let me guess, you have the investment opportunity that anomalizes all of that, right?"
2. Days and days of rain. Ugh.
3. That it is only Tuesday, and not 4:08 p.m. on a Friday.
4. Every elected official in Detroit. You make me want to move from this region.
You, I like:
1. Dirty laundry pile getting smaller and smaller.
2. Plans for this weekend are looking really good.
3. Running into my boy Pete while walking the dog last night. He was walking his AND sneaking a smoke.
4. Mrs. Chicken's adventures in the kitchen the last couple of weeks have yielded some mighty fine fare (homemade chicken soup one week; tofu fiesta and homemade tomato soup the next).
If you're bald, then you really don't need a barber. But, if you're lucky, you have such a person in your community, who, despite being 90 years old, can still provide you with a straight-razor shave, a service that is every bit the throwback to the past that its mention will conjure.
Ted has been cutting heads for 67 years. His resume would be longer, but he took a break during the late '30s and early '40s to fly B-24 and B-17 bombers in World War II. He is beyond old school. He is ancient school.
I have been visiting his shop for the last 10 years, starting back when I actually had hair to cut. In metro Detroit, since 1990, I had been to every salon within a 5-mile radius of my front porch. I've had $4 haircuts from the shaky alcoholics in the get-you-in-get-you-out cattle yard that is Adam's Barber Shop in Hazel Park. I've paid $50 (and a tip) to some well-titted broad to overdo my shit at Palazzolo. The gamut has been run. That ended when I randomly entered Ted's, and its preserved interior. Time not only stands still here, but comes to screeching halt, causing the time behind that time to slam into the trunk. It is like a museum in here. I love it.
Evidently, someone in the film industry thought the same because his shop was used last summer in the filming of the Clint Eastwood film "Gran Torino." When approached to use his facility, Ted was complicit, save, for one detail: He wanted to meet the Outlaw Josey Wales himself. His shop is now adorned with buddy photos of he and Eastwood, whom the barber described "as plain as an old shoe." Ted speaks highly of the five-time Oscar winner for both acting and filmmaking. Most guys my age and older, it seems, have some sort of respect/man love for Eastwood. I was part of a generation whose fathers made us sit in front of the TV, to view the works of Eastwood, Charles Bronson, or Lee Marvin, only to be reminded in real time just how bad-ass those guys were. I can hear my dad now, "That's one tough sonofabitch, boy." The only thing more magnificent than their work, is the epic gulf between their characters' level of charisma and toughness, and how woefully short you fell in any attempt to be as slick.
Those guys were the models of cool, the unflappable tough guys. Though I am now older and not in the custom of much hero worship, I still found it sort of pleasing that Clint Eastwood shot part of his movie in my hometown, in the barbershop I've often patronized. The film does contain graphic language, much of it old-boy nationalist/racist vernacular, which is keeping in with the characters of the film. Eastwood's character openly refers to his Hmong neighbors as "gooks," black guys as "spooks" and so on. I am not glorifying that behavior here or anywhere else. It is simply the composition of the film's story. Ted can tell some interesting stories of the filming, although it is only his place of work that gets on screen. The role of barber in the movie is portrayed by actor John Carroll Lynch. This clip is from YouTube. I did not title it.
Ted tells some great stories. He's been married to the same woman "since Christ was a kid," grew up in northern Michigan where he used to carry a rifle to school (one of my favorite anecdotes is about two kids who didn't much care for each other and decided to settle it with a fistfight, after they put their guns down), was an athletic director for a local school district and used to have so many men of the book and cloth in his shop, that it actually became known as the Catholic Priest Hot Stove League in there. He enlisted when things got dicey in Europe in the mid- to late-'30s and had his cadet training at age 26, in Las Vegas. "You could look out into the city and see just a small patch of lights," he said, letting out a polite "humph." He flew more than two dozen missions, dropping bombs from the sky. And when he was done, six years later, he returned to his wife, children, and scissors.
Another of my favorite tales is his time as a copy boy. As a former newspaper guy myself, I could always appreciate stories like this. "I worked the night of the Hindenburg explosion," he said. "I rode the train from Royal Oak down Woodward to Lafayette for my regular shift at the News and didn't come home until about 3 in the afternoon the next day. Stayed there all night." I have heard pretty much all of his stories before and don't mind listening to them again. Most of his accounts could be 100 percent bullshit for all I know.
But one thing that is not bullshit is a haircut and/or shave from Ted. I used to opt for the No. 1 or 2, a killer crew or butch cut that looked like something straight out of boot camp. He was a total pro. Cut you like a fucking hedge trimmer. Lo, the hair on the head is patterned out and not worth growing these days, so I keep it tight or shaved completely clean, or, as the barber says, "down to the meat."
Saturday, though, I wanted a shave and Ted did me up right. From the hot towels and straight-razor to the 80-proof astringent he slaps across your freshly cut open pores (and yes, it stings), there is something charming about the time-honored element to all of this. A shave. In a barber's chair. Nobody does it these days. Too much insurance liability and, seemingly, not a lot of people are interested in providing that level of personal service. No, they want for you to buy their brand of fucking cell phone or to stick you with extra fees to check your bags or menace the shit out of you on the phone if you're 20 minutes late paying your credit card bill. No, this guy just wants for you to relax and sit still, so he can shave your face and make you look and feel like the gentleman you're supposed to be.
He's a nice enough guy, but stern and intractible when it comes to his conservative values and politics. I have seen him bounce guys out of his shop for siding a little too enthusiastically with Clinton idealogies. He's 90. He's a decade short of a century, and he's not exactly tolerant of gay people, foreigners or people with metal in their faces and tattoos on their person. But with a resume like his, and for all he can tell me about my community -- both history and present day -- I casually overlook these massive, glaring shortcomings. I am tattooed and monolithically liberal and I still give this guy my business. It's not hard.
I don't talk to him about politics or religion. I don't talk to anyone about politics or religion because I am not so self-absorbed and in love with my own words that I have managed to convince myself that others actually want to hear what I have to say on those matters. I don't need to jockey for the best sound bite in the conversation. I don't need to come off as some sidewalk pundit. I don't place great emphasis on my own points in a conversation, why should I do the same for yours? Especially when I have a hunch that most of the watercooler or barstool monologue you are making in a conversation is some shit you read in the New York Times or the fucking Economist that morning.
With Ted, I just don't care. He's 90. He has, literally, dropped bombs on motherfuckers. And he puts it out there for your consideration irrespective your stance on such matters. His is not a bad philosophy. It's my shop, get the fuck out you don't like it.
Eastwood and Ted, a couple of bad-asses indeed.
Show us your favorite television character.
There are many -- including Frank Burns, Fred Sanford, and Peter Griffin -- but I would say this guy rises above most. I get a little bummed when I think of what genius work this guy would've put out between today and the time that worthless, psychofuck of a bitch wife of his put a bullet in his head while he slept.
I guess I could say the same about Cobain, Jam Master Jay, River Phoenix, Jeff Buckley, and David Foster Wallace, but that's getting away from the question-answer now, isn't it?
If you could see any movie, tv show, play or sporting event "on ice," what would you choose to see performed on ice skates?
Any one of the surgery shows on Discovery Health.
