This One's For The Boys

This place (link) cuts men's hair (supposedly). All I know is, first, I will never set foot in this place; and b., check out the website!

The highlights (pun, ha!):

*Services: (brace yourself):

Haircut - includes "facework" and "mini facial." Just for you, Greg!

Rest Facial - "cleanser, moisturizer, conditioner, and steam towel"...it's like describing a four-person blowbang to your grandmother!

Get Zen for this one: "Trimwork - Hair, neck and face maintenance." That's what she said!

Personal Services - "Shoe care, tailoring, dry cleaning and house cleaning." ?

No, really, ?

All services come with "complimentary beverages and concierge support" -- what the hell is that? Dry cleaning comes with a beverage? Is "concierge support" the same as "turn your head and cough"? (I don't speak the French, you know, but I'm learning pidgen Gay.)

Hand and Foot Care:

Hand Treatment - "For the gentleman who gets it on a regular" (sic) "...finish with a high gloss buff or matte polish."

OK. What the fuck does that mean? The "polish" part I've got; it means manicures are an abomination, or else they're offering me a hot dog -- it's hard to tell in written form. But "for the gentleman who gets it on a regular" -- gets what? Manicures? Pussy? My mind, she is bent!

Foot Treatment - all you need to know is that it ends with a "chillaxing massage." In a time machine. Set to 2007.

"Rough Around the Edges Hand Treatment - For the hard working hand...neglected the callous buildup, cut someone with a handshake, or left a welt on your mate..." Left a welt on your mate...oh, I get it. Manicures: the solution for domestic abusers who are tired of using a rolled-up magazine! But "cut someone with a handshake"? I think you're doing it wrong if that's the case. The complementary foot treatment frees you from "foot shame," which I mean, come on, we all know about that, am I right? It ends with "the rubdown of champions," which I must assume is a variant, by request, of either the Filipino Flogging, the Nanking Nutroll, or the South Carolina Gribble (also known locally as the "Sandlap"). Pretty sure.

Finally, let it be noted and forever remembered that the Signature Foot Treatment includes a "diamond chip foot file," which makes baby Jesus and starving orphans everywhere cry.

On to Products!

The line of purported men's products at this salon is fairly limited, but through careful review I have determined that it is exactly right for whatever you may be expecting, be it face cream, upper-lip foam, spoogy gel, cheek wash, stubble stick, or any of noted practitioner F. Ella Tio's worked-up lathers.

Let's begin with "Jack Black"'s line of squeezy tubes. These include "Face Buff," a movie I also saw, and "Beard Lube," as well as "Hand Healer," which was an unreleased Marvin Gaye track from the sessions with Columbia Records in '82. Beard Lube comes in a 16 oz. pump bottle, because hey, "you asked." But, does it numb and lubricate, or am I still going to feel some pressure...there? The best part of the site is "Ask Jack," where fake people ask made-up questions of the wise Mr. Black, or at least his underpaid intern-slash-webmaster: "What is the difference between Beard Lube Conditioning Shave and Supreme Cream Triple Cushion Shave Lather?" What a fucking great question! The answer is, "nothing! They're both jizz-based!" And, because I'm sure you are as bored with this totally jizz-based paragraph, we're moving on!

aMENity (what? I don't get it.) is another fine, retarded company supplying products to whats-its-name salon that I almost forgot about because this post has gone on way past long enough. Here's a testimonial: "When I go out, I like to look good. That mean's doing what fits my own personal style. I like Amenity because it feels good on my head. It works better than any product on the market and I've tried them all." Can you count the things wrong with that statement? If not, really, go check out the pictures. This must be a joke, right?

There is eShave, which I firmly believe is a computer program that shaves men through instant messaging (I confess that I cut myself shaving just this morning, quite severely actually, so I'm not going to throw too much shit on eShave. But I will point out that, just like half the restrooms in Wisconsin, eShave has a section about "Badger Hair."

Finally, we come to balla. You read that right. I encourage everyone to check this out, now! Under "where to buy," there is a picture of a hand holding $60. Serious. Sixty whole motherfucking US dollars, yo! Balla!

Also, balla has testimonials. From. Three. People. Did I mention this is a product you sprinkle on your balls to keep them dry? Read the disarmingly nonsensical customer reviews and marvel. Do not miss the press releases, either, which go to great lengths to describe what the product does, why it does it, and why everyone loves the "subtle, manly scent" you can only get from balla nut sugar -- or, you know, from my balls, which have the subtle, manly scent of, well, balls. Like most things genital, if it smells like something else, you fucked up and nobody likes fucked up genitals!

Marvel at this picture and the text beside it. For, truly, nothing (nothing!) on this earth says both "dry" AND "comfortable" like sitting in the ocean wearing only socks and a button-down while reading the newspaper.

Enjoy "how to apply" (you really are a dimwit, huh?), especially the advice that it's nigh impossible to dump scrote powder into your boxers without getting a bunch of it on your shoes. Because you wear boxer shorts, no pants, AND SHOES so fucking often! I am dying over here! Stop it! Please! ...Europe! (sound of me peeing on my balla-dusted boxers and shoes.)

Balla is not going to try to get in your pants. Balla WILL get in there. Balla is the Nazis of taint-glazing and balla is coming for your lady friends' tongues and nasal comfort! Balla has a language barrier but balla totally overcame that shizz and now is much to being on your nether regions and minds! Balla sometimes clumps on pubic hair and WILL coat the roof of your mouth and prevent normal intimacy as well as second dates. Balla has a sports car. Balla quite fortunately rubs off as fast as the douchebags who buy balla. Balla!

Balla will make clammy sacks a thing of the past and will put bat wings on the endangered species list.

"He Was Not A Bigoted Man"

Fergus M. Bordewich, of whom I had never heard and from whom I never expect to hear again, writes in Smithsonian magazine (Oct. 2009) that John Brown, abolitionist, was effectively a living saint who straddled modernity and age-old vengeance traditions and led the United States into the only just war in its history through the deft use of language, symbolism, action, and his own personal, god-like powers. Perhaps I overstate Bordewich's case somewhat. However, he quotes liberally David S. Reynolds, whose biography of John Brown is still the most asinine thing ever put to paper by a cultural studies nitwit, and so I don't trust Bordewich to tell me anything about Brown that I couldn't get from the slurrings of an idiot.

To take Brown as a revolutionary figure is fine. He was certainly that; but in a nation that rather frowns upon revolutionaries outside Washington & Friends, it is curious how often we are asked to re-examine John Brown's insane actions and lend them our approval.

In Bordewich's hands, you might almost believe that Brown was our greatest orator (Reynolds thinks the functionally illiterate Brown was our greatest author!) and hero, the symbolic leader of the free nation.

Or, you can go to the historical record.

The raid on Harper's Ferry was not Brown's signature moment, though his harebrained fans seem to think so. This is because Harper's Ferry was two debacles in one, the second being the ineptitude of the attempt by a young Robert E. Lee to dislodge Brown and his supporters from the armory. This comedy of violence masks the utter bankruptcy of Brown's "plan," to raise a slave army, and his own use of barbaric violence against anyone he believe to be his ideological opponent. "Ideological opposition" is, in fact, the key to understanding Brown. He didn't so much challenge slavery or wage war on the institution, as he did on people who agreed with the institution -- quite literally doing what I have threatened to do many times: take a club and go out in the streets and beat the other side's supporters to death. I understand the impulse, but I also know that Republicans (in my case) aren't solely defined by the things about the GOP that piss me off. Do I think Republicans are bad people? Sure. Do I think they waste their brains and talents on abortive political efforts? You bet. But do I hold the rank-and-file responsible for the leadership and traditions of the entire party, or do I hold the leaders and traditions of the party responsible? In other words, am I an intelligent political actor operating within a culture or am I a barbarian?

The visceral, disorienting experiences that can dislodge a subject from his place within a polity make for interesting studies. Brown's experiences are no exception. But don't make him the hero he cannot be; murderers aren't "controversial," their places in history aren't so "disputed" that we have to make fools of ourselves pretending to weigh the "cause" against what really happened. John Brown was a crackpot -- a perfect analog for Conrad's Kurtz, gone seemingly "mad" in his clumsy lunge at primitivity and a certain kind of freedom; truly mad, though, in all the terms that matter to thinking, political beings. A little off-point, of course, as an observation since (and Conrad's readers, Coppola's viewers, and Brown's acolytes always forget this) Kurtz/Brown isn't the most important, or even interesting, character in the story. The Africans are the objects of fascination and the impetus for madness.

"What are they going to say when he's gone, that he was a kind man? That he was a wise man?" They wouldn't say it about Kurtz and no one should be saying it about Brown, another man without a country intellectually, morally, and by his choice.

Brown was compelled to launch his bloody career as a terrorist by the "sacking of Lawrence, Kansas," an event where perhaps a thousand supporters of slavery in the territory attacked Lawrence, destroyed the anti-slavery newspapers, burned down the governor's house, and almost got away without killing anyone, until a piece of falling stone struck and killed an anti-slavery man who was apparently standing right next to a collapsing building.

The fact that no pro-slavery person had actually killed anyone in Lawrence made no difference to Brown, who became further enraged when Preston Brooks beat Charles Sumner (though recent work suggests strongly that Sumner, no fool at political theater, exaggerated his injuries for months in order to keep abolitionists at a fever pitch) and assembled his own small posse, including four of his sons, to get revenge on...well, somebody.

During the late night of May 24, 1856, the lynching party made its way to the Pottawatomie creek area, forced its way into the homes of three known or suspected advocates of slavery (not slave owners, mind you, just people who agreed with the totally legal practice of owning slaves), removed five adult men, and hacked them to death with swords, in at least one case in full view of the man's family. Just swell! For this brave action, as David S. Reynolds and Fergus Bordewich, among many Brown cheerleaders, will tell you, our hero was vilified and treated like a common criminal! Jesus wept!

Becoming a posthumous American hero apparently depends entirely upon the declining intelligence of historians and pop writers approximately 150 years after one's demise. You need not be consistent, or even rational. Your cause need not have focus, structure, or bear any resemblance to the accepted norms of protest -- even extreme protest -- of the dominant culture. One may apparently absent oneself from that culture, at any time, declare oneself a prodigy and literally hack one's opponents to death for espousing an idea in support of a lawful behavior, regardless of whether said victims -- I mean, opponents -- act on that support, and one will be transformed into a crusader for the justice of God and man, the inducer of any subsequent event (like a Civil War) that settles the issue that, in hindsight, clearly justified murder, and the originator of all good things remotely related (like the Civil Rights Movement). Basically, everyone since John Brown has done jack shit. It was him all along!

Or, reasonable people might wish to begin drawing some boundaries with the worship of America's most historical terrorist. John Brown's cause, as ragged and sloppy as it was in his hands, was just. But he was not. He was a murderer and a psychopath whose hate for something too big for his mind to comprehend was so debilitating that he attacked only its most junior, albeit accessible, minions. Brown was a crazed hunter whose psychic breakup not only drove him into the mouth of a tiger, but caused him to hold human life so cheaply that he ensured all his followers were eaten up, too.

And yet, the editor of Smithsonian: "For his part, Bordewich came away from the story surprised by Brown's personal tolerance: 'That is to say, he had among his friends and followers people of various religious persuasions, as well as atheists and agnostics. He hated slavery, but he was not a bigoted man.'" But naturally, one is always driven to cold-blooded murder by something other than bigotry. Great fucking God.

Because Yankees Fans are Masters of Reality

My favorite post-FJM baseball blog advises the millions of followers of a certain pinstriped Microsoft-with-balls "not to panic."

Yeah, because Yankees fans are smart, realistic, observers, known for their patience, calm, and respect for the game and especially for other teams and players who beat them.

I'm sure Yankees fans across the world are saying, right now, things like "Heck, that Cliff Lee sure was good last night! But, we still have a payroll bigger than the GDP of several nations, so we have all the talent necessary to stage a comeback. One game at a time, I always say!" Or, perhaps in the reality-based world, Yankees fans are completely disregarding this piece of nonsensical "made just for you" advice, however well meaning, and are instead all like, "Yankees RULE! You SUCK! Yankees RULE!!" while also losing their shit emotionally and crying out to Jesus because, Fuck! How the hell can the highest-paid team NOT win an American sports competition? That's communism or somethingYankeesRULE!!