Weird Al once had an album titled "Bad Hair Day". The cover was Al in dreads, gangsta'd up and kickin' it for the homies, and the album itself featured the great parody "Amish Paradise". Good stuff.
As for my own bad hair, my old college roommate Mick would probably tell you the worst thing I ever did with it was during my Freshman year of college, when I grew out a goatee, and wore a red baseball cap backwards like Fred Durst.
Take a step back. Yes, that was actually me, in the late nineties. Almost 10 years ago, in my freshman dorm room. Note the complete lack of personal belongings on my roommate's side. Also note the baseball jersey/backwards cap/menacing look I sported. Ouch. Its worth noting that I thought Fred Durst was the shit at this particular moment in time, and had a Limp Bizkit poster on my dorm wall. Double ouch. But I refuse to run from it, because it is fact, and I don't lie. At this time, Limp Bizkit was only really known as the guys who covered George Michael's "Faith" and turned it into a rap-rock travesty. Later in my collegiate days, they'd commit worse sins. Remember "Nookie"? Yeah, I bet you unfortunately do.
"I did it all for the nookie (yeah) the nookie (yeah) so you can take that cookie and stick it up your (ahh) stick it up your (ahh)!"
Man, that looks even worse than it sounds. That album, Significant Other, played in my car in 2000 for what seemed like an endless loop. My artistic style was even influenced by their urban hip-hop album artwork; one variation of my personal website that I turned in for a Web Design class featured elements inspired by the Significant Other album art. Painful to admit.
My entire wardrobe was football jerseys, baseball caps, and baggy jeans. While every other designer (hell, every other student!) was coming to class in nice jeans and dress shirts, I was like Random White Rap Guy. Why did I do that? To be different, I suppose. Long hair, goateed guys who wear rap gear are usually not cool. But that's easy to say in hindsight.
Later in college, I simply stopped getting haircuts entirely. Went almost the entire school year, and then came home one night from pint night at the Jay, went into the bathroom with a clipper, and shaved it all off. Put the ol' Number One on the clippers and emerged with a shaved scalp. Scary.
A couple of years ago, I let a girl I was seeing turn my hair into a blonde/orange/brown swirl of bad. That relationship was weird enough as it was, secret/not secret as it was, and seeing that butcher job of a hairstyle again made me realize that, yeah, you bet. I'd forgotten just how bad it was until I watched the documentary a film crew shot of The Show from that year. Every time a interview segment with me would come up, I would literally hide my eyes. And that's saying something, considering I understand my impulsiveness and accept the consequences of that...namely, the occasional bad decisions that result.
Yes, over the years, I've experimented with dying it, letting it grow for six months, shaving it off, etc. You've seen that Coke commercial where the lady walks down the street, takes a sip of her Coke, and stops into a barber shop to get her long flowing locks chopped off into a boy-style cut? That's basically how every drastic change happens to mine -- one second I have a thought, "Hey, you know what would be cool?" -- and the next, its done.
Well, Tuesday, I decided I'd had enough of styling my hair, and over lunch, while driving by a salon I impulsively dropped in, managed to get a stylist despite having no appointment, and proceeded to direct them to shave it all off. No hair. At all. Think Kojak. You bet.
Now, when you tell them to take three inches down to non-existent, they ask some questions. And lucky for me, they did.
"You want to take all of this off, and completely shave it all?"
"Like Kojak. You bet."
"That's pretty drastic -- are you sure?"
"Here's the thing, I'm tired of always styling this mop, and plus, I'm a groomsman in a wedding this weekend and I need to look presentable, you know?"
"You're in a wedding this weekend? You really shouldn't shave it off, then. The groom will kill you."
"Oh, I'm pretty sure he wants to kill me anyway, but you're right. How would it look to go really really short, but not shaved bald? Just slightly longer than Timberlake on that magazine over there."
"That's a pretty good style for your head shape, and its really en vogue right now. You want to do that?"
"You bet."
Its a good thing I had a caring professional stylist. If she hadn't reminded me that showing up at Cliff's wedding this weekend with a shaved head would go over about as well as a vest of pork chops at a vegan conference, I'd have been in trouble.
So I dialed it back a notch and got it cut as close to shaved off as you can go without actually having nothing left. I don't know that I like it. I don't know that I hate it either. I do know I'm not ready to show it off here. The laughter over my Limp-Bizkit Goatee is enough ridicule for one day. But I do know its not as stupid as the orange/blonde days. And its definitely not as stupid as Fred Durst.
You bet.
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