How to Be Well-Groomed

The birth of the Metro-sexual......

Poor Sue and her stubby hands!

Separated at Birth

When I saw famed photog Annie Leibovitz in today's New York Times, I instantly flashed on famed director Martin Scorsese. Has anyone ever seen these two masters of the lens in the same room together?

(Pic of Leibovitz from Flickr user maxnoy.)

Hair Dress Through the Ages

Your Daily Loser & Jury Duty for May 10th

Your Daily Loser - "Honey, I can't find a babysitter to watch the kids while we go rob houses!" "That's ok dear, just bring them along." At least, I imagine that's what the conversation would have sounded like in the Santana household in April. Erika Santana of Queens, New York, had her two daughters in the get-away van when she was arrested, along with two men, for a whole crazy mess of felonies and misdemeanors. The Story.

Your Daily Loser Bonus For Mother's Day - It's a time honored tradition for kids to bring their mother breakfast in bed. But when this man let his kids try to cook breakfast, they set the kitchen on fire ... all the while mom is blissfully unaware upstairs. Oh sure, she heard "a commotion" but she thought the kids were arguing. Meanwhile, dad's rushing off to the hospital with badly burned hands. Remember Dads, on Mother's Day, only you can prevent kitchen fires.

Jury Duty - Either this is one of those things you do to yourself after a really long night of boozing it up with your friends, or if you hate yourself. Whatever the excuse, when Anna Clifford was arrested for driving under the influence, the mugshot officer had to make special allowances in order for her hair to fit into the picture. Her mother must be so proud. The Story. // The Mugshot.

Human Hair Clothes

CraftStylish.com has collected instructions on how to make yarn out of just about anything: newspaper, VHS tape, plastic bags, or human hair.

They link to a story about a Romanian woman, Ioana Cioanca, who made an entire wardrobe for herself out of her own hair. She's quoted as saying, "Long years I had to wait for my hair to grow so as to make clothes from it but I managed and I am very pleased now."

If you ever want to end a date early, that sentence, said exactly like that, could scare away almost anyone.

Sarah Palin Wigs

Paula Young, "America's Choice for Beautiful Hair," offers a full line of Sarah Palin Style Wigs and Hair Pieces... for those who have an urge to look just like Alaska' governor.

Oddly, some of the biggest fans of Sarah Palin wigs are Orthodox Jewish women, according to BusinessWorld Online. It has nothing to do with politics. Orthodox Jewish women wear wigs for religious reasons, and they like her look. They're also willing to pay $700 or more for that look.

Psych-Out

Once you have experienced the 1968 film PSYCH-OUT, you will be unable to return to your square, plastic, uptight lifestyle. Just the sight of Jack Nicholson's fake ponytail alone will trip you out!

Hair Rings

I wonder how many hair rings Pixie Market sells. At $286 a pair, they can't be flying off the shelves.

(It took me a while to figure out that these were actually ear rings with long pieces of human hair attached... not hair attachments.)

Family of the Mystic Arts

I have a friend who's a couple of decades older than me. Recently, he happened to mention that his daughter, when a teenager in the Sixties, had been a member of a hippie commune in Oregon, the Family of the Mystic Arts. He recalled that Life magazine had done a photospread on the commune back then.

I remarked that all of Life's photos were now online.

We found several photos. (Alas, his daughter is not pictured.)

One is posted below.

For the other two, I'm directing you to the Life archives, rather than reproduce them here.

Why?

Because they feature bare-breasted female children.

Yes, that's right. Due to the prevailing cultural insanity, this blog cannot safely feature photos which a general-interest G-rated magazine that sold millions of copies each week could show forty years ago.

So here's a little tribute to a more innocent and less paranoid time, when "weird" was almost the dominant cultural mode.

Offending Photo No. 1

Offending Photo No. 2

Hot Thrills and Warm Chills

What you will witness in the video to the right is the first few minutes of HOT THRILLS AND WARM CHILLS. (It's totally Safe for Work, though the film itself is not.) But the trailer can only begin to convey the true stupefying awfulness of the film.

The gal doing the dance is actress Rita Alexander, and she's the ringleader of a trio of female jewel thieves. She meets with her cronies in her apartment, where they discuss their sex lives, with flashbacks of some assorted mattress workouts. The gals are topless during these bouts, but both males and females retain their underwear during the tussles. The love noises are dubbed in, over unmoving or unsynced lips. And the mambo soundtrack makes everything seem as if it's taking place at a bullfight or a Herb Alpert concert.

Anyhow, the girls--who live in Reno--are planning a heist-- During Mardi Gras! That's right, I bet you never knew Reno had an annual Mardi Gras, and a "French Quarter" as well. But they do in this universe, even though all the exterior shots are plainly shot in New Orleans. Reno seems to have been chosen as "Sin City" because New Orleans wasn't bawdy enough!

Having outlined the heist, the girls go out on the town, to a club that features an energetic but awkward topless dancer. One gal picks up a stranger, but our protagonist decides to go home with a local cop she knows!

In due course, the fabled heist is committed--off camera and past tense! One cop chases the fleeing Rita and a pal through the Mardi Gras parade and into one of New Orleans' famous above-ground, crypt-filled cemeteries. Rita eludes him by darting into a crypt, but gets locked in. She freaks out--despite having plenty of air and light and a gun in her hand with which to shoot off the lock--and commits suicide, and the closing credits roll.

You may now pick your jaws up off the ground.

All original content in posts is Copyright © 2008 by the author of the post, either Alex Boese ("Alex"), Paul Di Filippo ("Paul"), or Chuck Shepherd ("Chuck"). All rights reserved. The banner illustration at the top of this page is Copyright © 2008 by Rick Altergott.