JP's Guide To The Bald Lifestyle, Pt. I: The Shaving

Being bald has its advantages: Shorter showers, no more barber shops, and less time trying to figure out which shampoo is chemically balanced for your specific hair type.  Of course, there are down sides, too.  Chief among them is getting rid of the last remaning hairs that are still growing.

Iv'e been shaving my head for a few years now, and I have grown quite accustomed to it.  What I hate about it is the actual act of shaving.   It's archaic and borderline torture - dragging a bit of sharp metal across your scalp over and over, all different ways until your head looks like a swollen tomato.  Even with the expensive razors, I still manage to cut myself from time to time.

Enter the Panasonic Arc 4!  I got this beauty for Christmas after pondering aloud how an electric shaver would work on my misshapen skull.  The thing works great, and I totally recommend it to anyone who shaves their head as much as I do.  It's really a God-send for us bald types.

Before my first shave, I took my clippers and buzzed my hair as close as possible, to reduce the amount of work my new shaver had to do.  Then I lathered my head and went to town.

This thing was really smooth.  It felt great, easy to handle, and did a pretty great job - for the first few minutes. Then I noticed that it wasn't cutting as much hair as it was in the beginning.  I took the head apart, rinsed it out, and it fired up like new again.  So I'm thinking that it was just clogged with hair and shaving cream and whatnot.  Which is pretty good, considering I had already cut half my head.  These things are made for faces, not giant heads.  I also figured that the secret to a good shave is maintenance - keeping the hair short will make it easier to cut.  So the next day I did just that and gave myself a quick touch-up.  Perfection!

If you do end up getting this unit, the one tip I have is to keep your head damp.  I find that the Arc 4 doesn't cut as close dry as it does wet - even with shaving cream.  and if you do end up buying it, do us a favor and please buy it from one of the links in here, so I can get a little love for the referral.  Thanks!

Some Personal Bullshit

I share a lot of things on the radio.  Sometimes those things are 100% real, other times they are a blend of my real personality and whatever it is that I think people want to hear.  And, more often than not, I just make some shit up entirely simply to fuck with whomever might be listening.  It's fun!

Sometimes I wonder why I am such a cynical asshole.  Sometimes I know why.  But today really makes me think about it more than usual - 11 years ago today my Mom kicked the bucket on me.   Now, obviously I still have some feelings to cope with, but that is hard and takes lots of therapy (which I can't pay for), so after I spent the month following her death in a literal blackout, beer-induced and drug-fueled, I just pushed everything down.  And sure, for the first few months it was hard and I wrecked some relationships, but after a year or so it got easier. I highly recommend it.

Having a parent die unexpectedly on you is a really hard thing to understand.  Not so much in the way that makes you drop to one knee, lean your head back and cry out, "Why God have you forsaken me?!!!", but just in the "Oh fuck, what now" sense.  11 years later and I still don't know the answer to that one.

I guess it comes from not really having the chance to bond with my family at all, not just my mom.  My family has always been real weird about seeing one another, and as a little boy I never understood that.  But I am sure that's where I picked up my retarded sense of friendship and personal interaction.  Being close is too foreign for me to be comfortable with it.  I learned this from my father, which is one reason we no longer speak.  He tried to bring the family closer, but he tried too hard too fast, and when things didn't go his way he fucking put up a wall and quit, blaming everyone else for the failure.  I wish I could care more about him, but I hope he breaks a hip and runs out of pain meds.   Then shits himself.  Again.

Things like this can really leave you with an Asshole Vein, running the core of your personality.  I am an asshole, and I'm kind of just coming to terms with that.  After years of trying to be someone I'm not, well, sometimes you just have to accept certain shit.

What's my point?  I dunno.  Just venting.

P.S. - Since I forgot to add this at the time of posting, here is my little song of the post.  As if you cared. 

Acting! Er, Kind Of ...

I just returned home from being an actor - well, an extra for an International commercial, to run in the Netherlands, for some site called MyCom.  Well, I was supposed to be in it, but I got pulled out of the first scene and told I was being saved for a later scene.  Then that scene got pushed back, and after much waiting and a brief nap, I ended up being let go altogether.    Which is the breaks when doing extra work.  You still get paid, and you still get to hang out on a set, watching the magic of "Hollywood" swirl around you.  Plus there is Craft Services, which is always a plus.

What almost shocked me the most was how bloddy nice everyone was.  I mean, really and truly a pleasure to be around.  And it was fun just being around people like that - clearly in love with their jobs and clearly having a respect for who they were working with.

Even though I wasn't able to be in the project, I had a great time - OH, and I made a friend!   A nice black man named Dorian.  No, he doesn't have a picture of himself in his attic.  Yes, I asked.

Things Happened.  See?                                                           

Anyway, that was my night.  Not super exciting, but better than most.  Enjoy the video below, too.  Great song, with extra kitty footage.  That cat is being a very nice man!



This post written under the pleasant guidance of The Heptones: