Fashion and Grooming from the Pen of a Disheveled Man in SpongeBob Pajamas
Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT)- This is a public university in New York City where students go to plunge themselves into crippling debt and learn…what the hell do they learn? The name of the school is so confusing. Are they playing dress up with robots? Or are they learning how to 3D model a loom that’ll reduce deaths from loose clothing being snagged in the gears? No wait, I got it, they’re preparing PowerPoints that’ll instruct tech titans like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg on how to ditch those plain t shirts and jeans in favor of retro band tees and leather dog masks. Following the same formula as the Fashion Institute of Technology, I am founding an improvisational comedy school named the German Society of Lighthearted Ribbing and Whimsical Shenanigans. It’ll sit right next to my cooking academy, the Culinary Conservatory of Working Men with Stay at Home Wives. I am a rising sophomore at the Fashion Institute of Technology, maybe this year they’ll tell me if I’m heading towards a job in a bridal boutique or as a backend developer for an AI company!
New Barbers- There is taking a risk, then there’s committing to a haircut with a new barber. These are the only acceptable reasons for booking a cut with a new barber: being too far away from your regular barber (physically or emotionally speaking), your regular barbers’ untimely and sudden death (if you had known this was going to happen, you could at least have scheduled one final goodbye trim), and receiving a last-minute notification that you will be appearing as a contestant on that evening’s filming of the new gameshow sweeping the nation: American Ninja Warrior: Is It Cake? Edition. No matter what you tell a new barber about how you want your haircut to look, you’ll walk out of the appointment bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the reference picture you provided to the new barber to guide his work. The last time I went to a new barber I showed them a picture of a young Justin Bieber circa the “Baby” era, and told him that’s the trim I want, that’s the one that’ll make the ladies swoon. I might not have been able to get any play at my Bar Mitzvah, but with a Bieber cut I’d have no problem cleaning up at a local Jewish singles night. Instead of getting a Bieber cut, the new barber gave me something portentously titled, “The Dust Bowl”, which turned out to be a haircut done entirely without the use of water where they blow-dry your hair beforehand, making it the texture of “Bacalau”, or dried, salted cod from the Azores. From there, they placed an aluminum bowl on my head and cut around its circumference. I did not walk out of that barber shop a Belieber.
Even banter with a new barber isn’t as natural, as you lack rapport, and aren’t calibrated in terms of the amount of casual racism you are willing to divulge during the haircut, which we all know is a key predictor of barber-client relationship satisfaction. He made a joke about my curly sideburns, I fired back with something about him being loud at restaurants, but it didn’t go down well. At the end of my appointment, I reached into the candy bucket only to find out that it contained those strawberry hard candies with the wrapper that is meant to look like a strawberry, seeds and all, as well as root beer barrels. My regular barber would never cut corners on the candy selection. He would never cut corners in my sideburns either, making them resemble staircases. I stepped out of the shop with the shitty artificial strawberry taste coating my tongue. Two female passersby pointed up at my hair and laughed. The sun beamed down on my arid, straw-like hair and set it alight. I ran back into the store and smothered my smoking scalp with a Beisbol Mundial magazine from the waiting-room table, but the paper was low quality and cardboard-like, not glossy, so it too caught fire—something it’s cover star, Jose Reyes, hadn’t done in years—and started to crisp up. I tossed the magazine on the floor, strode back out the door, and walked away like a badass, never once turning to look at the fireball, but the smell of burning mofongo and the increasingly garbled lyrics to “Tití Me Preguntó” let me know my job was complete.