Wednesday, July 24, 2013

The Baldness Hall Of Fame

It was back in February 2003 when my pals and I took a road trip down to my pal Bryan's parents' condo in Florida.  SPRING BREAK, WOO!  The condo ended up being in a veritable retirement community (a good half-hour drive away from any beach) and it rained about half the time, so we spent more than a few evenings going to movies or just staying in to play Risk.  SPRING BREAK, BOO!

Anyway, we still got into the spirit of the trip by…dyeing our hair.  Yep, five university dudes in their early 20's decided the best way to commemorate this wild Spring Break* trip was to act like 11-year-old girls at a slumber party.  Compounding the hilarity was the fact that none of us actually knew how to properly dye hair, which led to some interesting colour combinations.  My pal Dave semi-burnt his scalp after applying twice as much dye mixture as necessary, and ended up with hair the shade of Lisa Simpson's dress. 

* = WOO!

The one holdout from this hair-dyeing madness was me, not since I was a killjoy, but because I had virtually no hair to dye.  I'd recently buzzed my hair from its usual Colin Mochrie-esque cul-de-sac of hair to a short buzzcut, in order to help hide the fact that I already had the hair of an old man at age 21.  Since I couldn't join in on the Florida hair extravaganza, I promised that once my hair grew back in, I'd dye what little I had left.  Frankly, my hope was that the guys would forget about this promise...

…but they didn't.  So in July 2003, I ended up colouring my hair blonde for an insane two weeks.  I say "insane" since my look ended up being, well, insane.  As noted, my hair crown already made me look old.  When dyed blonde, I looked not just old, but "old guy trying to look young."  I looked like Hulk Hogan if he really let himself go and started operating an ice cream truck.  After two weeks of looking like a straight-up idiot, I decided enough was enough.  I went to the barber (for the last time in my life, it occurs to me) and just told him to shave the entire thing off.  I had my first bald cut and since that date, I've kept up the cueball look through thick and thin and a thousand Lex Luthor jokes.

After only 10 years of being a full-on bald guy, I can hardly lay claim to being one of history's all-time great baldies.  (Though if you wanted to, I won't stop you.)  That said, what better way to commemorate my decade of baldness than to celebrate the legendary bald men who have not only rocked the chromedome look, but have paved the way for schlubs like me to also adopt said look and not be openly mocked for being follicularly challenged.  It is now time to present the inaugural class of the Baldness Hall Of Fame.

Criteria for the BHOF is pretty simple…. 

* you must be either completely bald or significantly balding!
* you must have a high moral character!  No terrible human beings in the BHOF, no sir!  (Exceptions could be made for fictional characters.)
* you must have achieved greatness, or at least significance, in your chosen field!
* your baldness must have in some small way affected your fame and/or the way people perceive you.

We are now accepting nominations for the BHOF's inaugural class.  We will select four people --- three actual humans and one fictional character.  The final determination of the inaugural class will be made by a panel of experts or just me, whichever takes less work.  Vote now, or forever hold your peace!

1 comment:

Chad Nevett said...

As a future bald man (it gets thinner every time I look...), I'll nominate three people and one fictional character:

Sir Patrick Stewart
Larry David
Stone Cole Steve Austin
Charlie Brown