Journal Bill Dog's Journal: young hipster, you are old 11

It was only a short while ago, on the game show Jeopardy, that I first heard the term "fauxhawk". But then I myself haven't been hip in quite some time.

Doing something with my hair first transitioned from my mom to me (or maybe there was a "no one" period in between those) about mid jr. high. It was the late 70's and everyone had long (over the ear), feathered, center-parted hair. So so did I. Note that it was partly because, well at least in my experience, jr. high was by far the time where kids were the most immature. They'd/we'd constantly be looking for something to make fun of, and at that age and mentality, the same old joke never ever got old -- the days of almost literally infinite energy and juvenility. So basically it was best to blend in when you could.

I continued with this hair thru high screwl, even tho in the early 80's it was quickly going out of date. Hair styles were partly linked to musical tastes then. In elementary school we all listened to disco, in jr. high we all listened to classic rock, but in high screwl the New Wave scene came along, and most of my friends went with it. But I still liked Led Zeppelin and Van Halen et al., and despised the synthesizer sound. So most of my best friends going back to kindergarten suddenly wore I guess the Flock of Seagulls hairdo. Which cracks me up because it makes me think of Barf.

So the summer before I went off to college I picked a side to part my hair on (the right, and randomly, tho I later heard something about that might have been a signal for being gay, but maybe someone was just giving me crap), and got it cut above my ear, to not look so much like a 70's reject. By then the hairstyle I had skipped over was going out of style, so I once again looked like my peers. However that didn't last forever. I'm still wearing that same hairstyle basically, with the part in the exact same place that I moved it to when I was 18, except with the hair on the top of my head almost gone, it auto-morphed into a comb-over (and now unfortunately it can more accurately be described as "the remnant of a comb-over"). But in the meantime, males had moved on to spiked hair.

Which I could never figure out. I just shampooed my head to get the grease out, and now I'm expected to immediately put some grease back in? No thanks. So it's been the Bart Simpson I guess hairdo that's been in for a while. The kids were all doing it for the longest time. Men around my age added the goatee, and voila, they were complete, as this established, cliched look has persisted a while, a long while it seems. I should note before proceeding that I still have my 70's moustache, so I guess I didn't completely look like my peers in college. (And now I look like some reject from the Reno 911 "comedy" show.) But I never did the narrow beard, nor the chin fuzz thing. I guess we all choose what kind of ass we want to look like.

Anyways, in the last year or so I've noticed that the kids are starting to finally get away from that. I don't have kids or watch kid shows nor am I a pedo, so you'll forgive me if I'm late to this party too. But now it seems swoopy hair, locked somehow in gravity-defying directions, is the latest style. This kid was doing some zit commercial on TV one night. I guess it's some "the wind is always blowing and it's always coming from behind me" look or something.

Saw this kid in some "Fred" movie while flipping thru the other night. I couldn't linger too long because he continuously spoke in a prolly purposefully obnoxious voice.

And saw this kid on youtube and somewhere on TV. That's like a comb-over for young people! Comb it forward and over, for the forehead is evil and must be stopped! And no need to grow sideburns -- just comb down over the front of the ear, part of what you combed forward! From Google Images it looks like he tried some other things before perfecting the swirl-around hairdo, like too greasy, and too Blago.

Hmm, maybe that's where this stuff is coming from. Or maybe the even earlier prototypical swoopy-haired dude, The Donald. (It's almost a science, of how to get maximal swoopiness.)

But in any case, if you're still sticking your hair up with gel or mousse or whatever metrosexual gunk you use nowadays, and esp. if you're still wearing that miserably beaten-to-death goatee and/or lower-lip bush, in case you hadn't noticed, you're officially old. Only you and your fellow old men buddies think you still look cool. But today's hipsters are moving on, and leaving you behind, to your oldness.

I hope I live long enough to see the same go for tattoos.