HAIRCUT BY RING LARDNER JAMES LILEKS. March, 1997:

My regular barberette, B., was out today, and in her stead, to my astonishment, was last year's stylist, M. - a cheerful young woman...

We had a good talk - that's one of the main reasons I go to her. I can't stand awkward conversation while I'm getting my hair cut... given how animated I get on certain subjects, it's good we don't talk politics, or I'd get a scissor-point in the eyeball...

Hollywood, after all, convinced us all that the mentally ill are just rebels, difficult people, no more or less sane than the rest of us, sanity being a socially constructed invention. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" - a great movie - probably did more damage to the mentally ill than all the lobotomies and shock treatments combined...

April 1, 2004:

...today I got a Madge. A fifty-plus haircutter who still had a hint of Winstons in her voice. You don’t want a wash? We don’t have to do a wash. I’d say more, but I just realized there’s a column in that, and I have to write a column tomorrow. Enough to say that it was a great cut, and I left feeling that wonderful I’m too sexy for my head feeling you get after a good haircut...

I know this paints me as a buffoon of the tenth magnitude, but I don’t care what France thinks, and I wonder why some are so eager to seek their approval...

June 3, 2004:

Never get the same stylist twice. Never. The last one was a classic Madge in the old wisecracking Lark-smoker beautician mode. This time I got someone who had learned some odd things at the Stylists Academy. There were moments when I wondered just what, exactly, she was doing. The shampoo, for example: at some point it just veered into some odd thumb-based scalp massage. I don’t like to get my hair washed by other people anyway. I generally prefer that strangers keep their hands out of my hair. Particularly if they’ve spent the day with their hands in other people’s hair...

Lenny Bruce was celebrated for offending the right people, and this enshrined the act of offending as some sort of brave stance against The Man, The Grey-Flannel Suited Establishment, the whole Ike-Nixon Axis of Medieval, the straights. Gotta offend the straights or you’re not doing your job...

June 13, 2006:

Then it was my turn. I almost asked the stylist if she remembered when the hallway was a dead end, but thought better of it. Yes or no, there’s really nowhere you can go after that...

Drove home. Two squad cars outside an apartment building. The conclusion to the afternoon’s story, perhaps. Fixed myself leftover pizza...

June 26, 2006:

The haircut was quick and cheap, and this time I had a well put-together stylist who did not seem to give off waves of regrettable but largely unexamined backstory. I read an article in the Weekly Standard about the Ahmadinejad letter. The stylist wanted to talk, but for once I didn’t. Because I have a bad feeling about this, as George Lucas wrote...

December 22, 2006:

My stylist was unpleasant. Usually I get a cheerful lass with a balloony bosom (displayed for all to see, so we can marvel at the tattoos) but this time I got a sullen minx who radiated indifference and self-regard... I made the first tentative offering of small talk, which was backhanded away with a grunt. Fine; I’ll just sit here, then, recalculating the tip.

Do you use scissors? she asked.

I had no idea what she meant. I mean, I did, inasmuch as she had scissors in her hand like every other person who’s ever cut my head, and I had entered into the transaction with the assumption, however unvoiced, that scissors would be involved anew, but I didn’t quite understand, and asked her what she meant.

Do you use scissors? On your hair?

No, I don’t, I said, carefully, but the people who cut my hair do?

That satisfied her. Pissed her off, too, but it satisfied her. (Later my wife explained that she was asking if I would rather have a razor cut, because now they’re offering to cut your hair with a razor....)

Spare me the emails about how I shouldn’t have tipped her at all! It was a decent enough cut, and she has to make a living. I just won’t use her again. I’m North Dakotan that way. I’ll show the little snit what I think, and tip her exactly what the custom demands...

July 19, 2007:

I failed to undertip Little Miss Sullen, the hair stylist I keep getting at the chop-shop where I get shorn every third fortnight; usually she’s a miserable little scowling pill, but this time we didn’t talk at all, and things went well...

...at least I didn't forget Bleat Radio Theater. This is an odd one from the 50s, from CBS Radio Workshop. It’s a “humorous” Cold War “parable” set on a planet populated by vegetables...

October 4, 2007:

Went to the Mall Wednesday night to get hairs cut; had a daffy stylist with a bosom tat and a fractured patter that made me wonder what she was doing to my head. Without my glasses, I can’t tell. She did a great job, but she also dumped half the snipped hair down my collar, and I walked around the mall itching and twitching...

Outside the sun was low, the weather warm; it felt like a summer day. I remembered what my stylist had said about the weather: it’s too cold, I want it to be cold. And I twitched and itched some more and headed to the car. Soon enough, dear...