Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
What’s Up Your Nose?
I’m a guy. I know every word in Caddyshack. I like sports. I like beer. I like steak and potatoes. I actually like the coffee they serve where I get my car’s oil changed. I watch the Top Gear reruns with Jeremy Clarkson. The only movie that makes me cry is the ending to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (gets me every time). My blue jeans actually fit.
When I go to get a haircut, I want to read the newspaper and hear men talk about football.
My wife and I have a friend who works at one of these new men’s hair salons. Instead of going to the barbershop on the corner, I made the trip across town to the salon. Okay, they had televisions with the game on, but you couldn’t hear it over the classic rock. Instead of pictures of sports figures on the wall, they had some local artist’s paintings of a long-haired hippy guy playing a guitar. An entire wall was filled with different hair products and lotions. The decor looked just like the salon where my wife goes.
For goodness’ sake, not one car magazine or even a picture of a Ferrari on the wall. The whole place was designed to make women comfortable while they wait for their soccer-playing sons or their husbands and get their manicures. Oh, and the coffee from the fancy coffee maker in the reception area cost $.75.
But a haircut is a haircut, even if I can’t point to a picture of Bart Starr from 1960 and say, “I want my hair to look like that.” Not that my bald spot will ever let my hair look like that, but I can dream, can’t I?
Into the chair I went when it was my turn, trying to watch the Louisville-Duke basketball game between the shampooing, the hot towel, and the neck massage. That’s when I noticed on the sign of services offered, “nose waxing, $5.”
I asked my friend as she continued the massage, “Is nose waxing what I think it is?”
“Yes, I take a popsicle stick, put hot wax up your nose and pull the hair out.”
Somewhere in Guantanamo, some prisoner is being told, “It’s time for your nose waxing, Fayeed.” “No, no! I’ll talk! I know where we keep Hillary’s deleted emails!”
I imagine that the salon gives a free nose waxing to any customer who complains about being charged for coffee. After all, what kind of man volunteers to have the hairs pulled out of his nose en masse unless he’s guarding the last copy of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue from ISIS?
Don’t these boys with their ill-fitting pants and the multiple face piercings realize that you can buy a battery-operated nose-hair trimmer? That the process of removing nostril tree trunks is painless as long as the double-A battery works? When all else fails, scissors and a mirror have got to be preferable to paying $5 for medieval torture.
Since my hot towel and back massage were not interrupted by howls of pain from the next salon station, I am going to assume that the hot wax popsicle stick up the nose is not as popular as the herbal tea scalp treatment. But I have to ask, is there a safe word involved?
Published in Culture, General, Humor
I did not take out the trash (much). Nor did I vacuum. Or cook.
Did I mention that I was really charming?
Frou-frou Seattle has a couple upscale barbershops, where well-endowed babes in tight clothing bring you coffee in a china mug while you wait, browsing through luxury travel and high end car magazines.
After your barber (all men) completes your haircut, your babe is back to walk you to a shampoo sink, afterwards towel-drying your hair and giving you a shoulder rub. Vigorous and jiggly.
Upcharge compared to my local barber (who cuts hair solo in a converted railroad car)? About $20 more for the cut plus a suggested tipping scale of another 25% or so. IMO not worth it.
My wife thought I was charming until I told her I didn’t get married to do my own laundry, or when I told her to put that on tape for me and I’ll listen to it later. It didn’t help when I told her I was kidding and besides the guys at roll call thought that it was pretty funny.
There’s a whole bunch of stuff that is ever so funny rolling around in my head but then, uh, not well received when comes out the mouth.
It’s gotten to the point where the lovely and talented Mrs. Mongo will elbow me sharply when I start laughing to myself* because she knows there’s something inappropriate in there.
* As I age, and theoretically mature, I’m trying to learn to employ filters.
Mike Rowe got there first:
http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/dirty-jobs/videos/nose-hair-yank/
Poor Barsky…
http://tvgo.xfinity.com/watch/Dirty-Jobs/8662585056617845112/1602091928/Dirty-Jobs–Mike-Rowe-Waxes-Barsky/videos
The sheer glee that Mike expresses as he’s waxing Barsky is a joy to behold…
Mine does now, in old (antique?) barber chairs he finds and restores. Plus, haven’t seen the first hipster there yet
Whoa, whoa, no hot, manly tears at the endings of “Red Dawn,” or “Field of Dreams,” or “Shawshank Redemption,” or “Wrath of Khan,” or that “Band of Brothers” episode where both Bill Guarnere AND Joe Toye get their legs blown off and Buck Compton just loses it? Come on man! *Sniff*
Maybe Band of Brothers….and Ol Yeller. Not Red Dawn man, put your purse down and have a whiskey…neat
The best part of the hair receding is being able to sit down in a real barber shop and simply saying “hit me with a #2” and being done with it.
Though based on these reports I may need to fly to Seattle for the deuce.
I can just imagine the sounds of this … procedure gone wrong:
{screaming and whimpering}
“Hey! We got a bleeder in chair #5! Bring sawdust! Now, where’d that darn cauterizer get to?”
I’d rather wax than use a nose hair trimmer. Tried it once and my nose would not stop itching for a week.
-E
Just do it yourself at home. You can take it. I mean the old fashioned way, not with chemicals. If you’re dating or even if you’re not, visible hair there makes you look older. It’s in the book, “How to Succeed with Women.”
@42 CandE – what have you got against tweezers?
The women in my family were always saying Suffer to be beautiful. I was a bitter disappointment to them.
There used to be a barbershop about 5 min away from where I work. I could leave at noon, and if no one was waiting, get my hair cut and be back at the office by 12:15. My favorite barber ever.
The Swiss Army knife is great for this. That’s exactly what I use.
Dad’s bought a little electric nose razor, though, and he’s made a very nice maple-wood box to keep it in.
Whenever I watch Jefferson gets shot at the end of The Dirty Dozen I am always unhappy.
End of Blackhawk Down. Every time I see those muldoons have to hoof it back behind the M113s, well my allergies just kick off. Plus I knew some of those guys, and I wasn’t there, so, yeah. Squirtsville.
I drive many miles out of my way to go to http://www.garysbarbershop.net. Just guys who cut your hair and talk about sports. All you have to say is, “Like this only shorter.”
Nothing, it’s my preferred method.
-E
This was great!
Has to make you appreciate what gay men go through, right? The chest wax, the back wax . . . I’m sure there’s more but I won’t go there.
Reminds me of this testimonial:
Thank you, James. I laughed all the way through.
I have a lady who is a barber, at least I call her “my barber” because given my relative lack of hair, especially on the dome, all she can do is cut it to make me happy, and then wait six weeks for the next appearance. Its a pretty simple job if one can use some scissors and then a machine which trims the back of the neck.
I do have the battery-operated item that clears the wreckage in my nose and also doubles for clearing the hair out of my ears. I have a friend who could use that service. His ears look like he is growing hair earrings that look like ugly buttons on the inside of his lower ears. It is horrible but we are men and I won’t volunteer that information. If his wife doesn’t care, well who am I?
Its a man thing.
Marine Corps Recruit Depot, it took less than a minute and any bumps on my scalp became bloody. It was free.
Just had to set my purse down for a second and add at least two episodes of “Firefly,” and **spoiler** when Wash buys it in “Serenity.” There. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going have a mani-pedi and fiddle with my hair.
Wax?!? That’s what God created tweezers for. I use them puppies and see how much I can yank out at any one time just to toughen myself up a bit. A great game with this is to see how many yanks you can get before you have to sneeze.
The thought of a barbershop does sound nice though. I haven’t been to one in nearly 12 years though, since my shaved head doesn’t exactly have need of the skizzers, buzzers, or someone elses razor. That said, I do miss the smokey ol’ barbershops I used to go to with my dad and brother. I suppose I couldn’t find one anyway since ’bout every place ’round has “No Smoking” laws that tend to downgrade the atmosphere of certain joints.
In the local grocery there was on offer a little hand-held tricycle with blades. It was for smoothing off the Chrome-Dome; for driving all over the top of one’s head. I thought that gadget enchanting, so much so that I regretted having no use for one. So, is it really a useful thing? And fun?
Great misquote rebark.
I recall a magazine ad for a nose hair trimmer as a gift idea “For The Man You Look Up To.”