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
You’re welcome. When your friend looks like Princess Leia in the first movie post a picture.
There used to be a pediatric radiologist at the University of Tennessee named Webster Riggs. He wrote a textbook on pediatric radiology in the 70s and was known for describing the Sam Browne sign on pediatric chest x-rays which had something to do with a shadow that crossed the chest like a Sam Browne belt. What the hell is a Sam Browne belt is what I asked then along with every medical student after me. I still don’t know know what it is but the point of this story is that Webster Riggs was also a marvelous storyteller who told stories as part of amateur competition and the best one I ever heard was about the time he had to go to a hair salon instead of his usual barber. I don’t think nose waxing had been invented back then but your reaction is much like Webster’s was when the hair stylist wanted to wash his hair before they started.
When we were dating, Ray used to rave about his hairdresser. He followed her from salon to salon for years. He has very fine hair which is difficult to cut well, so I understood. Once he gave me a gift certificate to her salon, so I went and had her cut my hair. Best haircut I ever had, but she was too expensive for my budget. A couple of years ago, she left her salon and set herself up with a mini-salon at her home. Now that we’re married, I finally gave up, and I only go to her for my haircuts, even if I have to drive 40 miles one way to get there. Now we sometimes go together. She actually gives me a discount from her normal rate, which I appreciate. I know she looks forward to seeing us-Ray used to talk about me all the time, and she was intrigued.
Sorry RB49, your story is horrifying on several levels. “Ray” may need an intervention
A Sam Browne belt worn by General of the Armies John. J. “Black Jack” Pershing.
The belt was developed and first worn by British General Sir Samuel Browne, who lost an arm (and won the Victoria Cross) taking a gun during the Indian Mutiny. Having one arm makes drawing a sword more difficult: the extra strap helped keep the scabbard down for a one-handed draw.
Now I know. At the time, Webster decsribed it as as the belt worn by crossing guards at school intersections and I never saw anyone wear a special belt at a school crossing.
I also agree with the Peyton impersonator that Ray needs an intervention.
Them too.
I figured it referred to the outside of the nose… Although a pair of tweezers is more than sufficient for that.
Have a great barber who has a concierge, his wife, who is dressed impeccably every time. You get soda, coffee and snacks on the house while you wait. He has a parrot which he keeps outside for passers by. There is music from the 30s playing. We talk about politics, gambling and other manly things. No waxing goes on here. He’ll do a hot shave with a straight razor if you ask though.
Electric razor ever two or three days keeps the wildman nose hairs at bay.
Back in the day (it must have been the mid 80’s), I was building a Ruby Tuesday in a mall in Tallahassee and let myself get out of control. There was a barbershop across the hall, and I treated myself to a haircut and a shave. The barber used a straight razor for the shave. She said the razor was the reason barbers had to be licensed by the state.
I try to keep my eyes on his face in order to avoid the issue. It is not true love which causes me to look at his brow or his chin, it is fear.
I demand silence. Any barber that tries to engage with me will receive dismissing grunts. I wanna get in and out quickly, with no chitchat.
Mrs Atkins likes the way I shave her legs better than she does…OooLaLa
Or that scene in
Or that scene in “The Dirty Dozen” where James Brown is gunned down after the grenade dropping run…Sorry I can’t see the keyboard through the tears
This is the kind of place only a MINO could enjoy.
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned that wholesale removal of nose hair is unhealthy. It’s probably the most important type of hair on the human body, with the exception of the tiny hairs inside the inner ear. It actually serves a function, and if you do any kind of woodworking, you know what that function is.
I must be terribly prone to infection, because pulling a single hair from my nose invariably causes pain and swelling in the nostril the next day. The idea of ripping them all out is horrifying.
I am reminded of the old barbershop I frequented when living in Brooklyn. They had cardboard displays offering nose hair trimmers, with the admonishment “DON’T PULL HAIR FROM NOSE. May cause fatal infection.”
The displays always conjured up the following scene in my mind:
Mourner #1: “I can’t believe Joe was taken from us at so young an age.”
Mourner #2: “It’s sad. I guess he didn’t own a Klipette.”
By the way, the shop in Brooklyn was old-school in every way: Italian barbers (brothers, of course), big blue jars of Barbicide, tiled walls and marble counters, and Frank Sinatra on the stereo – all day, every day.
I can still remember the poem from an old Dennis the Menace
cartoon, many, many, many years ago:
Zip, Zip,
Scissors & Snip.
Spare me an ear
and button your lip.