The End of an Era

My hair clippers rest in the medicine cabinet. It's been over a year now. The batteries have long been removed at sometime in desperation to change the channel when the TV remote control batteries died. I had planned on using them again as I had last year and the year before. Next to the clippers is a can of green hairspray. It too has gone unused for the last year. The discussion that ultimately led to the retirement of the clippers went something like this,


My wife: "Why?"

Me: "Because it's something I do every year."

My wife: "But you don't need a mowhawk this year."

Me: "I never need a mowhawk, but it's pretty cool."

My wife: "I could understand if they were coming this year, but they're not."

Me: "So, I still want to do it in protest."


And so the argument arises and quells over a period of about a week. A green mowhawk and seeing my favorite Irish punk rock band, Flogging Molly, three days before my birthday has been the extent of my celebrating for the last three years. For 364 days of the year, I blend into the crowd. But on one day, St. Patrick's Day, I become a green haired, mowhawked, punk rocker. In retrospect, green mowhawks blend in with the Flogging Molly crowd, so I blend in 365 days of the year. It's not that I particularly like blending in. I blend because some people in society can't see past the surface and take someone who looks different seriously. For more about blending in, see www.deanandnigel.co.uk. It's gotta be one of the funniest websites out there.

And so my wife and I come to a compromise. She gets to cut my hair and not in mowhawk fashion, but on St Patrick's Day, I get green hair. This whole argument wouldn't have been and I could just have my way if the only independent radio station in Phoenix hadn't done as Reel Big Fish once satirically suggested and sold out. First they get rid of the only morning DJ that has ever really made me laugh and replace him with the nasally, regrettable and forgettable Adam Corolla. Then they start playing nothing but Paramore, Katy Perry, the Offspring, and Kings of Leon. To top it all off, they fail epically in bringing to town the one sure thing that would have redeemed them. Flogging Molly not only didn't play in Phoenix this year on St. Patrick's day, they didn't play in Phoenix at all.

So my wife can thank corporate greed for this punk rocker's lack of a sweet green do. Edge 103.9, great work going from the best radio station in Phoenix to the worst.