So what have I been up to since I dropped off Facebook? Same old stuff, but just not including anyone else or publishing what I’ve done. For the most part. I have been trying to keep up on what’s new in people’s lives, offering stray likes and comments here and there. Just not posting a bunch of stuff like I used to. But I have been keeping busy. Reading, writing, bingeing. And watching my hair grow. Here is how that went.
As a baseline, this is me on November 4, 2019.
Here I am on January 14, 2020, wearing the same sweatshirt (we’ll come back to that in a little while). I had just turned 60 and was still trying to get my head around that when the rest of 2020 hit.
Three and a half months later (May 5), things are well underway. COVID-19 is a thing and so is my growth.
Sorry I don’t have any in between pictures, but I’m not much of a selfie artist. These photos were taken at the behest of others. Fast forward to November 6, one year and two days after the baseline photo.
Ohhhh, this deserves a side-by-side comparison.
Damn, that year aged me. Still, I am impressed by how much foliage I was able to grow in just 12 months.
Had there been a Halloween that year, I had my costume all set. Since there wasn’t a Halloween, I finally got around to dressing up and documenting it on December 8, knowing that I would soon be ridding myself of the beard. It was a sort of Gandalf/Merlin hybrid. I recycled parts of Toni’s witch costume from several years earlier and added my wizard staff, to good effect I think.
But the time had come to rid myself of the extra weight. And I took the opportunity to do something I always wanted to try. Muttonchops!
If it’s good enough for Presidents Martin Van Buren and Chester A. Arthur, it’s good enough for me. Well, it was until I saw a movie. A silent movie. And suddenly, the muttonchops paled in comparison to what I saw there…
Oddly enough, Barrymore was not the source of my amazement. It was one of his two buddies in the movie.
Time for a closeup.
Turns out—as is true of all outstanding facial hair styles—it has a name. It’s called a Hulahee, Because nothing this extraordinary deserves a moniker of lesser prestige. I had to have one.
December 12, 2020: the transformation.
Just look at the years melt away! But how did I do in the Hulahee department?
Nailed it.
(Coincidently this was the same day I took a picture of a faux Star of Bethlehem in anticipation of the cloudy skies that would surely obscure the exciting alignment of Jupiter and Saturn that was to occur near year’s end. I was not disappointed: it rained all day and there was not a star in the sky to be seen, miraculous or otherwise. The photo is a reflection of a reading lamp on my TV screen.)
And not to slight the star of the Svengali, here is John Barrymore, who could easily beat me in a wizard costume competition (and he still isn’t his creepiest here: his Mr. Hyde beats all).
Martha Mansfield’s emotional range in just a few seconds in this scene matches Barrymore’s 100%, although approaching from opposite directions.
My variations in hair have a long history. 2020 was not the only year this sort of thing has happened. Witness what happened a little over a decade ago. (Yes, I have posted this next bunch of shots before, but they have become relevant again.)
And it goes back even further. 30 years further back.
1976, 1977, and 1978 school pictures. You’re right! It’s the same shirt in the first two pictures. I am still guilty of the same crime 45 years later. And while there is a vast improvement in my personal appearance overall in the last shot, I still must deduct major points for the leisure suit even though we all were wearing them at the time. Conformity was never my strong suit (is that a pun?), so my fashion sense should have had more sense.
And what about all that hair that came off my face?
I know it looks like something out of a 1970’s porno, but really it’s just a beard without a face in the sink. I won’t even go into how much beard hair resembles pubic hair, even before I shaved it all off. It’s one of the reasons I was not sad to see it go. That and the shedding. I hadn’t counted on that at all.
There you have it. 2020 in a nutsack. I mean nutshell. I am also very much looking forward to getting my hair cut, but it needs to be a certain length before I can donate it to Locks of Love. I’m so close now, I guess I can stick it out for another little while. And I hope—as do we all—that 2021 is a brighter year all around. Now, for some hair of the dog.
