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Hardluck Jersey |
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Who Loves Ya, You Balding Bastard At least I found out I was going bald in a cool way; a beautiful woman running her fingers in my hair during an intimate moment, interrupting with a simple, weighted question: “are you going bald?” Of course I spent many subsequent intimate moments with a hand held mirror held behind my head in front of a stationary one after that revelation. It could be worse; at least I was in my mid thirties when the tyranny of male pattern baldness decided to claim my scalp. Besides, I’m pretty tall, and you would have to be as well to see the balding spot; and the front, although beginning to recede, still looks respectable when I remember to buy the extra volume shampoo. The seventies were a sturdier built time: the phones were heavy, sent signals to the central telephone office with a rotary dial, and were as wireless as the bras. The cars were made of metal; the guns were made of metal as well: police issued thirty eights, six rounds in a cylinder. I read an article recently about the old style police guns issued to the New York Police force. They stopped handing them out in 1993 when the new recruits were issued Glocks made from a remarkable new substance called ‘plastic’, (relax gun nuts; I know Glocks aren’t all plastic, we all just like to think they are.) In 1973 though, there was a cop who wasn’t toting a piece of plastic around the streets of New York (besides his Player’s Card), and he wasn’t whining about going bald on the internet. His name was Theo Kojak, and when he ran into a problem he addressed it. Going bald, shave your head. Smoking a few too many long, thin black cigarettes, assuage the oral fixation with some lollipops. Want to spend some time hanging with the high rollers in Vegas, film a few episodes where you have to bring the whole Manhattan South Precinct to Nevada to investigate the casinos: and have Liberace guest star. There aren’t too many thirty eights hanging on cop belts in New York anymore; and, outside of the Hassidic community, there aren’t too many guys dressed in Botany 500 suits with matching hats perched jauntily on their heads either. Kojak drove a rarely washed shit-brown Buick Century, his office was painted a shade of green thankfully retired in 1980. He didn’t seem to have a life outside of police work. Many episodes would begin or end with Kojak either waking up or falling asleep on his office couch. What Kojak lacked in a ride or a crib he more than made up for in threads: the man knew how to dress. There are several episodes where he’s wearing a full length fur coat. I think more than one cuddly animal was harmed during the filming of these treasured shows. Kojak even went disco during the last couple of seasons, dressed in silk shirts unbuttoned to highlight the jewelry against the chest hair. Kojak had a reputation as being a realistic police show for it’s time, but there are slip ups, especially in the first season. I’m halfway through watching season one on DVD and some blatant ones come to mind. Kojak fires his weapon a lot during the first couple of episodes, shooting two bad guys at different points in at least one show. I seem to recall him using his gun a lot less in the later episodes, where he wouldn’t even bother chasing the criminals. He’d just yell out the names of the guys working for him, ‘Crocker, Stavros, Rizzo, Saperstein’ and let them do the heavy work, allowing him to casually stroll up and crack wise after all the excitement. In another early episode he has to call the bomb squad to remove a bomb from a limo. The squad show up in bad seventies suits, (apparently you had to be earning at least a lieutenants salary to afford Botany 500). One of them crawls under the car; removes the bomb without using any tools other than the hands god gave him (no doubt Palmolive soft, this was the seventies after all), carries it over to the bomb squad van, puts it into some kind of cooler like device, and they drive off. These guys were real men, no police barriers or protective armor for them. Kojak drank, gambled, womanized. He knew everyone in the city, from the small-time hoods and prostitutes to the high level mobsters and city councilmen. He wasn’t opposed to bending the rules, but there were lines he wouldn’t cross. My other favorite bald cop, Vic Mackey, on the other hand, begins the first season of ‘The Shield’ shooting a fellow cop in cold blood after he finds out that the cop is spying on him and his strike team. Mackey is different than Kojak in many ways: he has a family, drives a brand new SUV and dresses casually. They both are quick with a wise crack, but Mackey takes a much more hands on approach to police work. Both cops are identified with their cities, Mackey’s LA and Kojak’s New York, but their personalities seem almost reversed with the personalities of their respective beats; with Kojak being laid back, almost LA style and Mackey in your face New York style. Both TV shows have a very noir feel to them. Kojak often gets his snitches and associates in trouble, and sometimes killed. Mackey usually cuts out the middle man and kills them himself; and Mackey has his fate hanging over him: right from the first episode, when he puts the bullet in his brother cop. He’s trying to go straight this season, but I doubt he’ll meet with any success. Why are my favorite cops bald? Am I going bald in sympathy with them? I don’t know, but the example set by these fine follicle challenged men has made the whole process a little more bearable. It’s the year 2005 as I write this. If you asked me in 1973 what I thought my life would be like when I was pushing forty, my seven year old self would probably say that I’d begin my day with my chimpanzee butler, dressed appropriately in a tasteful green jump suit, laying out my breakfast, consisting of a nutritious food pill washed down with a glass of Tang. I’d walk out to the garage, and if the day was too nice to take my flying car, I’d strap on my jet pack for my commute to work as a supervisor at the Soylent Green processing plant, my flowing locks buffeted by the wind. Sure, some things are better now than in 1973, things no one thought of. Home computers, wireless phones, the George Forman Grill, casual Friday’s, reliable high tech penis enlargement devices, the fact that no American is still giving serious thought to converting everything to the metric system; but we haven’t yet hit the mark on the important things. We’re not all speaking Esperanto, there’s only two people living in a space station, not the thousands who should be experimenting with weightless sex that was promised in the seventies, and no-one has come up with a cure for baldness. Sure they’ve made amazing strides in comb over technology in the last few years, you know, instead of combing over from only one side, why not grow your hair a little longer on both sides as well as the back, and comb over from multiple angles, catch the scalp in a crossfire of hair. I’m planning on it, and I’m confident no one will notice. But even I know I won’t be able to keep up this charade for more than a few years. Once the follicles start to retreat they don’t come back, and they seem to run farther each year. I wish General Patton was still around to order the troops back to the front lines. Every once in a while you hear about some guy who gets struck by lightning, the electricity somehow stimulating the follicles back into life. Barring this lucky event, I think I’ll eventually go the route of Kojak and Mackay and take it down to the scalp. At least my completely hair-free dome will be in good company, and my synapses would probably fire on a more consistent basis without the extra insulation keeping the heat in. Pat Lambe Copyright(c) 2005 by Pat Lambe
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