Mr. Roboto Is Scary

My daughter, Madeleine, will turn eight years old in a few days.  My two-and-a-half year old son, Christian, already gave her the birthday card he picked out for her.  It’s one of those musical cards, the kind you open up and a song starts to play.  The one he picked out plays the (in)famous chorus from “Mr. Roboto.”  Just in case you sat out the ’80s, it goes like this…

Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.  Domo…domo.  Domo…domo.

The card is festooned with images of friendly and silly looking robots.  Both of my kids thought the whole thing was quite hilarious.  They danced around the living room doing their best versions of The Robot and can now say “Thank you very much” in Japanese, which is sure to come in handy in suburban NJ.

Not content to leave well enough alone, I had a fatherly flash of brilliance.  “You know,” I said to them, “‘Mr. Roboto’ was a song from when Daddy was growing up.  Let’s try to find the video on-line.  Wouldn’t that be fun?”

They agreed that, yes, it would be fun and about five seconds later, we huddled around the laptop to watch the “Mr. Roboto” video – which turns out to be one of the freakiest five minutes and 33 seconds ever committed to film. 

First of all, there is Dennis DeYoung, the lead singer of Styx, who sports a perm AND a lavender jumpsuit in the video.  Maybe, just MAYBE, you could get away with one of those two things.  But BOTH?!  Not even in 1983, pal.   Then, there are the lyrics, which make absolutely no sense, especially the closing line, “I’m Kilroy!  Kilroy!  Kilroy!”  Are you now?

But the video achieves true freak-show status because of Mr. Roboto himself.  He is one scary fucking robot.  This became apparent to me after about 12 seconds of watching the video with my kids, and here is where moms differ fundamentally from dads.  A mom would simply recognize her error in judgment and stop playing the video.  It’s scary and who wants to scare a child?  As a dad, my reaction was to gut it out.  We started watching the “Mr. Roboto” video and, goddamnit, we’re going to watch the whole goddamn thing if it kills us!  Well, no one died, but my daughter shared with me the other night that she is STILL having nightmares about Mr. Roboto.  Father of the year!

Domo arigato for nothing, you stupid bucket of bolts.

First… Brush with Death

As a father of two children (seven and two), I often wonder how anyone lives much past the age of five these days.  So many things can go wrong and the greatest argument I can muster that there is, in fact, a God rests in the knowledge that things very rarely do.  In my forty years on the planet, for example, I can think of only one time when I actually came close to dying. 

My friend, Andi, had a share in a ski house in Vermont and she invited me to join her one weekend.  This was probably in about 1995 or so.  I don’t ski (very high center of gravity, shitty knees, a chronic dislike of the cold), but I was unattached at the time and had a sense that “ski house” was synonymous with “drunk chicks” and so I readily agreed to make the trip. 

Andi and I left from her house in Connecticut on Friday night.  The weather was just awful.  It was raining, snowing, and sleeting like mad and the conditions on the roads were rapidly deterioriating.  There were a few times when tractor-trailers would blow past us on the highway, spewing so much snow and water onto our windshield that it was virtually impossible to see.

“Jesus Christ, Andi,” I said.  “I think we should think about stopping somewhere for the night.”  (This was not a cheesy ploy to get Andi in bed; I was genuinely scared and we were just friends.)

Andi was hell-bent on getting to Vermont.  Her friends were already up there.  “Let’s keep going,” she said.  “It’s fine.”

You probably think that my near-death experience happened that night, but even Andi eventually conceded that the roads were undriveable  We stayed at a Motel 6 or something like that and finished the drive to Vermont the next morning.

It was a skier’s paradise.  All of that rain and sleet in Connecticut had been nothing but snow in Vermont.  There had to be a foot of it on the ground.  We suited up at the ski house and Andi, one of her friends, and I got into Andi’s car for the quick drive to  the slopes.

The snow from the night before had been plowed to the sides of the road, but there was so much of it that the roads were quite narrow.  We came up over a little rise and a big-ass snowplow was coming in the other direction.  Andi eased her car to the right to give the snowplow enough room to pass us, but she went a bit too far.  The car caromed off the five-foot-high snowbank along the roadside and we shot right across the road directly into the path of the snowplow.

“Oh, Andi,” her friend said in a tiny, sad little voice from the backseat.  Holy shit, I thought.  We’re going to die.

Andi tried to steer the car back into our lane, but it was too late.  The plow of the snowplow ripped into the front of Andi’s car and we went spinning around and around down the road.  I’m guessing that we spun around four or five times.

The car finally came to a stop and I realized that, no, we weren’t dead.  In fact, we weren’t even hurt.  The driver of the snowplow came running over to us.  We all got out of the car and surveyed the damage.  The front of Andi’s car was all torn up.  Pieces of her bumper lay scattered behind us on the road.  The police came and reports were filed.

Andi, God bless her, still wanted to hit the slopes, but I had lost what little “skiing mojo” I had.  I stayed in the lodge, drinking to my good fortune.  I bumped into one of Andi’s friends, who mentioned that he was going to be leaving the ski house early.  I bummed a ride from him and we made it back home without incident.

There is a wonderful line in the animated movie “Chicken Run.”  One of the chickens believes she is going to have her head cut off, but the evil farmer, Mrs. Tweedy, is merely measuring her to see how fat she is getting.  (Mrs. Tweedy wants to kill all of the chickens eventually to make chicken pot pies.  Spoiler alert!  She fails and the chickens all live happily ever after.) 

“I saw my entire life flash in front of my eyes,” the chicken says with great relief.  “It was very boring.”

B Is for Barber Shop

I do not get my haircut at salons.  I go to barber shops, baby.  Unlike John Edwards, I get my haircut for $15.  That’s 26 haircuts for me; one for Mr. Edwards.  Today, I went to a new barber shop, the Fanwood Clipper, just down the street from my new apartment in my new hometown.  Lots of new things, to be sure, but a new barber?  Now, THAT is significant.

As a child, I got my haircut at Woodmont Haircutters in Milford, CT.  Pat was my barber and he was a nice enough guy.  He called me “Thomas,” not “Tom” and I’m not really sure why.  At a certain point, my mom stopped accompanying me to see Pat and so I had to pay him myself, which I found to be quite awkward, especially the tipping part.  A ten-year old tipping a forty-year old?  In retrospect, I’m sure he didn’t give a shit — money is money, after all — but I thought it was odd.

In college, I got my haircut at a barber shop called Phil’s on the Yale campus in New Haven, CT.  Karl was the barber you wanted.  He was no better of a barber than any of the other guys in the shop.  But at the end of the haircut, Karl would give you a scalp rub that would transport you to another universe.  The running joke among me and my roommates was that heaven on earth would be Karl rubbing your scalp while a woman (any woman, really) gave you a blowjob.  I never pulled that one off, sad to say, but I’m young yet.

After college, I moved to New York City and began getting my haircut at a barber shop in Grand Central Station.  Tony was my barber there, a lovely, and ancient, guy, who cut my hair for several years before he went to that great barbershop in the sky.  Tony’s big finishing move was swaddling your face in a scalding hot towel.  He would slap it on there and pat it a few times, just to ensure that no follicle was left behind.  Oh, man, that was good stuff.

For the past several years, I’ve been getting my hair cut at the Towne Barbershop in Westfield, NJ.  This is such the quintessentially American barber shop that they routinely film television commercials there.  More importantly for me, they open at 7:00 a.m.  What a way to start the day!

I keep my hair short, so if it gets too long, I get very uncomfortable.  There is a “point of no return” for me with my hair, actually.  One day, it’s fine.  The next — whoa, mama! — it’s time to get a haircut.  A few years ago, I was in desperate need of a haircut, but could never seem to get myself to the Towne Barbershop either before work in the morning or after work in the evening.  One day after work, I began driving around town, looking for someplace — anyplace — to get my haircut.  I found myself in the one African-American neighborhood in Westfield and, sure enough, there was a barber shop, open for business.

I walked in and was reminded of those moments in “Ally McBeal” when something strange or awkward would happen and the record would just scratch hideously.  I’m sure they thought I had popped in to ask for directions or something. 

“Can I get a haircut?” I said enthusiastically. 

One of the guys — they were all fairly young — motioned me to have a seat in his chair. 

“Short all around.” I said, as I’ve been saying to barbers since about 1978.

The barber took out a comb and poked at my hair a bit.  He looked confused.

“Short all around?” he repeated. 

“That’s right,” I said.

“Come with me,” he said, after he tentatively ran the comb through my hair a few more times.  He led me to the back of the shop.  A yellowed poster of various white-guy haircuts hung on the wall.  “Any of these?” he said.

“That one,” I said and he gave it his very best shot.  A typical haircut for me lasts about 15 minutes.  I was in that barbershop for a good hour. 

Today’s haircut was excellent, though it’s always hard to tell right off the bat.  It cost $15 and took about 15 minutes.  $20 plus tip.