Bitch, Grow Your Bangs Out!

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BGYBO: Episode 16 Transcript

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Hi everyone! It's time once again when we examine what is quite possibly the worst possible choice in hairstyle a woman can make in this day and age. Sure, there are many ill-advised coifs that can be strutted about the town to achieve whatever degree of reaction or attention one wishes to squeeze out of an unsuspecting and undeserving public, but none so insidious, none so wholly disturbing as... the too-short bangs! Unattractive, unnecessary, impractical, gross. Hopefully, throughout the course of our program, we'll be able to knock some sense into the zeitgeist of TYOOL 2008 and prevent this atrocity from spreading any further as we start a brand new year. And so, without further ado...




*raucous applause*

Our first subject today is, sadly, an entire organization. While certainly every member of this group isn't guilty of the over-cropped coiffure, they are nonetheless complicit in the proliferation of the 'do as something to be considered attractive, even desirous. In this, they are somehow more diabolical than the most casual bang-trimmer. Ladies and gentlemen...




*chiding and derision*

Looking at Les Dammes de JeKylliendo, I can't help but wonder exactly what it is that links them all together into one big classification. I mean, superfluously you could say "tattoos." You could say "piercings," right? You wouldn't be incorrect in saying "an aversion to the sun." But really, what these chicks are selling is this: It's sexy to look terrible. I'm not saying some of these girls aren't attractive, but it's a tragic, ruined attractiveness that you feel accomplished for having found under layers of foundation and stainless steel. It's the same problem with the entire rockabilly aesthete. It's a beauty you want to rescue, not admire, and that is the soul of this program. There is hope for you yet, Suicide Girls! Let your piercings heal over! Save up for laser tattoo removal! Stop slathering on the fleshtone! And, for God's sake...




*applause*

Now that we're underway, and now that some of our new viewers have something of an understanding of what we're trying to accomplish here, let me get a little more obscure. I recently watched an unreleased independent horror film that was written by the same person who starred in the leading role. Did she also direct the movie? Probably. I can't imagine she could have gotten the part any other way. I couldn't find out for sure, as I was far too distracted by this...




*hissing* *booing* *gagging sounds*

I won't say the name of the film, to spare the poor girl, but this raises a good point about the TSBs (Too-Short Bangs). Our research indicates that many of the women who perpetrate this haircut actually think they look good. And I don't necessarily mean they think the haircut looks good. I mean they consider themselves attractive. This, studio audience, is a notion we must strive to disavow them of at all costs. This haircut isn't doing this woman any favors. Look at the heavily shadowed eyes. The lumpy chin and the perfectly conical nose leading down to the exposed nostrils. The long, craning neck. None of this is superficially ghastly but, when paired with the TSBs, does it start to remind you of anyone? Anyone you may have seen in... perhaps... another horror film?...




*gasps*

"I know! I'll get the same haircut that fucking Frankenstein had! THAT WILL LOOK FUCKING FANTASTIC!"

Now I'm not trying to be mean. Far from it. I'm trying to help these people. In the interest of objectivity, I've taken the liberty of having our experts whip up a photo composite of what this person would look like... were she to grow out her bangs! BEHOLD:




*gasps again*... but of pleasant surprise... *

Look at that, will you? She's charming! And with barely an inch in additional bang-length. I mean, not much is going to help you with that Venturestein looking countenance, but at least now with a more reasonable hair-to-face ratio she has this endearing Amelie thing going for her. You want to possibly give her a hug and wish her well, rather than chase her up a windmill with a pitchfork. So, madam, in the light of the evidence presented, and your unflagging resemblance to canonical movie monsters, I urge you...




*applause*

Thank you. Now, finally, we come to our feature for the night. Every episode we like to spotlight one person who, through their "high profile" position of power or celebrity and their insistence in sporting an unforgivable hairstyle has served to propagate this heinous excuse for fashion we know as the plague that it is. Tonight, I personally present you with the bane of my televised existence...




*retching and fasting* *the crying of children*

Famous? Not necessarily. Yet, this maven of the modern mohawk has managed to manipulate her mangled mop onto prime-time. People who perhaps would like to watch a show about how interesting cakes are made are instead subjected to this outlandish and erroneous thatch. I'm not having it. In the course of my research, a regrettable portion of my position here as I am forced to engage with these denizens of the down for much longer than can possibly be recommended, I learned that this person's name is, without exaggeration, Mary Alice Fallon Yeskey.

The gorge rises at the thought.

Of course this person would have four names, and of course one of them would be "Fallon." Of course she would have an abrasive personality and be the "firecracker" of the bakery. Of. Course.

Yet another unfortunate aspect of this hairstyle is the personality it seems to force on those who choose, foolishly, to brandish it. A confrontational nature seems to go hand-in-hand with the acceptance of this kind of appearance, for better or worse. Luckily, our crack team of genetic researchers were ready with our state-of-the-art imaging technology and managed to come up with this...




*undeniable shock*

You can't argue with results people! Despite a strange resemblance to my Aunt Kathy, Miss Mary Alice Forever Name is now not only saved from an egregious hairstyle, but I can actually stand to look directly at her for long periods of time without feeling violent towards her! That's great, isn't it?! That is exactly what we try to get across here at BGYBO (pronounced Biggy-Bow). The fact is that it's not too late for these ladies, and the solution to their problem, to all their problems, is the simplest solution there is!

Don't do anything.

Stop punishing your hair simply for being there, stop going into the salon every two weeks to ensure the closest crop you can possibly maintain, stop being the way that you are because it is terribly, terribly wrong. Stop the severe, authoritarian, masochistic streak you are on, turn toward the light, leave your hair alone for a change and...




*cheers* *applause*

Good night, everyone.

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I'll do a show about that thing Gwen Stefani does every now and then, once I figure out what it's called.

Meet Me in the Observatory

One of the things I really enjoy about working at the Times is the effect it's had on my productivity. True, the things that I have become productive at are not, in themselves, the most worthwhile activities, yet I can't help but feel that the place, the people, or perhaps their perception of me has had an enormous influence on my ability to follow through with many of my cockamamie ideas. There was a time, not so long ago, when all of my inspired notions would burn brightly for a moment in my mind and then quietly fade away, unrealized. No more.

Case in point:

The first thing you do on any given day at the ol' Horse Factory is head into the laundry room and grab your practice gear. This normally consists of some leggings (chain mail and the like) and a practice shirt you've brought or gleaned from previous stores. Either way, if you've achieved any level of authority around there, you have a cubby in which to store your personal garb.




Here is my good friend Mike getting his costume for the day. Mike is my neighbor. His cubby is directly adjacent to mine. I love Mike like the Jewish love tax season, but lately there has been a bit of a zoning dispute.

You see, the wall that separates our cubbies has become loose, and whenever I go to my little hidey-hole, the rear of the wall has swung into my area, leaving me with substantially less room. If you imagine the wall between ours like a door, the hinge being the visible edge of the board facing outward (many of which are visible in the above photo) the door has swung toward my side of our theoretically joined lockers, and left me with substantially less room.

This happened a few times and, when I pointed this out to a friend of mine, he attempted to fix it by forcing the wall back in the other direction as far as it would go, affording me much more real estate and playing a simple little joke on Mike at the same time. In the process of this small alteration, the board split and a section of the rear of the separating wall snapped off. I now had a door in the back of my cubby leading into Mike's. I joked that I should expand my cubby into his. Do some home improvements, if you please.

That was how it started.

How it ended was this...

Let us go back to Mike approaching his cubby that day. What he sees is this:




Mike's area would be the one with all the shit sticking out of it. Mike's shit, specifically. Apparently, there isn't as much room in there as there once was.




Having removed the overflow of costume from the laden cubby, what Mike is then faced with is this:




Evidently, someone has been doing some renovating and has deemed it necessary to annex a trifle of Mike's property. A smidge. A skosche. Mike, being the curious thing that he is, investigates further.






What he finds is, perhaps, not what he had expected.




Correct. I have installed a guest bedroom off the northern wing of my grounds. Here is a view as you enter the expansion. Keep in mind, non of this is pre-fab, and I have had to do all the construction myself.




Sadly, I have yet to take down that Christmas tree. It's getting to be a real fire hazard.

Still, not bad for a do-it-yourself-er. Maybe a year ago I would have thought, "Yeah, that'd be funny." And then I'd forget about it, or occasionally remember it and think, "Oh, right! I've got to do that!" and never get around to it. I might have even just told Mike about the idea and called that good enough.

Instead I've wasted precious time in this all-too-short life to make a dollhouse wall and stage a miniature coup of my friends clothes-locker. I knew I would eventually find a use for those furniture models, and here it is.

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I've since relocated the bedroom to my own locker, refusing to let it go just yet and enjoying far too much the soft glow of the light-up Christmas tree through the tiny picture frame window. I pay a Mexican Ridgeback lizard to vacuum in there ever other week, since I rarely use it myself and never have the chance to clean. A while back my friend Thumbelina stayed for the weekend when she was down from the Fairie Kingdom, but other than that it's pretty empty. All this space and nothing to do with any of it. Now I know the plight of those renovating nouveau riche. All that potential space... what to do with it all?

Also, recently, a couple friends and I made this as a Christmas present for our boss:




It's a working lamp. It took us two days to find a lampshade that ugly. His name is Ralphie. We're immensely proud of him.

The fruits of my labor. Time well spent.

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I'm working on a reloadable silly-string shooting device that can be placed inside a locker and is activated by the door opening. It should be able to empty eight cans of silly string simultaneously in a wide, suppressive array. I'll keep you posted.

Sgt. Hasternash's Picadilly Charade

I think the mark of a truly well-run house is, as we enter into January and the turbines of the new year start to kick on around us, the Christmas tree is still in the living room. A silent relic of the past, of the year gone by, standing its lonely vigil as if to remind you that all this time past, one more time around the sun, one more second gone, was not lost.



Those people who have their tree at their curb December 26th just seem to have their shit too together, you know?

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Like a lightbulb.