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The boss’s son got a Mohawk haircut yesterday. After inspecting the results, I decided to google some background information. Turns out, the origins of this popular hairstyle are not nearly as clear cut as you might suppose.

The earliest known Mohawk was found on the headbone of an iron-age Irish “bog body” known as the Clonycavan Man. Modern paleontologists were very lucky to discover this well-preserved haircut. I mean, what were the odds that an ancient Irishman would go down to his local pub-henge for a pint and then fall into a body-preserving peat bog on his way home?

Okay, maybe luck wasn’t a factor.

An interesting aside here: scientists examining Clonycavan Man found French plant oil and pine resin in his hair. As you undoubtedly know, these are the two primary ingredients in a modern hair-care product called Aqua Net®.

After the Iron Age, the Mohawk moved to colonial America. It did not, however, become a member of Mohawk nation. Early French explorers who reported seeing Mohawks wearing Mohawks probably saw Wyandots wearing Mohawks. This is an understandable mistake. Today, French explorers searching for Celine Dion and Michael Bublé concerts often mistake the Mohegan Sun Casino for the Foxwoods Casino.

In the modern era, the Mohawk has been worn by many celebrities, including the boss’s son. Mr. T wore it in all three of his popular roles — Clubber Lang in Rocky III, B.A. Baracus in The A-Team, and Fortinbras, Prince of Norway, in Hamlet. All members of the seminal punk band The Plasmatics wore the Mohawk. None of them ever fell into a bog, either, although Wendy O Williams did fall into the mosh pit.

Well hello everyone.

First, I would like to apologize for my recent lack of blog posting (unless this lack of posting was good thing, in which case I would like to apologize for this apology).

Somehow, over the course of time, I convinced myself that blog posts should be “interesting,” and that if they could not be “interesting,” they should not BE at all. Kay-rist, what was I thinking? Blogs are all about uninteresting posts. Blogs are places where our low expectations are NEVER exceeded, where unnecessary exposition ALWAYS fails to move the plot forward (largely because there is no plot to move), and where the blogger (me) supports every ridiculous point with three examples separated by commas. This last thing, I promise you, I will do AT LEAST ONCE in every paragraph.

[Applause.]

My friends, if a Tolstoy novel is the tumble dryer of language, then my blog is the lint trap. It is a place to collect the stuff that clings uselessly to the useful (but damp) stuff, a place to use annoying acronyms like LOL and BOM and BYOB, and thirdly in this list of THREE SUPPORTING EXAMPLES, a blog is a place to use bad metaphors without shame, particularly those which compare the literary arts to common household clothes-drying appliances. Oh, hell, I don’t even know if that dryer bit WAS a metaphor, and I don’t care, because, dammit, I’m a blogger! Yeah!

[More applause.]

Settle down now and pay attention. I want to tell you (in excruciating detail) about my formative years. Long ago, before my hair fell out, I was a boy without a blog, a boy scratching boring stories into the dirt with a pointed stick. . . .

I’m holding a scratch lottery ticket in one hand and my cellphone in the other hand, and I’m steering the JesusChrysler with my knees. I can’t see the road because I’m tailgating a garbage truck.

It’s a TrashCo truck. Paper is flying from it’s back end and fluttering down around me. Apparently, TrashCo removes paper from the bin at the end of your driveway and then recycles it onto the streets of your neighborhood. No matter. It takes more than fluttering paper to stop a JesusChrysler.

At the traffic light in the center of town, the truck turns right and I turn left. Before I can straighten the wheel, I hear a pop, and my right front tire starts flopping like Manu Ginobili. I limp into Jimmy’s Gulf station.

Jimmy is an experienced auto mechanic. He explains complex problems in terms the average guy can understand. “Cars do two important things,” he tells me. “They go and they stop. If your car stops going or stops stopping, then you’ve gotta bring it to me.”

“But if my car stops going, how am I supposed to bring it to you?”

Jimmy ignores the question. With a pair of pliers, he extracts three nails from my flat tire. He says, “Dick Dastardly & Muttley used to pull shit like this in that Wacky Races cartoon. It’s a simple but effective way to eliminate tailgaters.”

“Those guys quit the cartoon gig,” I say. “They’re driving a TrashCo garbage truck now.”

Jimmy patches the tire and gets me back on the road. As I resume my commute, I wonder how many other law-abiding tailgaters will be sidelined by TrashCo today. Anyone could fall for their junk — the fluttering paper up high, and then the tack attack down low. They got me—I admit it—but it wasn’t because of their little distraction. I was much too busy with my phone and my lottery ticket to fall for a cheap stunt like that.

Kevin Bacon has zero degrees of separation from himself. If you ask me, that’s a little to close for comfort.

I am waiting to be sheared at Mastercuts when a guy strolls in dressed like a medieval monk. He is holding a large photograph. The guy stops at the desk and says, “How much for a haircut, m’lady?”

Lady d’Mastercuts gives him the once-over and says, “$14.95, friar.”

“Is tonsure included in your price?” he asks.

The lady shrugs. “Whachoo mean by tonsure?”

The monk slaps the photograph down on Lady d’Mastercut’s table. He pokes it with a bony index finger. “I mean, how much will it cost to make me look like him?”

Across the room, I peer over the top of Popular Hairplugs magazine. My curiosity is piqued. Which celebrity hairstyle, I wonder, is currently in vogue with the medieval monastic crowd?

I move in for a closer look. At a display case near the desk, I pretend to examine a bottle of Bed Head Creative Genius Sculpting Liquid. The monk and his lady friend are bent over the celebrity-hairdo photograph. But it isn’t a photograph after all — it’s a page torn from an art history book. A painting fills the top two-thirds of the page, and a short descriptive passage follows. The subhead reads, “A Portrait of Thomas Aquinas.”

Painted Aquinas is holding a bible in one hand and a cathedral in the other. It’s an unbalanced load and he is listing badly to one side. The top of Tom’s head is shaved bare. A thin strip of hair, just above the ears, circles his bald crown like an English hedge.

“Ah, tonsure,” the lady says. “It’s just the Little-Boy cut with a big bald spot on top!”

“Indeed?” says the monk. “What price for the Little-Bald-Boy cut?”

“$14.95.”

“Can you do it?”

“With my eyes closed,” the lady says. She looks down at Thomas Aquinas and then up at the guy who thinks he’s a monk. “You know,” she says, “you really had me worried for a minute. Dudes usually bring pictures of George Clooney.”

Mr. Noah Webster,
spelling reformer, word monkey and child actor (retired)
c/o the afterlife

Dear Mr. Webster,

I’m very sorry to hear that you’re still dead. I had an excellent idea today, and I wanted to share it with you. It a word thing.

Here’s the gist:

First, I will list the 70,000 words I’ve had to invent over the years to fill the gaps you left in the English language. This list of fake words will include such favorites as Neurotica, and Lambatomy and Passhole. When the list is complete, I will make and eat a chicken sandwich. After the sandwich (ATS), I’ll jot down meanings for each of the fake words I listed before my sandwich break. That should take me right up to dinner time. Since this paragraph is already running long, I’ll have my summer intern, Rosemary Chickenbreasts, arrange my fake words in alphabetical order while I prepare dinner. Finally, I’ll stuff the words, definitions and perhaps a few bits of mustard into a big compendium of fake words called a “Fictionary.”

Send me a message if you dig it, Noah.

P.S.: I enjoyed your TV program.

While taking a tour of Fenway Park on Thursday, a middle school student from Connecticut was attacked by a red-tailed hawk. Team officials told reporters that the bird was protecting its nest, which was installed above the press booth during off-season ballpark renovations. Some eyewitnesses, however, dispute the official explanation.

“It wasn’t a random attack,” said Joe from Bristol, a Sox fan and tour chaperone. “Come on, man, the kid’s name is Alexa Rodriquez. Do I have to friggin’ spell it out for you?”

Sox fans are often ridiculed for their obsession with curses and conspiracy theories. Even so, one may reasonably question some aspects of the “nest defense theory.” For instance, with so many students to choose from, why did the vengeful raptor single out the namesake of a hated Yankee rival? I mean, what are the freakin’ odds, man? Come on!

According to Joe from Bristol, little A-rod was a marked girl. “I don’t care if they sic a freakin’ pterodactyl on me,” Joe said. “I’m just tellin’ it like it is.” The other tour chaperones, many of whom are parents of students, were reluctant to back Joe’s story. The parents of Annie Pettitte, Derika Jeter, Maryanne Rivera and Becky “F***ing” Dent declined numerous interview requests.

You have survived another blog software upgrade. Now you can engage in many new and exciting blog-related acitivities. Unfortunately, I do not know what any of these activities are. Not yet, anyway. Since I know you all look to me for leadership in new-and-exciting-blog-related-activities area, I will do some research and get back to you at my earliest convenience. If I get back to you sooner than that, it will be at my earliest inconvenience.

Thank you. Get back to work.

Last Saturday night, at General Yee’s Olde Tavern, I ran into a guy I hadn’t seen for a year or two. Guy saw me wandering around, zombie-like. He hailed. “Hey,” he said, “how you been? I haven’t seen you in a year, maybe two.” (Obviously, Guy had not read the first part of this paragraph.)

I said, “I haven’t seen me either. In fact, I was just looking for myself.”

Guy said, “Ha!”, and then he pointed at his girlfriend, who was also saying, “ha!” Guy said, “this is my girlfriend, Whosit.” He looked at Whosit, who was no longer saying “ha,” and he looked back at me, and I could tell that he was trying to remember my name. “Whosit,” said he, “this is . . .”

There was a brief pause, and then Guy said “Ken,” and I said “John.”

Whosit said, “Soooooo, which is it, Ken or John?”

Guy looked at me. “I thought your name was Ken,” he said.

Not knowing how to delicately sidestep the awkward social situation, I said, “Well, my name used to be Ken, but now it’s John.”

Whosit and Guy said, “Ha!”

Before her 11:00 a.m. hair-poofing appointment, my elderly mother and I strolled through Sears. We saw only one other customer. He was standing in the aisle between Electronics and Appliances, and he was so still, I nearly mistook him for a mannequin.

Perhaps I should have suspected mischief. I mean, how often do you see a mannequin in Electronics or Appliances? How often do you see a petrified customer? But I was not alarmed. If a customer had been petrified in Sears, then surely there was a reasonable explanation. Maybe he was struggling with a difficult decision — should he buy the pacific blue Kenmore Elite King-Size Front Load Washer or the Hitachi 50-inch Plasma HD1080 Television? My friends, we have all done battle in the retail arena. Which of us has never been paralyzed by indecision?

The elderly mother and I walked blithely on. When we were about five feet away from Mannequin Man, he started ranting. Apparently, he was motion-activated.

“When you reach a roadblock,” he said, “you MUST seek alternate routes! There are always alternate routes, and you MUST seek them when you reach a roadblock! If the alternate routes are also blocked, then you must seek alternate alternate routes! There is a way around every roadblock!”

Mannequin Man followed us with his eyes as we stepped carefully around him.

The elderly mother glanced over her shoulder and quickened her pace. “Oh, dear,” she said.

“Hey, lady, don’t run from the truth” I said. “Hey, lady, wait up!”

“He’s crazy,” she whispered.

“Maybe he is,” I said. “Or maybe he’s an omniscient commentator.”

“Eh? Is that like a store greeter or something?”

“Nope. It’s more like the chorus in Greek tragedy. That guy is probably trying to reinforce the moral of our particular shopping story.”

“Which is?”

“Don’t be discouraged by obstacles. Don’t let anything stand between you and big poofy hair.”

I’m in the driveway,
shoveling snow, sleet and rain . . .
Stirring a slurpee

String beans, potato balls, Purina Monkey Chow . . . ooh, and one angry old woman who swears in Italian.

Well, hello, fine female-person. I was so busy with my grocery list, I didn’t see you there. Come in, come in! Have you been waiting long? You have? Well, I apologize, and I promise that I’ll never keep you waiting again. Oop, hang on a sec. . . .

One personal-sized Christmas tree (trimmed), a wool hat with ear flaps, a secret freckle . . . there! If I don’t write these things down immediately, they go right out of my head.

So where were we? The Superbowl? Yes, as a matter of fact I did watch the Superbowl this year. I watched it at the Old Same Place. The crowd went wild when that Giant caught a wobbly pass right on top of his head. Amazing! I saw a seal do that with a beach ball once, but not during a football game. Wazzat? Oh, no, don’t feel sorry for Tom Brady. When the game ended, Tom limped home to Gisele Bundchen. Hmm . . . when those two are alone, do you think Gisele teaches Tom how to catch satin babydoll teddies on top of his head? I certainly hope so. The right foot may not be the only appendage Tom Brady keeps in a brace, if you catch my drift.

Hey, are you going to be here for a while? You are? Don’t move a fine female muscle. I’ll be right back.

Post-it notes, plastic hula girls, White Hut caramelized onions. . . .

Okay, I’m back, and I have a confession to make. One time, when I was unhappy, I ate chocolate truffles and drank red wine while sitting in a bath tub. Of course the tub was filled with water, baby . . . kripes. What? No, I am not a girl. Maybe if I had placed smelly candles around the edge of the WATER-FILLED tub, or if I had added scented Bubble Bath to the water before diving in . . . maybe then you’d have a point. But there were no smelly candles — neither bayberry, nor gardenia, nor white ginger — and the only bubbles floating in my WATER-FILLED tub were squirrel-made gas bubbles.

Hey, where’d you go? What did I say? Was it the gas thing?

And last but not least, Beano.

In the autumn of 1965, the University of Florida’s head football coach asked Dr. Robert Cade why Gators players never “wee-wee” after games. This simple, yet disturbing question changed Dr. Cade’s life forever. It lit the Bunsen burner of science beneath his personal pan-sized Petri dish of curiosity. Before he left the football field that day, Dr. Cade promised the coach and players that he would work tirelessly, selflessly, and he wouldn’t stop working until the wee-wee was problem was solved.

No, he wouldn’t even stop for a pee break.

After weeks of exhaustive research, Dr. Cade concluded that blocking, tackling and ass-patting caused football players to perspire, and that the process of perspiration caused players to leak water. Through the hot summer days, Dr. Cade worked to end perspiration. Late in 1965, he invented “antiperspirant.” While this generally improved the smell of Gators football players, it did not stop the leakage.

In January, 1966, Dr. Cade abandoned his experiments in fluid retention and focused instead on fluid replacement. With the help of his faithful pet alligator, Samantha Letherpants, Cade concocted a greenish-yellow cocktail loaded with carbohydrates, electrolytes and Siberian vodka. He named the product Gatorade and rushed it into clinical trials.

Early test subjects complained that formulation tasted like pee, and the inventor agreed.

“I guzzled it and I vomited,” Cade said. “It did taste like pee, gator pee, to be specific. Not that I know what gator pee tastes like. Samantha and I don’t have that kind of relationship . . . cough.”

To improve the taste of Gatorade, Dr. Cade infused it with fresh local huckleberries. He named this new flavor “Urinberry.” And with this stroke of marketing genius, the sports drink market was born.

The polar bear is a dangerous and unpredictable predator, but it is not nearly as unpredictable as the bi-polar bear.

On the campaign trail, I often speak of “the two Americas.” No, not North and South America. Not Right and Left America. I speak of those at cocktail parties, but on the campaign trail, I speak of the other two Americas.

My friends, we are a country divided. We are not divided by 3 or by 4 or by the square root of your mama’s hypotenuse; we are divided by 2. Today, half of America believes that Chuck Norris is the deadliest man in the land, and the other half believes that “The Hoff” is the nation’s baddest bad-ass. This great debate pits brother against brother, sister against sister, weird uncle against third cousin once removed. It tears at the fabric of our lives like an angry crocodile in a Brazilian Supermodel’s lingerie drawer.

Where did this terrible schism begin? For years, Mr. Norris and Mr. The Hoff were coequal superpowers of primetime television whoop-ass. And then one night, The Hoff drank too many Fogcutters, talked too much smack, and got his ass kicked by an angry cheeseburger. A shocked America watched the video on YouTube. (If you missed it, it’s the one in which a bleary-eyed, slurring Hoff rolls around like an otter and then eats lettuce, tomato and onion off of his bathroom floor. I’ll have one of my interns post a link for you.)

The video was a tragic blow to the Hoff’s career — more tragic than Baywatch, even — but not everyone saw it exactly the same way. Where most viewers saw sad vulnerability, the Norris campaign team saw joyful opportunity. Just days after the YouTube posting, Mr. Norris told Neal Disputo of Fox News that The Hoff would be easy prey for any sissy-pants, sally-boy Kung Fu master who might happened along . . . Chuck Norris, for example.

Hoff’s agent fired back. “Right now,” she said, “my client is like Sylvester Stallone at the beginning of the first Rocky film — socially dysfunctional, drunk, addicted to junk food — but before you know it, he’ll be running stadium steps, doing push-ups with a Pontiac Firebird on his back, and causing a ruckus in the ladies’ locker room at Wimbledon.”

“And besides,” she added, “that cheeseburger was much tougher than it looked.”

So, my fellow Americans, we are called upon to make a difficult choice. We must decide which of these legendary bad-asses is baddest. But how can we fairly weigh their many pros and cons? Clearly, Mr. Norris has a quickness advantage. Some say he’s so quick, he can run around the world and punch himself in the back of the head. But The Hoff is as cunning as Richie Cunningham. While Chuck is wasting all that time and energy running around the world, the Hoff will surely be lying in wait, gathering strength, gnawing a Fixins Bar tomato slice into the shape a ninja throwing star.

The way I see it, this thing could go either way. So why take sides? Why don’t we just sit this one out . . . you know, remain above the fray? Heck, let’s skip the fray entirely and remain in the punchbowl. Somethings are worth standing up for — that’s true — but other things are worth sitting down for! As John Adams famously said, “United we stand, divided we sit!” My fellow Americans, today we must sit!

Is there anything else we can do here? I mean, anything other than blogging?

While doing play-by-play commentary for the World Series game on Wednesday, Joe Buck’s Giant Head said, “Jeff Francis doesn’t feel the cold tonight. He’s a Canadian, and Canadians are part Yeti.” I am paraphrasing, of course. Joe Buck’s Giant Head used many, many more words to express this theory.

Since the Fox Sports broadcast team occasionally makes statements which are not firmly grounded in science, I asked several REAL CANADIANS FROM CANADA the following two questions:

1. Are you impervious to the cold?

2. Have you or any of your ancestors ever had sex with a Yeti?

In each case the answers were the same: yes and no.

My friends, REAL CANADIANS FROM CANADA do not lie, not even about sexual encounters with furry mythical beasts. Therefore, I conclude that Joe Buck’s Giant Head deliberately overstated the “Yeti factor” in order to ratchet up the hype and boost ratings. Although his theory did correctly identify Canadian cold-imperviousness, it failed to explain why Canadians from all provinces are impervious, and not just those living in the Yeti-dominated Province of Sasquatchewan.

Yesterday, as I was preparing to drive from Point A to Point X, a thoughtful person said to me, “watch out for falling leaves and bears.” That was good advice. The world is a risky place, and falling bears and leaves are only two of the many hazards faced each day by hard-working, laterally-moving people like you and me. Consider the following:

A leaf falling at maximum velocity and at just the right angle will, under certain circumstances, leave a noticeable scratch on your automobile’s fine glossy finish. This is what we call “cosmetic damage.” A bear falling from the same height will put a serious crimp in one or more of your automobile’s crumple zones. We call this “structural damage.”

To understand why a falling bear is more dangerous than a falling leaf, visualize Sir Isaac Newton sitting under his apple tree, watching a bear fall on your car. The force of attraction between the bear and the car is called “gravity,” and Isaac Newton was the smart guy who invented this force. Mr. Newton came from family of clever inventors. As you undoubtedly know, Isaac’s great-great-grandson Wayne invented the casino and the pencil-thin mustache. Wayne’s grandson, Eddie “Tootin’” Newton, invented the Ding King Twist-A-Dent (as seen on TV), which is a useful remedy for most leaf, twig and small meteorite damage.

Hallo, my little liebchens.

Today we will learn the difference between “Schadenfreude” and “Sigmund Freud.” First you will memorize my definitions, and then, as a reward for your hard work, you will be severely disciplined. (Listen up, naughties, I’m talking to you.)

Schadenfreude — malicious enjoyment of the suffering of others.

Sigmund Freud — Austrian psychiatrist who maliciously enjoyed the suffering of others.

Next week we will learn the definition and proper pronounciation of Dasuniversumisteineichhörnchen. Spank you all very much. Class dismissed.

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Thank you all for your support, and always remember the sage advice of my great uncle Alabaster, who said, “Boy, when someone asks your name, try to sound like you know the answer!”