Will Hines Dot Net

I’m basing this on people at my office only. The woman who sits across from me gets really excited to talk about television; and the three guys who sit near me don’t. A small sample set, but I’m ready to extrapolate that poorly-founded hunch onto the entire American population.

So: do women like television more than men?

Tell me now of the best trip you’ve taken.

Courtesy of an Xmas gift from Hines Bro Brian, I had a royal shave at an Art of Shaving store last Friday.

I’ve had a straight razor shave once before: when I returned from Japan and had to go from the airport to the UCB Theatre to perform in Rob Lathan’s “one-man” show (also featuring myself and John Gemberling) — I had 2 hours to kill. To keep me from falling prey to jet lag, I had a shave at a barber shop. It works, although it is completely harrowing. I keep thinking of Sweeney Todd and how easily these people really could completely murder you with that unguarded super-sharp razor rubbing right near your jugular vein.

Anyway, my facial hair grows quickly enough that I could shave twice a day –Here’s me at 1pm having skipped one day.

The “royal shave”  consists of pre-shave oil, thick warm shaving cream, a “with the grain shave”, then more cream, then an “against-the-grain” shave, then post-shave ointment, then an after-shave mask. I would have had each of these stages photographed had I not been terrified of disturbing the barber while he was shaving. I did get him to take this one of me in the hot towel:

The towel was very hot.

A lot of those steps are unnecessary, but the overall experience is just being pampered. You’re there to have the full treatment, to feel like you’re at a spa without feeling like a girl. It was a very manly experience — during my shave I heard two other financi-a-douches getting shaves to celebrate “finishing our filing, dude!” They fit in well.

But I really loved it!  It felt great and was very fun. One slight hitch is that normally I shave in the shower, when my skin is very soft and warm — so I almost never cut myself. But the hot towel did not get my skin anywhere near as soft as it becomes in a shower, so the first pass of the shave felt VERY rough. I though I was gonna yelp or start crying or something. But I worried the financi-a-douches would have bullied me so I stayed strong. The second pass at shaving was very smooth. Somehow the pain made it all feel more substantial.

I did not get a good “after” shot — but here’s my barber.

Nice guy. He had an Eastern European accent which made him seem very old-world, which gave him a lot of credibility.

The shave was great! Good gift idea. Thank you Brian!

I ordered a new iMac on Saturday, only to discover that there has been a “fraud hold” on my credit card since around January 2. However, there’s been no fraud — it’s comes from my increasingly eccentric efforts to ignore any communication from corporations, including ones whose services I use.

I get a lot of junk mail from Citibank, my credit card provider, offering me programs that give me discounts on shopping at various stores, or rental cars, or credit reports — or other things I don’t want. I long since started throwing out anything from Citibank that wasn’t clearly a bill. Unfortunately, that also means I threw out a new credit card that was sent to me in December to replace my expiring one.

When I notced my card was expiring, I called to request a new one, and they said “We sent you one.” “I probably threw it out,” I replied. “Send me another and I”ll keep an eye out.” That initiated a red flag of some sort on my account. My (second) new card arrived five days later and I activated it via my cell phone. But the number that Citibank has on my account is my land line — a number I stopped using two years ago since all I got was telemarketing offers. Now I have two red flags — a request for a second card and an activation from a phone that’s not on record as my actual phone.

Citibank tried to phone me, but like I said my land line is unplugged. They sent me letters which I threw out without opening.

So on the phone on Saturday, they asked me a series of questions from my credit report. What that last amount I paid against my mortgage (don’t have a mortgage, though I got a pre-approval for one in an amount I don’t remember)? What was the year of the car you purchased before December 2005 (well, I bought a Honda for one dollar from a friend, do you have a record of that? And I don’t remember what year it was anyway). Which of these was the license plate of the last car you had registered (don’t remember, at all)? Which of these streets have you lived on? (none sounded familiar, but I’ve had probably 20 addresses since graduating college). The guy felt bad and threw me a bunny — What’s your father’s middle name (a security question I had set up some time ago) but I was flustered and gave my mother’s maiden name. I started worrying they were gonna send the cops to my apartment right then.

I got all questions incorrect — resulting in a THIRD red flag on my account.

So now I have to go into a bank on Monday with some ID and get a teller to eye witness that it’s me, and to call Citibank and put me on the phone to correct everything.

The odd thing is: I don’t really mind. I like that there are guards against fraud. And I like that I’m successfully becoming enough of a hermit that this big corporation can’t get to me unless I’m expecting them to. I know it’s shooting me in the foot, but I like being off the grid.

Things I could have answered: the names of the last five improv groups I’ve been in. The passwords for any of my work email accounts of the last ten years. The last 10 discs I’ve gotten from Netflix. My favorite Elvis Costello albums, in order. Booyar’s last five gifts to Kevin Hines.

The Red Sox are going to the World Series for the second time in four years. Pretty amazing. A friend of mine who roots for the just-beaten Cleveland Indians says that he kinda hates the Red Sox now, because they “feel like the new Yankees!” And by “Yankees” he means some combination of “team that always wins” or “bullying team that buys its way to success” or “evil” or so I assume.

First of all, the Red Sox are not truly “the Yankees” until people stop comparing the Red Sox to the Yankees. Second of all, it’s doubtful that any of us will live long enough to see any American sports franchise have as much success for as long a time as the New York Yankees.

I started rooting for the Red Sox when I was eight because my family had just moved to Connecticut, where you root for either the Sox or the Yankees. I liked the Sox logo better and that was that. Because of that almost completely impulsive decision 29 years ago — I am entitled to talk shit to certain friends of mine today. That’s just the way it goes.

I just finished watched “The Great Escape.” I would like to be the ten millionth person ever to observe: Steve McQueen is goddamned cool. The movie is… odd, though. Parts of it seem as silly as Hogan’s Heroes in how the Germans seem to let the captured soliders have full run of the camp. And no one in this movie is scared of Nazis. These were the Silly Nazis, I guess.

I keep wanting to create a “hit single” comedy video but most of my ideas involve detailed lists of obscure adjectives.

That’s all I got.

This Australian artist had an actual ear grown in a lab and then put into his arm. It’s a statement of some kind, though the only statement I can discern is “Look how much I’m willing to do to get your attention.”

I assumed that as genetic engineering advanced we’d get cool things like clocks inserted into the bottom-right-hand corner of our field of vision, or maybe silver-plated faces. I could go for things like that. But this ear thing just seems creepy and random.

Better use of genetic tampering, everyone!

My co-workers and I were filming outside the Apple Store on 5th Avenue yesterday. It was a fake news bit — filming tightly on our actors, though with the Apple Store in the background. About five minutes in, a security guard came over and (politely) asked us to stop filming. Then he corrected himself and said “Well, please don’t film the building.”

We acquiesced, but I was infuriated. The building is outside in a public space. Really public actually: Fifth Avenue and 59th Street of New York Fucking City. They didn’t build it there to be hidden or demure. They WANT it noticed. We weren’t being rude, we weren’t bothering (or even filming) their customers, and we were tucked tightly in one spot to avoid being in any one’s way. We were on the public sidewalk and not on its property. Am I allowed to walk out onto my city block and ask people to not look at my apartment building? I would argue that by demanding my unsolicited attention as I walk down the street, they are surrendering their right to control my unsolicited use of their appearance.

I don’t know the law, and my beef is not really one of civil legality. It’s one of innate rights to tell a story and form one’s own opinion.

I argue that a corporation’s main desire is to control everything around it. Its ability to make money is secondary. When we film a corporation’s headquarters, we threaten to seize the power to use its appearance as a symbol in a story, and who knows what the story will be? And corporations fear the power of stories and want to control them. If they could, they would control the use of their corporate symbols in all news stories, conversations and even thoughts.

What I love is that the guard, and by proxy, his corporate employee — had NO IDEA what our goal was or who we are. But they must reach out and squash any uncontrolled representation of itself as an entity.

I remember in 1987, my high school friends and I went into the Danbury Fair Mall one week after it opened with a VHS camera. We were filming each other on a bench in the community area, and a security guard asked us to leave. What possible damage could we have inflicted?

It’s what I loved about the short-lived science-fiction show Max Headroom. In that story, which takes place in the future, you need a license to own a camera, and people treat cameras with the same reverence and fear that people normally have towards guns. That show got it right!

I call upon all storytellers, writers, comedians, actors and conversationalists to willfully use all corporate symbols to their own ends regardless of law or even the point of what you’re saying! Just push back on the forces that want to tell you what to think. Start the precedent today that we own our thoughts and stories no matter what a privately-owned entity tries to tell us. Scorch the Earth! Stop the monsters!

Not that I did anything.

Today on the way to work I saw a man who must have been over 65 wearing a tight sleeveless grey t-shirt. A muscle T, I believe they’re called. He was pretty muscular, but he mostly looked too old to be sporting the “let’s get in a bar fight” look. It was like someone hit a thuggish dock worker with an insta-aging ray.

Still, I admired the old man’s gumption.

That is awesome.

Wikipedia: Sunken Cities

If you’d like, please suggest some other intriguing Wikipedian categories.

The Journalista blog from The Comics Journal is outstanding. Tidbits linked in just today’s entry:

• A review of the new Gilbert Hernandez Paolmar story.
• Hilariously over-large breast drawings in super-hero comics here and here.
• Adam Koford’s 700 drawings of hobos.

Can’t beat that! In other linked goodness, Pete Rose admits he bet on the Reds (to win) every night he managed. He also bet while playing. This guy is a jerk, but I still think he belongs on the Hall of Fame. 4,000 hits is 4,000 hits.

And here’s something about a redesigned alphabet.