Attack of the Brain Vampyre!

Beware! Beware! All who pass beyond this point have been warned...




...What? You're still reading? This is my point, exactly! I have been noticing a correlation between my readers and vapid stares. Empty gazes. Silly grins. A certain diminution of IQ.

I write about Wife Whisperers and I attract more female attention. I jump out of an airplane and everybody wants to jump out of an airplane. I stop dating red heads and I'm inundated by blonds. Now don't get me wrong. I appreciate the attention, but I'm thinking something else is going on here.

Like the time I rushed to Victoria Secret's 50% Off Sale and they were still modeling the entire ensembles. I never know what people are thinking.

Take my friend Kenn for an example. When I first met him, his name was Ken. But after three years of reading my blog he can't even spell his own name correctly. What's with the extra n, buddy? Did you flunk Abbreviation Class in grade school? Were all of the cool nicknames taken? And he's just one example.

Apparently several of my blogs have been read during a study group exploring Spiritual Enlightenment. As Larry the Cable Guy says, "I don't care who you are - that's funny."

So it got me to thinking. How can these otherwise bright people find themselves going after the shiny lure? It's not the brilliant writing. Or the original ideas. I've actually looked up the word derivative in the dictionary and copied it into a blog, for God's sake!

Something else must be going on.

Maybe the neo-Gothic architecture of my blog's typeface was once used in a voodoo zombie sacrifice and the residual demonic aura is still working it's hoodoo? Maybe the steady drone of my uninspired wording is hypnotizing my readers into a passive state of non-productivity? Maybe the letter n is stuck on Kennnnn's keyboard.

We may never know.

But I can tell you three things. I'm not getting the benefit of the extra IQ points being left behind. The more points you lose here the more likely you are to return. And, but for a difference of 3 points, this would be Kenn's blog.

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The Death of the Petite Red Head

I was standing behind the tiki bar when my friend Mike came up the side steps. "What's up, Big Mon?" he asked. He could see that I was upset.

"Oh, hell!" I responded as I slammed a bottle of something onto the bar, shot glasses bounced and a couple rolled to the edge where Mike's cop-reflexes caught them. "Woa! Woa! Take it easy!" He set the glasses upright and reached into the cooler for a cold beer. "Now," he continued. "What's the problem?"

"The Petite Red Head is dead." I stated flatly.

"Really?" he raised one eyebrow. "I thought she was fictional?"

"She mostly was."

"So how can she be dead?"

"Well, as you know, she was a composite character. A little feistiness from one girl, a little stubbornness from another, a little playfulness from another, and the intellect from my dream girl. The red hair was from several other girls I've known and the petite part just seemed to fit into the Johnny B character's arms."

"Yeah, I know that." Mike said. "But that doesn't explain how she can die."

I looked at the gloomy sky, thunderheads roiling in the distance. A slight breeze was picking up and I could smell the honey suckle at the far end of the tiki deck. I chose not to answer his question directly. "Remember when she first showed up in the Help Yourself blog? The one about the "A" and "B" type hosts and guests?"

"Sure."

"She was just a minor bit of window dressing. A bit player. A walk on part. But she just felt right, man. You know what I mean?"

"No, not really. But then, you are the writer." He answered truthfully.

"Then a little later, I had a mis-understanding with a girl I was dating and I brought the petite red head back in I Can Do That! to help me illustrate the humorous contrasts between how men and women think."

"Uh, huh."

"At this point, I was beginning to see the potential of a female character who was slightly smarter than the Johnny B character and I began using her sometimes as a straight man and sometimes to set him up as the fall guy of the piece. I did this in The Trouble with Hairy (Legs) and in Giving Good Foot. But she really came into her own in Breakin' ALL the Rules!. That's the one where she gets me for being so anal. Remember?"

"Yeah, I do." he smiled. "It was actually pretty funny."

"That's when I knew she had to die." I said.

"What!"

"That's when I knew she had to die."

"I didn't mean what did you say. Didn't you see the exclamation mark? I said 'what' in the sense of 'what the hell are you talking about!'." He explained.

"Oh." ...

... "So? Like, what the hell are you talking about?"

"Well... it's just that... well, she was stealing my thunder, man."

Suddenly Mike got very patient and began talking in slower, more measured tones. "Johnny, how can she steal your thunder? You are the one making it up."

"Hey, this stuff isn't easy. And it's even harder to explain. It's sort of like when you date a girl and after about a month or so you realize she has this whole other life going on outside of you. Like... who knew? You know what I mean?"

"Uhhh... No."

"Anyway, I figured if I let her have her way, she was about a couple of weeks away from having her own blog. Which could have been one way to get rid of her but, logistically, that would have been a nightmare."

"Uh, huh."

"So I decided to phase her out."

"How did you do that?" The skin around his eyes tightened and I could tell he was sorry he asked the question. So he took another sip of his beer.

"Well, that was when I wrote The Stripper and the Toilet Bowl. I was kinda hoping to divert the attention away from the petite red head." I explained. "That was also about the same time I quit dating red heads... I figured maybe I was channeling some of their crazy energy into the petite red head. It's a shame, too. There was this one chick..."

"Ummm, Johnny. Back to the story."

"Oh. Yeah." I said shaking the fog from my head. "Anyway, I still needed her. She was a good foil and my raison d'etre. So she popped up again in The Great Beard Rebellion."

"That's when I began playing around with different female characters. Trying to find one that resonated. I thought I hit pay dirt with the Frankie character in So This is Love, but it turned out that she was too flighty."

"But... never mind."

"This is when I started writing more introspective stuff and the true stories from my life. Things like The Polish Blog and The Gift. I even tried my hand at writing a country/western song. Remember Every Fool has a Heart?"

"Yep. And if I remember correctly, you haven't written about the petite red head since. But isn't that kind of what you wanted? Is the character irreplaceable?"

"No. Oh, Lord, no!" I said. "In fact I'm already working on a new one."

"What's her name?"

"I'm not sure she'll have one. But I'm thinking of calling her the Blond Bombshell. What do you think?"

"Sounds cool."

"I just need to keep this one on a short leash. It is, after all, my picture on the page."

"O.K." Mike said - then he paused before continuing. "So, if you killed the petite red head on purpose and you have a replacement in the wings to serve as your straight man and foil, etc., why are you so upset?"

"Well, I was thinking about throwing a party for the Petite Red Head, sort of like a wake, but I can't remember how to mix her favorite drink."

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The Great Beard Rebellion

I grew my first beard out of rebellion. I was told by an authority figure that I could not have a beard. So I grew one.

Actually, one of the few genuine talents that I possess is the ability to grow hair. Recently, the amount of facial hair I've had has been directly proportional to the amount of gray I've had. So I went from a full beard in 1993 to a goatee. In 2oo7 I began wearing a droopy sided mustache. They used to be called Fu Manchu's. (Back when people watched black and white movies or actually read books.)

I discovered very early in life that I had this talent for growing facial hair. I wasn't one of those kids that shaved in the 5th grade, or anything. Although, because the school system did not practice social promotion in the early 60's, I was technically old enough to. But I do remember, in high school, having to shave before school every day and again that evening if I had a date.

I never grew a beard or mustache in senior high because our school system still had dress codes and grooming codes when I graduated in 1970. I did, however, have sideburns to the bottom of my earlobes. The longest the code would allow.

When I joined the Air Force after high school, I ended up stationed on a multi service base along the coastline of Turkey. This meant that I worked along side of Army guys, and Marines, and Navy guys. The Navy guys were allowed to have beards. Which I thought was really cool. Unfortunately, the Air Force rules prohibited beards and severely limited the size and shape of any mustaches.

So, the authority figure that was telling me that I could not grow a beard when all the rest of my friends had one, was the United States of America. More specifically, the U.S. Air Force.

When I realized that I would never be permitted to grow a beard I decided to go along with the program and I began shaving five times a day. After about three days of this I had the worst razor rash in the eastern hemisphere. When I went to the base doctor for some cream or ointment, I explained that it was a chronic condition. I left the doctor's office with a tube of ointment and a medical excuse - giving me permission to grow a beard.

I had that beard until I left the military. I shaved it off then mainly because nobody was telling me what to do about it anymore, so the need no longer existed.

I've kind of been like that my whole life.

I would always have just as much facial hair as my employers would tolerate. Don't get me wrong, I was always well groomed. But I did enjoy pushing the envelope.

At one point I had the same beard for decades. One day I decided to shave it off and my kids did not even recognize me. My younger son actually cried. He was 23 at the time.

I can say, however, that the theme of facial hair and rebellion have gone hand in hand throughout my life. I feel like I have established my authority over my own face and I have been kind of enjoying the clean-shaven look recently. I had actually forgotten that I had a cleft in my chin.

Last week, much to the surprise of many people, I began growing a full beard again. When asked about it, I've been giving a variety of reasons. I've said that I am preparing for a covert CIA mission where I have to replace a bearded foreign agent who was captured several weeks ago. I've told people that I had realized how much I looked like my photos in the Post Office and figured it was time to change my appearance again. (I call this one the Richard Kimble gambit.) And I've been reminiscing about my Air Force rebellion days, as well.

So why am I growing a beard? As it turns out, the petite red head thinks that beards are sexy... and who am I to argue with logic like that?

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