HAIR APPARENT!

A Hair Raising Funnies...

Welcome back, SUNFUNer's!
     No, this isn't going to be another collection of bald jokes. 
Or blonde jokes, for that matter.  But between shaving, curling,
styling, coloring, straightening, growing and removing, we humans
certainly do spend an amazing amount of time fooling with hair. 
Since it's just about the first thing we notice about people,
hair was probably the original fashion accessory.  It wouldn't
surprise me if the very first stuff humans invented to improve
their appearance was for the hair.  Maybe it was just grease
drippings and ashes from the cave fire, but it was the start of
cosmetics industry that makes $5 Billion a year in the US alone.
     Now I have to admit up front that I got lucky.  Drifting
through middle age, I still have all of my hair.  Lucky thing,
too.  From various misadventures over the years, my head has a
wild assortment of marks, scars, lumps and dents.  So, if I went
bald, the Frankenstein's monster effect on the top of my head
would probably give people nightmares.
     We don't usually think of it that way, but hair has also
affected world history.  Some folks have used hair and beards to
get attention.  Uncle Sam, Napoleon, Abe Lincoln, The Beatles and
Don King all owe part of their fame to the way they wore hair. 
Samson lost all of his strength after a haircut.  And Charlie
Chaplin was convinced that Hitler stole his 'Little Tramp'
moustache just in order to appeal to the crowd.
     Nothing so proves that life is unfair as the notion that
bald men still have to pay the same for haircuts as guys with too
much hair.  And, as if that wasn't unfair enough, they still have
to shave.  Not to criticize the design, but middle age wouldn't
be quite so traumatic if only your beard fell out.  There used to
be an old shaving cream company that had roadside ads reading:

               In this vale
               Of toil and sin
               Your head grows bald
               But not your chin.
                    (Burma-Shave)

     Last week's Sunday Funnies was more-or-less pre-written, so
that I could have some minor surgery, so I didn't get to quite
all of the Hellos and Thank You's.  I'm pretty much back at
normal strength now, and though my stomach has more holes in it
than a miniature golf course, I feel fine.  Special Thanks to all
of you who sent cards, letters and Email while I was recovering,
including:  Bruce Gonzo, Nancy Wohlge (& Thanks for the Bagels!),
Carol Becwar, Nnamdi Elleh, Sue Yan, John Wallner, Caterina
Sukup, Laura Hong Li, Bernie & Donna Becwar (& Thanks for the
cookies), Dick Ginkowski, Antonia Chan, and Sylvia Libin He.  In
addition, Hello and Thanks this week for the support and
contributions of:  Masami & Yuko Shimizu, Bob Martens, Timothy
McChain, Beth Butler, Kerry Miller, Lydia Cheong Chu-Ling, Jerry
Taff, Naomi Ogawa, Alison Becwar, and all the gang at the Adler
Family reunion.  I'd have a hairy time trying to put together
Funnies without you folks.  (Ouch!  Now there's a shaggy pun if
there ever was one!)
     Have a great week!


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     As reported in Sunday Funnies last year, a law in
     Eureka, Nevada, forbids men who wear mustaches from
     kissing women.

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IS GREASY HAIR A PROBLEM?
------------------------
     With the economy in tough times in Japan, many companies
there are having to invent new ways of doing business.  Now, from
Japan Energy Corporation comes the "Hair Station," where both you
and your car can get quick repair at the same time.
     The station's layout consists of a full-service gas station
on the first floor with a beauty salon upstairs.  Two stylists
provide the usual services, including cuts priced at only $21,
less than half the usual going rate in Tokyo.
     The company hopes that the experimental station in the
western Tokyo suburb of Mitaka will set the pattern for hair
stations elsewhere.  Japan Energy has tried in other experiments
to combine gas stations with noodle shops and even drive-through
laundries.  (Reuter)
          [  Kinda gives "hot oil treatment" a whole
          new meaning, doesn't it?  ]

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     In England, you can tell when it's really hot because
     judges allow barristers to remove their wigs in court.

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POMPADOUR AND CIRCUMSTANCES
---------------------------
     One English scientist thinks he has the answer to hair loss,
but the cure might very well be worse than the disease.
     "Wander down the Strand in London and you will see the
evidence.  How many of the alcoholics are ever bald?"  asks hair
loss expert Dr. Hugh Rushton of the Institute of Trichologists in
London.
     Rushton claims that the excess of testosterone that causes
the hair to fall out doesn't happen in heavy drinkers, because
their livers are so badly damaged that they can't process the
hormone.  (Reuter)
          [  Some choice that is! ]


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     The soundtrack credits for the movie "Hot Shots! Part
     Deux" (1993) lists one song as:

          "I GOT A LOT OF HAIR FOR A BALD GUY AND IF I
          WEAR IT LIKE THIS YOU WON'T NOTICE" 
                                   by Michael Bolton

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FUZZY LOGIC DEPARTMENT
----------------------
     Another theory on hair loss comes from China, where a
newspaper called the Disaster Reduction Press printed a warning
about the causes of baldness.  Their answer?  Baldness is caused
by beards.
     Quoting some research from an unnamed French source, the
paper claimed that growing a beard "makes the scalp too hot and
affects the function of the brain.  To compensate, the body drops
hair from the head to create baldness."
     The problem of baldness in all those millions of guys who
have always been clean-shaven is not explained.  Neither is the
fact that most Chinese men have a beard that is pretty sparse --
thin enough not to be much danger in the hot-head department. 
Nor does it explain all of the men in Middle-Eastern countries
who are required by Islamic tradition to grow a full beard, yet
have hairy scalps, even living in countries where the outside
temperature is about the same as the average oven.  Back to the
drawing boards, guys...  (Reuters)


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          Nearly a third of US women color their hair.
               [ Blond, right? ]

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A REALLY EXPENSIVE BAD HAIR DAY...
-------------------------------
     Bill Clinton got in trouble once for costing thousands of
dollars by holding up traffic at an airport while he got a
haircut on Air Force One.  Now another U.S. President's bad hair
is going to cost almost $8 million to fix.
     The U.S. Treasury Department's Bureau of Engraving and
Printing was just about ready to release their newly designed $50
bills late last year.  That's when they noticed that Ulysses S.
Grant's hair looked funny in the portrait on the new bill.
     Since the appearance of the image is considered one of the
anti-counterfeiting features on the new bill, the fix meant
reprinting all 217.6 million notes.  (Reuters)
          [  Nah...  Grant's hair always looked that
          funny.  ]


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HEY!  IT GROWS BACK!!
-------------------

   - Los Angeles, California  police arrested an 18-year-old man
     for burning down two barber shops and vandalizing a third
     because he didn't like the way they cut his hair.

   - Eric Graham sued a department store hair salon in Orlando,
     Florida because they didn't follow his instructions.  Graham
     wanted his hair short on the sides and long and curly on the
     top.  The salon cut his hair too short on top and left the
     sides long.  Graham sued claiming that this unkindest cut of
     all drove him to seek psychiatric treatment.


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     "John has a long Moustache" was the coded signal in
     World War II to mobilize the French Resistance once the
     Allies had landed in Normandy.

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CALL ME HARRY DEPARTMENT...
------------------------
      Charles Murphy filed a lawsuit last August against the
manager of the federal building in Eugene, Oregon, after he was
dismissed from his job as a security officer.  Murphy claims that
his boss fired him for not grooming his hair.  Not the hair on
his head -- Murphy is bald.  His boss objected to the way his
bushy chest hair poked out of his uniform shirt.


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          If a man is bald at the front, he's a
          thinker.  If he's  bald at the back, then
          he's sexy.  When the front meets the back,
          then he just thinks he's sexy.

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HAIRDRESSER TO WHO?
------------------
     Being about the most image-conscious place on earth,
Hollywood has an unusually high number of toupee wearers.  Well-
known members of the "Hair Club for Men" included:  John Wayne,
William Shatner, Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire.  And soon maybe
Kevin Costner, judging from all of those high forehead close-ups
in his recent movie, "The Postman."
     But one star that might still be a surprise member of the
rug squad would be "Babe," the little piglet from the recent
movie.  All 48 piglets who played the starring role in the movie
wore little toupees to make them look more like perfect little
Yorkshire pigs.


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IT'S THE REAL THING...
-------------------
     With so many of the folks in show business using wigs, falls
and other cosmetic tricks, it's nice to know that some of the
show folk really do have their own hair.  Two women we can be
sure of are the Ayala sisters, Andrea and Michelle, who perform
in the Barnum & Bailey circus.  Their act consists of the sisters
spinning, twirling rings and juggling fire batons, all while
hanging by their hair.
     In a recent interview, Andrea Ayala described the pain from
this as being "Twenty!" on a ten point scale.


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BETWEEN HAIR AND THERE...
----------------------
     So you want to travel in space, but you haven't got the
'right stuff' to be an astronaut and you don't happen to have a
couple billion dollars to fund your own space program?  Well, a
company called Encounter 2001 has just the answer...  They can
get you into space for only about $50.  Of course, to do it that
cheaply, they have to cut a few corners.  More to the point, they
have to cut a few hairs.
     And that's all they send -- a sample of your hair.
     Their theory is that a few hairs is all that's required. 
All they need to do is load up the rocket with the hair of up to
4.5 million people and a couple of information CD's, then blast
the whole fuzzy pile into outer space.  Then super intelligent
space aliens will eventually discover the clip-joint capsule and
clone your DNA back into you.
     "If an alien race is capable of finding the spacecraft, they
should be able to access the data," said David Goldstein, vice
president for space systems at Encounter 2001.
     Oh, sure...  It's hard enough to trust human doctors, and
we're supposed to trust something that probably looks like a
cross between a jellyfish and a zucchini -- something that has
likely never seen anything that even looks like a human -- to
reassemble us from spare parts without an instruction manual.
     One thing I don't understand:  What's to keep the super
intelligent guys from doing what you or I would do if we found a
glob of hair out behind the garage one day; just shovel the whole
mess into the dumpster and forget it.  Now let's see...  4.5
million hairs would only weigh around a kilogram or so, right? 
At $50 bucks a sample, that would mean these guys at Encounter
2001 would collect around $225,000,000.  With space flights on
France's Arianne rocket costing about $10,000 per kilogram,
either their administrative costs are way out of line or somebody
plans on milking a fortune out of this.  Maybe I do understand
after all!  (Reuters)


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