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Mike W. Bryant
Staff columnist
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Well, who would've thought that a Charles Bronson hair-do would ever go out of style?
Frankly, I like it and have been proudly cultivating it for some time but apparently it's too close to the Stephen Harper puppy-kicker look, which I assume will never be in vogue but may remain with us for a long time to come.
In any event, it was a crisis that required emergency rectification, according to the ladies at Vixen Hair Den.
I don't have a lot of time to fool around any more so I told them we'll have to kill two birds with one stone on this one. After a long winter funk, I really needed to do a little ice fishin' last weekend, and I didn't want to hurry the experience with a hair salon appointment added to my already busy schedule. Fortunately, Jenny Fischlin and Aileen George - Vixen's owners - were also keen to head outdoors for a stretch last weekend. I reckoned we could pop a few holes through the ice and get down to shaping a swanky new look right out there on the lake.
Jenny promised I wouldn't be disappointed.
Jenny Fischlin, of Vixen Hair Den, attempts to give me a 'faux-hawk' while out at the burbot hole on Sunday. It was too damned cold and windy to finish the job. - Mike W. Bryant/NNSL photo
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"You can be recognized as you always are but with better hair," she said.
Fabulous, I thought, as the girls wrapped the cape around my neck and got the scissors and comb out while I dropped a line down the hole baited with a nice, juicy cisco.
Aileen thought a "David Byrne look" from the New York new wave 1970s and '80s group the Talking Heads would make for a swell haircut but Jenny disagreed.
"You should get a faux-hawk," Jenny said.
"You can do business during the day, and faux-hawk at night."
The difference between a faux-hawk and a mohawk, from what I understand, is that one makes you looks like a really hip scenester-guy while the other makes you look like some junkie, panhandling loser.
I never had a mohawk or a faux-hawk or whatever when I was younger but I did try dreadlocks once.
When I was in show business and living in Vancouver I thought it would look really gnarly on stage if I had some big, knotty dreads flailing around ala Bob Marley, or the Grunge-era equivalent.
To accomplish this goal I used to take the bus down to Stanley Park with a couple of empty, four-litre milk jugs in tow, and fill them up with sea water from Georgia Strait.
The trick, when you're a young white punk with straight hair, is not to wash it for a few months. Periodically dumping the sea water on your head helps by making your hair all matted and crispy.
This went on for a while until I noticed barnacles and periwinkles growing on my hair, and human decency forced me to turn to the nearest barber to have the whole mess excised from my head down to the scalp.
It was, unfortunately, a much belated decision. I smelled liked the Sargasso Sea for weeks afterwards, and my girlfriend finally threw in the towel and dumped my salty butt.
Anyway, Jenny and Aileen were all set to transform me into a really cool dude. They brought along this stuff called Disrupt, which according to one website, "contains expandable gum fibres to give you more styling flexibility and freedom." Hell, it's gotta be better than sea water from a ditch.
"You've been disrupting a lot of Yellowknife lately in your columns so I thought Disrupt would be a perfect product for you," opined Jenny.
Alas, not all my ideas are well planned-out, as it turned out for my fishin'-and-hair cuttin'-in-one scheme.
The weather on Sunday was really quite nice, better than the -40 C deep freeze the weekend before but nonetheless, trying to sit still while wet and bareheaded in a 20 km/hr headwind on open lake ice in -25 C is not easy. I was also alarmed as Jenny's fingers began to shake while trying to hold onto the scissors with her bare fingers.
Needless to say, I didn't get the faux-hawk. It was more of a half-hawk.
Jenny's idea for cutting hair while ice fishin'?
"Cut fast and think positive."
Fortunately, Jenny was able to squeeze me in Monday night to finish the job with a dollop of Disrupt to boot. Gone is Charles Bronson. According to one reporter in the newsroom, I look like one of the Back Street Boys now.
Cheers ladies, we'll try this again in the summer.
P.S. I haven't seen any Catch of the Week photos for some time. If you got a big fish, or just a funny pic, e-mail it to me at editorial@nnsl.com.