Beauty Salon Dropout: Why I Cut and Color My Own Hair In the Year 2017

A (very purple!) 1980s hair salon. Image via Scanagogo

A few months ago I made the difficult decision of emailing my hairdresser to let her know I was breaking up with her. It wasn't because I was unhappy with her work -- quite the opposite -- but she had moved twice within the past year, eventually opening up her own salon in a town that simply felt too far away for me to drive to for a haircut. I wished her good luck with the new business venture and thanked her for all of the awesome styles she gave me through the years not to mention all of the times she patiently listened while I cried in her chair over a dope that broke my heart.

What I didn't mention in the message is that I had recently trimmed my own hair and was pleased enough with the results that I had no intentions of seeing her, or any other stylist, again any time soon. I had perused a ton of DIY haircut tutorials on YouTube and finally one afternoon took the plunge myself (I actually did more then trim; I cut off about an inch and a half, which is what I wanted.)

The Time Ronald McDonald Hung His Head In Shame: Mac & Me

The 1980s decade was not the best time for McDonald's, branding-wise. Late in the '70s they were sued by Sid and Marty Krofft over their McDonaldland characters, which the brothers claimed were a copyright infringement of H.R. Pufnstuf and related characters. The Krofft brothers won, and McDonald's was ordered to stop using several of the McDonaldland characters in advertising and commercials. In 1987, they introduced a new character -- Mac Tonight -- who had a giant crescent moon for a head and wore a tux and shades. He sang a reworked version of Bobby Darin's "Mack the Knife" and landed McDonald's in hot water again when they were sued by Darin's estate for infringing upon his trademark song without permission.

Then there was the time McDonald's got involved with the movie business. The result was Mac & Me, released in 1988 and widely considered one of the worst movies ever made. I can now say that I'm one of the few that has watched Mac & Me (it's been uploaded to YouTube) and it was one of the most excruciating experiences of my life (but alas, a retro blogger's got to do what a retro blogger has to do.) I don't think there's a word or phrase in the dictionary that can adequately convey how bad this movie is, but sh*t show comes close.

Jürgen Prochnow Should Have Been a Huge Star In the States

Hey Germany, let's make a deal. I'll trade you George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, James Franco, Matt Damon, Ryan Gosling, Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Bradley Cooper, and Justin Timberlake for your Jürgen Prochnow.

In fact, I'll trade anyone that's ever been featured in the pages of People magazine's annual Sexiest Men issue and anyone else that the Hollywood media deems that us warm blooded American females should be drooling over...because they say so...for your Jürgen Prochnow.

All of these pathetic American "actors", you can have them all. Just give me Jürgen. Please?

OK, if the answer is nein, I don't blame you. I wouldn't trade him, either.

But he should have been a huge star here. I'm talking bigly. (I just noticed that Blogger didn't autocorrect bigly. So it's a word after all.)

Why I Simply Cannot Stomach The English Patient

In my last blog post I raved to you about a movie that totally won my heart, Das Boot. In today's blog post, I'm going to gripe, vent, grovel about and generally rip apart a film that lost it: The English Patient.

No one would be more surprised to hear this than my high school friends, who went with me to see the movie when it opened in theaters in 1996. Back then I thought it was romantic, sexy, and tragic. I suppose the crush I had on Ralph Fiennes at the time had something to do with it...this was way before he started losing his hair and turned into Lord Voldemort.

But time and life has a way of educating one's self. While watching clips of the movie online the other night, a profound realization swept over me: this is a pretty stupid movie.

Movie Review: Das Boot (Director's Cut)

Every once in a while a movie will impress me with all of the ingredients of a perfect storm: a stellar storyline, superb acting, impressive sets and special effects, and a memorable soundtrack. But it's the rare film that has all this plus the ability to hit me hard emotionally in some way. As I've gotten older, such works of art have become all the more rarer, given the way Hollywood is going these days, with its banal, never ending parade of remakes chockfull of sterile characters and overblown CGI.

I knew I was long overdue, then, for a dive into the retro movie vault to remedy this. So when my mother and I saw that our local This TV channel was airing the director's cut version of Das Boot on Memorial Day, we got excited and set the DVR. The movie was a favorite of my late father, a WWII vet that ate up anything on film that had to do with the war. It had been many years since I watched it with him on VHS, and I must confess that I simply could not appreciate it at the time, which must have been when I was in my 20s.

I'm now 45 and despite seeing it before, I was not prepared for how much this movie would affect me. I truly wept at the ending. Then I rewatched the final five minutes the morning after (as if I were in disbelief about the conclusion) and bawled like a baby.

Yes, a German war (or anti-war) movie about a submarine caused me to increase Kleenex's profits. And if this film doesn't affect you on some level like it did to me, I may have to question if you're human. Das Boot is a painfully poignant reminder that in war, nobody truly wins. But more importantly than that, it proves that even the people we perceive to be our foes are no different than us, and war affects all sides in similar ways.