Slice & Dice
Finally, normalcy has returned to The Ranch. The car is back from the shop looking and (more importantly) smelling like its old self. And I got a hair cut.

When first I crashed the new German car, I made the offhand comment that the body shop was going to have to order parts from Germany. Regrettably, that prophecy turned out to be true. Not only that, but I am told the 2006 model was redesigned and built new from the ground up. Although this is the kind of talk that pushes all the right buttons when you’re buying the car, it’s really not what you want to hear when it comes to fixing your ‘unique’ car. No parts can be cannibalized from older models, which means Dolph and Otto back at the VW plant in Wolfsburg need to make brand new ones for you (you did a great job guys – thanks!).

Now, about my hair…(aren’t blogs great?). It had been about three months since my last follicle chop and I was beginning to be mistaken for an actual Portlander with a proper mop of ‘Portland Hair’. But I’m just not comfortable in that skin yet, so I had to trim down.

My barber was visibly distressed about cutting my hair. She couldn’t understand why someone would want to cut such a beautiful unkept mop. After her first go round with the scissors, I had to demand, “no, shorter!”. To agitate matters worse, all four of the hair choppers on duty seemed to actively hate one another. I found out shortly that this was due to them all having very different tastes in music, which resulted in a lot of cattiness surrounding whatever current CD was being broadcasted in the joint. My barber listens to two kinds of music: the Iggy Pop kind and the Danzig kind. When not extolling the virtues of these musical men, she spent most of her time colorfully explaining what the other hair choppers listened to and why those selections made them incredibly horrible people. She even confessed to both stealing and breaking other people’s CD’s! Cinderella is her least favorite band of all time. Thankfully she did not ask what I listen to, as I have no idea how I would have answered that question, what with all those razors and scissors at her disposal. My barber has an affinity for the phrase ‘Slice and Dice’, as in, “If she puts on that Cinderella CD…boy, we are going to have to slice and dice“. If you heard that phrase enough times while strapped to the barber chair you too would acquiesce and agree with all earnestness that, “Yes, Danzig’s ‘Mother’ is, without question, the best song ever written”.