Haircut
Friday June 27, 2025
I wrote my college essay about facial hair, so it was only a matter of time until I admitted how confused I am about haircuts here.
To this day, I have no idea what to ask when I sit in the Supercuts chair. The only thing I’m confident about when it comes to my hair is that I don’t want to spend very much money on it. I had a small meltdown about this last week when I had the sudden realization that I didn’t want to say “just cut it shorter.” Unfortunately, I didn’t know what the hell else to say, so I was prepared to tell the stylist to use my head as her canvas.
Lindsay talked me out of that. I asked for “shorter” and it turned out okay.
But man, this is one of those areas where I still feel like a child. I’ve gotten my hair cut at five places in my life:
Station Street in Hingham, where Pat called me “Nicolino” and reminded me into my 20s about how I fell asleep in the chair as a kid whenever he spritzed water in my hair.
Miguel’s in Oberlin like twice when I wasn’t going home for a break.
A Korean spot in one of those LA concrete deserts between MacArthur Park and Mid-City that put a sign out front that said “$8 Man Hair Cut.” That’s advertising. Saw it on one of my first commutes to the office, and it became my place. $10 with tip, not a word of English spoken, and K-Pop music videos playing all day long. I’d go in, point at one of the headshots of little white children on their white people menu, and someone would chop up my hair and send me out of there in 15 minutes. I’d still make the hour-long trip even after moving to the West Side.
A place down the street from our first Somerville pad that charged $30, but the guy had to fix his clippers with a screwdriver multiple times during the cut and I started having day nightmares about the clippers falling apart and cutting my ear off.
After that experience, I’ve been going to Supercuts with the exception of a couple of visits to Tony in Hingham (Pat retired). I did a little bit of research, found a few highly regarded spots, but the price tags all scared me off. I’m not paying $50+ for a haircut when I have literally no fucking idea what to ask them to do to my hair. At least at Supercuts, I know I’m getting the same bad boys’ regular haircut for $32.95 after tip.
I think it really triggered me deeply when Ryan Howard on “The Office” said he paid $200 for his haircut after getting promoted at Dunder-Mifflin. I just can’t bring myself to pay that much money (or a quarter of that much money) for someone to slap a razor and some scissors on my head.
Do I have to start bringing in pictures to Supercuts to get a good haircut? Do I have to go to a real barber shop and pay a ton of money to get a good haircut? Does it even matter? Tell me my hair looks nice. What do you do to feel like an adult?
One Hollywood: Mickey 17, Max
Bong Joon-Ho’s first movie since Parasite stars Robert Pattinson as Mickey, a man in the not-so-distant future who enlists to become an Expendable; a person who can be killed and reprinted with his consciousness intact for research and dirty job purposes. It’s pretty good. No Parasite, but it’s entertaining, somewhat thought-provoking, and Mark Ruffalo is hilarious as the charlatan leader of a religious/corporate movement to colonize a new planet.
One Book: “The Last Policeman” by Ben H. Winters
I’ve been looking for sci-fi and fantasy recs for a little while because I want some real page-turners when I’m up at all hours of the night with a newborn. I found this trilogy on some list somewhere and it was the first thing that was actually available on Libby after striking out on like six fantasy series. It’s not spectacular, but I am enjoying it. Feels kind of like Carl Hiaasen meets Douglas Adams. In the period of “unbearable immanence” before an unavoidable asteroid is predicted to smash into the planet and eliminate half the population and pitch the other into dystopian darkness, Detective Henry Palace attempts to solve what he’s pretty sure is a murder in Concord, NH. However, nobody really cares about murders anymore and the judicial system is barely still standing, so that complicates things. I’m not really sure how this is going to be a trilogy, so I’m looking forward to a twist or two as I get closer to the end.
One Song: Bob Sinclar - World, Hold On
The DJ at Matt Camello and Aaron Babst’s wedding played this for like two minutes and it brought me back to dancing high as a kite in Nick Sneath’s kitchen. What a banger.
One Place: Bob and Linda’s Pool
Our neighbor, Linda Camberlain, invited us over to her pool on that 100-degree Tuesday. It’s the first time we’ve used their pool and holy shit is it amazing to have neighbors with a pool. Virtually every house in our neighborhood has one, but the Camberlains are the only people we’ve gotten to know well enough for Linda to call me up out of the blue and invite us to use it on a hot day. When people say, “Come over any time,” I generally assume they don’t mean it, but Linda might actually mean it and I might take her up on it because it was so damn nice to just sit in a pool for a little while. It’s especially relieving for Lindsay, who has a weighted demon growing inside of her that can only be quelled by the anti-gravity properties of water.
They have a sign on the fence that says “Swimsuits optional beyond this point.” Beyond this point is our yard. So guess that’s license to walk around naked in the backyard.
One Picture:
Goose wanted to drive home after the vet on Tuesday. He did not. Happy weekend everyone!