Midget update.

It looks like midget wrestling might not happen on Thursday. I invited a second-career ph.d. student from my program and she was interested, but she says she's not going since it's a part of herself that she doesn't want to encourage. A masters student I know says she really enjoyed this one bar she went to on St. Patrick's Day where they had paid a midget to dress up as a leprechaun and dance on the counter, but she has too much work this week for Friday to go out.

Rock-and-roll panel: Comments.

This past Saturday I went to a panel on artists who've worked with rock album covers. All of them were thankful for the massive exposure landing a choice album can give someone's work, even if people don't know the artist behind it, though they lamented the fact that CD covers are smaller than record covers, and MP3s just don't allow for the circulation of cover art like it used to be.

In addition, one speaker trashed a lot of rock-and-roll artists for their lack of social concern, and how there's not been one good rock song about the Iraq war, and how rockstars "are shoppers, not rebels," and how the role of the rebel in popular consciousness has increasingly devolved away from rockstars.

Also also, they spontaneously trashed New York and how there's nothing happening there since no one can afford to live there. "But Brooklyn is better and a lot of artists live there," the moderator was like, and everyone in the panel kind of shook their head and was like, "No," as if the Brooklyn artists didn't matter. One (foreign-born) panelist said Berlin had a really productive art scene right now, where people were flocking there and it was cheap to live.

Also also also, they said the U.S. is so big that it's hard to have a "moment" here like you do in other countries like England, where everyone can get fired up about the same musical developments at the same time because it's densely populated and everyone's tied into London. They were saying that to have something get going to create a moment, it would have to happen in New York/Chicago/L.A. and elsewhere and get momentum really quickly, and that just doesn't happen.

Was discombobulated.

One more detail --

I was telling Diezel that my dad taught high school and his whole crack about keeping meals in his moustache was usually his response to his students who asked him about his moustache, so him saying what he did in response to that fact added a whole different layer to everything.

Also, I felt like this was the first time I had ever been overwhelmed by an outlandishly obscene scenario someone sprung on me to the point where I couldn't respond. Usually, I'm the one doing the springing, like with "hairy ball sweat", and when that happens, I'm always amazed at the lack of reaction I get, but now I think I know what it's like to be a deer in the headlights. You really don't see it coming.

Got my haircut yesterday (part IV of V): Diezel's favorite story.

After all this shit, Diezel told me his favorite story. Like fifteen years ago, his gay coworker came in to the barbershop where he was working and was talking about how he had brought this guy home and was getting his clothes off, and was like, "I said, 'No, that ain't going in me! I'm gonna put that on my shoulder and burp it.'"

Got my hair cut yesterday (part IV of V): Ladies being nice.

Somehow, too, Diezel got to telling me about how he's dumb with women and he doesn't know when they're hitting on him. Just last week, he was telling me, this woman he knows in her 20s whose family he knows was alone with him somehow and told him, "You know, I've been hitting on you for a while," only he was like, "Who am I, to think she's hitting on me, am I something" -- and here he mugged -- "'Yeah, she's hitting on me, did you see that, did you see that,' no, I was just thinking she was being nice, I'm dumb like that, and I told her that, I told her, 'Your aunt, sure, maybe your grandmother, and definitely your mother, but darling, what do I need with a young girl like you.' No, I'm not getting into that, no I'm not."

I was confused a little by that story, and asked about his age -- it turns out that even though he looks mid-30s, Diezel is actually in his 50s.

Got my haircut today (part III of IV): More on moustaches.

Later me and Diezel started talking again about hair, and he was saying how he gets a really patchy beard so he can't wear a beard or a moustache, though back when he was young he grew a thin moustache and tried to make it look better with moustache wax, only he was dating a white girl at the time, so she kept getting this dark ring around her mouth from when they'd kiss and they couldn't figure out what it was, though he figures she thought black men were dirty, then he realized it was his moustache wax and he stopped wearing it but didn't tell her that that was what was leaving the rings around her mouth. He was like, "They should put a warning on that stuff, "Warning, do not date light-skinned people.'"

Diezel, who's really, really black, then told me about how he's always gone for women lighter than him, and was like, "It's bad enough when it's you and you turn off the light and she's like, 'Where'd he go?', but when it's both of you, oh boy, you need dogs, 'C'mon boy, find her, find her, c'mon!'", and he stretched out both his hands and walked around beside the barber chair like he was blind.

Later he was telling me about the Filipino woman he's dating and how last weekend her mother badgered him for a haircut and when he got to her place in Chinatown, it was a surprise birthday party for him.

Got a haircut today (part II of probably IV): Advice.

Diezel asked me why my dad just didn't shave his head entirely, and I said my mom said not to and just let it grow back a while, which turned out to be bad advice, though he was like, "No, that's good advice, he just didn't do it right, that's what you always say. Women and your mother can't give bad advice, you always messed it up or you weren't listening right or something, but they always know what's right." I tried asking him about times when his mother gave him bad advice about something, but he didn't really tell me of any times.