Losing My (Artistic) Edge

I think it was Goethe who said: "He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds trust in his hairstylist".

Wait, there's no such quote? Damn. That would have made such a great opener. All right, let's start all over again.

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New England 1, Midwest 0. In the ongoing battle for cultural superiority, that is the latest score.

The reason, of course, is "The Artistic Edge" hair salon's recent relocation from Chicagoland, Illinois to Framingham, Massachusetts (79 Main St, Suite 103).

An exquisite skill with the blade
It has been my pleasure—and that of the entire Brumpelstiltskin blogging troupe—to be a confident client of The Artistic Edge for seven gloriously stylish years. Never had MC Gallagher let someone trim his unibrow, nor Greenspanke his neck hair, until we met Jen, the salon's founder and ace stylist, whose skill with the blade makes Sweeney Todd look like the Dabbling Barber of Geek Street.

Those who knew her as a young prodigy agreed that Jen was born to do hair—that it was in her blood—and many questioned if formal training would even be necessary. But the finest education she would receive: first under the tutelage of her grandma (herself an accomplished hair stylist); and later through the 1500-hour program of world-renowned cosmetology academy, Pivot Point International. Thus equipped with a first-rate fusion of nature and nurture, Jen graduated from Pivot Point in 2001. Soon after, the Artistic Edge was born.

While the salon offers a range of advanced services (e.g., color, highlights, lowlights), personally I’ve always received the traditional men’s cut. That said, there’s nothing traditional about Jen’s approach even to this basic service, which creatively combines a firm grasp of current popular trends with an instinctive awareness of individual wants and needs. Click here for an exclusive Mic’s Tape-sponsored coupon offering first-time clients a 20% discount off any of Jen’s services—which also include updo’s for special occasions (sample updo, above right).

Chairside manner par excellence
But besides being a master of her craft, Jen’s personality and demeanor—not to mention the salon itself (pictured above and below)—place The Artistic Edge among the most comfortable and inviting of salon atmospheres. Indeed, she’s the kind of stylist you suspect could have won the friendliest superlative in her high school yearbook.

I did not fully appreciate this latter point until Jen’s relocation left me in need of a replacement, and forced me down the street to the neighborhood Cost Cutters. "God, how many cowlicks do you have?" the stylist inquired as I sat down, thus launching a steady barrage of insults and barbs far sharper than the shears she would use to massacre my once-magnificent mane. “Do you even use conditioner?” she continued, a look of disgust on her face, before exclaiming: "Ugh, your hair is getting all over me"!

The contrast could not have been more profound. Like Shakespeare's Lear, cast overnight from kingly castle to forbidding tempest, I entered Cost Cutters expecting the royal treatment, but left feeling (and looking) like a Pumpkin Pie Haircutted Fool.

In the wake of such experience, it is with great zeal that I call upon New Englanders everywhere to capitalize on the glamorous gift that has landed in your midst. Trust one who knows: a salon combining a time-tested, hair-designing prowess with client-focused personality is a rare commodity to be cherished. So get thee with haste to The Artistic Edge, my friends, for a planeload of chic-deprived Midwesterners will be right behind you!

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Mike-Michael (pictured left, before his first visit to The Artistic Edge) will look like this once more if he doesn't book himself a ticket to Boston ASAP.

Rate Your Music

When asked if I'm on Facebook, my standard response of "No, but I am on Rate Your Music" is usually met by a blank stare that seems to say this.

So, what is Rate Your Music (RYM)? To put it verbosely, it's a delightfully handy online wonderland of user-driven musical minutiae in which ratings yield recommendations, like-minded pop/rock/soul mates are unearthed, and “critics” (i.e., paid music nerds) take a backseat to "normal people” (i.e., unpaid music nerds) like me (visit my profile here).

Or, to put it simply, it’s a great way to discover new music. Here’s how:

First, if you invest a little time and “catalog” (aka make a list of) and rate (on a scale of 0.5-5.0 stars) your music collection, RYM will (much like Netflix’ website) generate custom recommendations based on your input. It will also create a “compatibility list” of other RYM users whose tastes most closely resemble your own, and then allow you to peruse their collections. More recently, they’ve implemented a “predicted rating” feature which “represents how strongly RYM thinks you will like” any given album. Using this tool, I can tell, for example, that I should heed a friend's recent advice that I check out Ágætis Byrjun by Sigur Rós (predicted rating: 4.46).

Second, it’s also interesting—and this doesn’t require making any ratings—to simply look and see what “average” people think is best. For instance, this list of the RYM users' top albums of all-time has led me to many a gem (such as Odessey & Oracle by The Zombies). This can also prove useful in deciding where to begin with a certain band (like when a glance at The Cure's discography led me to start with Disintegration). And then there are the inevitable surprises, like when I learned that—shockingly—the top-rated single of 1985 is not Eddie Murphy's immortal classic, "Party All The Time" (video here).

Ronaldo's Own Personal Crying Game

It once seemed inevitable that the dominant sports story for Spring 2008 would be the May 12 return of American Gladiators. That was the way it was supposed to go down, anyway.

But as the last few weeks have shown, life is full of surprises. Just ask Ronaldo.

Ronaldo, age 31, is a Brazilian football (aka soccer) superstar, a three-time former World Player of the Year (1996, 1997, 2002), and the most prolific goalscorer in FIFA World Cup history. However, it's an off-the-field "hat trick" that's earned him headlines as of late. Cue the video:

Our non-Portuguese-speaking readers may be a bit confused by this clip, but perhaps caught the words "prostituta" and "travesti"? These words were used because on April 28, Ronaldo (to quote the BBC's Jane Hadden): "left a nightclub with what he thought were three female prostitutes and took them to a motel. It was only after he got there that he discovered the women were actually men".

Ohh...

For the full details (including an excellent video clip in English), I'd recommend this story by BBC News.

To put it briefly, though, once Ronaldo realized there were "too many balls on the field", he promptly signaled his disinterest and offered the prostitutes $600 for their time. While two accepted, the third, Albertino, threatened to leak the incident to the Internet unless Ronaldo paid him $30,000.

In response, Ronaldo went to the Rio police and fessed up, and now Albertino is being investigated for attempted extortion. In his testimony to police, Ronaldo said: "I'm not going to pay [this money]. I may be publicly condemned, but I did nothing wrong".

While Ronaldo is indeed blameless from a legal standpoint (prostitution is not against the law in Brazil), many still question whether he, in fact, "did nothing wrong". Nonetheless, it's strangely refreshing to see a superstar athlete just come clean for once. In the era of Steroids and Co., it's hard to imagine many US athletes following suit.

Kentucky Fried Clinton?

In the wake of last night's Indiana and North Carolina Democratic primaries—the latter won decisively by Barack Obama—a slew of leading political pundits (led by NBC's Tim Russert) have declared the race all but over.

They point to the popular vote. They point to states won. They point to funds raised, and pledged delegates, and superdelegates. But for all their pointing, the pundits have missed the point.

Namely, the factors they mention—"the math"—mean nothing. No, all that matters is which campaign, Clinton's or Obama's, has what it takes to go "coast to coast". With the game on the line, which candidate has the skills to grab the proverbial defensive board and take that mofo the length of the court for a "game-changing" (nay, game-winning) slam dunk?

In other words, it all boils down to who can win Kentucky. That's right, KY. Cue the map:

As you can see, each candidate is but one state away from an electoral Connect Four (i.e., winning contiguous states from the Atlantic to the Pacific). In their respective quests, Clinton (dark blue) need only bridge Indiana and Tennessee while Obama must fuse Virginia and Illinois. For each, Kentucky is the coveted tie that binds.

Note, too, how crucial Oklahoma turned out to be. Thanks to the clearly biased cartographer's decision to assign Obama the northern half of Texas, this whole issue would already be decided if Clinton hadn't "panhandled" Obama (55% to 31%) in the Feb 5 Oklahoma primary—a victory historians have already dubbed the "Barack Block".

But again, it is the May 20th Kentucky contest that should ultimately decide this thing once and for all. For afterwards, in his or her victory speech, the winner will finally be able to claim:

East coast? West coast? It don't matta. Come November I'll get you to the White House lickity split. No sh*t!!

Be a Pioneer (Tips to Fight Global Warming)

A lot of people say Mic's Tape will never offset the carbon emissions it creates (by virtue of the sheer number of energy-wasting computers our fan base has to use in order to access us). One critic even told us to go piss up a flagpole (as opposed to our current policy?).

In response, we wish to underscore our environmental commitment by promoting a few websites—here, here and here—that offer everyday tips on how we as individuals can collectively fight global warming.

A few of the suggestions we'd heard before, such as replacing traditional incandescent light bulbs with more cost- and energy-effective compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs); and using public transportation or carpooling (instead of driving alone).

But most of these tips presented new, previously unconsidered challenges; of these, we've recently begun to practice: (a) letting hot leftovers cool before putting them into the fridge; (b) using reusable containers for drinking water (instead of disposable plastic); (c) unplugging electronics, such as cell phone charges, when not in use; and (d) bagging groceries with cloth bags such as these instead of paper or plastic.

Please take a look at these suggestions, and challenge yourself to put at least one into practice. Also, feel free to share any other tips that you feel are especially important.

Pepsi's Got It (The Right Stuff)

My palate has been wooed by many a soda/pop in its day, and never more effortlessly than by A-Treat Birch Beer and Barq's Red Crème Soda. But alas, given my remoteness from both Allentown (PA) and a Kroger in Ohio, respectively, I haven't tasted either of those luscious libations in quite some time.

In their stead, I sometimes sip the sweet carbonated nectar of locally-operated Millstream Brewing Company, but by and large I've sold my taste buds to the industry's two biggest behemoths: Coke and Pepsi.

For years have I vacillated—like John Kerry in the wind—between the two. On one hand, nothing compliments a fresh Italian hoagie quite like an ice-cold can of Pepsi. But if popcorn is the course, and I need something to wash down the handful of Pop Secret Homestyle I just devoured (after noisily smearing it on the side of the bag), nothing but a Cherry coke (served in a pretentious little cup on the rocks) will do. Yet, I've always been more attracted to women who drink Pepsi. And so the debate raged on...

But after my recent dual discoveries of My Coke Rewards (MCR) and Pepsi Stuff (PS), the jury is no longer out. Not only is the actual website for PS (integrated with Amazon.com) clearly superior to MCR's slow and clunky design, a comparison of the actual "rewards/stuff" reveals, in my opinion, a slam dunk case in favor of Pepsi.

For simplicity's sake, I'll restrict my argument to digital music-related prizes. While a single-song download from Rhapsody.com (not iPod-compatible) "costs" 33 Coke points (aka 11 caps), a single-song DRM-free (i.e., iPod-compatible) download on Amazon.com costs a mere 5 Pepsi points (5 caps). About the only thing Coke offers for 5 caps is a "virtual jacket" for your avatar to wear around CC Metro, which is a computer-based, alternate reality island (à la Second Life) shaped like a Coke bottle (seriously).

Brumpelstiltskin's very own music critic, MC Gallagher, who's been known to rummage through the recycle bin in his workplace's break room in search of bottle caps, put it this way: "If given the choice between an actual mp3 or some make believe clothing shite—even if it's a powder fooking blue tuxedo—you better believe I'll take the first option every time".

The Price is Wrong, Bitch

As the human sibling of 11 (count 'em!) illegitimate feline brothers and sisters (of whom 36% are pictured left), I have firsthand experience with the profound ramifications of cat overpopulation.

For starters, there are the inevitable ribbings from friends that result as a corollary of Tigue's Law, which states that "as the number of cats that one adopts approaches ten, the probability that each new cat's name will be utterly ridiculous approaches one". (Just ask my younger brother, "Window Scratcher".)

Then there's the price. According to the ASPCA website, the average CPC (cost-per-cat) is $1035 for the first year and $670 for each year thereafter. Even if you remove all "luxury" expenses (i.e., toys/treats, health insurance, collars, scratching posts, carrier bags, and "misc."), you're still looking at $440/yr on food, litter and recurring medical expenses (plus an extra $280 during Year 1 on vaccinations, etc.). Given that the average lifespan of an indoor-only cat is 15 years, even under the second "luxury-free" scenario, a typical cat will cost $6880.

But there's more to this topic than monikers and money. Just a few weeks ago, amid an impulsive web search, I was unexpectedly struck—like a cat scratch—by the discovery that the scientific community has in recent years gone absolutely b.a.n.a.n.a.s. for felines. For the fever of curiosity that ensued, I knew the only prescription was to sink my teeth into the the first article I could get my hands on: "A review of feral cat control," written by Dr Sheilah Robertson of the University of Florida, and soon to be published by JFMS (that's The Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery for you lay people).

Dr Robertson begins her review by defining the "feral" cat. Unlike my 11 siblings—who are among the estimated 90m "owned/pet" cats in the US—feral cats are not fortunate enough to be cared for by empathetic humans like my parents. Though sometimes defined in the literature simply as "escaped domestic cats gone wild" (aka the lost and abandoned), in truth the feral population also includes a massive subset who were never domesticated to begin with (e.g., barn and alley cats). While some rely on humans for varying degrees of food and shelter, they are all by definition free-roaming, and there are an astounding 25-100m of them in the US alone.

In her review Dr Robertson also details six main issues in the feral cat debate: (1) public health and zoonotic disease; (2) spread of disease to other species; (3) spread of disease to "pet" cats; (4) effects on local wildlife and ecosystems; (5) public nuisance (e.g., "the noise they make, fecal contamination and their presence around restaurants, cafes and other public places"); and last but certainly not least, (6) the welfare of the cats themselves.

The article also discusses potential solutions to this issue, but that will have to wait until a future post. In the meantime, for a clue, click here.

(This is the first installment in a planned two-part series)