Corn Mo Doo

I first came across Corn Mo in the Dooms UK some nine years or so ago now. The Dooms was the first band I sought out in Fort Worth after moving there. They got a good write-up in the Weekly, and that was enough to convince me, newly arrived, to give them a chance. They were worth it, and Corn Mo, behind the keyboards seemed to the quintessential cool elment of the band. What made Corn Mo cool? It was probably a combination of things, but certainly one of them was his hair.

Corn Mo had, at that time, a beard, mustache, and a long blond maine. The beard and mustache have since been replaced by long mutton chop sideburns, but the rest remains. He was, at the time, relatively thin and muscular, everything, it seemed, that I was not, at least in terms of coolness.

But here was the odd part. Corn Mo was a real person, kind, not the kind of person you think of as "cool." Granted, it was the Dooms UK, and nothing about that band was exactly normal. They were songs about elves living under the city and mechanical monkeys after all (both songs were never put to a album, so we slog along without that record).

I ran into Corn Mo one day on the streets of downtown Fort Worth. I saw his solo work once, which is where the name comes from. He was affable and friendly and we talked for awhile about why he was out there and about his performance work. More recently, he showed up in Athens, where I have since moved (he has since moved to New York). He was the same affable man, a bit heavier but with the same long stallionlike hair, and a whole lot funnier and exciting as a performer than he had even been back in Texas. I talked with him after his show, and although he didn't know me at all, he made it seem like he did, asking my name and acknowledging the whole Fort Worth connection. He seemed genuinely pleased that one of his old Texas fans had come to a show in Georgia.

I guess I've typically found long hair somewhat offputting in men. Such speaks to me of them either being hippis or so extremely cool that they would be too cool for me. Corn Mo is neither. His hair is part of the act, I think, the act of being cool, but deep down, he's also a really nice guy and a funny one as well. Go see him perform if you ever have the chance.

Hairy Science

Who knew that scientists worry so much about their hair? After reading through several books of scientific theory, last week I finally took a poke at James D. Watson's The Double Helix. Admittedly, it wasn't a book on my science-reading list that I was looking particular forward to. I hate biology, after all, and microbiology all the more. Oh, I understand it's usefulness, and I'm glad someone likes it and wants to study it so that he or she can tell me what's wrong with me and fix me up and all, but it needn't be me. I'll be down at the record store, pouring through vinyl, thank you (and I don't even own a record player--but at least the covers are interesting).

The Double Helix turned out to be a hoot, a sort of celebrity tell-all autobiography, only with high-minded scientists in the mix. You have a researcher afraid of his assistant, an assistant who threatens her boss and anyone else, an annoying heavy talker, and amid all of them an American who sort of just stumbles into genius--or so he makes it seem toward the beginning. Watson does want to study anything he doesn't like or understand, so he's taking the easiest road possible, and ends up finding DNA.

In the midst of this, however, he obsesses on his hair. He's an American, after all, among the Brits, and his hair is way too short to fit in. He lets it grow out to garner esteem in the eyes of his colleagues, and along with that, a beard, which others find atrocious and which he later wins accolades for shaving off. And then, to end it all, Nobel Prize in hand, he walks out onto the St. Germain des Pres to stare at the pretty long-haired girls walking by. He's too old for them now, he realizes--all of twenty-five. Alas, the tragedy of winning prizes--to be cast aside by beauteous hair.

Hair of the Adonis

I didn't even know who Aaron Eckhardt was before last week, but now I am sure that few men are blessed with such hair. Near the start of the movie Thank You for Smoking, in which he stars, his character states that he was "the guy." You know, "the guy." The one that could pick up any girl in high school, who all the girls wanted to be with, who was Mr. Popular. And good looking. And athletic. And loved. And despised. This is Aaron Eckhardt.

I'd been unaware of him before last week, but I had seen him before, where he was also "the guy." It was in a movie called In the Company of Men. In both films, his characters are in many ways a despicable human being, though in Smoking, his character does at least have some redeeming qualities. But I am not think of morality first when I think of Mr. Eckhardt. I think of "the guy." And I think of hair.

With hair like that, I too could pick up the women. If you have seen Eckhardt's hair, you know that it is a thick blond mane that he quafts neatly in a business cut that does not seem geeky in the least. No, it's cool. It's quarterback cool--the quarterback we see in the pictures, not the kind that gets booted around the football field. Aaron Eckhardt, thank you. Thank you for showing me the way to more excellent hair. Do you give combing lessons? I'll start tomorrow. Oh, but you'll have to teach me how to cover the bald spot at the front of my head.