A Friendly Rant From Captain
Spaulding
IS THE
MALE EGO A HAIRY BEAST? YESSSS!
In the midst of
the somewhat sad and sordid spectacle that is now
Marv Albert's ruined life, an odd thought sticks
with me: What is the most mortifying
embarrassment suffered by the former NBC sports
broadcaster as a result of his sodomy trial last
month? Is it the revelation that he:
1) was cheating on
his girlfriend?
2) bit "the
other woman" repeatedly while fighting with
her?
3) forced her to
have oral sex with him against her will?
4) did nos. 2 and
3 because she would not bring another man into
their bed?
5) was described
by the "surprise witness" at his trial
as wearing white panties and a garter belt during
one of their assignations?
or
6) ended a tussle
with said surprise witness with her holding his
toupee in her sweaty hands?
I'm guessing
number six. While there's no doubt that Marv's
way up there on the tabloid tittilation scale in
terms of his sexual predilections--his exploits
make the teenybopper-chasing former Illinois
congressman Mel ("Peach panties? Did I win
the Lotto?") Reynolds look like a
Gideon--there can't be anything more humiliating
than the revelation that he wears a rug.
I mean, there are
big stars walking around with bird's nests on
their skulls who have had to live for years with
the open-secret rumors about their membership in
the baldy club. One bad photo, one odd public
transition in terms of one's scalp, and the
gossip train leaves the station. Burt Reynolds
has seemingly spent half of his public life with
folks tittering about his rug. Howard Cosell's
ill-fitting dustrag was the subject of comedic
monologue legend.
Why would men in
the limelight expose themselves to the ridicule
of the cultural laugh track? Part of the answer
lies in the stock response all men give
when asked why they are attempting to mask the
fact that they are follicularly challenged: Women
like hair on the top of a man's head. Lord only
knows why; from what we now know about the male
endocrine system, baldness is a sign that a guy's
testosterone is percolating quite nicely, rather
than diminishing. But, then again, we have no
reasonable answer to give to women for why we
like Jenny McCarthy--so I guess we're even.
The other part
lies in the kind of self-absorption that can only
be magnified by klieg lights. The idea that women
are the only half of the human race afflicted by
vanity is a canard. Men who spend their lives on
camera don't necessarily preen like peacocks, but
they are not without a certain sense that their
appearance is their meal ticket--broadcasters as
well as actors. Okay, there's the
real-guy-journalists like Germond, Kondracke,
Ebert, etc. who look like a makeup artist's
nightmare . . . but print journalists
moonlighting in television tend to be so in love
with their own words that they don't have the ego
to spare on their looks.
Seen in that
light, you tend to view A-list males who have
come to terms with their baldness as heroic. Sean
Connery certainly earned major cool points when
he ceased wearing his toupee offscreen. One
wonders, though, if he wasn't just presenting
casting directors with two available looks--the
familiar hirsute James Bond, and the real deal.
Far more laudable is Ted Danson's surprise
revelation that he wears a hairpiece, a
revelation made all the more entertaining by the
fact that he shockingly doffed the rug at the end
of one of the last Cheers episodes.
Thus, he not only came out of the Hair Club
closet, he did it in character as the
narcissistic walking hairdo Sam Malone.
Of course, it's so
much easier for men to slap on a hairpiece and
think that they can get away with it. Women spend
so much time working with, thinking about, and
changing their hair that for the wig business to
keep up with the latest look is akin to the Cold
War superpowers' attempts to stay ahead of the
arms race. For instance, 1997 will be forever
remembered as the year that the Scrunchy Era gave
way to the Epoch of Women Wearing Potato-Chip-Bag
Clips In Their Hair--and woe to her who did not
keep pace. For men, a hairstyle is like their
clothing--you find something that's comfortable
and, as Jerry Seinfeld says, you ride that style
out until you die. Thus, the ease (in theory;
subtlety is usually not the forte of toupeed men)
of sliding into the rug look; stealth is much
easier to achieve within the mundane.
As any sensible
woman who has survived teenage years spent in the
shadow of the cheerleaders and the Homecoming
court will tell you, a life devoted to the mirror
is a life with no perspective. Surely William
Shatner does not hear the snickering about his
hairpiece, because he's too busy thinking about
how styling he is after all those years
spent tackling bad guys with Adrian Zmed and
warping around the galaxy with Leonard Nimoy. He
and his brethren in the Royal Order of the Rug,
Celebrity Chapter, have either spent too much
time in the public eye to know any better, or
else they are all former child victims of the
"they're not laughing at you, they're just
jealous" subset of motherhood.
And so, as Marv
Albert waits for the buzz about his curious
sexual proclivities to die down enough for him to
take a career mulligan and update his resume, we
can assume that the top of his head will continue
to go through life without a sunroof. A man with
a tewp may be fooling only himself, but he is
also making a statement to the world with his
covered pate. Maybe it's "I'm as young as I
feel" or merely "I dare you to find the
seam", but they're all saying something. In
the case of Marv Albert, it may simply be
"Moss doesn't grow on cement."
E-Mail Captain Spaulding.
Previous
Mountaintop Experiences with Captain
Spaulding:
Hooray
For Me #1-- One Margarita
Too Many?
Hooray
For Me #2-- Spitting at the
Generations
Hooray
For Me #3-- The One-Eyed
Spokesmodel
Hooray
For Me #4-- Semisardonic
Over Semisonic
Hooray
For Me #5-- Bury My Brain
at Wounded Knee
Hooray
For Me #6-- Tempest in a B-Cup
Hooray
For Me #7-- Princess Diana
Hooray
For Me #8-- Get Back, Honky Cat
Hooray
For Me #9-- Mother Teresa
Hooray
For Me #10-- Selling Johnny Cash
