For TBT: 1994. Age 39 Phil’s Phurther Hair-Raising Misadventures Having your author’s photo taken is not unlike sitting for your high school yearbook picture, in that it will endure for posterity, so you want to look reasonably good. (One significant difference being that presumably your high school yearbook won’t wind up in the Barnes & Noble remaindered bin ten years later.) This photo, for my 1994 book “Dog Days: The New York Yankees’ Fall from Grace and Return to Glory, 1964 to 1976” (about the shitty Yankees teams I grew up rooting for; aka The Horace Clarke Era, set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing America), captured me on a Hall of Fame-worthy bad hair day. The author’s pic for my previous book two years earlier wasn’t too bad – an author-in-the-great-outdoors shot that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a “National Geographic” photo essay on Siberian mooses, but I thought I could do better this time by going to a photo studio. I had it planned perfectly: exactly seventeen days since my last hair cut, so it wouldn’t be too short or too long. Well, maybe it was the extreme humidity that morning, but, for whatever reason, my hair came out kinda ... poufy. So I tried blow-drying it a second time, and then a third time, only to wind up looking like Annette Funicello teasing out her bouffant for the teen flick “Beach Party Bikini Waxin’ Surfin’ Hullaballoo Death March!” By the fourth or fifth futile attempt, my hair looked like a cake that had been allowed to rise too much. Maybe it was that all-yeast organic shampoo and conditioner. (In retrospect, I probably should have driven over to the local cigar store and asked if they’d mind if I blow-dried my hair in their humidor. I can’t imagine they would have refused. After all, I’m a famous author, dammit!) Next, to counteract the damage done, I tried tamping it down – might have even schpritzed it with some women’s hair spray (NOT feminine spray; even I have limits) – which only gave it the effect of a cake with far too much frosting. I probably should have cancelled the photo shoot at a local studio, but my editor at Random House had called all hysterical, saying that he needed my author’s photo el pronto. I should have remembered that in the genteel, slug-paced world of book publishing, where authors actually brag about having written their latest opus on a Smith-Corona manual typewriter (and, presumably, drop it off at the publishing company via mule and wagon), “ASAP” means “If you can get it to me before the end of the winter solstice, that would be g-r-e-e-e-e-a-t. If it’s not too much trouble, that is. I don’t want to disturb you from your c-r-e-a-t-i-n-g or whatever it is you do.” And we were leaving for a vacation the next day. The photographer did the best she could, given what she had to work with. But I came out looking like a carnival cotton candy with eyes. After sixty years together, my hair and I have a special relationship. We share our deepest secrets, like this: My hair: “Hey, think I’m gonna go get me a mohawk, Dude!” Me: “No way in hell, hair.” After the photo shoot for “Dog Days,” I was so pissed at my hair that I didn’t speak to it for months. Im pretty sure it noticed. (Related note: Having sat for several highly professional photographers over the years, I still believe that if you gave a chimpanzee a decent camera, several dozen rolls of film, a bunch of bananas, and a mild sedative, it could probably do about as a good a job once it stopped swinging from the rafters.)
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 10:32:47 +0000