But the eye-catching nature of blondeness can also be a negative, “nowhere to run, nowhere to hide” situation that makes you stand out when perhaps you’d rather blend in. Because their yellow hair stands out in a crowd, blondes must be thoughtful about the types of establishments that they frequent. It’s all too easy for an evening of live music to turn into the legendary night when your best friend (and fellow blonde) gets punched in the face.
In late summer 2004, I was living back at home with my parents after my year of living in Chicago. Yes, I was a “boomerang kid” (graduated from college and ended up living back in my parents’ house) before it was big. I got in on the ground floor of that sad phenomenon, my friend! One evening a few weeks after my return from Chicago, I was reclining on my childhood bed, staring up at the ceiling, which I had covered, twelve years prior, with glow-in-the-dark stars. I thought to myself, So I guess this is rock bottom? Being twenty-four years old, broke, and sleeping back in your childhood twin bed with glow-in-the-dark stars overhead.
The phone rang (yes, a landline—I’m a Luddite), and it was my lifelong best friend, Suzanne, mercifully inviting me out of the suburbs and into the city. Suzanne and I fell right back into our usual routine of hanging out and having fun, and thank God we did. Suzanne helped me resocialize back to Boston life. That night, Suzanne asked if I wanted to drive to her apartment in Brighton because a Guns N’ Roses cover band called Mr. Brownstone was scheduled to play at the live music hall Harpers Ferry that very night. Her then-boyfriend, Paul, had seen them before and reported that they didn’t just play Guns N’ Roses music; these guys dressed up as Guns N’ Roses and put on a hell of a show. Wait—a lineup of five hard-rocking, bewigged dudes belting the sweet melodies originally created by Axl, Slash, Izzy, Duff, and Steven? Before you can say, “I might be a little young, but honey, I ain’t naïve,”64 I was driving into Boston for the night’s festivities.
I parked my parents’ car (because I was going hog with the whole “reverting to high school life” thing) on the street and climbed the stairs to Suzanne’s third-floor walk-up apartment. It was a dingy three-bedroom apartment, but it boasted a big front porch with a beautiful view of L.A. (Lower Allston)—specifically Brighton Avenue, the street on which Harpers Ferry was located. So we were stumbling-distance from the concert venue—clutch. Suzanne; her new beau, Paul; and his handsome buddy Ben (well hello there!) were all drinking beers on the porch when I arrived. I was glad to meet Paul as he and Suz had recently started dating and I wanted to suss out if this guy was good enough for my best friend. By transitive property, it earned Paul some points that his best friend, Ben, was not only hot but his love of all things Guns N’ Roses almost rivaled my own. After Bud Lights on the porch,65 we walked the few blocks to Harpers Ferry, paid the ten-dollar admission fee, bought some cheap beers, and got ready for our minds to be blown thanks to Mr. Brownstone. I was prepared for the universe to explode when the GnR cover band Mr. Brownstone played the song “Mr. Brownstone” as it would be a critical mass of Brownstone-themed rock.66
The band’s blond-wigged drummer (the would-be Steven Adler) caught my eye first as his platinum locks caught the multicolored lights. He wasn’t as heroin-chic emaciated as the real Steven Adler, but that was probably a good thing for the stability of the cover band. Three guitarists then came out and I looked them over, assuming the other blond-wigged guy was Duff, the short brown-wigged guy was Izzy, and of course the curly-wig-and-top-hat combo was the unmistakable Slash. It’s common knowledge that a good Axl can make or break a GnR cover band, and while theirs was a pudgy Axl, he rocked the serpentine dance with such skill that it didn’t matter.
The band Mr. Brownstone rocked hard and put on a hell of a show, just as Paul had predicted. They blazed through songs off of Appetite for Destruction, Lies, and both Use Your Illusions as the crowd ate up their hard-rocking antics. Pudgy faux Axl’s thick white legs poked out from beneath his kilt as he enthusiastically shrieked that he was loaded like a freight train and yet simultaneously flying like an aeroplane. Who doesn’t love songs about modes of transportation? Come on!
After a few ditties, Suzanne, Paul, Ben, and I made our way toward the front of the standing-room-only audience. We were all singing along with GnR’s hit song “Paradise City,” which was advancing toward the second half of the song, when the drums switch to double-time and it gets pretty nutso.67 Slash shreds on the guitar, and the song sounds like it’s spiraling out of control as Axl shrieks, “Take me down! Ohhh yeah, spin me round . . .” The power of this chaotic double-time section washed over the crowd, prompting a spontaneous mosh pit to form around the four of us, and we couldn’t fight that wave of madness. We found ourselves at the center of the pit, with assorted limbs flying around us in white-kid rage soup. I just tried to stay with Suzanne, Ben, and Paul as bodies were moving and swirling around us. It was difficult to stay with the group and see where the guys were, though. To that end, Suzanne’s platinum hair was extremely helpful—I kept my eyes out for Suzanne and hoped that Ben and Paul would do the same. She could be our lighthouse so we wouldn’t lose one another in the madness of “Paradise City.”
Just then, a random fist appeared out of nowhere and connected with Suzanne’s cheekbone. “Holy shit, what the shit!?” I shouted, stunned at what had just happened.
“Oh my God!” Suzanne exclaimed putting her hand to her cheek. She’d just been punched square in the face. Suzanne immediately bent down to register the fact that she had been punched in the cheekbone by a random guy. I looked at her boyfriend, Paul, who was horrified, frozen, and unwilling to do anything about this. Thank God Paul’s friend Ben turned out to be less of a pussy as he had seen the stranger punch Suzanne and he was ready to brawl.
“Who the fuck did that? What the fuck!?” nonpussy Ben shouted as he scanned the crowd and tried to find the offending fist. But we were about to see Random Fist Punch: Part II as the perpetrator’s balled fist was heading straight for us yet again, this time clutching a makeshift weapon. The drunk jerk thrust a beer bottle in the air and was about to bring it down on our heads. On our heads! On our platinum-perfection domes! He was aiming it toward us, like an upside-down parabola of unprompted drunk rage.68 I have no idea why this random stranger was in attack mode and can only guess that he got too caught up in the mosh pit experience. Perhaps he had been rejected by hot blondes back in high school and was eager to unleash some payback on arbitrarily selected members of the blonde community. Perhaps Suzanne’s white-blonde hair just happened to catch his eye and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the wrong time was about to happen again. The stranger had an upturned longneck bottle of Bud Light in his hand, and it was heading straight for Suz and me. I watched it descend upon us as if in slow motion.
“What the shiiiiiiiit?” I slow-mo choked out just as Ben saved the day and intercepted the bottle’s trajectory with his hand. The bottle then broke all over Ben’s hand, which ran counter to everything I knew about Physics and Anatomy and Physiology. How did that Bud Light bottle just break on Ben’s hand? Is that even possible? The glass that beer bottles are made of is so thick, most likely so that it won’t easily shatter in a bar fight. Yet one just smashed all over Ben’s fleshy paw. Are his fists made of friggin’ cement!? How did a fun night out in Brighton turn into a scene from the cinematic masterpiece Road House?69 I thought.
Within seconds, blood was pouring from Ben’s hand and shards of glass were everywhere, including jammed into his hand and wrist. That was when this Guns N’ Roses concert got a little bit more Guns N’ Roses, as Ben balled up his hand into a bloody fist and wailed the bad guy in the face. I’m almost ashamed to admit that watching a bloody fist connect with a dude’s face to the double-time second half of “Paradise City” is the closest that I have ever come to spontaneous orgasm.
We missed the song’s final refrain of “Oh, won’t you please take me home?” because our entire party was shoved out a side door by a posse of beefcake bouncers. The
four of us found ourselves in a dark alley next to Harpers Ferry as Ben’s hand continued to bleed.70 Using Boy Scout–style survival skills, Ben removed his shirt, wrapped it around his hand, and applied pressure to stop the bleeding. I already thought that Ben was great for pounding his bloody fist into a dude’s face, but now he was also shirtless in a dark alley. This night had gone from great to awesome. The moonlight illuminated his muscular body as I noticed that Ben had tattoos on his chest and arms. The night had ticked even further up the continuum of radness from great to awesome to amazing. The dim starlight and nearby streetlights bounced off Suzanne’s ashy blonde bob, and I thought about how her head caught the eye and ire of a drunken stranger, thus making this night out into an eventful one.
We four walked down the alley and onto crowded Brighton Avenue. Ben and Paul hailed a cab and headed to Mass General Hospital so that Ben’s hand could be looked at and stitched up. The guys knew that they’d be in for a few hours of sitting around the waiting room, so they told Suzanne and me to just go home and crash. Suzanne needed to get some ice on that cheek anyway.
“I’ll call you in the morning,” Paul told Suzanne as I stared at Ben and thought, I’d like for you to call me in the morning . . . but I hardly know you. Nonetheless, I feel like we could build a relationship based on our mutual love of Guns N’ Roses, tattoos, and unbridled aggression. In the words of Axl Rose, “When you’re in need of someone, my heart won’t deny you,” so when you’re all stitched up and your fist is ready to bash in faces of other dudes at concerts, please call me.
Paul and Ben sped away in a cab while Suzanne and I retraced our steps and walked back to her apartment, our blonde heads bobbing along Brighton Ave.
“What the shit?” I said.
“Yeah—wow—what a night,” Suzanne agreed.
“Crazy the kind of rage that can be incited by two hot blondes at a concert, huh?” We laughed.
It’s that type of mayhem that can confront blondes, apropos of nothing. We have a tendency to stand out in a crowd, and sometimes that protrusion is enough to make us the target of a punch or errant beer bottle. Color blindness is a sex-linked condition carried on the X-chromosome, so males express the condition at a much higher rate than females. Many color-blind males report that the color of blonde hair stands out dramatically to their eyes. Get some of these color-blind guys drunk and stick them in a mosh pit, and they just might swing their fists and beer bottles at the first head that attracts their eyes. So in a real-world context, the bold quality of blonde hair can be dangerous, but in the computer world, its eye-catching properties mean a maximum number of clicks. As the old saying goes, damned if you do (have amazing light hair), damned if you don’t (have amazing light hair).
CHAPTER 14
RULE: Be Capable
I can tolerate a lot of things: smelly subway cars (you get used to them after about ten minutes and you don’t notice the stench anymore), materialistic loudmouths (sometimes I feel like these people have got me surrounded), disorganized junk drawers (it’s a junk drawer—it’s just where you toss random crap). But one thing I cannot abide is helplessness. Nothing makes my blood boil more than seeing a coworker who needs to send some documents via FedEx but can’t be bothered to figure out how the shipping website works. Or a person who refuses to learn how to drive, so she’s stuck hitching rides from friends and family and being at the mercy of others. Or a person who claims to hate a book or movie or sport, but only because he doesn’t understand it. This type of person—the willfully obtuse—drives me semibananas.71 As people of earth, and especially as women of earth, it’s so important to be capable. An incorrect stereotype about blondes is that we are vain, defenseless, and clueless. Well, we may be vain, but we’re certainly not defenseless or clueless.
Every blonde should know a few things and have a few key skills up her sleeve: know the basics of football, America’s most popular sport; know how to read a subway and street map; and know how to pump her own gas. You might already have those skills and, if so, good on ya. For you, we have a few advanced skills: know a few phrases in major languages and know how to throw a drink or a punch when in danger. Let’s learn these important items.
Know Football Basics
It’s imperative that blonde gals understand the basic tenets of football in order to debunk the stereotype that women don’t understand complex sports. Any sport can be fun to watch once you understand the basic concepts. Also, football metaphors are often used in the workplace and politics, so it’s good to know what somebody means when they make a comment like “Time is running out for this project—we’re in the fourth down.”
Football is a long game that resembles a recurring pig pile for three hours. To me, the only bright spot in football is the tight pants worn by the players (and adopted by trainer-to-the-stars Tracy Anderson). These pants are fantastic: They’re made from shiny, stretchy fabric; the capri cut is fun and playful; and most football players have beautiful, round bums that are showcased wonderfully in these uniforms. But football is more than matching outfits and shiny, metallic hats—it’s about moving the ball down the field, ten yards at a time.
In football, two teams of eleven play against each other, and the game is played in four fifteen-minute quarters. The clock is stopped a lot during the game, though, so the entire game takes a lot longer than an hour. Plus, sometimes you have a jazzy halftime show adding to how long you’ll be watching a game. To start things off, the referee (zebra-looking dude) conducts a coin toss and the winning team decides if they’d prefer to kick the ball or receive it in the initial kickoff—that is, the decision of whether to play defense or offense first. With football, you might hear a lot of talk about Xs and Os, and that stands for defense and offense. (When coaches are mapping out plays, they draw the different players using Xs and Os. Xs are defense, and Os are offense.)
The kickoff is what starts the game, and another kickoff commences the second half (after the halftime show). Within the game, each team has four “downs” to advance the ball at least ten yards. Many teams need only three of these downs to move the ball ten yards or more, so often they won’t even use the fourth down. Think of the fourth down as a spare tire in the trunk of your car: It’s there when you need it, but you can probably get where you’re going without it. To advance those ten yards (or more), a team uses coordinated maneuvers called plays—running plays, passing plays, trick plays. On TV, you might see a team and the announcer says that it’s “first and ten” and all the dudes are lining up on the line of scrimmage.72 “First and ten” means that this is the first down (just starting off) and the team needs to advance ten yards. The line of scrimmage is the line on the field where both teams get into position against each other. On TV, it’s usually a yellow line that is digitally inserted into the shot. As we discussed, during their four downs, the team who is on offense (trying to score) must advance ten yards down the field from the line of scrimmage. If it’s a close call, you might see referees come on the field with two tall poles connected by a chain. This isn’t an elaborate torture device: This is a ten-yard-long chain that measures if the team moved the ball far enough. For example, you could have a situation in which a team uses all four downs but is only able to advance the ball nine and a half yards. The refs with the tall poles will come out to check it out. If the team doesn’t advance ten yards in their given four downs, then the ball goes to the other team and the line of scrimmage remains where it was. So then the teams switch up and the team that before was on offense (trying to score) is now on defense (trying to block the goal), and the team that was on defense before is now on offense. This switch-up starts things over again, so the other team is on first and ten now (first down, trying to move ten yards). See, it’s not so confusing!
Points are scored either when a player runs into the end zone (the end of the grid-like field, where the player who just scored usually breaks out some dance moves) or when a ball is kicked into the uprights (the goalposts, which are usually yell
ow or white and look like a box with three sides but no top side). A touchdown is worth six points, and after a touchdown, the team can kick the ball through the uprights for one point or they can opt to do a two-point conversion for two points (obviously). The two-point conversion is a bit trickier because it’s not a kick or a guarantee—it’s a play on the field that could potentially go wrong if the other team blocks it. It makes sense that the one-point option is 99 percent guaranteed (unless you have a “LACES OUT” situation like in the film Ace Ventura: Pet Detective) and the two-point option is a bit harder but with a bigger payoff. That’s life for ya. A field goal (which is another time when a team kicks the ball through the uprights—just in a different situation during the game) is worth three points.
As with many sports, the plays in football require special “teams” or specific groups of players. The quarterback is usually the guy on the team who gets the most credit and fame—Tom Brady, Eli and Peyton Manning, Brett Favre, Joe Montana. He calls the plays, and then, when the action starts, he has to find a person to pass to or he has to run the ball himself—the quarterback is pretty clutch.
The defensive guys are the truck-like fatties who are mostly hunched over and tackling people, and they are the Xs that I mentioned earlier. The positions on the line are defensive tackle, defensive end, nose tackle (also called nose guard), linebacker (outside and middle), corner (also called cornerback), and safety.
The New Rules for Blondes Page 14