Finally, there are ads for all kinds of alleged “miracle” hair-growing pills, creams, lotions, and potions in the backs of sleazeball publications such as Penthouse and American Beet Farmer, which make all kinds of outrageous claims such as they can “stop the spread of baldness” and “restore lost hair” and even “grow hair on a billiard ball.” These claims, of course, are totally false, except the one about the billiard ball, which government researchers recently discovered is true, the drawback being that many of the balls also developed tumors.
So unfortunately, balding men, there is little to offer you in the way of hope at this time. If only somebody would develop a proven scientific guaranteed effective totally safe miracle hair-growth substance!
(News item)
SCIENTISTS LAUD DAVE BARRY PROVEN SCIENTIFIC GUARANTEED EFFECTIVE TOTALLY SAFE MIRACLE HAIR-GROWTH SUBSTANCE
BUFFALO OR ST. LOUIS—Scientists wearing white smocks here have announced that in proven scientific tests, the Dave Barry Miracle Hair-Growth Substance did, in fact, bring new life to dead hair follicles belonging to volunteer bald persons who were scientifically monitored as they slept on street grates.
“As this enlarged photograph shows,” explained Chief of Research Dr. Ernst Viewfinder, “most of the follicles of the untreated volunteers are small and dead—not unlike, I might add by way of a humorous aside, some of the untreated volunteers themselves, ha ha. But in these photographs of the treated volunteers, we can see that the Dave Barry Miracle Hair-Growth Substance has brought their scalps back to life, with sleek and happy follicles the size of adult mice, in some cases completely crowding out the brain! This could well be what happened to Vidal Sassoon.”
Skin
What do women find attractive when they look at a man’s skin? Bumps. Yes, bumps. Why do you think women fall all over Robert Redford while virtually ignoring you and me? Go watch Redford in a movie sometime, and you’ll see that he has a number of facial bumps, which look during the extreme close-ups to be big enough to play polo on, and which, as far as I can tell, are the only major physical characteristic in which Robert Redford and I differ.
So what I am recommending, men, is that as part of your daily grooming ritual, you apply small globulets of Silly Putty to your face, as shown in the illustration, so as to render yourself irresistible to the opposing sex. I regret to point out, however, that Silly Putty comes in only the Caucasian skin hue, which is blatant discrimination against those members of minority groups who also wish to install facial bumps, and I think those of us who are still liberals ought to sit right down and write hostile letters about this to our Congresspersons.
Makeup
Makeup is definitely the coming thing in male grooming. Oh, I know what you’re saying. You’re saying, “No way. No way am I going to put on makeup!” But of course that’s exactly what you said about bikini underwear, and hair spray, and blow-dryers, which, if you had used them in a locker room 15 years ago, would have resulted in a situation where if you entered the shower, the other men would have fled from you in very much the way the residents of Tokyo fled from Godzilla, but which are common grooming articles today.
Yes, men, you might as well face it: it won’t be long before we’re all wearing makeup. And the last thing you want to do is get left behind on this trend and end up looking ludicrously out of date, like the unfortunate individuals you occasionally see who still wear white patent leather shoes and matching belts and always look like assistant deputy sewage commissioners from small towns where the highest form of cultural activity is reading the drive-thru menu at Burger King. So what I recommend you do is gradually start introducing makeup into your grooming routine—a little blusher, a little eye liner, a touch of lipstick—and see if you don’t start making a big impression at your office, maybe even start attracting the attention of people as high up as vice president, people who once seemed unaware you even existed, but who suddenly start looking at you for 20 and 30 seconds at a time on the elevator and trying to discreetly read your security badge.
Chapter 11. When You Get Sick
Even the healthiest person, if he follows the fitness program described in this book, will eventually need medical care. Fortunately, we Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it.
What we’re going to talk about in this chapter is how you can become more aware of the various problems that your body can develop, so that you’ll be better able to worry about them. We’ll also talk about how, if you actually do become sick, you can explain your problems to the medical-care establishment in such a way that it does not immediately yank out a useful organ.
How You Can Tell When There Is Something Wrong with You
Trained medical personnel detect illness or other bodily problems by looking for “symptoms,” the major ones being these:
Aches Pains A total absence of aches or pains Bullet holes A feeling of not keeping up with inflation A leg bone sticking out through the skin Never having the correct change A stoppage of heart or brain activity Irritability
Get in the habit of checking yourself every 20 minutes or so for these symptoms. When you notice one, you should immediately follow this emergency procedure:
1. Take two pills containing a Scientifically Proven Painkilling Formula that has been advertised on television by a reliable avuncular spokesperson such as Robert Young.
2. Phone your office to tell them that you won’t be in for several days and could somebody please remember to discard any interoffice memoranda aimed at you. If you have no office, you should phone your mother and have her confirm that there is definitely Something Going Around.
This course of treatment will cure you most of the time. If it doesn’t, you probably have a serious illness, which means you should call your physician’s answering service and make an appointment to go into his office the following month and sit in the waiting room for an hour and 45 minutes reading National Geographic. If that doesn’t work, you should go to a hospital emergency ward and inflict a gunshot wound on yourself, thus increasing the odds that you will see an actual doctor to nearly 40 percent.
Dealing with Doctors
To get the most out of a doctor, you have to understand how he perceives the world, which is best summed up by the last sentence of the Hippocratic Oath:
“AND ABOVE ALL, REMEMBER THAT THE PATIENT HAS NABISCO BRAND SHREDDED WHEAT FOR BRAINS.”