Toupee Olé

While doing laundry yesterday, I listened to this interview between Bill Maher and Cary Elwes. The show, Club Random, really earns its name, time and again. This was better than Ron Perlman's appearance on the show, during which it rapidly became clear the only one of Perlman's movies Maher had seen was Quest for Fire. I'm not sure he's seen a lot of Cary Elwes movies but the conversation veered off in other directions.

I watched the beginning of the interview in which Maher compliments Elwes for still having so much hair at his age. I don't know why he does that when so many of his guests are clearly wearing toupees, as I think Elwes is, judging from that oddly sharp hairline. He seemed even on the point of admitting it. Asking him about it surely puts him in an awkward position.

There was a boxer recently who lost his toupee in the middle of a fight. It's amazing this guy felt the need for one when so many black men can look good with a shaved head, and this guy's toupee was just like a little disk on top. It's sad watching him try to laugh it off as the whole world learns his secret. But why is it so important for guys? I kind of get it with an actor, like Elwes, because he needs to maintain a certain look for the roles he plays. But why would a boxer want one so badly?

A lot of guys in Japan wear toupees. It's kind of surprising given how much baldness is incorporated into traditional Japanese male hair styles.

I guess having big hair is associated with youth and vigour nowadays in Japan, as you might surmise from all the big hair styles in anime. And baldness is something that gets mocked. Kids sometimes make fun of my own thinning hairline and the fact that I don't care doesn't seem to phase them. One kid used to sing a "hage" (bald) song around me sometimes and I'd dance little for him. I really don't care.

A few years ago, I worked in a school where a well-liked teacher had a big bald spot and one of the students who liked him said something to me about how we can never tell him that he has a bald spot. As though he somehow didn't know. This is a very old aspect of Japanese culture, where if there's something wrong with you, people carefully try to keep you from realising it. You can see this in Kurosawa's Ikiru in which the main character only learns that he has cancer because he overhears some people talking about him accidentally. Traditionally, people aren't even told if they have a terminal illness. I think this has relaxed a bit because I knew a guy here in Japan who was well aware that he had diabetes. I guess he'd have to be told, though, so he can properly manage his diet.

It seems like there were more openly bald men in Hollywood movies before the 2010s. I guess Sean Connery was the last one who could get away with it while also being a sex symbol. Or maybe he's the only one. Is anyone unironically attracted to Telly Savalas?

And, of course, there's Patrick Stewart. And some would say William Shatner. Given how many men in Hollywood wear toupees, it's odd that Shatner gets picked on so much for it.

Some actors are oddly open about their toupees. Like when Christopher Lee didn't wear his toupee for The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. I guess in cases like that, it really is a matter of men wearing toupees for their careers while having no particular desire to be seen as someone with hair.

Why am I thinking about this? I don't know, it's just funny. I need more coffee.

X Sonnet 1981

Beyond the colour tunnel, things are ash.
No questions blurred the hairy petri dish.
Your science joined a million dollar bash.
So shave your silly head and make a wish.
Returning forests stifle gormless snow.
Now look alive, for banshees came for bronze.
Diana knocks a flower to her bow.
The music played before the coming Fonz.
Machines betray the leather jacket men.
With teeth of hounds, the teddy boys arrayed.
We mix the olives well with plenty gin.
You see a simple drink too long displayed.
Where skies were grey, we longed for azure blue.
When hair would fall, we added special glue.