#90 - Something More Comfortable

Slipping into Something More Comfortable

6/30/06 (#90)

Today I'm going to talk about slippers. But first, I am compelled to pay homage to Andy Rooney, 60 Minutes humorist and my first exposure to a "social commenter." (It's hard to believe Andy Rooney and George Carlin have the same job description---I doubt their respective high school guidance counselors would have predicted convergent career paths.)

The line I remember best from Rooney is his commentary on footwear: "You can tell a lot about man by his shoes. For instance, 'The Loafer'." Though ironically, I'm not sure if Andy Rooney delivered the line at all---it might have come from a frumpy-suited Joe Piscopo or Dana Carvey. With apologies to Mr. Rooney if his most lasting impression was made by an impersonator, I can't talk about slippers without paying respect.

However, I will resist any effort to emulate Andy Rooney, in part because I'm not a student of his style, and in part because I do not want to associate myself too closely with a man whose ideas on personal grooming were formed during a viewing of Lon Cheney's The Werewolf.

I'm talking about his eyebrows. And in his case, "eyebrows" is an gross understatement: Rooney doesn't have eyebrows, he has pets. They're huge---surely visible even when one is standing behind him, considering that from the front it looks like he's planning to adapt them into the world's strangest comb-over. (A dubious superlative considering the fierce competition among combovers.)

Let me go on record that I am not a proponent of vanity when it comes to physical appearances---I am opposed to rhinoplasty, face lifts, botox, even colored contact lenses. Especially when it comes to me: I am often unshaven, occasionally disheveled, and chronically unconcerned about such things. (To my wife's chagrin, I not only fail to see bedhead as a grooming flaw, but consider it a point of pride.) Yet even I have trimmed a few random hairs from my brows now and then.

With eyebrows, it's not simple vanity. Eyebrows take a great deal of pressure off of the vocal chords---raise them in surprise, furrow them in thought, angle them to demonstrate a foul mood. They are valuable facial accessories, and they need to be maintained for efficient use. (Unlike the nose, which is a freeloading facial feature---one can turn up their nose, but when you do, it's the neck doing all of the real work; look down your nose? Again, credit the neck for that disdainful expression.) The eyebrows are working overtime. Grow them out until they look like the pasted scalps of two troll dolls and their expressive quality is notably compromised. ("Hey Morley, was that an expression of disbelief on Andy's face, or was it just the wind?")

But Mr. Rooney's brows are not the stuff of mere vanity---they are patches of unmowed hay amongst the barren soil of his forehead; they are shoots of bamboo exploding from an otherwise manicured lawn. To even the casual observer, it appears that his face is hiding within a duck blind.

That he can look at the clutter of white weeds that grows above his eyes and not care is impressive. Perhaps he is growing them defiantly, a reaction to a 1974 comment from Mike Wallace that "The green is starting to look like the fairway" and he has been thumbing his nose at the 60 minutes brass ever since, daring them to call him on his anti-star grooming techniques. I like to imagine Rooney releasing his inner-Wilfred-Brimley on his bosses: "You think you can get anyone to come in here and talk about the frustration of toothpaste tubes or how hard it is to navigate through those automated touch-tone message systems at the bank? You think some chump like Adam Corolla can step up and entertain a demographic as broad as mine in three-minutes flat? Well, I've heard Loveline---and that potty mouthed punk couldn't do it, so lay off the primping tips and make sure Ed Bradley stops drinking my Evian."

Perhaps he's under the mistaken notion that a thick bush of eyebrow helped Mark Twain to be the brilliant social commentator that he was---though such esoteric connections should have been dispelled when a nation of writers heard that Hemingway kept a bottle in his desk and they did the same---creating one of the most populous waves of drunken hacks the nation has ever seen.

What about the make up people at 60 minutes? Surely they talk amongst themselves; maybe they even have a wager running, $100 bucks to anyone who can convince this octagenarian Sampson to trim that bristley mess back to something close to "just shaggy". I'm sure there's some perfectionist beautician at CBS who is slipping Nytol into his coffee in hopes that he'll fall asleep in the chair and she can extract the hedge trimmer from the bottom drawer and right that annoying wrong.

No, I'm no Andy Rooney, and the only time I'll ever pretend to be is for Halloween---I'll loosen my tie, clip the handles from a couple of whisk brooms and glue the bristles to the top of my eyeglass frames, and kvetch to people how modern life requires me to remember too many passwords.

Anyway, slippers----I love slippers. More comfortable than shoes, but more formal than bare feet. If you don't have some, you should get a pair. I don't recommend the home knitted type--too much like socks, and if done with anything larger than a #8 needle, the texture is rough on your heels. Also, avoid the huge faux-bear feet or cartoon characters---not because they aren't cute, but because they are cumbersome to tuck underneath yourself when you fold into the corner of the couch. I recommend the simple, classic slipper, the ones that look like...well, loafers. (Queue the big stopwatch.)

©2006 wpreagan