Ain't nothin' but an Elvis impersonator(also, hair)

Last night, instead of our usual Tuesday night Nepalese food, we went to Mr. A's sister's thirtieth anniversary party. Her husband had planned the whole evening as a surprise, staging everyone in a back room at their favorite Chinese restaurant, and bringing her in at the last moment to thunderous applause. The highlight of the evening, for me at least, was a 20-song set by this great Elvis impersonator – featuring my favorite Elvis song of the moment, Rubberneckin', which I am listening to right now. Hooray for iTunes!

He wore a one-piece white polyester jumpsuit with pirate laces up the chest, and superlong fringes strung with multicolored plastic pony beads. And he had copies for sale of his own CD of non-Elvis songs he had written. The front cover was a studio portrait of himself wearing a St. Patrick's Day green pullover sweater, leaning forward on folded hands next to an adorable blonde Golden Retriever puppy. I kind of wish I had bought a copy of that. He was the sweetest Elvis impersonator I've ever met.

(A technical aside: Will someone let me know if the Elvis photo switches to an alternate view after 5 seconds? It's not working for me in the Blogger window, but when I click on the photo, it loads fine. Does Blogger not support animated GIFs?)

Another Elvis-related item: During our trip to Utah last week my six-year-old niece showed me a computer game where you create your own character by clicking on the face, clothes, hair, jewelry, etc. that you want and dragging them onto the body you've chosen. There's an enormous selection of variables for each category and I wanted to encourage her to have fun mixing it up. So when I saw her pretty golden-haired high-heeled princess emerging, I suggested, "Let's give her those gigantic red sideburns!"

"What are sideburns?" she wanted to know.

So I went to Google and showed her how to search for them. And somehow today my results are different, but on that day last week one of the first results took me to this (you have to scroll almost to the bottom to see it): the Gigantic Elvis Wig, including the world's most gigantic sideburns! There's also a mullet Elvis wig, one made from real human hair, and (actually, I think this one was on a different site) the Elvis Afro. Yow!

I love everybody's facial hair except my own. Possibly I have already given this link at some time in the past, because I've been a fan of this site for several years, but here it is again – the ultimate facial hair website, at least to my knowledge – the official website of the World Beard and Mustache Championships. Even if you've already seen them, it's worth another visit because they've recently posted a great new photo of the 2005 champ.

And finally, thanks to Julie for turning me on to Jennifer Miller of Circus Amok, a bona fide real live woman who proudly sports a gloriously bushy black beard. Even if I stopped plucking my chin-hairs I would never have a beard as full and luxurious as hers, but still – I find her inspiring.

When I was younger I was a lot more comfortable letting my freak flag fly, but even then I was deeply mortified by and protective of my beard hairs. In my late 20's I endured the agony of electrolysis, which helped for awhile, but left me red-faced and sore for an hour or so after each appointment. The damage was so obvious, I decided to just come out with it. Yeah, I know my chin is red. I just got out of my ELECTROLYSIS appointment! You know, to get rid of my BEARD!

I was amazed at how many women at my office and elsewhere would furtively approach me to confess their own possession of beards and hit me up for advice, once they learned what I was up to. It turns out, tons of women have facial hair. Some, like me, think the Frida-style heavy black mustachio'ed look is totally sexy and hot. Alice B. Toklas is also noted to have had this type of hair. But women who are willing to let their chin hairs grow and flourish unmolested by tweezers, blades, and chemicals are much fewer and farther between.

There's also the whole phenomenon of leg and armpit shaving. I wonder why so many of us – even the comfortable-with-my-body, free-thinking hippie alterna-chicks – are so desperately at war with our hair?