The Daily Poop - Tues., 17JUN14

I woke up at 0300, thinking about stuff I need to get done before I fly to Norfolk on Saturday. I write a weekly column for a chain of newspapers in western Illinois, and the way the reunion and my deadlines  are lined up, I realized I had to write three columns this week. Packing, shopping, printing out concert band music. Etc.

So I got up, made coffee and turned on the computer. It can all wait.

Great news for those who really care how much weight I lose for the reunion every year. Not that there are many of you. Or any.

I won't embarrass you with numbers. Let's just say that I've got my weight down to MU2 level, c. 1979. I've been down to MU3, even MUSN in prior years.

Oh, and I've also settled the haircut problem. I accepted the fact that it was too late to go to the manly barber.  My coiffure simply wouldn't have time to recover from the butchery. Love the barber, hate the haircuts.

So instead, I have an appointment for tomorrow at the hair salon around the corner. Yes, yech. But the woman does a good job.

The whole point is to have professional attention paid to The Bald Spot. A B-flat haircut just doesn't address the issue. And there will be no comb-overs, not on my head.

The solution is art. Styling. A hairdo that says this guy has hair. Lots of it. Sure, there's a bit of baldness here and there, but that's to be expected at his his age, and it's hard to believe he's 65, he looks 20 years younger. And oh yes, he's slim, isn't he? Like a rail. Like a flagpole. Like a plastic coffee stirrer.

That's why I'm willing to sit in a shop full of w-w-women. It's worth it all just to walk the halls of the reunion and hear old men whispering to each other, "Hair. Not fat. That damn Frank."

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I heard Charlie Sweet may be coming to the reunion. And John Derby's coming, too. They've both been to reunions before, but not at the same time. John and I both worked for Charlie in Show Band West in the '70s. A years or so ago John told me he'd like to apologize to Charlie for his behavior back in those days. I told him that I apologized on his behalf when I saw Charlie in Louisville in 2006. John and I were pains in the butt in those old San Francisco days. We didn't know that someday we'd be bandleaders and find out the hard way what it was like to run a band full of people like, well, ourselves.

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Okay, that's been plenty o' stalling. Since I leave on Saturday morning, it's four days and a wakeup.