King Mullethead

All right, you bunch of posers. Look upon the king of all bad mullets. What do I win?


In my defense, this was around '93. I had spent a good deal of the late '80s working for a company that had a very strict dress code, and I grew the hair when I changed jobs just because I could.

It's out of my system.

P.S.

Amazing. All I have to do is post a picture of myself looking goofy, and everyone comes out of the woodwork. From the number and nature of some of your comments I get the feeling that further explanation is required.

Bret probably hit the nail on the head when he suggested this 'do was a result of my love for the prog-rock band Kansas. I don't think I was consciously trying to emulate anyone specifically (has Phil Eheart had hair plugs, do you think?), but I've always loved music. Rock music. A lot of it Progressive Rock like that produced by bands like ELP, Yes, Marillion, and Kansas.

Of course it's reasonably painful to look back at the '80s and see the clothes and the hair styles we wore, but that's what was cool back then. Unfortunately, as I said, my employer at that time wouldn't have any of it so I may have been just a bit late for the party when I started growing my hair in 1990.

I played a lot of air guitar/air microphone, back in the day when I had my own apartment and no one except the neighbors to object if I gave my Klipsch KG-4s a workout. The long hair was something I always identified with rockers, so it was probably natural for a nerd with insufficient vocal range and no aptitude for the guitar to try a shortcut to coolness.

I wore an earring, too. Left ear, for those who keep up with such things.

Anne notes that I looked proud of the mullet in the picture above. Maybe, but I'd never heard it described as a mullet at that time, much less in a derogatory tone. My expression was intended as one of seriousness and cool, not pride of coiffure. I had just started dating a woman (pre-Sweetie) who wanted a photograph of me, so I set up the camera on a tripod and did this self portrait.

She dug the hair, by the way, which may go part of the way toward explaining why that relationship was a bad idea. I firmly believe that having to live through that one was God's way of preparing me so that I'd recognize that Sweetie was The One, when she came along.

But that's a whole 'nother story.

I used to wear my hair in a ponytail a lot of the time, but did I ever braid it? Yes, once. When I decided I was tired of fooling with all that hair and that all the gray in it went counter to the bad boy image I was trying to achieve, I went to my stylist and asked her to cut it off. She had always liked my hair, because of all the natural wave, and decided she had to braid it before chopping it off.

Nearly 10 years later, I'm still trying to find a use for the thing. Maybe a chain pull for a ceiling fan.