I had the most horrific experience in the barber shop today. No Sweetheart, it had nothing to do with my hair. I even left it a bit longer for you this time. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

I like this particular barber shop because it is a barber shop – not a hair salon. They have a hot shaving cream dispenser and shave your neck with a straight razor. And there’s even a sign on the wall indicating that they will shave your back for you. Now that’s full service. It’s nestled between a gas station and a machine shop. You can practically smell the testosterone.

It reminds me a bit of the shop my dad took me to as a kid. Well… almost. It lacks a small and impossibly old man with a German accent who had a disconcerting skill with a razor strap. But that’s another story.

I usually stop at this manly barber shop on my way to work. It’s early and quiet, and there’s no one there but maybe one or two other guys who also learned to read from watching Batman. We grunt at each other, make disparaging remarks about the weather, and scratch at will.

But today, I stopped in after work, which was apparently also after school. I was the oldest guy in the shop by 15 years. But the line wasn’t as long as the crowd would indicate. There was a kid apprenticing in the shop, and several of his friends had come to just hang at the shop. Well that’s an old and noble Mayberry tradition. Howard would feel right at home. And at first I thought it would be interesting to listen in on what high school guys bantered about these days. This is where the horrifying part comes in.

First, there was a discussion of who’s house they were going to watch “The O.C.” at. I’ve never seen the show, but it’s basically a nighttime soap. It is on Fox, so I can only assume (hope?) that it’s laden with half naked women and sexual innuendo. But none of the discussion centered on “hot chicks”, so they might not have noticed anyway.

Then they went on about the best value in tanning salons and how to get a good base before spring. I was briefly encouraged by the topic of cell phones and who’s was the coolest. But then they started talking about the virtues of hair gels, mousse, and whether or not one of the “guys” should cut his hair.

What the hell? Who were these girls? And were they representative of teenage boys in general? I suddenly fear for my own boys. Hell, I fear for the girls. I fear for the military (“Does this body armor make my butt look fat?”). Or maybe I just need to go back to a hair salon, or at least to mornings.

I had the pleasure of attending The Lion King stage show last night. I know, I know, it’s been around for 10 years, but it finally reached my little cultural backwater, and it only seemed right that The Beauty and the Beast should pay them a visit. So we did. The production was nothing short of awesome. The costuming… the creative and imaginative ways they brought the animals, and even plants, to life was simply spectacular.

The other amazing thing was that it was very true to the movie. Yes, a few scenes and songs were added. But what surprised me was not that the plot and the music remained, I expected that. It was that the characterizations remained. The actors voiced the characters as if they were imitating the movie. This was unfortunate for the guy playing Mufasa, as you really wanted to hear James Earl Jones’ voice, and no one was going to pull that off. And I did miss Jeremy Irons as scar. The guy tried, but it’s hard to sound quite as premeditatedly evil as Irons. Still Zazu and Rafiki were amazing, as were the young kids who played Simba and Nala.

Of course the night was not without the usual remindings from the fates that I am unworthy. We had just tucked ourselves into our snug little seats when the woman arrives who will be sitting to my left for the next couple of hours. She was overflowing with… well, maybe it’s enough to say that she was overflowing. I’m still listing to the right in my chair as I type this.

And there was some amusement at the intermission which occurred just after Hakuna Matata. The row of seniors behind us was querying each other about what that odd looking creature with the warthog was supposed to be. Was it some sort of weasel? It was amusing to listen for a bit, but finally I turned and offered helpfully that Timon was a meerkat.

“A what?”

“A meerkat.”

“Well that doesn’t help me much,” snorted Grandpa in a self derisive sort of way.

“Think of it as sort of a… well… an African prairie dog.”

“Yeah, that’s what it is,” confirms the woman sitting mostly in the chair next to me.

But Grandpa is still clueless. It would seem that not only is he unacquainted with mammals not found in his backyard, but he doesn’t get cable either. And age has apparently eroded memories of all those Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom episodes. Oh well. I tried. You can shine a light, but sometimes the darkness is overwhelming.