Let’s Plug It Out

Welcome back to On the Bald Spot, where this week we’re mourning the end of HBO’s brotastic show Entourage (Spoiler Alert- everything worked out in the end).

Over the show’s eight season run, viewers have tuned in to luxuriate in the unfettered wealth, the style, the celebrity, the wooden acting, the occasional nudity, but here at On the Bald Spot, we had our eyes trained and our jeweler’s loops ready for only one thing each week: Jeremy Piven’s hair.

For a postmortem on super agent Ari Gold’s ever-changing pate, we’re lucky to have celebrity blogger and noted wigologist Jeffrey Wolinski.

Brendan: Jeremy Piven had one of the great hair turnarounds to modern Hollywood history. He was a relatively obscure balding actor with bit parts in his Chicago buddy John Cusack’s films like Say Anything, occasional film cult success like PCU or the short-lived TV show Cupid. But on Entourage, he showed up with a full head of hair and nobody seemed to question it? How did he engineer this hair comeback story?

Jeff: In the beginning, it was just the good old comb over or comb forward.  I'm sure he went the topical solutions route. He then graduated to pieces. These are just mere rug samples that you carefully plot the empty parts of your scalp.

Brendan: Tuning in this season, I noticed that the Piven’s wig work was getting a little ragged. What happened?

Jeff: My sources tell me that Piven started to go gray.  Now, he had to combine the hairpieces AND the hair dye. This is a balancing act because he now has to match his pieces to the color of the hair dye or vice versa.

Brendan: A very tricky tight rope act indeed.

Jeff: Then later on he lost too much hair for the hairpieces to latch on to so he had to go the surgery route. The surgery route has been an ongoing process for the past 10 years. This is a simple procedure where they remove hair from the back of your head and re-plant it on the top of your head.

Brendan: So what went wrong?

Jeff: I think Piven waited too long for this procedure and he doesn't have enough good hair to replace the ones that left his head. So even with the transplanted hair, he still has to wear rug samples to fill in the blanks PLUS break out the chemistry set to create a hair dye that perfectly matches both! Not to mention his DYE BROWS!  I'm tired just thinking about it.

Brendan: Lloyd, get me Empire Carpet on phone!

Jeff (singing): 588-2300, Em-pire!

Brendan: I noticed in a couple bedroom scenes this season that Ari had a perfectly shaved chest. Do you think he was harvesting his chest hair for replanting on his head?

Jeff: Piven is nothing if not a resourceful actor, so it would follow that he wouldn’t let any good hair go to waste. But, the chest to hair technology is still in developmental stages (in a lab in Robin William’s basement).

Brendan: Do you think there’s any deep-seeded psychologically issues at work here concerning Piven and his hair?

Jeff: I know that long time friends Piven and John Cusack have had a bit of a “falling out”, and I believe it’s about the “falling out” of their hair. I truly think that Piven is jealous of Cusack b/c of his hair. Not that it’s b/c Cusack has perfect hair; we all know that is not the case.

Brendan: Lloyd Dobler? Say it isn’t so!

Jeff: Yes it’s true! Mr. Cusack has a hair-raising secret too!

Brendan: Maybe his hair went back in a Hot Tub Time Machine?

Jeff: No, that is factually inaccurate. Just like Piven, Cusack has had the surgical procedures and bathed his head in the oil-filled Gulf of Mexico BUT Cusack was able to ward off the unforgivable follicle loss until later in life when the technology and money was there. This is the true reason why Piven and Cusack, once best friends, are now just mere acquaintances.

The documentation of this demise between two old friends can be seen in the underrated comedy from the 1980s, One Crazy Summer.

Brendan: Great movie.

Jeff: Cusack played the lovable tall leading man with the thick head of black hair and Piven played the tiny side character with what only looked like a thin layer of dryer lint from a brown sweater on top of his head. So sad….  Piven was only 20 years old in that movie and he already didn’t have a chance.

Brendan: With Entourage over, what’s the future hold for Jeremy Piven’s hair?

Jeff: The future for Piven's hair is one of constant work and turmoil.  He's reaching 50 years old and only time will tell how long he will keep the charade up. Like I said, I'm tired just thinking about all the work that has to go into that head every day, month and year.

Brendan: Thanks, Jeff!

Jeff: Wherever there is a celebrity, I will be there...to judge.  Wherever there is success of an actor/director/screenwriter or producer, I will be there...to find their flaws. Wherever there is Hollywoold celebrity with a minor cosmetic flaw, I will be there...to hate.

Brendan: Uh, thanks again, Jeff… Jeff, where are you going?

Jeff quickly exited and ran to the bathroom with two mirrors in hand to check the top of his head.

If your interested in further reading about the top of Jeremy Piven's head, the internet has plenty of information available including some particularly grisly looking hair transplant scars (that I chose not to include since, you know, I'm trying to keep things light). You've been warned.

See you next time… On the Bald Spot!

Using Powertools Without Losing Your Thumbs

Growing up in my house, if something broke and needed fixing, my dad, my mom, my sister and I all stared at each other for a long moment and cursed the gods for our misfortune. Eventually we’d all settle on the only solution that we could think of: let’s get a Phillips screwdriver.

No matter the problem, we’d invest all our hopes in the Phillips head screwdriver, the only tool we all knew by name. If that didn’t work, my dad, my sister and I would shrug our shoulders like “we did all that we could, but the patient was too far gone to save,” then assume that my mom would call the relevant professionals to fix the problem and forget all about the matter until it was magically fixed.

But back to the screwdriver, once the call went out to “Get the Phillips”,  my dad would race to his study to find an old vinyl LP  by "The Mamas & the Papas" from his collection, and my sister would run upstairs to her room to remove a “Wilson Phillips” cassette tape from her Walkman. While they were out of the way, my mom would instruct me to go down to the basement to get the Phillips screwdriver.

I would trudge downstairs to the basement and to the creepy unfinished storage alcove where an ancient dented blue metal toolbox rested in seclusion. According to family legend, my Grandpa Kainz had given his new son-in-law, my dad, the toolbox as a housing warming gift. My dad thanked him for the toolbox without asking him what it was or what it was for, and quickly forgot about it. That toolbox followed us from house to house and eventually from New York to Chicago where it found its final resting place in the basement storage place, covered in cobwebs.

I eventually (sorta) grew up, got married, and bought a house. And one day, my wife turned to me and said, "Wouldn't it be nice if we had a deck in the backyard?"

"Indeed," I said. "That would be nice."

"So why don't you build one?"

I looked deeply into her eyes and was surprised to find that she was deadly serious about this. I thought to myself, "Man, that's going to be hard to do with only a Phillips screwdriver."

Fortunately, my father-in-law not only has every tool known to man and possessed the knowledge to build anything worth building or fix anything worth fixing, he had four daughters and was dying to teach someone how to use them.

With his help, it took the entire summer, but I did build that deck in one one of the greatest manly triumphs of my life. I figured I had a lifetime pass from any future projects.

Then, a few weeks ago, my wife got another glean in her eye, actually a craving buried deep in the genetic code of a good majority of women. I'm talking of course about the craving for "organizational tools". In particular, my wife desired shelves in our basement to house all the baby crap we've accumulated in the last two years.

So I called on my father-in-law for more help.

Off to Menards we went to go wood shopping!

Wood. Seriously, they sell this stuff. You go to the store, pick it out and you go home with it. Really, this happens. Have I blown your mind yet?

All I'm thinking here is, "Don't saw off your thumbs, don't saw off your thumbs." It looks like my father-in-law is trying to keep me from running away.

We're smiling because we decided to take a long beer break. I'm also smiling because I think I look cool in my protective glasses. And I still have all my digits.

And here they are! Job well done.

I sipped my beer and looked over at my wife for approval and she said, "I was thinking, since these are already filled up, we should build some for the other wall."

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!