america in decline: first the war, now the mullet?
if jimmy fallon’s hair is a barometer for america’s screw-everybody-else attitude — and i think we all know that it is — then we’re in a heap of trouble. because fallon, for some ungodly reason, has chosen to sport … gasp … a mullet.
go ahead. take a moment. i needed one, too, after spotting fallon’s dubious ‘do on a recent episode of saturday night live. (if you are wondering how this is possible in china, i downloaded it.)
message to my american brothers and sisters: you all saw what happened to our rep when starting a war in iraq all of a sudden became fashionable again — just imagine the repercussions of a similar comeback by the mullet. if you think the war made us look bad, what do you think the rest of the world will think if the little jimmies and janes of our great nation start running around with mullets or — dare i say it — rat tails. our “these colors don’t run” t-shirts are already scary enough (click here, here, here and here for examples) — add a mullet to the mix and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. the damage could be irreversible. goodbye, superpower. hello, supercuts.
since i am not living in america, i have no idea if fallon’s hair is a harbinger of things to come. maybe he just got a bad haircut. perhaps he needs his hair styled this way for a movie role — the role of a character with really, really bad hair. hopefully, there will be no ‘do domino effect. hopefully, fallon will meet with the humiliation he deserves. and things will be back to normal: the rest of the world will still hate americans … but at least they won’t make fun of our hair.
i’m not so sure, though. there is this whole 80s revival going on — i, in fact, am listening to an 80s station on itunes as i write this … “pour some sugar on me” by def leppard is playing right now — and if ballooning federal deficits can come back into vogue, why not the mullet? you’d think we’d learn from our mistakes. but, obviously, we don’t. just look at who’s in the white house. in the 80s, at least we had cocaine to blame for all of our bad decisions. what’s our excuse now?
yeah, there is a similar 80s thing going on in china right now … well, shanghai, at least (see the red, white and blue mullet pictured above). but here, i let all the 80s-fueled fashion faux pas slide. this is no retro thing — this is the first time around for the chinese. this is their me decade. let them have their cocaine-free fun.
but for jimmy fallon, for america, there is no excuse. (well, unless you do lots of cocaine.)
01.27.2004, 10:05 PM · Television
3 Comments
Have no fear, I believe that to be the “ironic mullet,” popular with trucker-hat-wearing hipsters. In fact, I could’ve sworn it was part of Hipster Bingo:
http://www.catbirdseat.org/catbirdseat/bingo.html
happy everyday in China.
that’s good stuff brad. just by spotting me you could fill a few spots on the bingo board … sadly one of them is called “grandpa.”