Christmas Thoughts What will Santa Bring?

Christmas 2008/ 12/21/08 aboard American Airlines Flt 25 BOS-LAX

The one thing I desperately want most for Christmas- (besides world peace, waking up ten pounds thinner tomorrow, Alfred turning gay, and all squirrels that dig up flower bulbs to drop dead) is for our new high tech multi media studios to be open, finished, functional, and done done DONE!! Like Santa’s elves I need producers, researchers, techy computer geeks, eager interns, and advertising executives scurrying around us with busy and purposeful energy. I want a printout 3 seconds before going “on air” that says how many men use Rogaine or Viagra. September 1st was the original start date. Now it finally looks like (fingers crossed) the switch gets flicked by January 7th when Alfred and I come back from the “Holiday Hiatus.”(Enjoy the re-runs until then.)

Let’s have a holiday Pity Party. An hour before our big Christmas show this week our producer called; “bad news guys.” The electronics are getting rewired and we can’t record (in the phone booth size temporary studio, no outside phone line, or capability to broadcast “live.”) It's hard not to be disappointed as we had researched, worked, and saved all emails pertaining to the holidays for this week. “I have no money, what can I give my partner for Christmas?” –“ my husband’s promotion is almost sealed but his boss drinks to much at the Christmas party and slobbers over me. How do I tactfully handle it”?

We’ve been cranking out pre recorded iTune podcasts and RadioYou HD programming for 6 months now. We are unable to interview big name, celebrity guests due to the technical situation. Damn, we had Carrie Fisher lined up (Debbie Reynolds’s daughter, you know the horny teenager from ‘Shampoo’, and uber hairdo icon: Princess Laya in “Star Wars.”) Lenny Clarke- comedy king is waiting to come on, the editor of …let’s just say a big fashion magazie, and some surprises not yet able to mention. Santa, we are SO ready to get into that studio. Send the fricken sleigh, and drop the new headphones off under our tree. OK, a week at the fat farm, a hike up Brokeback Mountain with Alfred, and a squirrel fur coat would be nice too.

Now let’s look at the bright side, and get off this damn Pity Pot. Alfred and I have churned out our best shows in the last 6 months. Held together by gum and string like MacGiver, (without the mullet), we walk in, pull up the microphones and do our thing. We can do great radio, just the 2 of us, with our supporting cast of characters: Pizza Regina our talented producer and sharp tongued Valeria the vixen, our associate producer. Twenty eight years of standing next to each other all day, makes for an easy, lovingly caustic, comedy that we could expand to a 3 hour show tomorrow. If you came into our salon, you’d here our radio banter all day. Ricky and Lucy went on for years and years. Starsky and Hutch did too-although I still have my suspicions about those two. The Phantom Gourmet guys have nothing on us. 96.9 here we come.

The greatest gift that Santa has been steadily putting under my tree is the gift of gratitude. Wow, I am so thankful for realizing what is important in life and what’s not. The trick is to see and have the ability to receive the gifts when they come. Someone very wise once told me “Receiving the gift honors the giver.” I have my health. I have people in my life that care about me. I have enough to eat, and a place to sleep. I don’t need another sweater, or a new fancy car. I just need the strength to pull myself up by my bootstraps and plow through whatever it is I have to deal with at the moment.

A lot of us have crappy childhoods; for now let’s just call that SO WHAT, and move on. Timmy-grow up, Lassie died 20 years ago. Acceptance is giving up the hope that I’ll ever have a better past. I am increasingly grateful for trusting my instincts and choosing the profession that I truly love, instead of what was expected of me. I was like a baby turtle running for the water in the beginning; the flesh eating birds trying to pick me off. Nice WASPY boys don’t become hairdressers. Therefore the best gift of all is no longer having regrets. I can go back and substitute the word MISTAKE for the word LESSON. All the mistakes I’ve ever made, all the way back to wetting my training pants was an opportunity to learn.

So, back to “what can I give my wife for Christmas since I lost my job?’ As your hairdresser I would say the most valuable, romantic, and meaningful present you can give anyone is YOUR TIME. Inside of a big box all wrapped up, put an envelope inside with an old fashion love letter. Say I LOVE you, I APPRECIATE you, I‘m GRATEFULL that your around, I have NO REGRETS, and I want to spend more TIME together. On your computer make up a “book of coupons” that you can glue together. Each coupon has things like: -Good for a massage,-Good for a night I cook dinner,-Good for a Sunday walk around Walden Pond,-Good for a game of chess,- Good for going to a movie of your choice- (Go to a girl movie…suffer through it)-Good for listening to a book on tape together,- Good for a very naughty night!! All these things have the underlying message that I want to spend time with you. Even if you’re a zillionaire, that’s a priceless present.

I’d take Alfred’s audition as a Chippendale dancer/elf on Christmas morning- that would be spending time together, come on… Merry Christmas, from HAIR ON THE AIR.