There’s also black-leather-jacket black, and black-pearl black, and black-mirror black. And blackstrap-molasses black, and squid-ink black, and storm-cloud black, and night-shadow black.
Like a million different facets of a thousand-carat black diamond, they are all layered and intertwined and cascading in a perfect symphony of liquid perfection.
And the conductor of that symphony? The conductor is my conditioner: Pert Plus.
It is actually a shampoo-conditioner combo, so it saves me five minutes in the shower every morning.
Pert Plus has this priceless, secret, all-natural ingredient you can only find in the most hidden depths of the rain forests of South America, called dihydrogenated tallowamidoethyl hydroxyethylmonium methosulfate. I’m pretty sure it was discovered by Magellan in, like, some rare Tibetan water lily. Then Pert Plus bought up the world’s supply.
Every morning, smear that green, gooey goop into that scalp of yours, work it into a rich, hydrating, foamy lather, and watch while Pert Plus and its precious dihydrogenated tallowamidoethyl hydroxyethylmonium methosulfate clean and condition and highlight every single shade of luminous, glorious, sackcloth-sun black, volcanic-sand black, wetsuit black, or Vulcan-zombie black in your hair.
Unless you’re a blond, which is a hair color for punks. I don’t know why you’d even bother to wash that.
3. Combing
With hair as thick and bulletproof as mine, I don’t actually have to comb it or blow-dry it. And I damn well don’t have to perm it. It just kind of naturally falls into place with the perfect level of wavy undulation right after I shower.
So combing my hair isn’t really about actual maintenance or adjustment—it’s about looking really fucking cool. That’s why only one tool will do: the switchblade comb. But here’s the thing, all right? There are very specific, very precise ways to handle a switchblade comb, and if you get it wrong, honestly, what’s the fucking point of life?
1) Okay, so first off, you wanna make sure you have a switchblade comb and not a switchblade knife. I don’t have time to hear you bitch about your weak clotting.
2) Next, there’s flipping it open. Before you press that button, make sure—make absolutely 100 percent fucking certain—that the comb is facing OUT and AWAY from your palm.
You don’t know how many attempts I’ve seen TOTALLY SCREWED UP when some idiot tried to flick the comb open and it just half popped out directly into their palm, and then they fumbled it and had to kind of toss it from one hand to another, and maybe they even dropped it on the floor, and immediately all the girls went home with headaches.
3) Third, there’s timing. If you want to be running that thing across your hair with rhythm, you gotta anticipate, all right? You gotta know exactly when you need to pop that baby open on the two so you can have it cocked and ready to run through your hair on the four.
4) Last—and this is most important of all—there’s placement of the comb itself.
Because here’s the thing. If you have cool hair, if it really is as thick and masculine and wavy as a tortoiseshell, you don’t really want to actually touch your hair with the comb. You just want to give the illusion that you’re almost combing your hair.
You get that? Not even the illusion that you’re combing. The illusion that you’re almost combing. It’s the air kiss of real men.
So to do that, you want to keep a distance of 1.3 centimeters between the edge of the comb and your hair at all times. I repeat, AT ALL TIMES.
Okay. Now we’re gonna put this all together and actually give it a try. We’re gonna do an on-rhythm meta-illusional switchblade-comb run through your long, thick, wavy, perfectly conditioned multilayered black hair.
Get that switchblade comb in your hand and… Deejay, drop it:
Bump-tsshhh.
Bump-tsshhh-tsshhh.
[Blade pop now!]
“They call him Doc!”
[Hair comb now!]
YES!
Excellent work! You did it on rhythm, with—
Whoa.
WHAT THE FUCK???
You forgot rule one of using a switchblade comb! Make sure it’s NOT a real switchblade!
Fuck, now there’s blood everywhere, and a chunk of your glorious new hair is just kind of lying there on the floor with like pieces of skin and some dandruff.
Though if I’m being fair, you still would’ve been good if you’d just followed rule four and kept the blade exactly 1.3 centimeters away from your hair. With that amount of blood, my guess is you shivved yourself at least half an inch deep.
But hey—take that little chunk of hair and guts with you. Maybe the surgeon can sew that shit back on. Shame to ruin such a good-looking mullet.
PROPER MUSTACHE CARE
All right, so the truth is that unlike mullets, mustaches still haven’t exactly seen a revival.I And hey, who am I to judge? If you want a face like a baby, a woman, or a hairless cat, go ahead: free country. Not every dude is man enough to pull off a badass ’stache like Magnum, P.I., or Billy the Kid or Freddie Mercury or myself. If you’re not on that level, I give you props for admitting it.
By now you know that’s bullshit and I don’t give you props for anything. But it’s not too late to turn your life around, and by reading my book you’ve already taken an important first step.
Second step is to finally grow a decent goddamn mustache.
1. Style
You don’t choose the right mustache for your face. It chooses you.
Now, I’m not saying that the spirit of Slick Daddy actually came to me in the night when I was a young, hairless, prepubescent superstar-in-waiting and whispered, “Doc… Doc… I’m here to show you the ideal mustache length and shape
