Watching the LLWS game yesterday between Chula Vista and Westport, and seeing the ample locks of two of the California players, I had the flash of “memory” from some movie or TV show where one character (perhaps a coach or drill instructor type) says offhandedly to another character something along the lines of “Get a Haircut” or simply “Shave!”
I think I may be fusing the scene in Raising Arizona where Cage’s character tells an inmate, “You missed a spot” while passing by him in the prison as the other guy is mopping the floor.
But there may be other such moments where I have that “memory” from.
Could you perhaps be thinking of the Simpsons episode “Homer At The Bat” in which Mr. Burns, coaching the softball team, keeps insisting that Don Mattingly shave his sideburns?
I remember in the late sixties, my uncle telling that to his sons. He was an old school WWII vet and had the notion that you couldn’t be much of a man if your hair was long. From what I know, this wasn’t uncommon in that era and thus, a media meme.
No doubt that phrase and others like it have been uttered by all manner of people at least as far back as when longish hair was both in fashion and also a statement by rebellious youth.
What struck me most about the “memory” I’m trying to recover was that it was said perfunctorily with little to no emotion and more like an order. The matter-of-factness and dryness of the delivery was something like Billy Bob Thornton or Bruce Willis might have said. I doubt it was an R. Lee Ermey type or others with a more authoritative manner.
As I mentioned earlier, it had the flavor of deadpan that permeated Raising Arizona.
Did anyone say that to the Beatles in their movies? I know a reporter asks them about “all that hair” somewhere, though it looks rather short to us nowadays.
Very true. I have vivid memories of that time: “Get a haircut.” “Shave.” “Take a bath.” And of course “Join the service; they’ll make a man out of you.”
There was a TV commercial back in, I want to say the 80’s, maybe for AT&T, where the dad angrily tells his son “and get a haircut!” By the end of the commercial, whatever crisis was plaguing dad at the beginning was magically solved by AT&T, and dad tells his son over the phone “by the way, your hair’s fine- don’t cut it”. Cut to the son who is freshly shorn, and rubs his hand over his buzzed scalp and laughs as he says “too late!” Fade to black.
That does ring a bell and might even be part of that “fused memory” I’m trying to identify. Best bet so far, in any case, but there are some other good possibilities, too.
This may just be one of those things like, “It doesn’t do anything. That’s the beauty of it.” Or words to that effect. I seem to recall an older thread that pretty well put that one to bed.
