Anyone remember the animated short Lupo the Butcher (Quicktime, NSFW,) that made the rounds of the festival circuit in the late eighties? It was pretty popular for a short, and there was even talk of basing a Saturday-morning cartoon on it. (WTF?! How would that work?)
Anyway, I just moved back to a predominantly-Italian neighbourhood a little East of Vancouver’s funky Commercial Drive, and yesterday I went into the local barbershop to get a bit of a trim. The place is called “Lupo’s.” “Heh,” I thought, “Lupo the Barber. That’s funny.”
I sat down in the chair and asked for my usual short back & sides – and then it began. The fella began holding forth disjointedly on whatever subject floated down his stream of consciousness, engaging in a long, varied, and profanity-laced tirade. He would ocassionally step back from the chair in order to better gesture to the heavens with the hair-cutting instruments he held in both hands, and then lunge forward again, channelling the passion he felt about his subject into the vigour with which he assailed my head. He touched on everything. Israel, China, Bush, Harper, kids today, women working outside the home (!), the EU, andI-don’t-remember-what-else. A non-stop torrent of bitter observations, puncuated with frustrated cursing.
I sat there, marvelling at how much he resembled the animated Lupo, who is such a broad stereotype that I never imagined anyone actually being so remarkably similar. Then he said it: “Son-of-a-bitch, I dunno!” And a few minutes later, he said it again, answering his own cynical observation.
This was too much. I had to ask: “Uh, is your name actually ‘Lupo,’ or did you take over the chair from another fellow?”
“Lupo is-a my last name.” (Really – just like that – no embellishment.)
“Um, have you ever heard of Lupo the Butcher?”
Oh. My. God.
“SON OF A BITCH! Don’t getta me started about that cocksucker! I used to have another shop down on Hastings street, and this animator that used to come-a in, he asks if he can use-a my name for his cartoon. ‘Sure,’ I say, and he says if the movie gets made, maybe he-sa gonna give me some money. Fuggin’ asshole.”
Now I get the full story about how the guy made “millions,” and Lupo never got so much as a dime. He complains that ten years later, one of his friends gave him a Lupo the Butcher t-shirt for his birthday. “Thats-a all I ever got! And it wasn’t even from the guy! Fuck, I dunno! This shit.”
He was sore about it – make no mistake.
As for my haircut…
It’s so short that I look like a marine, and it’s a box-cut at the back, which is weird. He inexplicably shaved it a full half-inch over my ears, which creates the illusion that I have Alfred E. Newman ears. Well, he mostly shaved it over the ears. On the other side of the expanse of bare skin over my ears (the side nearest my ears,) he left thin strips of hair about a quarter-inch long, like minute mohawks for my ears. I trimmed them off when I got home.
You should have seen the look on my GF’s face when I got back. Before we went out shopping, she suggested that I dig up my baseball cap. :o
It is easily the worst haircut I’ve ever had, but now at least I understand the genesis of Lupo the Butcher.
Fuckin’ I dunno!
I’ll have to get my hair cut there when I move home.