In other news, today at lunch I inadvertently got the shortest haircut I’ve had since, well, ever.

I’ve been busy. Exceedingly busy. Which is why, though ‘get a haircut’ has been on my to-do list for weeks, I hadn’t managed to stop in for a trim.

This weekend, however, my brother pointed out that I had started to grow payis. Then, this morning, Jess told me I had ‘lady hair’.

So, at lunch, I headed off to Jean Louis David. Which, while admittedly French for ‘Supercuts’, has normally sheared me well. Today, however, there were only two stylists at work, and a shaggy-haired lineup waiting for them.

So, short on time, and remembering that my intern Jed recently had his hair cut at the nearby Astor Place Barber Shop, I headed there instead.

Located in a dingy basement below the corner of Astor and Broadway, the Astor Place Barber Shop is enormous – apparently about 9,000 square feet – and packed to the rafters with more old Greek and Italian barbers than I could count, each with electric trimmers buzzing.

I was more than a bit worried about plopping down in ‘Einstein’ Enrico’s chair (as his sign proclaimed) – his stooped stance, mildly shaking hands, and thick, thick glasses didn’t inspire much confidence. Nor did I feel much better when he launched into cutting, taking off giant chunks in one fell buzzer swoop.

The entire cut took less than three minutes (which, at $12, is perhaps all the time I had paid for). But, in the end, it looks surprisingly good. A bit short, perhaps, but overall pretty nice.

Nice enough, in fact, that in six weeks, when I next need a trim, I suspect I’d once again live on the edge, and head on back.

For the past several years, I’ve had an account on Facebook. A good friend of mine was their head of biz dev, and another served a stint as the company’s president, so I signed up on their request, to provide some user interface feedback in the relatively early days of the site.

After which, I more or less forgot that I had even signed up in the first place. Being old and out of school and no longer even vaguely aware of what’s cool with the kids these days, I had no idea that I was supposed to be using the site obsessively, checking in several times each and every day (as the average user inexplicably does). Instead, my account lay largely fallow. Which was perfectly fine with me.

But then, a few months back, I started getting friend requests from anyone I’d ever met two to ten years younger than I. As a result, suddenly, at least a few times a week, I was logging into Facebook. And while I must admit I still don’t completely grasp the site’s appeal, I’m finally and undeniably on there, a real (albeit rather uncommitted) Facebook user.

Early this week, I took my Facebook-ship up a notch, having been added by my brother as an officer to my very first Facebook group: “I Live at the Russian Samovar”. (Which, as I do, how could I possibly refuse?)

And though I’m not really sure what that’s about either, I have the sense that I’m supposed to now be pimping the group out. I’m sure there’s some way to link to it, or to invite you all, or whatever. But as anyone likely to join on probably understands the site far better than I have the patience or desire to, I’m just going to say it’s out there, and that all of you young alcoholics should get in on it, whether you’ve actually been to Russian Samovar, or whether you’re just happy to support the undisputed category king for “New York Russian mafiosi vodka bar part-owned by Mikhail Baryshnikov.”

For those on the fence, I copy below our group’s manifesto:

Comrades!

Let us leave our plows to instead join arms in a unanimous decry of solidarity!

Let us lift high our glasses to toast the People’s Party of Inebriation!

Let us cast away the opressive yoke of capitalist early morning work hours!

Let us marinate like fine matjes herring in flavored vodka until we cannot speak our home addresses to impatient cab drivers who retrieve us on the nearby Broadway corner!

Let us honor mother Russia with shot and shot and shot of Russian Samovar’s fine fruit-infused vodka until we vomit on the poor out-of-town assholes waiting in line for Hairspray next door!

Long live the Party! Na zdorovje!

Join up. And add me as a friend, I guess. But don’t send me messages on the site, because fuck knows I’m not going to try to figure out how to pick those up.

As on most Halloweens past, tomorrow night I’ll be playing big band jazz at the venerable Theater for the New City’s Vintage Halloween Costume Ball, a masquerade party replete with liquor, food, live music, and weird, weird East Village types.

And, setting aside how my lack of trumpet practice time over the past month may leave my chops worse than mangled by the end of a two hour set holding down the solo trumpet chair, I’m primarily concerned about my lack of appropriate apparel. In prior years, the tuxedo dress code left me with little choice on the costume front, aside from toting toy gun and martini glass in my best attempt at Bond chic. This morning however, the bandleader emailed to say that we’d now be free to costume ourselves however our swinging hearts desire. Which leaves me, in short order, to come up with my best attempts at items-already-available-in-closet assembly.

As my backup choice is to wrap a bow and ribbon around my neck, going as god’s gift to women, I’d better think fast.

There’s an old truism that, as soon as a guy starts seeing someone, the guy somehow becomes instantly more attractive to women, who apparently telepathically divine his newly taken status. Girls come up to him at bars, exes send friendly emails out of the blue.

I have, however, now taken that theory to its logical conclusion. Minutes ago, I received an email that began:

ABC Television’s hit reality television show, The Bachelor, is searching for its next star. After viewing your profile on LinkedIn, the casting producer has selected you as a potential candidate.

Um, no.

About seven years back, I was in CNNfn’s green room, waiting to go on-air for an interview. A woman walked into the room with a clipboard, said, “Joshua Newman”, and looked around.

I stood up. So did another guy. We looked at each other. Then at her. As it turns out, there were two Joshua Newmans in line to be interviewed, one of us right after the other – he about a new wireless technology IPO, I about some startups in the financial services space.

After our respective interviews, we headed to a neighboring Au Bon Pain for mid-winter chicken soup, only to discover that, not only did we have the same name, and not only did we work in the same industry, but we had both graduated from Yale, he four years before me.

After falling out of touch in the intervening years, that Joshua Newman emailed me again today to say he’d recently moved out to LA, to become Director of Digital Media for Twentieth Century Fox.

It seems the secret cabal of Joshua Newmans has now moved, en masse, from the world of high tech into the world of film. Movie people, look out.

People often ask me whether writing so publicly about my alcoholic adventures and dating debauchery ever causes problems. My answer: of course.

Observe, for example, this rather gracious email I received last night, in reference to a segment of the inaugural F. Scott & Friends Bourbon and Brylcreem Hour podcast, from a friend of my younger brother whom Sarah and I had discussed on-air the likelihood of my drunkenly sleeping with:

Um, dare I say ìwell done?î I listened long enough to hear the bit about my dimple and how I am apparently going to get angry after we drunkenly sleep together. OH, josh. Weíll blame it on the bourbon (not us sleeping together ó your podcast). Its no wonder Dave insisted I check it out.

For the record, I know what the hell a pod cast [sic] is, too.

Hope all is well. We all need to go drink/sing/not fuck real soon.

[name redacted]

My bar-napkin masterpiece, “Naked Lady / Moose”:

[photo courtesy H. Hunter and four glasses of Maker’s Mark]