blonde ambition: yes, i can. and because i can, we all can, because otherwise it's just not fair

alright already.

i know it has been a long time since my last post and i apologize, the constant phone calls, texts, emails and personal visits from fans demanding new posts is a little over the top don't you think?

i am only one blogger. i can only do so much. but, for the welfare of my readers, i will try and fit in a post or two before the end of the month. what would the holiday season be without a post from me? probably pretty much like every other holiday season you have experienced since i didn't start blogging until earlier this year. now you have a new tradion to hang your holiday stockings on. embrace it. cherish it. love it. pass it on to your children so they may pass it on to theirs. pour some hot cider, go caroling and recite or reenact a prior post or two in the spirit of the holidays.

why have i not been blogging in recent days you might ask? well, november has been a pretty depressing month i might answer. i won't go into specifics, but let's just say that i'd just as soon never experience a november quite like this again in my life. fortunately for my mental, emotional and physical health and well-being, two very significant and uplifting events have taken place this month that have more than made up for the depressing ones.

that's right, you guessed it: the new james bond movie came out and 24 finally aired a new episode after an 18 month hiatus. alright, so maybe the latest bond wasn't as great as the last one and maybe 24: redemption wasn't quite worth the wait, but these franchises mean more to me than the fictional stories they are. they represent something i have looked for and needed my entire life: blonde headed tough guy roll models.

while you may not know it now, i once had very blonde hair. i actually still consider myself a blonde, in fact, that's what i put on my license for hair color, but i also state that i am 6 feet tall on it. both might be a bit of a stretch, but i still think i am more blonde than brown and this is my blog so deal with it.

the reason hair color matters so much to me:

growing up as a starry eyed blonde headed boy was difficult in my era. it was tough to find a good blonde role model that i could look up to and really try to emulate in my life. it was easy to see brown haired personalities who had found wild success, riches and beautiful women in their lives, but i rarely found blonde ones. this often left me questioning my self-worth and wondering whether a blonde headed kid from vegas such as myself could ever amount to anything in a brown haired world. i felt as though everyone would always judge me based on the color of my hair and the stereotypes that came along with it rather than see me for who i was... a person with feelings, ambitions, wants and needs.

my older brother jeff, on the other hand, had it made... he had dark brown hair. like i said, all the cool, succesful guys in real life and on tv had brown hair: bruce wayne, superman, ronald reagan, fonzi... even jesus. unfortunately, i just didn't look like any of those guys. but, jeff, all he had to do was open the newspaper, turn on the tube, or read a comic book to find stellar brown haired pillars of achievement to look up to and with a simple flick of his brown locks, he was in like flyn.

i always felt like he had an inherent advantage over me in life because of his hair color. he looked like those guys on the covers of comic books, in the news, and the 50s diners; whereas, i looked like aquaman... flippin' aquaman and his green spandex tights and his orange scaled spandex top riding a seahorse. what kind of a role model is that? how can an ambitious blonde haired strapping young lad be expected to break free of the blonde haired stigma of my generation when you had weaklings like aquaman swimming around? because of him, everyone assumed i was soft or that i was overly obsessive about my hair and spandex... but, that just wasn't me.

as a result, i went through phases where i tried to embellish the blondeness of my blonde hair by getting highlights and embracing my true hair roots. during this time, i studied andy warhol and spent lots of time in coffee shops writing poetry, discussing politics, figuring out whose fault this was and getting mad at them for it. this was successful for a time, but then one day in the chinese sweat shop place where i got my highlights done in south san jose i realized i was only hurting my cause to strengthen the blond haired people's revolution. as i sat in my chair with the darth vader perm helmet hair dryer apparatus drying my bleach soaked hair, i noticed a street hardened cholo on my right getting his black as night goatee trimmed and his loco amigo on my left getting his scalp bic'd with only his dark haired wife beater mustache left in place and i realized i was far from being the strong blonde haired role model i, and many other like me, needed to find success in life (i also feared for my life given my then current situation).

it was then that it hit me: i will never be the same as my brown haired counterparts. i would never be their equal. and so i flipped up the darth vader helmet hair drier, tore off my hair guard apron and the holy plastic cap adorning my crown with little sprouts of bleached blonde hair sprouting out all over my head and stormed out of the shop at once. actually, i didn't, instead i embarrassingly finished up my hair treatment session and went home feeling less of a man. i decided to work on the car to compensate before realizing i hadn't the slightest clue what i was doing and could only make things worse at that point. i went shopping for a new pair of jeans instead. actually, i didn't. i was a failure.

but that was then. that was before i had the audacity to hope for a more accepting, more tolerant world.

now, with the success of a blonde haired james bond and jack bauer, i have finally found a reason to be proud of my country for the first time in my adult life. i never thought i would see worthy blonde haired role models in my lifetime. i am so pleased to see that others have accepted james and jack as leaders and the transformational figures they are. the world now looks to them as agents of change in a society so bent on pierce brosnan and the lost boys... the movies have changed for crying out loud, we can change... and change can mean only one thing: i have no idea what that one thing is but apparently it is good because the grass is ALWAYS greener on the other side.

i know james and jack will carry hair-color relations into the twenty-whatever'st century and make our country's divisiveness over hair color a thing of the past. i can tell this because they said so and lots of other famous people on tv and in the movies say they will, how can you argue with that logic? i feel a righteous wind behind them and i'm pretty sure it's nothing to do with flatulence. they may be tested at the box office or the ratings here pretty soon, but i trust them with my job. i do.

i rejoice for my two blonde headed sons knowing they will never face the same role model'less' childhood i had. they have james and jack to look up to and will never struggle again. what parent wouldn't be thrilled to have their child turn out to have the same types of morals, temperament, and values as james bond and jack bauer?

jameson and colston: yes, you can, too!

and while that blonde-haired box on your college application and hair-color based scholarship that got me through law school may not be available to you by the time you start your graduate studies, just know that daniel craig and kiefer sutherland didn't need degrees to become big time famous actors... well, neither do you anymore, my sons. now we can all share in their success.