Fewer is Less

We checked out the newly opened Tenpachi on Eastern Avenue in Fells Point and were seriously underwhelmed. Tenpachi is like an urban Hair Cuttery; no gimmicks; $11 haircuts (raised from $10 by the new management, sort of defeating the purpose of the name Tenpachi). What Tenpachi doesn't tell you upfront is that cheap haircuts mean keeping overhead down. What does keeping overhead down mean for a salon? It means putting no product in your hair, not even to style it. It means charging you to blowdry your hair. It means stylists who are freshly out of stylist school or just aren't that good. Like stylists who yack a lot about themselves and then take two hours to do a one-hour cut and color (and not on my giganta hair even; we're talking pixie-cut K here).

I don't know; maybe the Charles Village Tenpachi is light years better. After all, they did win the City Paper's Best Haircut or something a couple years back, but we know that's all politics. Our former stylist got that a couple years in a row and what did that get us? Her never returnig our phone calls. Alexander Payne seems to have had the same underwhelming experience. Next time, it's back to Clip Art in Federal Hill for us. Liz will serve you a beer or a coke while you wait, and you can make faces at the overpriced Phillip Michael Salon patrons across the street.

Thankfully, the rest of the weekend was full of goodness. Phillygirl made us a mean shrimp risotto Saturday night and sent us home with some leftovers. Phillygirl has some serious kitchen equipment: $120 knives, cheese grinders, a garlic press that looks like an oversized Ball-Peen hammer. I lamented that I did have such impressive tools, but then K chided me for declining to buy a set of Henkel knives at the QVC outlet for $60. Yes, I know; I'm cheap and sometimes it comes back to bite me.

Today I hosted L's book club at our house. Ironically, I spent a lot of time cleaning upstairs yesterday (puke stains on rug from hairball cat, tub ring, mildewy shower curtain) and nobody from the book group used the bathroom or took a shower. The nerve of them. We discussed What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, an interesting look on why blue-collar America votes against their economic interests by voting Republican, but we were largely unfulfilled. It's one thing to point out how it was done, but there were no solutions on how to fix it. I've decided to do my part. For months I have battled with managment over them playing FoxNews at the gym. For the past four months they have played CNN, which I also hate, but they've slowly moved back to Fox. Instead of arguing about the lesser of the two evils, I'm going to demand they play Comedy Central on one of the TVs instead. The Daily Show from the previous evening replays every night at 7 pm, which is peak gym time. Maybe now everyone will get to watch one news show that tells the truth. I mean, satire show. And Jon's much easier on the eye that those weird alien-eye people at Fox. What is wrong with their bug eyes?