dirty deeds done

You may be wondering why I'm rollin' in the Jacksons. My crew and I have made our fortunes by doing our share of dirty work. Some things I do are things that nobody else would touch.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned Joe before. Actually, I just did a quick search of the blog and I guess I mention Joe quite a bit. He beats me in Guitar Hero all the freakin' time. One thing I'm pretty sure I haven't mentioned is that Joe has an intensely hairy back. After this last Wednesday, I think he may possibly have the hairiest back in the state.

About a week ago, Joe borrowed my camera to enter 101.9 The End's "Bringing Sexy Back" contest. It was a hairy back contest. We always joked with him about his hairiness, but I didn't think he'd make the station's callbacks. He did. The station asked him to come into the studio to compete against two other hairy-backed guys. They also required him to bring in someone else to sculpt his back hair into some kind of artistic statement. Since, my boss was to be out of town the day of the contest, I volunteered to take the day off work to do the deed.

I had one demand: that we didn't just cave to catering by simply writing in the name of the radio station. Joe, Maria and I brainstormed a few pretty good back designs. Maria suggested the rock-on hand sign and wings. Joe loved the rock sign, but i didn't think I'd be able to make it look convincing. I liked the idea of the wings, because a hairy texture is close to a feathered texture; so I talked Joe into doing the wing thing.

We barely made it to the station on time and were escorted into the studio. We met Parker and Wendi, the two newest personalities on The End. He pretty much talks non-stop about how the Utah audience hates him. Nicer in person than I thought though. Wendi was super-nice, but slightly forlorn. His picture on the website makes him look like a total db, but his hair isn't actually that peroxided in person. One of the other guys was our age. He brought his sister with him. Both of the other guys were bigger gentleman, but the guy who came with his wife was quite a bit bigger. He was also a bit older. His wife did a lot of complaining about how weird it is to cuddle up with a guy with a hairy back. Anyway, they started off jabbing off with us for an unnecessary amount of time. I brought in my iRiver FM receiver to record the experience, but the reception in there was strangely bad. Maybe I should have just turned the microphone recorder on. I'll try to post what I got anyway.

I didn't think we really had a chance of winning until it was time to have everyone take their shirts off. The young guy was about as hairy as Joe, but the guy with the complaining wife hardly had anything. Hopefully after seeing the other contestants, she'll quit her yappin.' So then they gave us about 15 minutes to go ahead and work our magic. We forgot an electric razor, but the station provided a couple of them for us. We were prepared in just about every other way. I sharpied up some key locations, so that I could get the symmetry of the wings right (I still got it quite a bit wrong). We also brought some razor blades to do some close cutting on the edges for a deeper contrast, but they were only good for a swipe or two before they became clogged up with hair and useless (it's not like we had running hot water to rinse them out with). I messed up plenty on the texturing. I wanted to sort of make the triangular shape of feathers, but when I did I wound up taking off more hair than I wanted to (because of the curl variable etc.) and we wound up with plenty of very unneeded baldness. Because of this, I panicked and to Joe's chagrin I touched up the whole project with some sharpie outlining.

When time was up and we got a glimpse of the other contestants, I had a sudden surge of hope. To my delight, BOTH of the other teams went with the butt-kissing "101.9 The End" design that I vetoed initially. They also went overboard in coloring their poorly shaved designs with magic markers. We had to tell a couple of people what our design was, but once we told them, they ahh'ed with mild delight. The judges were the sponsors (a husband and wife team from the laser treatment place called Evea) and an up-and-coming Georgia band intensely loved by Parker called Five Star Iris (a sort of blend of Gin Blossoms, Keith Urban and an EFY tape).

After a short dismissal, we got back into the studio where the Evea guy (who has almost no body hair, btw) announced that Joe won (say hooray!).

After the contest, we were treated to a free mini-concert by Five Star Iris. They're pretty nice guys. Good thing, because nobody really knows who they are yet, so they'd be dumb to be divas already. After the show we chatted and got our picture taken with them.

The contest prize was $200 (which Joe split evenly with me (hence the top photo)) and three free laser treatments, which I guess Joe will start participating in around Memorial Day or so. Of course If Joe wants to do it right, he'll have to order three MORE treatments after his free ones at close to a cost of 1000 bucks. In essence, the laser people will ultimately hustle him into it. On the other hand, the poor hairy guy has been meaning to do this for a long time, so he may as well get a huge discount on the process. Looks like Joe won't be the hairiest guy in the state for too much longer.