Your appearance is a direct invitation for judgment. So, inviting strange looks and stares - honestly, without really considering the consequences of my actions - I went and shaved my head. With a razor. Skinhead bald.

Taking such a drastic step in one’s appearance radically alters the projection you give to the world. Suddenly strangers were either very positive or very negative toward me, based on appearance alone. I stopped being Normal Guy and became What’s-His-Agenda Man. Was I a Hell’s Angel trapped in a white-collar day job? A very small bouncer with a runner’s frame? Or just that middle-aged, balding guy? Looks were now more inquisitive than glancing.

But the interesting part is that I could feel myself falling into a pre-described role. Natually, I picked the hardass, rather than the balding old guy, persona. ‘I look like I’m going to smack someone or, at the very least, glare at them balefully,’ I figured. ‘Time to stop being a nice guy and smiling at people.’

And the permanent scowl really does have its time and place, such as at a very crowded concert - rather than pressing up around me, people seemed to give me a bit of room. And walking to the bar was a breeze. Granted, there was drinking involved, and I could have been imagining things, but perception is nine-tenths of reality. Or something like that.

While the hair is gone, the angry outlook is still a work in progress. I’ll keep you posted how it’s progressing.

Your run-of-the-mill electronic show consists of endless permutations of the following:

• endless knob-twiddling
• head bobbing
• the same repeated loop in three different tempos
• vaguely emo haircuts
• and white people.

A Jamie Lidell electronic show, however, subverts the expected. Wait, are you creating your own beats - live - by singing into a mic and then looping it? Are you seriously expecting me to listen to your electronic recreation of a live studio band? And what are you thinking, crooning soulfully like some 21st century Otis Redding over your track?

This white boy done good, so at least he had the last item on that list covered. If you have a chance to see this guy, I highly recommend it.

People go to great lengths in the name of ‘oh, that seemed funny.’ Unfortunately, those actions are often poorly thought out.

So on a snap judgement, without any rational thought and analysis of my decision, I said yes to attending ‘Barbie Live! in Fairytopia’ based on the following criteria:

I knew the actress playing Barbie. She was a friend of a friend in high school, her father is my father’s doctor, et cetera.

Barbie was above the fold on the New York Times front page. So the show has to be good, right? Even if it’s about … Barbie? In Fairytopia?

It was going to be funny. Or something. Like I said, I was a little fuzzy on how it was going to be ‘funny,’ save the irony of three 24-year-olds in a sea of mothers and six-year-old daughters.

The only way we kept our sanity was to a) drink during the intermission, conspicuously showing ourselves as the only demographic that would consume alcohol at a Barbie function, and b) leave after said intermission. In one way, I could use a little more off-the-wall irrational decisions in my life. Thanks to Natalie and Stephanie, who so graciously posed with the cutout Barbie and who agreed with me when I said we needed to leave.

This, however, should not have been one of those poor decisions. Oh, the irony.

There are so many things I we wish we could remember. Examples include the name of the girl you said that stupid thing in front of in sixth grade or why, oh why, in god’s name you decided not to cheat in gym class when everyone else was cutting across the 50-yard line and you were that fat kid that came in last.

Not that either of the above happened.

There is one commercial I’ll never forget, however. For some reason - probably the same marketing genius that had some Indian cry when he saw garbage in a stream (you didn’t care about garbage or Native Americans, you just thought it was funny to see Chief Whatshisname cry) - I cannot get the image of NBC’s ‘One To Grow On’ series of PSAs out of my head.

Scene: Kid, maybe 10 or so, is being egged on by his (obviously younger and obviously non-threatening) friends to do some damn vandalism. Brick-through-a-window or spray-painting-the-principal’s-car-type damage. At his friends’ insistence, he yanks the antenna from a nearby car, causing his friends to make some 80s-style comments of ‘Rad!’ or ‘tubular!’ or ‘you’re cooler than Prince!’

Flash forward to the next morning. The same kid is climbing into the passenger seat of the same car. His father is sitting in the driver’s seat, fiddling with the radio knobs. ‘Hey!’ he exclaims. ‘Some punk broke my antenna!’ The kid slumps down in his seat as the public service announcement outro music plays. ‘The More You Know’ flashes on the screen, making me think the kid would have broken some other sap’s car had he just known the car belonged to his family.

It never seemed that solid a message to me. I could never figure out why some moron kid would break his own father’s car when there were plenty of other parked cars around.

But that skepticism would come serve me well, as apparently NBC has allowed ‘The Office’ to skewer the modern concept of ‘public service announcement’ as cast members teach small children to not eat the black jellybeans (’they’re gross, seriously’) and to eschew expensive bars (’if someone tries to give you a beer for nine dollars, tell them no. It’s just not worth it’).

Watch them for yourself and see how early training in irony has allowed me to appreciate postmodern pop-culture humor.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go vandalize my own apartment. Ironically.

A typical Sunday schedule usually follows the same routine.

• 8-11:30 a.m. wake up
• wake up-2 p.m. read paper, make coffee, think about working out
• 2-5 p.m. realize workout is not happening, read something (book, magazine, internet)
• 5-8 p.m. think about dinner, think about drinking
• 8-11:59 p.m. begin, continue or keep drinking, marvel at how early it is
• 12-2 a.m. wonder ‘how did it get this late?’ and pass out

The most recent Sunday, however, was a bit different. When at 1:15 in the afternoon you find yourself thinking that the day has, up until this point, been so brilliant that the rest of the day is going to be a letdown, you know things have been productive. By that point in the afternoon, I had already:

• beaten my stated time goal in an 8K race by almost five minutes with a 37:54 finish;
• seen Cracker, my favorite band of the last 12 years, live (see above, with guitarist Johnny Hickman so close I could reach out and touch him);
• exchanged hugs and kind words with close friends and coworkers;
• set myself on a path to drinking oblivion.

Short of Natalie Portman coming to me, dropping to one knee and proposing (and me taking my sweet time to think about it before hitting her up with a ‘why not? Sure’ and a pre-nup), the day getting any better. Knowing this fact and respecting the gods of fortune, I resigned myself to an afternoon of the below (completely fictionalized, of course) routine.

• 3:34 p.m. tell female cowoker to shut up, hit on her friend
• 3:36 p.m. order two Jager bombs
• 3:37 p.m. ask same female coworker to touch waitress’ boobs
• 3:38 p.m. ask same female coworker to touch them again because it effing rocked when she did it the first time
• 3:42 p.m. ask ladies, ‘is your friend gay, or just French?’
• 3:42 p.m. find out said friend is both gay and French
• 3:43-6:29 p.m. (more of the same)

Then I threw myself a curveball.

• 6:30 p.m. say ‘what the hell is this? It’s still light outside?’ when leaving a bar
• 6:31-9:54 p.m. try to throw darts
• 9:55 p.m. pass out

This was one for the record books. Next Sunday, I’m going back to my normal schedule.