Let Me Off at the Top!: My Classy Life and Other Musings Read online

  MY HAIR

  First of all I’d like to dispel the nine most popular myths about my hair.

  MYTH NUMBER 1: My hair is called Andros Papanakas. It is not. I have no name for my hair.

  MYTH NUMBER 2: My hair was bestowed upon me by the gods. This one is hard to dispel. It would have been just like Zeus to make such a gift, or Hermes, but even though I have called on these two gods many times I have never been told specifically by either one that I was given my hair, so I have to say no to the gift-from-the-gods theory.

  MYTH NUMBER 3: My hair is insured by Lloyd’s of London for one thousand dollars. Nope! It’s fifteen hundred, thank you.

  MYTH NUMBER 4: My hair won’t talk to my mustache. This is basically true but I would hardly call that a myth.

  MYTH NUMBER 5: My hair starred in the movie Logan’s Run. It was definitely up for the part of Logan but that eventually went to Michael York. He did an excellent job in the film and to this day it’s still considered the best film of all time.

  MYTH NUMBER 6: My hair on my head is the exact same as the hair on my crotch. Don’t I wish!

  MYTH NUMBER 7: My hair was the principal cause of the overthrow of the Chilean government in ’73. This one is true. Look it up.

  MYTH NUMBER 8: Each strand of my hair carries the DNA for not only a complete Ron Burgundy clone but also a duck-billed platypus. This is incorrect. Scientists at Georgetown University studying my hair strands have detected the DNA from eight different semiaquatic mammals. The platypus is nowhere in sight.

  MYTH NUMBER 9: I wear a toupee. Sure, I wear a toupee, and women don’t have vaginas and cats don’t have dongs! Seriously, this is not a myth, just an insult. Stop it. This is my hair. You can’t have it. You can’t buy it. You can’t burgle it, but you can enjoy it on top of my leathery oversized head.

  I would love to be able to report to you that my hair is the work of many hours of teasing, combing, conditioning, dyeing, fluffing and whatever else men do for vanity’s sake, but it’s simply not the case. I was born with my hair and that’s that. I could be cruising down the road in a new convertible sports car with a topless beauty queen at my side. She could be feeding me a thick New York strip steak and pouring me a tall glass of scotch as I drive. In the backseat of the car there could be a stuffed bear and Johnny Carson, but as that car sped by, most guys on the street would look up and say to themselves, “Man, I wish I had that hair.” It’s just a simple fact. My hair is great. I’ve always had it, literally, from the day I came out of the womb. From what I was told, on first seeing me come into this world the doctor and the nurse stood dumbfounded and then ordered the entire hospital into the delivery room because they thought perhaps they had witnessed the second coming of Christ! NO, they hadn’t! It was just me, Ron Burgundy, and my perfect hair.

  Ed Harken, my boss at Channel 4, once joked that if anyone ever cut my hair, like Samson I would lose my power. I laughed deeply and heartily for many hours and lost no sleep at all over his wit. Several days later, a little more anxious, I went to the San Diego Public Library and asked if they had any books on this Samson guy. Little-known fact, turns out he’s mentioned in the Bible. It’s just a blurb really but that’s pretty cool to get a mention in the Bible! It wasn’t a well-written story but I got the gist. It was comforting to know the whole story and I was able to function without much incident having this new knowledge of what happened to Samson’s hair. Knowing all about Samson and his girlfriend Delilah did not make me nervous and I hardly spent any time thinking about what would happen if someone cut my hair off. It was fairly easy to not think about it, although at night for a few hours I would give it a thought. Why did he tell her? It made no sense! I guess women always want to know the source of our power. That’s why they sleep with us, right, guys?

  Anyway, I know that it calmed me immeasurably to know all about Samson and what happened to him. That’s why I was surprised a few weeks later during our production meeting when I yelled out very loud, “Ed Harken, if you touch my hair I will cut your face up like a root grinder and your friends will spend the rest of their lives too terrified to look at the mess I left behind. Do you understand me! DO YOU!” I believe I had a twelve-inch hunting knife in my hand at the time I said it. Long story short: My hair is not mythological or magical in any way. It’s very simply a great gathering of hair strands formed in such a way as to be undeniably perfect, and I am not nervous at all about someone cutting it off someday. That doesn’t make me nervous.

  Now, I know in the past you’ve seen pictures of me in the ad section of the San Diego Union-Tribune endorsing this or that hair product but I’m here to tell you it’s all a lot of horse crap. I say and do a lot of stuff for money. One thing I’ve always stayed true to even if it meant never compromising is that Ron Burgundy is for sale. I’ll endorse anything if there’s money on the table. Seriously, if some dirty grease bag flies into town with a bottle of cat urine and pays me enough money to say it will make your hair look like mine, I’ll do it. Just know your hair will never look like mine. That’s not to say I don’t on occasion use product. All anchormen use product. Most of the better hair products have either lost traction with today’s youth or been discontinued by the EPA. Over the years these were the products I came to trust but that now no longer exist for one reason or another.

  FRED MACMURRAY’S MAN GUM

  One of the best ever. Was the “go-to” hair product growing up. It came in a one-gallon bucket and had the consistency of axle grease. You could use it as axle grease in a pinch but at a quarter a gallon, why waste it? In the sixties they discovered that lead chips were not safe and Man Gum lost favor with hair lovers.

  HARMON KILLERBREW’S HEAD GOO

  If you were a sports nut like me you couldn’t wait to squeeze out a tube of Killerbrew’s Head Goo before heading out to the movies. More like plaster of Paris than a malleable gel, it went on wet and minutes later you had a rock of hair on your head that no force could change for days. We just loved it. Like all plaster-based products in those days, the lime content was pretty high. One day it disappeared from the shelves with an offer to join in a class-action lawsuit. No harm no foul, I’ve always said. Baseball legend Harmon Killerbrew took the r out of his name and became “Killebrew.” It was enough of a name change to hide him from the lawsuit and any culpability relating to all the seizures.

  EXXON HAIR TAR

  This stuff was everywhere and it really did the trick. It was the only hair product with the words Completely Edible on the label. Not that you would eat it, because it tasted like farts and clams, but it got thrown into a lot of pastry recipes around where I grew up and no one cared a lick. It took a while to work it into your hair as it was pretty sticky stuff, but once it was applied, look out, James Dean. It also helped if you had black hair because that’s the only color it came in. A shipment of Exxon Hair Tar spilled out on Route 66 in Indiana in ’56 and they closed down the highway for half a year. Every animal and piece of vegetation was annihilated within ten miles of the spill. Sad, when you think about it. In a gesture of true American courage Exxon owned up to their goof by saying they were sorry for what the truck driver did and that truck driver would have been fired if he had lived. Gosh darn it! Sometimes I wish we all could stand so tall in the face of our failure!

  DR. LON’S LOVE SAUCE

  Frankly this was the best of the bunch. It could only be found in adult bookstores and the backs of gentlemen’s magazines, but if you got your hands on a tub of this creamy sauce it made all the rest look like turds. No one knew anything about Dr. Lon except that he was a real doctor who specialized in hairology and that he had discovered his sauce while hiking in Tibet. It smelled a bunch like socks and yeast, so you had to keep your distance from other people, but the glow it gave your hair was worth it. I liberally put this on my head three times a day for four years but then decided I needed human touch and I put it away. Years later I did a story on Dr. Lon, only to discover he was not a real human at all bu
t just a made-up name. The real Dr. Lon was a bunch of researchers at Exxon Oil! Ingenious!

  In the end, because I’m such a hobby lover, I concocted my own special hair formula through trial and error. It took six years to get the perfect balance but here it is, my gift to those of you who honor your hair with love and affection.

  Eggs (six to eight)

  Bourbon (half bottle)

  Beer (Schaefer, four cans)

  Maple syrup (bottle)

  Rotten apples (four)

  Coconut milk (one gallon)

  Paint thinner (two cups)

  Shoe polish (two tins)

  Bouillon cubes (twenty)

  Cat urine (bowl)

  Wet newspaper (two to six pages)

  Cream of broccoli soup (one can)

  To prepare, throw all the ingredients into a large lobster pot and stir vigorously; add paint, color optional, when necessary. Cook till boiling and then let cool. Recipe makes enough for one or two applications. Your hair will look shimmery and stout all day. Hey … I’m just pulling your chain. My hair looks this way when I wake up and stays the same all day long. It’s just something you’re going to have to come to terms with. Unless your last name is Hudson, as in Rock, or Goulet, as in Robert, you won’t even come close to hair like mine in your lifetime no matter what you plop on your head. Ron Burgundy.

  One other quick story about my hair. In 1971 I was awarded the prestigious Action-Man Magazine award for best hair. It’s quite an honor. Past winners have been Lorne Greene, Bobby Sherman, and professional golfer Johnny Miller, among others. So yes, it’s a very big deal. The big shots over at Action-Man Magazine and Brunswick Bowling Balls fly the winners first-class to Hawaii for an all-expenses-paid weekend of fun and sun at Eros Hotel and Spa. Beautiful mixed-race nude women parade around with colorful drinks, sashaying between ice sculptures of scenes from the Kama Sutra and live exotic animals on chains. It’s a first-class operation all around. Although I’m not the biggest celebrity at the gathering (Buddy Hackett and Agnes Moorehead are both in attendance!), I feel pretty at home surrounded by all this class and style. I plant myself at the Outrigger Bar and enjoy a whole menu full of ice-cream drinks while feasting on shrimp and hot dogs. I will admit straight up I’m doing my very best to put out some Burgundy sex signals. From the hotel gift shop I’ve purchased a bold new swimsuit and robe that are most definitely working. I am getting more than my share of looks! (That swimsuit was hands-down my favorite for years until my associate Brian Fantana told me it was a pair of women’s underwear. Carpe diem!) Sure enough I lock eyes with a sultry temptress with a name tag that reads “Kimberly Gropff, Brunswick Bowling.” (For her protection—she is a married woman with children from Sterling, Illinois—I will call her “Tanya Lambkin.” We later had relations in many different positions and styles, but that’s not where this story is going, although it’s hard not to think about it.) As “Tanya Lambkin” is making her way over to me at the bar and Sir Roderick Hainsworth is peeking out of my swimsuit (women’s underwear), a sudden burst of crashing plates and general commotion explodes out by the pool. From where I’m perched I can barely make it out but someone is sing-yelling my name: “Roooooon Buuuuuuurgundy! Yooooou are an imposterrrrr!” I think I’ve made it very clear I abhor violence of any kind but when it comes looking for me I sleuth out my chances and decide if I need to run away or stand my ground. “Roooooon Buuuuuurgundy! I knoooooow you’re at this hoooooooteeeeel!” Almost more singing than yelling really. I stand, still uncertain if I’m going to take off or get ready for some boisterous action, but I’ve run out of time. Moving at me like a charging rhino is Hollywood legend and world-class singer Jim Nabors. I quickly sidestep his attack and give him a karate chop to the back of his head. Unfazed, he turns on me and swipes a bear-paw-sized fist at my head, which I fend off with my left (Jack Johnson, as you may recall). No time to lose! I bring Tom O’Leary from down below and come up strong on Nabors’s chin. The big man hardly rocks back at all! Too much man there. I lay into him with some rabbit punches to his bread basket—nothing. Something like Thor’s mighty hammer comes down on my head and I start to wobble. Jim Nabors, television’s Gomer Pyle, is about to take me down. Time to get tricky. Like a boxer just trying to make it through a round, I dive at the big fella and grab on for dear life. I need to catch my breath—we dance like this for a few minutes. It starts to dawn on me that Nabors is enjoying the close contact with another man. He relaxes for a second and pow! Tom O’Leary right to the nut sack. Down goes Gomer in a Pyle! (Just too hard to resist. It’s a chuckle for sure.) Once he’s down I get into his mug. “Hey, what’s the big idea?” He gives me a confused look for a second and then sheepishly admits, “Ahhh, someone said your hair was better’n mine and I got sore.” Then he smiles and starts laughing. It’s an infectious laughter so I start giggling too. Pretty soon we both are chuckling up a storm. We became friends. “Tanya Lambkin” invited the two of us up to her room along with Hawaiian lounge singer Don Ho. A lot of beef got passed around that night, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I thought I’d share that story about my hair.

  OUR LADY QUEEN OF CHEWBACCA

  If the town of Haggleworth, with its burning streets and ash heaps and high murder rate, was a grim place to grow up, no effort was made inside the walls of Our Lady Queen of Chewbacca High School to make us think otherwise. The hallways of the high school were some of the most dangerous thoroughfares in town. Grown men didn’t like walking those halls. Because of the town’s mining tradition, much of the school was dug underground. If you weren’t careful, one wrong turn and you could get lost for days. Rumor had it that somewhere in the deep, past the teachers’ lounge and further down into the subbasement, there was a Minotaur. It seems almost too mythological to believe but this Minotaur, which did in fact exist, came from the deepest recesses in the earth. Minotaurs are born of fire and anger. No man can kill one unless equipped with the arrow of Theseus. Ahhh, now I’m just listing Minotaur facts to show off! You got me! Anyway, there probably was a Minotaur in the basement of my high school but it’s one of those unconfirmed facts. There were, however, some classrooms that kept a canary in a cage in the corner. The oxygen could get pretty thin on some days, and if that canary dropped it was an unorganized scramble to see who could get out alive.

  Carrying my flute through the halls with my impossibly beautiful hair put a fat bull’s-eye on my back from the beginning. I knew if I was going to make it through those four years I needed to find the toughest guy in school and show him I was not one to be trifled with. On my first day I went right up to Han Solonski, a big lump of a Pole, and I beat him within an inch of his life. The poor dumb lug didn’t know what hit him. (It was a brick. I used a brick.) After that day no one dared bother me. I was number one. No one ever officially declared that I was number one, but I knew it. I had posters made. It was pretty obvious.

  I can’t say I was much of a student. The good sisters, bless their hearts, showed a lot of patience with me but it just didn’t take. A word about the good sisters, and all nuns for that matter. I’m no Catholic; in fact I have an irrational and unexplainable dislike for the Catholics. They’re a grubby bunch of sour sacks if you ask me, but even the Catholics I talk to hate nuns. I mean, you’re always hearing about stone-faced old hags rapping kids on the knuckles for not paying attention or stern old maids pulling children through the halls by their ears. First of all, if any nun would have tried any kind of nonsense like that in Haggleworth they would have gotten socked in the puss. I would have been the first in line to do the socking. I’ve socked old ladies before and believe me, it’s not pretty. But the nuns at Chewbacca who tried to put education in me were nothing like the repressed old maids we all think of when we think of nuns. No, I don’t know why—maybe it was a papal order from the Vatican—but the nuns we got at Our Lady Queen of Chewbacca were very sweet and very, very gorgeous. The whole lot of them across the board could have been Playboy centerfolds for sure, but they gave their
lives over to Jesus Christ. There were about twenty-five of them there in the high school and they ranged from age eighteen to twenty-two. Jesus was their lord and master, and what a lucky guy he was, because these ladies were absolutely stunning. Maybe God sent the very best to Haggleworth because it was so close to hell. Who knows? All of them were five foot seven inches tall and built like Raquel Welch, with legs that went on for days.

  Of course, we never saw the nuns out of their habits and hats, except when they taught wrestling or during swim class, but other than those two hours every day they were as buttoned up as Eskimos in a snowstorm. I’m gonna admit it: When one of those nuns showered with us after wrestling practice there were more than a few boners on display. It wasn’t very respectful of us but it was hard not to think of them as just ordinary women even though they had given over their lives to serve only Jesus Christ. Heck, we were all just boys with very little understanding of religious conviction. Lando Calrissian, the only African American (still getting used to saying it like that!), made a play for Sister Honeytits (I’m not making that name up. Why would I make that name up?) but that was the only instance I knew of such fiddling about. Lando was the star shooting guard for the Chewbacca Stormtroopers, so he was basically immune to punishment anyway. One of the sisters, Sister Vicky Vaginalicious (real name), did leave the faith and took up with my good buddy Wedge Antilles, but it was rare. These women respected the church too much to let carnal desire interfere with their calling.