Rant #1,702: Hair-Brained

I liked David Bowie as much as the next guy did.

He was an innovator, he was cool, he was "the man" in music at one point.

I still like his music, and although he is gone, that really is what he left the world, a music catalog that will span the ages.

However, some people go way beyond just liking Bowie, liking his music, and thinking that he was a cool, thin white dude.

In a recent auction held in Los Angeles, a lock of Bowie's hair was sold for $18,750. Yes, just one lock of his hair.

Evidently, the lock was originally part of a collection of his hair used in 1983 by an artist from Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in London, Bowie's hair was used to create a wig for a wax figure of the singer. This lock was evidently left over from that creation, and has stayed in storage for all of these years (I don't know if hair used on wax figures ages, but I guess they need backup hair just in case of an emergency).

Look, I admire celebrities as much as the next guy does--I just told you about getting autographs and meeting the celebrities at the "Dark Shadows" convention in yesterday's Rant--but collecting actual pieces of a particular celebrity is not my thing.

I find it kind of maudlin, kind of ridiculous. What are you going to do with the lock of hair? Are you going to put it into some type of eerie shrine to the dead rock star, or perhaps weave it into your own hair so you will really have a piece of Bowie with you at all times?

I really don't get it, I really don't.

I guess it might be because I, myself, am somewhat hairless on my head, as my hair follicles left me years ago.

But heck, when I leave this earth, you can still get a lock of my own hair from the back of my head, and I have plenty on my arms and legs and other places that could satisfy a curious collector.

But who would want such a piece of memorabilia from me, or even, from a worldwide star like Bowie (pictured here with a nice hat on his head, evidently protecting his scalp's mane of hair for future use)?

This is not the first time that someone of note has had a lock of hair preserved like this. I believe several dead presidents have had a lock of hair preserved, and yes, these locks cost a lot of dead presidents to own.

But I still don't get it.

Why not use that $18,750 to purchase some other Bowie artifact, something more tangible, like written-out lyrics, perhaps one of his guitars, maybe one of his ties he wore regularly in the 1980s?

A lock of hair?

Gosh, it has got to make all celebrities look at their hair brushes and pick out the loose follicles that collect on these things.

What next, some celebrity's toe nail?

I can think of some other things, but let's just leave it at that.