?>{"id":126,"date":"2011-12-02T06:46:45","date_gmt":"2011-12-02T14:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.late2theparty.com\/?p=126"},"modified":"2012-01-13T06:39:29","modified_gmt":"2012-01-13T14:39:29","slug":"why-i-sort-of-hate-led-zeppelin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.late2theparty.com\/?p=126","title":{"rendered":"Why I (sort of) hate Led Zeppelin"},"content":{"rendered":"

This entry will<\/em> be about sort of hating Led Zeppelin, but I have to digress for a moment. For context. And so you don’t think I’m a bitch.<\/p>\n

In another life, some years ago now, I managed 20 or so miscreants at a hair salon. I was a poor college student who needed the job.<\/p>\n

Hairstylists, in general, are an interesting<\/em> bunch. Societal misfits, artists, and amateur counselors for their clients, they live life on the fringe of moral acceptability and like it. Moody and dramatic, fascinating and frustrating, I loved working with them slightly more than I hated it. But I was young and I put up with a lot — too much.<\/p>\n

And so, having no other outlet for my frustrations and needing employment badly, I used to burn CDs for my coworkers in a show of (passive-aggressive) “goodwill”, and in an attempt to get them to stop being such narcissistic assholes to me.<\/p>\n

A couple of examples of their shenanigans:<\/p>\n

Exhibit A:<\/strong> One female stylist I worked with was a robust<\/em> woman in her late 40s who used meth (or something like it) to lose 150 lbs. — and not gracefully. In fact, I was once confronted by an irate (bigoted, piece of shit) customer who thought that we had hired a drag queen. “I know you hire those people <\/em>in this industry,” she hissed, “but this is too much!”\u00a0This particular stylist was often so strung out (“I’m hypoglycemic!”) that she would pass out in the middle of cutting hair, horrifying her clients and causing two or three of her fellow stylists to stop what they were doing to pick her up, drag her to a shampoo bowl and hose her off.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Like this, only a woman... and with more meth.<\/p><\/div>\n

I made her a CD filled with songs about the dangers of doing drugs. She loved<\/em>\u00a0it.<\/p>\n

EXHIBIT B:<\/strong> Then there was the guy whored himself around so much that, one sunny afternoon, he ran screaming out the front door of the salon when he discovered he had crab larvae\u00a0wriggling\u00a0around in his eyeball.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

To cleanse you of that visual, here's a puppy.<\/p><\/div>\n

I made him a CD about self-love, with euphemisms about the act written all over the disc. He thought it was hilarious.<\/p>\n

See, none of them ever “got it”, and would just thank me profusely for such cool CDs. They’d be extra nice to me for a day or two before they’d be back to their old tricks. So, as the years went on I became more brazen, just to see what would happen and because, well, fuck them.<\/p>\n

EXHIBIT C:<\/strong> Okay, so there was this stylist who was head-over-heels for Led Zeppelin. She was super cute, blonde and had lots of borderline-creepy male hangers-on.<\/p>\n

\"courtesy<\/a>

No, she wasn't Robert Plant.<\/p><\/div>\n

When her birthday rolled around I, naturally, made her a CD called I Love Jimmy Page<\/em>, full of obvious, pointed examples of what a talentless group of thieving hacks Led Zeppelin were.\u00a0The idea was that she’d put the CD on, thinking that it would be a bunch of Led Zeppelin “bootlegs”, but would instead get 80 minutes of all the original<\/em> songs that her favorite band in the world had so shamelessly ripped off.<\/p>\n

Now, before you convict me for crimes against rock for slagging on Zep so hard, hear me out.<\/p>\n

Every single one<\/span> of these hairdressers – remember, I was dealing with 20 of them – drove me a little crazy. A very<\/em> typical day usually involved at least two of the following:<\/p>\n