Thursday Stylin': Don't let all that cocaine mar your hairstyling integrity

In this week's desperately pathetic attempt to fill space and build ad revenue, The New York Times completely implodes. It has never been worse. If you want pearl-laden hair cream slapped on your face, your body covered with chocolate, your rugby players homoerotic, and your masturbation acts to happen in a locker room, the Times is the paper for you. Read to the end for an ass-whupping jeremiad, profane Cotton Mather style.

Rise. Fall. Rinse. Repeat. A former coke addict, who once smeared pearl-infested haircream onto the faces of unwilling models, is back and better than ever. That's Oribe Canales for you. In case you've been living under a haircare-neglected rock, Mr. Canales is the Arnold Schwarzenegger of hair care. He once ran a Fifth Avenue salon -- "a gilded $3 million shrine to glamour modeled after a Venetian palazzo." (An aside: glamour? Is the Times catering to British readers?) Mr. Canales is described thusly: "You would have to go the whole length of the place past the chandeliers and the sweeping drapes, and there at the end of it all was this attractive biker-looking person in black leather and jewelry with studs."

But he couldn't handle the pressure in New York, so he became a cokehead and a drunk. He was yet to hit rock bottom:

"I was in a terrible period of my career," Oribe said. Marc Jacobs "would say, 'Just throw this barrette in the model's hair and let it hang,' " he recalled. A devotee of the glossy, fastidiously maintained Rita Hayworth manes of the late 1940's and 50's, Oribe was shocked."A barrette is supposed to pull back the hair and show the face," he said. He was equally stunned when during a shoot for Calvin Klein someone noticed a pimple on the model. " 'It's genius, let's leave it,' someone said," Oribe remembered with a roll of his eyes.

Yeah, life sucks. When the grunge era ascended, Mr. Oribe futilely raged against the dying of the light. Dethroned at the hair salon, he opened a barbershop in Miami. Then, J. Lo helped revitalize his career, as he gave her the image of a "glamorous plutocrat." Now he's glad to be away from New York, because people here are disloyal.

Going to the Therapist En Route to the Altar. A New Hampshire teacher went through second thoughts about marrying his girlfriend, and as punishment, the girlfriend made him promise to forego his "frat-boy activities." Also, she forced him to enter couple's therapy. Clearly, this is the North Korea of relationships, with the New Hampshire girlfriend cast as Kim Jong Il. She sucks.

But not to the Styles section. This is just another cutesy, cutesy anecdote at the start of another cutesy, cutesy story! Emasculated guys are going to "couple's therapy" with their girlfriends! Aw, cuuuuuuute!

Any girl who'd want to date me needs a little therapy of her own, but I'd never force her into it. Seems to me like unmarried couples who need joint therapy are either doomed or insane. This would be a massive, Time Square-style neon sign to run away as fast as possible.

Lastly, the article is of primary interest to the rich/frivolous and the very, very, very neurotic.

Your Cake and Slather It on, Too. People cover themselves in chocolate for skin-care purposes. Joanne Chen may yet be the next Alex Kuczynski. She likes hyperbole: "Chocolate boutiques have cropped up, Starbucks-like, on every corner." Dude -- not in my allegedly hip neighborhood. The Times factcheckers are failures.

Ladies, what I'm saying is, if you want to date me, I'll eat your chocolate-based makeup straight out of the bottle, then refuse to enter therapy.

Has anyone seen the great Talking Heads movie True Stories? It's one of my favorites. In it, there is an anti-commercial commercial for the song "Love For Sale," in which humans are dipped in chocolate. David Byrne, 20 years ahead of the curve. True Stories doesn't have anything else to do with this article, but it's a lot more enjoybale than the Styles section.

A Scrum of Stripes Refined for the Street. Most. Homoerotic. Article. Yet. In a piece about rugby's influence on pop culture, David Colman uses the following words in a single paragraph: "sex," "sex symbols flaunting tan good looks," "six-pack abs," "boyish fly half," "hero," "bare-chested," and "being really fruity." There's also a bunch of stuff about pictures of naked rugby players.

I don't know how Bill Keller lives with himself, knowing that bullshit like this is in his publication.

Everything You Need but the Sunshine. After last week's all-out descent into madness, Alex Kuczynski is back to her norm: ordinary-grade USDA-approved insanity. Of course, the first paragraph is all about herself. She hits some golf balls, then bloviates about golf's "psycho-sociological" role in American life. The first five paragraphs are all about Alex. Then she goes shopping for golf clubs. I doubt anyone looking to buy golf clubs gives a shit about what Alex thinks, just as I doubt that anyone shopping for Etros shirts gives a shit what Phil Mickelson thinks.

Locker Room Trysts Bedevil Health Clubs. I've saved the worst for last. No way to be delicate: it's an article about dudes jerking each other off in health club locker rooms.

QUESTION: What in the sam fuck is the New York Times doing???

Motherfuck and goddamn! There's the obvious issue of good taste. Second, the article acknowledges that there's no news hook here. It says that this is nothing new, and there's no way of knowing whether such behavior is more prevalent now than in the past. Apparently, it was just time for an article about dudes jerking each other off in locker rooms. Up next: celebrity assfuckings in the alleys of the Meatpacking District, and oral sex tips from tranny hookers in the West 30s.

Understatement alert: "To some members, such behavior is offensive and detracts from their enjoyment of the gym."

Gee, do ya think? You mean, some delicate motherfuckers find that it "detracts from their enjoyment of the gym" when dudes are jerking each other off in public? Are you fucking kidding? You mean, the way some people think that their cases of mad cow disease detract from their enjoyment of a quarter pounder? If I ever walked in on shit like that, I'd be drafting the motherfucking class action complaint against New York Sports Club.

Unbelievably, this article ends with a quote from a puppet. Really. It really, really does. The Times quotes a puppet on the subject of locker room masturbation: "Oh, yes, these steam rooms are wonderful," his puppet Oglesby boasted in a Manhattan bar a few months ago. "I even hear they have a workout room upstairs."

I should be hesitant, throwing around the name Neil Sheehan and mentioning the Pentagon Papers. I've done it before. I'll do it again. There was a time, years before I was born, when the Times performed some of the most important work of any institution in America. It is now a screaming fiasco that quotes puppets on the subject of men jerking off in locker rooms. If I hadn't already done it two years ago, this would be the night that I canceled my subscription.