Pages

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Step No. 14 - Crank my stereo to see if I can literally blow my hair back

Far from intended, Dr. Seuss' hifi proved
to be a nightmare for most children.
Once upon a time I saw a one-panel cartoon in the daily paper where two teenage guys sat in one's room with a stereo speaker hovering a few inches off the floor. The caption read something to the effect of: "Hey, you wanna see my parents freak out? Let's crank the volume and see how high we can get the speaker to hover off the floor." Of course we, the reader, were not privy to the parents' reaction, rather only the adolescent logic that suggested this sonic experimentation was a good idea.

Unfortunately at the moment I can't reproduce that one-panel cartoon, as my apartment straddles a very quiet used bookstore and a similarly quiet (and under-patronised) Indian restaurant whose owner is quite sensitive to noise. Instead, I propose to replicate another scenario: A famous, oft imitated, photo from the late 1980s or early 1990s shows a young bespectacled man sitting in a squarish leather chair watching a television whose volume was turned so high as to produce sufficient energy to blow his hair straight back. My first challenge, and subsequently yours, is to crank your stereo speakers until the energy emitted from the speaker blows your hair back. Hopefully you do not face the obstacle of male pattern baldness as I do that will hamper this experiment's success.

I'd love to hear back about your results presuming, of course, that I still possess any auditory facility.

No comments: