I look forward to going to the hair salon.

        Every two months or so I get to sit back and let someone else deal with this tangle on my head. The hardest task I have to perform is to keep up my end of the gossip and news buzzing about the place.

        I admit it; I indulge. I've talked about the stolen presidential election, O.J. Simpson's taste in women and lawyers, the best and worst dressed on Hollywood's red carpets, and rap versus soul.

        I've commiserated about bad husbands and boyfriends, children who've left the fold, others who hang on too long.

        Sometimes we share too much. Somebody gets choked up or gets their back up.

        Always, though, between the scalp massages and the hot curlers, we manage to get in a few laughs.

Barbershop talk

        I expect that at my next appointment we'll be chatting about Barbershop.

        This blockbuster movie with a predominantly African-American cast was written, directed and produced by African-Americans.

        And it's got all the ingredients for a ripe riff with the ruminators at my salon.

        We'll touch on the main tale, a sweet story about a neighborhood barbershop and a young man who doesn't value his father's and grandfather's legacy until it's too late.

        We'll chuckle a bit over the hilarious side stories wrapped around unforgettable characters: the clowns who make crime look harder than it is, the black bourgie barber who can't stomach the white barber with the blacker-than-black lifestyle; the female barber who wants a little respect with her love.

        The character most apt to add sauce to our stewing will be the crotchety old barber, played affectionately by Cedric the Entertainer. Sometimes he's a buffoon, sometimes a sage. Always this geezer is a spoiler, saying what he thinks no matter how unpopular or ignorant it is.

        He claims Martin Luther King Jr. has become a “ho” because on his holiday some people take the day off and have sex.

        He says Rodney King deserved the police beating for driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs.

        He says Rosa Parks is “no one special” because she wasn't the first person arrested for refusing to sit in the back of the bus.

Keepin' it real

        But he's also the one who reminds the hero — and the audience — of the importance of heritage and of honoring our elders. And he manages to keep hope alive when everything else is conspiring to kill it.

        But that doesn't matter to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who've said the film is insensitive and disrespectful of civil rights elders.

        The filmmakers have apologized, but that's not enough for the reverends.

        Mr. Jackson wants the offending lines excised when the film is converted to video and DVD. Mr. Sharpton has hinted at boycotts.

        Too late. Barbershop, which cost $12 million to make, has reaped $51.4 million at the box office. The film got an extra boost from audiences who wanted to know what all the ruckus was about, says MGM, its distributor.

        Imagine, white audiences flocking to a black movie.

        It even caused some of us to use the film as a springboard to discuss civil rights and freedom of speech.

        It seems the old heads, like the Revs. Mr. Jackson and Mr. Sharpton, should check in at a barbershop sometime.

        More than a touch-up, they need to touch base with reality, see what the cutters and their clients are really saying.

        I expect that at my salon, they'd hear plenty.

        E-mail damos@enquirer.com or phone 768-8395.

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