Mullet? What Mullet?

Just when you think people have come to their senses...
   I was in the local Whole Foods this afternoon, because it's stupid hot in LA and for an environmentally-conscious health food emporium they certainly do keep that place cold. I was buying some produce and on-sale yogurt* when I saw them. You've seen them too, more than likely, perhaps you ARE them.
   The tattooed couple.
   A man and a woman, both inked to within an inch of hepatitis, dressed like they'd slept in the van in the same clothes for a week. Which perhaps they had. Still and all, they were in Whole Foods right beside the pretentious yuppie moms and their poorly-behaved kids, the senior citizens marveling at the $2 cucumbers, and people like me trying to get out of the heat and pretending to be shopping.
   The tattooed couple was getting a few sidelong glances, and a few stares from the little kids too young to know they weren't supposed to be staring. They had dramatic ink, certainly, and lots of metal studs and dirty denim, but what really caught my eye was the woman's mullet. More of a mullet-hawk, really, buzzcut on the sides - and brown - and short and blonde in front, very long and blonde in the back. With a barette right in the middle.
   I thought mullets were the stuff of twenty years back, Billy Ray Cyrus and all, and only worn now in rural areas, and even then only by men who really couldn't be expected to know better. But to see one on a woman in the middle of Pasadena... I think she was a foreigner. Or someone who works below the line, those folks have some special neuroses.
   I was so startled I forgot to notice the tattoos. Usually you can get a Bettie Page homage, or a Led Zeppelin Icarus thing. And skulls, there's always a skull. You know, you'd think for something that's supposed to be as individual as a tattoo people would get something different once in a while.


* 69 cents for an 8 oz. cup! You can't beat that!