European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - August 01, 1993, Darmstadt, Hesse                                A Vav f,&.\ftsrv-fc--i a. Adlai Stevenson eggheads unite Heady ideas for the brightest by Rob Kyff the Hartford courant sometimes being smart can  think of the epithets intelligent people Are forced to endure. Public broadcasting commentators Nina to Tenborg and Mark Shields for in stance recently referred to intellectuals As eggheads and Lon Heads respectively. Given the High is of Public to and radio audiences Totenberg and Shields May have been biting the fans that heed them clearly americans Are of two minds about people who arc great minds. We All Admire and hate the smartest kid in class and one Heady Way to express this ambivalence is to associate a High in with a misshapen Skull. Thus we Call smart people Lon Heads because they take the Long viewpoint Heads As if Heads could be sharpened like Pencil highbrow Large forehead equals Large intelligence and eggheads Oval shaped cranial Hatch Brainy ideas. The most famous american Egghead democratic presidential candidate Adlai Steven son once cracked eggheads unite you have nothing to lose but your  unfortunately this Yoke Laid an egg with Ameri can voters who were not about to put some one As smart As he in charge of the country. Enter Ike. As for Gray matters brain might seem like a Fine term for a smart person but using a part to describe a whole a literary technique called synecdoche can really brain a person. Can you imagine calling a soccer player a foot a violinist an Arm or a baby a stomach likewise intellectual and intelligentsia pack elitist connotations and in psychology intellectual nation is an undesirable defense against real feelings. More recently wonk has succeeded dweeb grind and nerd As the insult of Choice to describe the studious. Given the smart bombs dropping around us i say we need new terms for Bright people. But then again i m no Bruin surgeon. Steven Seagal finds himself in plenty of hairy situations particularly in i991 s out for Justice. Warner Bros. Guys obsessed with wearing ponytails should Cut it out Tony Kornheiser what is the Deal with ponytails every fourth Guy you see has a Ponytail. They All look like or.  died and made Steven sea Gal a flaming Bonehead with the artistic sensibility of unleaded Gas the Archduke of fashion you re not Safe from ponytails anywhere. You re watching night inc and Ted Koppel is interviewing the attorney for some commission on Public Canso doing and my god he has a Ponytail. A grown Man in a business suit who s going to have one next mister Rogers when did they get the time to grow these things one Day they re sitting around the office with a regu lation Brooks Brothers haircut and by the Middle of next week they look like Andre Agassi. Soon they will Start binding their ponytails with those Pink Plas tic pompoms like by daughter wears. This will be the critical question for men in the 90s How to accessorize. It was bad enough when men started wearing ear rings. You d see some fatso in a Deli ordering a Pas Trami Sandwich and sticking out of his left ear would be a stud the size of a gnat. What happened Morty playing russian Roulette with a Staple gun what causes a 45-year-old Man to become such a Putz that he gets his ear pierced i Hope it s not so he can keep up with his 15-year-old son because be Lieve me the kid won t Stop with an earring the kid will come Home with the Usa today weather map tattooed on his Chest. Since i m Middle aged and Bald i realize that Al most nothing Short of wearing my underpants on my head could make me look stupider than an earring. Except a Ponytail. Which is what you see All Over now Middle aged men with Gray hair often preposterously thinning Gray hair with earrings and those Short tight All greased up sinister ponytails so from the Sid View their Heads look like a q. Not that he has a Ponytail yet but have of seen Joe Didun during the Ruth Bader Ginsburg confirmation hearings judge Ginsburg by the Way is the Only woman in America still wearing a Ponytail. She pulls her hair so far Back her head looks like a Ping Pong paddle obviously Biden s hair plugs have kicked in. He has More new growth than a Chia pet. The next time his committee meets to confirm some one Biden will look like Andrew Jackson. Hell be the first Guy to leave the Senate for a Job As a Roadie for megadeath. When i was a kid Only girls had ponytails. Does anybody out there remember the song Lyric what is love five feet of heaven in a  it never occurred to me they could be singing about Danny de Vito. Men Wear ponytails and women Cut their hair like Katie Couric s. " if j. Edgar Hoover were alive today he would t know whether to Date or go Bowling. Ponytails Are the nose rings of hair. And what is the Deal with nose rings which i would t think is an especially Swift career move unless your heart is set on working on a merry go round. What a Nightmare for kleenex if these things catch on. Nose rings Are More disconcerting than ponytails. You walk into your kid s school the last thing in the world you expect to see when you meet is. Ben Wick is somebody with a nose ring. She s sitting there explaining in detail Why she chose to concen trate on crustaceans rather than arachnids for the biological evolution segment of the curriculum and All you see is this Diamond sticking out of her nostril and you wonder apprehensively what happens i she sneezes Man about town Chip Muldoon who s now out in California where these awful trends originate tells me the newest Cool Deal is the voice car  the Way this works is if you Are walking too near a car let s say you get within breathing Dis Tance of a particularly attractive infiniti q45 fender a computerized voice will shout As loudly As James Earl Jones reciting Tennyson you Are too close to the car everyone turns to look at you like you Are Johnwayne Gacy. At this Point you have two options 1. Throw your hands in the air and say Don t shoot me i m Only an airbag  2. Kick the bumper and say indignantly Don t Natter yourself. You re a piece of junk. I would t steal you if Michelle Pfeiffer were crooning my funny Valentine on your  does everybody have a computerized voice com my out of their car i asked Chip. No. The really Rich people hire dwarfs to live in the trunk and shout he said. There is some Good in this. Assuming you can pro Gram your car s voice you could have a Little fun with i he Squeegee people who come Over and terrorize you at intersections. You could have your car shout at them the Check is in the mail creators Syndicate / Page 24 sunday August 1, 1993