Only In America . . . ^TM

Armando Sartori won the coveted Hair Ball award presented at the Bizarre is Beautiful Banquet held in downtown Bogotá, Colombia, last night. He won the award for creating La Tete Poulet, currently the most popular hairdo in the world.

"Mr. Sartori, how long have you been in the hairdressing business?" was the first question asked at the press conference held immediately after the banquet.

"Almost . . . ahh . . . four months now, I think. Yeah, that's right. Ever since last summer when my combination worm farm and chicken ranch failed."

"So how did you happen to take up hairdressing?"

"I just gave my little sister a haircut, the same way my Papa used to do. Then when she got to school the kids all went crazy and wanted one just like it. The rest is history."

"Was your father a hairdresser, too?"

"Nah. He was a butcher. But he knew a lot about knives and cutting and stuff, so he used to do our hair the same way he did meat."

"I see. So, was it your father who developed the Tete Poulet cut--as it is now known--or was that your own invention?"

"Well, Papa taught me the basics, but I added a few twists of my own, and that made all the difference."

"Can you explain the technique in lay terms?"

"Sure, that's easy. You take a big soup bowl, put it over the person's head so that the eyes don't show, then take a sharp butcher knife and cut off everything that isn't under the bowl. Except their ears, of course. That's the way Papa did it."

"And that's what you did to your sister?"

"Well, almost. The only bowl we had at the time was broken, so I ended up getting one side a lot higher than I meant to. I tried painting one side of her head to cover it up, and that's how I invented La Tete Poulet. Simple, no?"

"Well, it's different. How did you happen to come up with that name?"

"That was the easy part. Whenever I cut my little sister's hair, the rest of the kids laughed and called her Chicken Head, because that's what she ended up looking like. We just translated it into French, more or less, so it would sound better. Smart, huh?"

"Sure is. It's amazing what the public will fall for. So, what's your next project, Armando?"

"Well, my youngest sister got chewing gum in her hair last week and I had to cut it out in patches. Then I put iodine on the patches so they wouldn't get infected, and everybody thought it looked so good that we decided to go commercial with it."

"And what are you going to call your new creation, Mr. Sartori?"

"Why, Piece de Gomme, of course."