I’m mainly happy with the way I look. Oh, sure, I wouldn’t mind being six inches taller, more muscular and having rugged good looks. Still, for a slender shortish man with a slightly effeminate manner, I look fine. I’ll never make women dewy with my matinee-idol good looks, but no blind date has run from the room upon meeting me. They stay until I open my mouth and hear my sonorous voice utter the kinds of nonsense you read in this column every day. They are driven away by the content of my character not the non-comeliness of my skin.
In my mind, I bear more than a passing resemblance to Matthew Broderick, although I’ve never had anyone else point this out. Speaking at a meeting last week, I was compared by someone in the audience to “the brother on Two-and-a-Half Men.” I’ve only seen the show while walking through the living room at Liberty House, so I assume the comparison is to Charlie Sheen, who I believe is considered attractive, if insane. Still, I’m okay with my looks. Until…
… Monday, the Tiny White Box will host a visitor, Sean McDonald from Channel 9 News in Manchester. Sean hosts the morning news and a TV magazine show called “Chronicle.” For the latter, he and a crew are driving to the Tiny White Box, likely for a segment to be called “Eccentrics of the North Woods — And Why They Should be Kept There.”
Sean has asked me to be prepared to do some things while he’s here, the sorts of activities I naturally perform — walking with Sam (is a dog), shoveling snow, cooking lunch, rescuing small children trapped on an ice floe. (That last is one we didn’t discuss, but I think it’s a made-for-TV moment. If you live in the North Country and have a couple of little kids who want to be televised, please contact me. I’ll do my best to get them back to you at the end of the day.) Apparently, a segment consisting of me sitting in a rocking chair, typing on a computer while Sam sleeps on my bed is not captivating enough for his viewers.
Sean strikes me as an intelligent and kind man, but he is also ummm . . . handsome. I’ve got “never-going-to-be-the-ugliest-guy-in-the-coffee-shop” looks while Sean has often been the handsomest man in the arena, the coliseum or the county. I don’t (much) begrudge Sean his good looks, I just know his sun will darken my penlight by comparison. Since I’m the segment’s subject, I can likely set up the shoot so Sean and I are never in the same shot, or at the very least I can stand on an out-of-camera milk crate. Still, I need to do something to improve my look. As they are currently, I could get by on a tiny black-and-white screen in a camping outpost, but I understand a number of people have televisions larger than medicine chests, and capable of seeing inside facial pores.
If I were in Manchester, I’d go to Bethany, my hair stylist at Michael Anthony Salon. The first time I met Bethany, I asked her to make me 10 percent handsomer. Magically, she accomplished that, as she has each time since. Granted, trimming eyebrows and ear hair accomplishes a 10 percent improvement in the looks of a man pushing 60; still, Bethany is great. And in Manchester. And I need more than 10 percent –Sean McDonald is easily twice as handsome.
So, constant reader, I am open to any and all self-improvement tips that can be effectively implemented by Monday, even a movie-quality Matthew Broderick mask from Amazon Prime. Please send me your suggestions. Right away.
Have I mentioned how much I like radio?
Keith Howard used to be a homeless drunk veteran. Then he got sober and, eventually, became director of Liberty House in Manchester, a housing program for formerly homeless veterans. There, he had a number of well-publicized experiences – walking away from federal funds in order to keep Liberty House clean and sober, a contretemps with a presidential candidate and a $100,000 donation, a year spent living in a converted cargo trailer in Raymond. Today, he lives in a six-by 12-foot trailer in Pittsburg, NH, a few miles from the Canadian border with his dog, Sam. There, Howard maintains tinywhitebox.com, his website, works on a memoir, and a couple of novels while plotting the next phase of his improbable life.
