The Hair. THE HAIR.

You may have probably noticed that some of the male "hotties" that I often mention on this blog share a vaguely similar trait: wavy, messy, slightly grungy hair. Peter Sarsgaard, in Shattered Glass? Guilty. Simon Baker, in The Mentalist? Doubly guilty. Rafe Spall, in the entirety of that placeholder post from last summer? Definitely guilty on all counts, and should be sentenced to several weeks' worth of deep-conditioning treatments if he didn't know what was best for him.

[/still bitter because I've watched Hot Fuzz a billion times on TV, and yet nobody has taken my idea of casting Andy Cartwright as Patrick Jane's brother in The Mentalist - okay, not really, but still]

Let us not even forget the glory that used to be Gerard Butler's hair in the otherwise craptastic Dracula 2000...



...to say the least of my long-standing, old-guy crush on Jeff Bridges and his glorious head of hair, which not even the all-over grunginess of Crazy Heart could obscure. (Yes, it broke my heart when he had to go bald for Iron Man.)

(And, at this time, we should point out that Jeremy Renner has responded by thanking Colin Firth, Jason Statham, and Gilles Marini for reintroducing him to the concept of soap and water. Heh.) 

I mention this because I have been following the men's speed-skating events in the Winter Olympics, which means that I have been regularly exposed to THIS: 

 
Ladies and gentlemen, Canadian short-track speed-skater Charles Hamelin: frequent record holder, and one of the few folks outside of Team USA or the South Korean team worth betting on during the heats.

Here, the hair looks pretty good... but on the ice, when it's barely concealed by that speed-skating helmet? Good grief. Frizz everywhere, with the woolly beard hair sticking out like overgrown moss from under the chin strap and over the collar. Every single time that my Dad and I watch speed-skating, I always point to him and say, "Hey, it's the Canadian guy with Jesus hair." (No offense to my own Lord and Savior, but... really.)

The crazy part of it all is that the combination of all that grungy hair with the helmet, rainbow-tint Oakleys, and full-body spandex uniform takes so much of the pretty away from poor Charles. In fact, as I was sizing up the competitors for speed skating based on how they looked on the track alone, I actually thought that Francois Hamelin looked much, much better than his brother. (Never mind that, outside of the uniform, Francois is basically the French Canadian version of B.J. Novak.)

Eye candy factor aside, I like watching short-track speed skating because it's not that hard to watch: everyone skates fast, and whoever gets to the finish line without tripping over the other person or falling on one's rear end wins. And while I have a lot of respect for les freres Hamelin and the South Korean skating team, I also have to give a shoutout to Team USA - not just for my mestizo homeboy J.R. Celski, but also for Apolo Anton Ohno... who will always have my undying love and respect, just for THIS:



Credits: anthonygeorge.wordpress.com via Google Images (Jeff Bridges); Le Blogue de Le Point via Google Images (Charles Hamelin) 

EDITED @ 2/27/2010 to differentiate between speed skating and short-track speed skating. BIG distinction. Also to fix some major punctuation issues.