Here are my favorite writing clips. These special reports have been my babies in the past few years.

"The Ripple Effect," reported from a refugee camp in Uganda:
Part 1: www.dailycamera.com/news/2006/sep/06/ripple-effect/
Part 2: www.dailycamera.com/news/2006/sep/04/here-and-now/
Part 3: www.dailycamera.com/news/2006/sep/05/part-3-hope-tomorrow/

"Island of Stability," reported from Petit Trou de Nippes, Haiti:
Main page with various online elements, including a videos, maps, blogs, photo galleries, audio clips, forums and links: www.dailycamera.com/news/specialreports/haiti/
Part 1: www.dailycamera.com/news/2007/mar/18/island-stability/
Part 2: www.dailycamera.com/news/2007/mar/19/spiritual-solution/
Part 3: www.dailycamera.com/news/2007/mar/20/headline/

Imagine sitting down in a tattoo parlor, offering your back to the artist and saying "Paint me with your needle." You have no idea what will happen, and neither does he.

Accept the discomfort with love, I keep telling myself, knowing that love is the opposite of fear, and that any drop of fear will destroy this experience. If I let fear cloud me now, I am going to miss the message.

Any rational human would say I should be scared.

I have given my entire back to Chris Fuller, a tattoo artist at Junkyard Ink in Louisville. I met Fuller during an interview in February. I clicked with his philosophy: that tattoos are art on flesh. In fact, Fuller and most of the other employees at the shop were traditional artists first. Fuller was a painter.

I visited the shop regularly to talk about my next tattoo. My first four had been specific words or designs in specific places on my body for precise reasons. I had over-thought them all. They felt like extensions of my body, and they were an external expressions of internal enlightenments. They were my babies, in ink.

This time is different.

I don't know what Fuller was going to tattoo on me. Neither did he.

We agree to not go into the tattoo with preconceptions, but to approach it in the same way he paints his murals on canvas. I will be Chris Fuller's canvas for a free-form tattoo painting.

Like I said: not rational whatsoever.

But rationality -- the over-thinking, the limiting human mind, the man-made labels and explanations -- is exactly what I want to suppress.

I am hoping by stilling my brain, I will shift perspective. Gain sight through the endless spirit, not eyes, which can shut or go blind. I hope that by diminishing the physical absorption of a physical experience, it can transcend into something spiritual.

And maybe not hurt so dang bad.

Of course, it's a far leap. But you can't catch air without leaping. And I've always believed art is an experience and expression, not a logical, finite explanation to prove, or even understand.

Like Einstein said, "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science."

I get that, in theory.

I am about to really get it, personally. Do you believe in anything deeply enough to let it transform you? To let it become you? For the love of art, and the sake of its raw beauty, I am about to become it.

Hour two: As I lean over the chair, breathing into the pain, I decide this is what it must feel like to be the marble, or wood, or iron being welded into a new form.

When Michaelangelo created some of his greatest masterpieces, he did not go in with an agenda. He did not carve the marble into an angel. Quite the opposite. As he put it, "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." The angel was already inside.

Amid the dull hum of the tattoo gun, this quote haunts me. I try to imagine the beauty living inside everything: every piece of paper, every chunk of wood, every empty stage. Potential is hovering beneath the surface of everything, like scientific joules: artistic jewels.

Fuller "carves away" at my canvas in the same way he paints. He lays down layers of color until something emerges out of the lines and shapes, and he builds on that. He had been wanting to attempt this revolutionary style of tattooing for years, but he said he could never find anyone who wanted to do it. They were too afraid of letting go of the control.

What -- or who -- is living underneath my own skin?

As I sit, I wonder. It could be my own Michaelangelo angel. An octopus. A tree. Beneath my skin could be a flower, a lion, a snake. A demon.

Hour five: I think about beauty. A person's style is their temporary artistic expression. A daily opportunity to paint and celebrate our bodies.

Fashion is only as shallow as how you choose to confine it. Because it is possible -- albeit difficult -- to appreciate something for its pure and simple beauty. In fact, the origin of Zen came from that idea, a "silent sermon" during which Buddha held up a flower and gazed at it, saying nothing. Enlightenment might just be letting go of everything we thought we knew, the labels, the mind, the over-analyzing of every single thing, and just letting the beauty be.

I wrote about this one night. Just a free-form poem to myself. Not to share with anyone. I opened up and the words fell out onto the page.

It was the next day that Fuller told me his tattoo idea. I didn't hesitate. I would lose control, but gain a mark for beauty's sake alone. What greater honor than that? Not to remind me of something that I had experienced and learned; but rather to be that very experience and lesson.

Hour 11: I think more about Michelangelo. Perhaps we all are born with the ability to unearth this perfect beauty, in various ways. For some, it's dancing or drawing, photography, singing, writing, woodworking, playing an instrument, cooking, theater, a sport, making jewelry or designing clothes. You do not pick your art; it is a gift, given to you. You know it is yours because it chases you.

And it will. It nags at you until you die. That's because it is your duty to do something with it. Art is what you give back, in exchange for the love that you receive, and the opportunity to have life. And it is balanced; every human's art is as deep and breathtaking and awesome as the perfect love that God created us from and offers to us.

But occasionally -- most of the time, actually -- people decide that gift is not there. They suppress it. They bury it under things that do not satisfy. It is almost as if they don't want their gift, or for some very human reason, they are afraid of it. They do not acknowledge or accept it, so they cannot express it.

Michelangelo accepted it. He opened up and took it. If people accepted their art and stopped thinking about it, and just became that gift, their art would flow from them perfectly and fully and completely.

The reason Michelangelo's art was so incredible is because he simply removed the dam and could see what was already inside -- of the marble, and of himself. Art flows out, like love flows in.

By letting go and releasing my canvas to an artist, and trusting him, I was allowing him to follow his art.

Of course, the very manifestation of this experience, the reason I was ready for it, came from the poem I had written the day before. In an artistic cause-and-effect, this made the tattoo a ripple effect from my own art: writing. Art begetting art.

Hour 20: I can't wait to see what is living inside my skin. It has been four sessions of about five hours each. Fuller used more than 20 different shades of blues, greens and purples. The white highlights he added at the end will continue to grow brighter as the tattoo heals.

He tattooed the entire right side of my back, from my neck to waist. I felt him painting swirls. I felt spirals and coils and curls, tracing the natural curves of my body. Fuller followed those shapes and connected them until they created a picture.

I stand up to finally see the completed project. I feel open and trusting, but exhausted. Above all, I feel honored to spend the rest of my life wearing a painting. Fuller initials it. I turn to see the mirror.

One of her arms is reaching up to the sky. Her chin is lifted, and she's gazing up. She is feminine, elegant and fragile. She is abstract, almost a mermaid, or a cyclone, a Siren, a ghost, or an illusion in the water or sky or both. Fuller barely knew me when we started, but he tattooed my spirit.

Underneath my skin was a dancer.

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008/jul/24/move-over-metrosexuals-the-unexpected-fashion-of/

Heckel: Move over, metrosexuals

The unexpected fashion uprising of the rugged, beef-eating dude

My friend Mark never thought he'd be in style. In fact, he never thought about fashion. At all.

Mark is the anti-fashion. The opposite of metrosexual so much that he doesn't even know the term "metrosexual" exists, or that some guys go shopping (on purpose -- for clothes). Mark would never put wax on his chest -- only on his Jeep, which his wife calls his mistress because of how much time and money he spends on her.

Alas, Mark is a flannel-and-work-boots-wearing manly man who bow-hunts, cuts his hair with clippers, regularly cleans his gun on his front porch while chewing tobacco and not only knows what "a Jeep thing is," but he also understands it.

Mark drinks beer for breakfast. He's hairy and proud of it. He has strong arms, a scruffy face and spends as little time and money as possible on his appearance.

He is also the latest fashion trend for men: the retrosexual.

Of course, he has no idea; if he did, that wouldn't make him authentically retrosexual.

Call it the rule that everything -- literally, everything -- comes into style at some point. Or maybe it's along the same lines of how something can be so outdated that it flips the entire scale and becomes hip again.

Regardless, increasingly more of Hollywood's leading men are alpha-male types who shun Botox, are a bit squishy around the middle and would never consider asking for directions, especially not to a man spa.

Think: Jack Black. Will Ferrell in "Talladega Nights." Kid Rock. Vince Vaughn. Ben Affleck.

To gain a deeper insight into this trend, I sat down with my very own living specimen. After explaining to Mark that he was officially now "in vogue," and then explaining to him what "vogue" meant, here's his take on how to be fashionably unfashionable.

Question: What's your fashion philosophy?

Mark: I don't have one. That's the beauty of it.

Q: How do you pick out your outfits?

M: I have one rule: that I didn't wear it the day before. I don't really look in the mirror. I don't like wearing the same colored top and bottom, though.

Q: And what colors do you have in your wardrobe?

M: Uh, I have no idea.

Q: I see that you are wearing olive green and brown today. Well then, what kind of clothes do you have?

M: Ninety-nine percent of my wardrobe is T-shirts. I have one tie and dress shoes. The last time I wore them was when I bought them on my way to an interview for a job 11 years ago. They have dust on them today.

Q: And your other shoes?

M: I have one pair of work shoes, one pair of boots for hiking or winter, dressy flip-flops my wife bought me and everyday flip-flops.

Q: Did you say "dressy flip-flops?"

M: Yes, the part that goes over your foot is leather. On my everyday flip-flops, the part that goes over your foot is camo.

Q: I'm sorry. But I think you said "dressy" and "flip-flops" in the same sentence.

M: Yeah, my wife sometimes tries to make me dress up. Sometimes she makes me wear a tie, and I feel like an 8-year-old. I can't get comfortable, not even sitting down. I'm just not myself. It's like I'm trying to be someone else.

Q: Moving on. Tell us about your grooming habits.

M: I don't own a brush. I keep my hair short enough that I don't have to comb it. I shave when my daughter tells me my face is too scratchy. I do shower, though, and I use deodorant.

Q: What shower products do you recommend?

M: Whatever my wife puts in there. She goes shopping and hands me something and says, "This is yours."

Q: Do you know what brands they are?

M: Yes, the shampoo is in the white bottle. The shower gel is in the blue bottle. I wash my face with the shampoo, too. Start with your head and go down. Shampoo from the neck up.

Q: Shower gel? Does that mean you use a loofah?

M: Well, my wife bought me this big sponge thing. Squirt it on there and it'll foam right up.

Q: That would be a loofah.

M: It's like a plastic ball.

Q: Right. Anyhow. Tell us about your morning getting-ready routine.

M: I brush my teeth. I like the toothpaste in the green tube, super minty, like Herbal Expressions or Extreme Herbal or something. It's basically blow-your-head-off-minty-wow.

Q: What else comprises your morning routine?

M: I put on clothes.

Q: I see. What about your fingernails? I see you have one black nail. Is that painted?

M: No, I hit it with a hammer.

Q: Do you wear cologne?

M: No. I've had cologne before, though. Something like Drakkar. It was a gift. I lost it.

Q: Experts say beauty starts on the inside. What is your diet?

M: My wife is always trying to eat pasta salad or some kind of salad or do something with chicken. But if it's not beef, I'm not really that interested.

Q: Are there any downsides to being retrosexual?

M: Well, today my shirt had stuff all over the back, and I didn't know until a coworker told me. My pants also have burn holes, from campfires or welding my Jeep. Almost everything I own has stains on it.

Q: Any final fashion tips for the retrosexual man?

M: Keep everything simple. It's all about being comfortable.

Q: Thank you for your time, Mark.

M: You know, I'm don't think I'm a complete retrosexual. I mean, I still do laundry and clean the house. And I have a little 5-year-old girl.

Q: Oh?

M: Yeah, I'm teaching her to shoot a bow in my archery range in my backyard. I want her to be able to go bow-hunting with me soon.

Q: (Stunned silence.)

M: So obviously I'm not a total manly man.

Q: (More silence.) Right. Obviously.

The sales associate at J. Crew couldn't have known the weight of this simple transaction.

"Would you like the receipt with you or in the bag?" she asked with a robotic smile.

Instead of answering, I looked her hard in the face and tried to explain.

"This might be the most important sale you've ever made," I said. I reached into the sack and shook out the brown silk dress. "This dress is a crossroads. It will change everything."

Robot smile. She wished me a nice day. She looked past me at the next customer in line.

I paused, and continued shaking the dress at her. I half wanted her to yank it out of my hands, or make it not fit me somehow. But she was ignoring me — or at least pretending to not notice the insane girl shaking her new dress. The sale was made. And I had to follow through with the promise I had made to myself.

I've always believed there is no such thing as indecision. You always want one thing more than the other, but fear, lack of information or apathy can paralyze you.

My freshman year in college, I began rehabilitating this paralysis through coin flips. Brown shoes: heads. Black shoes: tails. You could call it trusting fate. Or you could say it's forcing yourself to acknowledge your true desires. If my coin landed on black shoes, and I felt the overwhelming urge to flip it just once more, that must have meant I truly wanted the brown shoes.

I plucked the J. Crew dress off the rack and did not look at the size. My flight was scheduled to leave the next day; there was no time left for paralysis — this time rooted in fear. This dress would be my coin flip. I couldn't carry the weight of the decision myself. If it turned out to be the "wrong" choice, it was Mr. J. Crew's fault.

If the dress fit me, I would go home and pack my bags for the trip to Africa with my mother — the culmination of one year of planning, fundraising and her life's greatest dream: to build an orphanage on a refugee camp, in honor of my grandmother, who was an orphan. The plane tickets were nonrefundable.

If the dress didn't fit, I would stay home with my father, who had been hit by a car just a few days earlier while riding his bicycle on a closed road. He had been fishing with my little brother. We thought my dad would die, or at least have brain damage. Instead, he was recovering miraculously. But how could I leave him now?

I saved the brown dress for my last day in Uganda. I found it wadded in the abyss of my oversized backpack, stained with hand sanitizer. Silk was a stupid fabric to pack; it held every spot and wrinkle, a glaring contrast to the bafflingly always clean and pressed clothing of the refugees. I made a mental note to select a more practical fabric the next time I decided to put my destiny in the hands of an item of clothing.

I stumbled outside, tripping over my hiking boots like a toddler wearing her mom's heels, and spotted my mother. She was standing in the eye of a hurricane of swirling African children, who were laughing and chasing bubbles that she was blowing.

I remembered telling her not to waste space in her backpack on bubbles. Oh, my stubborn mom.

Then one of the older children leaned toward me. He laughed, "They have never seen something like this before. They will remember this magic forever."

I got cell phone service in the airport in Entebbe, Uganda. A string of missed texts beeped in like high-tech Morse code, announcing how quickly my dad was recovering, day by day. Something about how a trip that wasn't canceled — a decision made on faith — ignited his own faith that he would be OK and that life would go on.

I looked at the pool of brown wrinkles I was sitting in, feeling happy that this story had turned out to be a comedy instead of a tragedy.

The airplane began boarding. I quickly sent a text to my dad in the hospital: "I'm so proud of you. We're on the way home right now."

At the same time I pressed send, I received a text. I opened it up. I had to look twice. It was from my dad, who typed it from his hospital room: "I'm so proud of you. I'm on the way home right now."

Thankfully, the tears didn't leave spots on my impractical silk dress.

The bubbles did, though.

But I think I'd like those stains to stay.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Aimee Heckel at 303-473-1359 or heckela@dailycamera.com.

Noah Kloor dissects the concept of fear.

He is a creator of fear, so to speak.

He has been designing haunted houses since he was 8 years old. They started modest — the basic "blindfolded stick your hand in a bowl of spaghetti and pretend it's brains" kind of spooks, for family and neighbors.

Now, at age 16, Kloor runs what some consider one of the most notorious Halloween events in the state, the haunted house that winds through the tunnels below Boulder High School. Last year's haunted house earned a nine out of 10 skulls ranking from www.hauntedhouse.com.

This year, Kloor says, he's shooting for a 10. Boulder High's haunted house — which this year sports the theme "Infected" — is one on a long list of Halloween events around Boulder County, from corn mazes to pumpkin patches to aerial shows.

"Infected" opens its doors on Thursday. Kloor has been analyzing and planning his event since July. It's a funny thing, to manufacture an emotion out of empty air, he says. Especially on a bare-bone budget: less than $1,000, in his case.

When you walk through a haunted house, you know the bloody face that lunges toward you isn't really going to harm you. You know, rationally, it is an actor who does the same thing over and over to hundreds of other passersby. You know that red liquid is make-up. You know everything is fake.

But wait. There is a tiny flicker between heartbeats, when you forget what your mind knows. It is this subconscious flicker that Kloor seeks.

Your imagination reigns. Your instincts kick in, albeit irrationally.

You jump.

That is manufactured fear.

As Kloor sees it, it's a precise operation to extract this emotion just right. It is a balance between an overall creepy atmosphere and "the boo-factor," or the surprise. It is lighting dark enough to be mysterious, yet light enough to allow for anticipation of what you might see. It is a balance between presenting the things that people are afraid of, while doing it in an original way; unique twists prevent a scary scene from turning cheesy.

And it's crucial to have a theme, a story that ties the atmosphere, lighting and horrors together, Kloor says.

"It gets you into the idea that this is what the world would be like if this happened," he says. "From there, it draws you deeper and deeper in."

In Kloor's opinion, a good haunted house has little to do with fancy tricks or the amount of money you spend. For the Boulder High School organizers — about 40 students this year — the key is passion, dedication, originality and creativity.

Many big-scale, professional haunted houses do it wrong, Kloor says. They are like mass-producers of cliché fear. The audience has seen those masks and that same old chain saw scene before. Predictability gives logic a head's start against a racing imagination. And when you can expect the unexpected, that doesn't spark the kind of fear that sends people running out the door, Kloor says.

Ironically, that was the biggest problem with last year's haunted house, which centered around insane doctors and bizarre medical experiments, he says.

For the finale, the students built a lake on the theater stage. Visitors walked over the bridge and a motion detector made the water bubble. Then, the growl of a chain saw. The actor with the chain saw was supposed to chase people up the theater aisle and out the door, to end the tour.

"But people were so afraid, they would start climbing over chairs in the theater running in all directions," Kloor says.

We're talking "too-cool," tough-acting teenagers, says Sam Cotton, a Boulder High junior who acted in last year's haunted house. She is helping run the administrative side this year.

"There were high school kids who thought they were not going to be freaked out, and there were people falling over themselves trying to get out of there," Cotton says. "They were more scared than I expected. I loved it."

About 1,000 people attended last year, raking in about $5,000 that benefited the high school's theater program. Kloor says he hopes to double the visitors.

This year's theme, "Infected," was inspired in part by zombie movies like "28 Days Later," and in part by Kloor's imagination.

"I'm not really a morbid person," he clarifies. "Well, I guess I must have some streak of morbidity to thing of the things I come up with."

He cares more about transferring an emotion to the audience than what that specific emotion is. Kloor is a theater kid. He's been in every Boulder High play since he started high school.

"I like when people really enjoy themselves," Kloor says. "People come out, they're laughing, having fun, just enjoying something you and others have created."

And as for the key to balancing all of the different elements of a haunted house — the secret ingredient for creating fear like Noah Kloor does it?

Oh. Well, he can't tell you, or he'd have to kill you.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Aimee Heckel at 303-473-1359 or heckela@dailycamera.com

SOME AMBIGUOUS SMALL TOWN, ILL. — A short flight takes me simultaneously back and forward in time.

Some people (well, my dad, but he is always right) say this town several hours from Chicago has not changed in 50 years, since Father Heckel was born here. Maybe longer. Population growth: Neh. The radio plays an abnormally high ratio of Beatles tunes — on all of three stations.

I am wearing a thin dress accessorized by airplane filth, but in the Midwestern humidity, even my bare skin would be too hot. My hair instantly panics and the once-straightened locks shrink back toward my scalp, forming a halo of frizz. No products work here. It is hair anarchy.

My dad and I pull our rental car over to snap photos of the white Long John Silver's restaurant, like tourists in Colorado stop to photograph mountain goats. We gawk and point, remembering the novel time in which folks ate cobbettes and fried fish. For the Boulderites who are not familiar with the term "fried," it is the act of cooking food with oil/fat as the heat transfer medium in order to create a delicious crunchy outer layer of death.

I step into my grandparents' apartment and, behind the bobbing fluff of a poodle rhythmically bouncing into my line of sight, I realize I'm looking at my own apartment back home — just slightly gramma-tized.

My pink couch is fuchsia, and Gramma's is pink pastel. Poodle fluff. My kitchen counters are scattered with Hershey's Kisses; Gramma has bowls of sugar-free chocolate. Poodle fluff. My closet is a landmine field of stilettos; Gramma's boasts a mountain of pumps. Poodle fluff. I have an entire chest of drawers packed with handbags; Gramma has a entire room. Poodle fluff.

Her apartment is conveniently, not coincidentally, located within walking distance of the mall, where workers have her Bath and Body Works lotions pre-bagged on a weekly basis. I work, also deliberately, on the Pearl Street Mall, where Urban Outfitters employees text my cell phone to check on the artillery of my shoe landmine. Poodle fluff.

My grandma's mouth and mine are wildly chattering at the same time, not to anyone in particular, just flapping with delight. She hasn't taken a breath in 75 years; I haven't in 28. Poodle fluff.

After six poodle fluff bounces, I know it's time to pick the dog up or it will explode. I'm well-versed in the Toy Poodle Handbook. After all, my baby is apricot, whereas Grandma's is black.

And as I clutch the wiggling dog, I gaze at my grandmother in awe and envy. She's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, with her brown bouffant, teal pantsuit and glasses. Her stature is strong but feminine. She wears my grandpa's military photo in a locket around her neck. She still calls him her "baby" and blots the grease out of his bacon for breakfast. Her beauty shines in her actions and the kind of charisma that amplifies with age. This could be my life in 47 years. A love like theirs and a grandmotherly elegance like hers makes me excited to grow old.

Wrinkles and all. Yeah, I said it.

Not that my grandma has many. But if she did, it wouldn't matter. I don't understand why society is so terrified of wrinkles. I see them as a map of your world. As sort of the facial badges you earn by living, growing and expressing yourself.

In the past year, I have welcomed several new smile-induced wrinkles around my eyes and a new fault line on my forehead, presumably from scrunching up my face when I'm thinking too hard. And I would never select a smooth face over all of those smiles and hours of contemplation. I'd rather eat Long John Silver's — without my grandma there to blot the grease away.

Once upon a time, I thought I wanted to go into broadcast journalism. It seemed to combine my love for reporting with my hereditary chattering (to no one in particular).

Then I worked for a school news station, and my teachers recommended I "curb my expressions." They thought it was distracting how much I moved my eyebrows, flailed my hands and how I "felt" every story I read.

The concept of feeling something "too much" did not register with me. And trying to stop my bouncing eyebrows — without Botox injections or an uncomfortably insincere performance on my part— was like trying to stop a bouncing poodle.

So I opted to hide behind a computer instead, where I can make stupid faces, as desired. And work on defining my smile lines so my grandchildren some day will know that I didn't hold back.

Behind a computer screen, I can even get a bouffant. And wear straw hats the size of a dining room table. I can cake on coral-colored lipstick and trap my furniture in a web of doilies.

But I think that comes after I trade in my fuchsia couch for the pastel version.

Minus the sugar-free chocolate, I can't wait.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Aimee Heckel at 303-473-1359 or heckela@dailycamera.com.

My brother can't show his wife half of his childhood pictures.

That's the price he must pay for being so darn hip.

Nathan was the coolest (new) kid on the block during his youthful days in the '80s. He owned M.C. Hammer pants fluorescent enough to blind Apollo, the Greek god of the sun.

Nathan rocked envelope pants. A bright pink ball cap with a straight rim. His signature look: below-the-knees shorts he called "jams," with tall socks and Velcro high-tops.

Obviously, Nathan was a hot commodity at his elementary school. But by and large, my brother's trendiest feature was his hair. He had a mullet. And a rat-tail, braided, with multi-colored beads at the bottom. And a Mohawk. And spikes. And zigzags and lightning bolts shaved into the sides.

All. At. Once.

Not to mention the Vanilla Ice eyes: three lines shaved into the eyebrows, which, as it turned out, took significantly longer to grow out than it took "Ice, Ice Baby" to fall off the charts.

Nathan's character (and the Post-Traumatic Style Disorder he suffers today) hinged on his 'do. He's proof that for guys, your hair style is a significant part of your fashion identity.

A good hairstyle can magnify a guy's hotness factor. But true style (that won't cause you night terror in 15 years) falls somewhere between the word "clippers" and the uber-trendy cut-du-jour. Here's some advice from some local experts on guy heads:

Luke Salem, 27, of Boulder, a 1999 Fairview High graduate, software salesman and possessor of guy-hair extraordinaire:

A good cut should require at least 30 minutes.

Once you find a stylist you like, stick with him or her.

A younger stylist might have a better idea of trendier cuts.

Use professional product. He likes Graham Webb's Brit Style Styling Paste and Pureology's Texture Twist for his current style, a hybrid between a crew cut and Mohawk.

Rachael Donaldson, Boulder style coach:

No comb-overs. Ever.

Don't color your hair. A little salt and pepper looks nice.

Opt against highlights. Guys typically aren't committed enough to care for colored hair, which means highlights will quickly look brassy and washed-out.

Get your eyebrows waxed, but not above the brow.

Deandra Trevino, stylist and expert on guy cuts at West End Salon, 1980 Eighth St., Boulder:

Don't use clippers. They don't give hair texture or character.

Point-cutting, or cutting with the scissors point into the scalp instead of straight across, creates a naturally messy look.

Grow it out. Modern styles are longer, with "guy bangs" — but not straight across or "baby-doll" short.

Consider your face shape, and the shape of your noggin, when choosing a cut. Narrow, long faces with high cheekbones can look like a Q-tip with too short hair.

If your hair is thinning, go shorter, not longer. As a last resort, many guys shave their heads completely.

Pomade and wax products look softer and drier than gels.

Use conditioner at least once a week.

Keep your sideburns orderly. The length affects the shape of your face. If they fall just above or below your cheekbone, they make the cheekbones pop.

Facial hair depends on the guy. But avoid the 'stache.

And no Vanilla Ice lines. Unless you have the lightning bolts to match, of course.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Aimee Heckel at 303-473-1359 or heckela@dailycamera.com.

I was wearing a formal gown, which cost an Audi but which I referred to as "Aw, this ol` thang?" The shoes tethered to my feet by a complicated algorithm of crisscrossing straps would soon spark a series of lower-back spasms that would remind me for months to come of this delightful evening.

I took the elbow of my date, and nudged my girl Nicole toward hers. We were ready to go crash the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity formal. Nic and I were old alumnae now, but decided to pop in to my former favorite fraternity`s big event to show them "how it`s done" (said with manly chest pound).

OK, actually, I was just looking for a reason to play dress-up and, at 27, I now felt an inch too saggy to continue crashing proms like I`d done annually since high-school graduation.

So, with my toes numb and seat-belted into their silver wedges, we were ready to crash. As soon as our dates put on their shoes. At the ankles of their mostly pressed suits were flip-flops. Silly boys.

I eyed their feet and asked where their shoes were.

They looked back, baffled, and wiggled their hairy man-toes at me.

Oh.

My girl and I had made the common mistake of inviting the Colorado Male to a formal occasion. The Colorado Male, which commonly refers to itself and its fellow creatures as "Dude," is not capable of removing flip-flops from its feet, not even in blizzard conditions, and certainly not for a fraternity dance. A little-known fact my extensive field research has uncovered is that the Colorado Male is, in fact, born with flip-flops affixed to his soles, and to remove them would cause serious injury and/or death.

As there was nothing I could do about the flip-flopped formal feet that didn`t involve a chainsaw and anesthesia, I bit my tongue and kept my eyes above waistline all night.

Dude style experts, such as Palm Beach-based Belisi Fashions (www.belisi.com) say never pair flippers (as I call them, because flip-flop is hard to say) with dress pants. Belisi calls that "bad form."

Curious of how much bad form overlaps with Boulder form, I asked some of the other guys in my life their take. My Longmont friend Trevor - who describes himself as "at least 20 percent gay" based less on his sexual orientation and more on his talent to design jaw-dropping tie and button-down combos - gave two (man-icured) thumbs-ups to flip-flops.

As he sees it: "Better than Tevas or leather sandals."

Or Crocs, I`d add with a shudder.

Belisi also warns against glowing white tennis shoes. Instead, opt for Puma shoes in a darker color so they don`t steal the attention of the outfit, a la Jerry Seinfeld. Check the Puma store at the Twenty Ninth Street mall in Boulder.

My brother offered two more thumbs-ups to flip-flops, adding that the Colorado State Shoe should come with a warning label because of his recent flipper-related injuries. First, his flip-flop slipped while he was catapulting himself over a brick wall and he fell four feet onto his face. Next, he got a bunch of goatheads (the Colorado State Sticker) lodged in the soles. The pointy weed-tacks continue to piece his feet because his flips are worn paper-thin. Yet he wears them still. To work. To play. To catapult over walls. Probably to bed.

Here is where I would like to offer a virtual standing ovation to my father. And not just because this weekend is Father`s Day and I`m too broke to buy him an expensive gift.

This weekend, my dad released my mom and me into the wild (Longmont`s Twin Peaks Mall). While my mom and I zipped around the department stores trying on eyeliners (we settled on Clinique`s brush-on cream liner, $14.50), my dad not only entertained himself without complaining, he also returned carrying a bag over his head, reminiscent of a caveman who`d just killed a boar for dinner. Only instead of a furry beast, above my dad`s bald head dangled a pair of dress shoes.

Clarification to the Colorado Male: This so-called "dress shoe" of which I speak is similar to a flip-flop, except the opposite. It features a closed toe, laces, leather, tassels and soles thick enough to prevent wall slippage and goathead-related injuries.

Yeah, I said tassels.

I was torn on the tassels, but in honor of my dad`s autonomous undertaking, I let them slide. That was the best thing about his catch of the day: He did it on his own.

The worst thing: I was going to get him dress shoes for Father`s Day.

Guess he`ll be getting another pair of flippers.

American consumers are expected to shell out $9.9 billion for Father`s Day this year, according to LifeScript. That`s a lot of ugly ties. Or not.

Here are some other ideas:

Go classic. Martin Miller`s Gin surveyed 100 fashion editors from across the country to weigh in on timeless guy fashion. Here`s what came up as classic:

White oxford button-down shirts, tailored black suits, jeans, navy blue blazers, polo shirts, trench coats, khaki slacks, peacoats, loafers and V-neck sweaters.

Be trendy. Belisa Fashions says these are the styles of the summer:

Khaki or olive green shorts (instead of denim shorts) with a nice belt - not braided, for Pete`s sake - and an oxford shirt. Dress it up with a tie. Dress it down by loosening the tie or rolling up the sleeves. (Hot.)

Just make sure you tuck in the shirt. Unless a shirt is cut square along the bottom, it should always be tucked. A rule of thumb: If the shirt is longer in the back with a pleat at the sides, tuck it.

Jeans with a dress shirt, collar open, and with a sport coat. Leather loafers without socks, or a dress shoe with a buckle (that`s more casual). Try loafers from Gucci.

For something different, try a polo shirt with a blue or brown sportcoat.

For something really crazy, leave your flip-flops in the closet for a day. Now that`s the call of the wild.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Aimee Heckel at 303-473-1359 or heckela@dailycamera.com.

By Aimee Heckel, Camera Staff Writer
Sept. 1, 2006

When Chris Behm-Meyer wants to hear his favorite hip-hop, he goes underground to the basement.

A musty, dim room is buried in the heart of the University of Colorado campus, beneath the University Memorial Center. Behm-Meyer, a CU business student known as B Money, calls it the "backbone of Colorado's hip-hop and even Midwest hip-hop."

It's the home of student-run Radio 1190's weekly underground hip-hop show, "Basementalism." The nonprofit, non-commercial program airs on 1190 AM from 4 to 7 p.m. Saturdays across the Boulder-Denver area; it's also broadcast, in part, around the world over the Internet.

In "Basementalism's" eighth year, the show attracts international attention. It's lauded as a driving force behind Colorado's hip-hop scene, including the success of what some consider one of the state's most promising exports, the Procussions. And most importantly, according to the volunteers who run the show, it has created a family of artists, DJs, MCs and even other radio stations a movement they say channels the spirit of hip-hop culture.

Click below for the rest of the story:
http://www.dailycamera.com/bdc/music/article/0,1713,BDC_2468_4954052,00.html
You gotta log in, but it's free and only takes a sec, so stop whining. 

Missed your chance at love?
Here's your second shot
The funny, sweet, sad (and sometimes fake) 'missed connections'

By Aimee Heckel (Contact)
Friday, Nov. 30, 2007
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2007/nov/30/a-second-first-chance-at-romance/

Carrie Henderson, 29, is the one that got away. Twice. That she knows of.

If you've ever browsed the social networking site, Craigslist, you might have noticed a link to "missed connections," where users can post free notices for people they want to find. Sometimes its an old friend. Other times its the hottie from the coffee shop in the red pumps who stole your tongue.

For one Boulder guy, it was the strawberry-blonde girl at Cinnabon who ordered a "mall-sized" Dr. Pepper.

For the blonde in a German barmaid costume, it was the tall guy in the red pajamas at the Foundry's Halloween party who threw her a piece of candy.

For a 20-year-old named Alex, it was a woman named Satin at the Bus Stop strip club in Boulder who "really turned my night around."

Everyone you pass is a potential missed connection. And the continued popularity of Craigslist's service indicates that increasingly more people are trying to do something about it. In Boulder, the number of postings is only a handful, maybe five per day. In bigger cities, every day brings hundreds of new solicits. Lady in red at Taj. Pirate socks. The cute guy on "V" train to Queens reading the paper.

A missed connection can be a semi-public confession of love for a psychiatrist, co-worker or boss — a way to make a move — ish. Because if the seek-ee doesn't see the posting, it gets buried in the ever-growing abyss of Internet causalities. Rejection evaded, plus freedom from the nagging cloud of "what if I had done something."

But sometimes — and it wouldn't be a stretch to say on extraordinarily rare occasion — the right eyes see the right posting, and a missed connection is fused.

Henderson nearly hit the floor when her friend showed her the posting about a blonde girl who had been working on her laptop in a bar.

"People rarely come into the bar with a laptop," Henderson says.

She e-mailed the seeker and attached her photo. He seemed more even shocked than she was.

It's some posters' greatest wish and simultaneous fear. For the shy posters, it resets the game back to ground zero: the meet and greet. For the fearful ones, the possibility of rejection returns. For others, the romantics and dreamers, the coincidence feels something like fate. And for the "missed connection" purists, the one-second-too-laters, the "it's me" e-mail means a second first chance at romance.

Henderson's admirer turned out to be of the shy-fearful combo. She decided to meet up with him after a few e-mails. She says she was flattered, and secretly thought it sounded like the plot to a romantic movie. Something like, "Their eyes locked across the room (his words; Henderson didn't remember meeting anyone's eyes). The chance was lost, until fate (also known as the Internet) brought them back together."

If only.

"He kept putting himself down, like 'I can't believe you met up with me,'" Henderson says. "He had no self-confidence and that didn't add to his attractiveness."

Several months later, a friend showed her another familiar notice online, and lo and behold, it was about her, too. A guy she had small-talked with about Vitamin Water on public transportation had been hesitant to ask for her number. They ended up going on a date, and the lucky poster even got a little smooch out of the deal. But it ended there because he lived in Seattle.

Now, Henderson reads the missed connections regularly. She recently clicked on one "to Carrie," thinking the third time might be the charm. But it was a notice to a different Carrie from Skate World.

"I read them for fun, but I think we're all secretly hoping to see one about ourselves on there, whether or not we admit it," Henderson says. "People want to be seen, noticed in the crowd."

For months, J. Shaw, 36, of Lafayette, has been admiring a woman from across the room at 24-Hour Fitness in Boulder. He describes her as petite, with brown hair with highlights, about 5-foot-6. She works a the post office.

"Admiring from afar, but hate to bother women at the gym," he writes. "Just had to try this wacky way to see what the universe has to say."

Ah yes, Shaw calls himself a "mildly helpless romantic." And respectful. He says he wants to avoid that typical "hit-on-the-chick-at-the-gym kind of thing." A missed connection is a little more than doing nothing, he says.

He thinks missed connections appeal to people who believe in the concept of love at first sight.

"It's not about Match.com or drunken scenarios. It's about walking down the street, the grocery store or the bookstore and thinking that someone has this spark or aura so interesting that you can't help but speaking to them if you can," he says. "And if you can't, what are your options?"

Spark aside, he says he's not expecting to strike gold with his posting. More like "throwing pennies in the well," he says.

Although a description of his rec center goddess in the newspaper can't hurt his odds. (Note: Shaw is 6-1, brown hair, 220 pounds, healthy and fit. Posting ID No. 481934430. Just saying.)

The more people on the site, the better chance of the right people seeing it, says Brandon Weil, of Boulder. Weil is the 23-year-old author of "You hooked up with my roommate last night - m4W - 23."

His missed connection describes a woman who was "hammered" but "hot," with brilliant brown hair, long arms and terra cotta skin.

Which, as it turns out, never really happened. Weil admits he occasionally writes fake missed connections to increase the volume of postings to encourage more people to write their own presumably real ones. His staple writing style: misused adjectives that sound poetic, but are really just silly. Like "terra cotta," which, in fact, is a dry orange clay.

"It's just kind of a glimmer of hope that fate might bring two people together. Maybe they'll see it. Maybe we're destined for each other," Weil says.

Which brings us to "Newspaper Girl - m4w - 23," posted earlier this month.

It reads: "You interviewed me for an article today. I can't get your alabaster voice out of my mind."

Alabaster, eh?

No need for a missed connection posting. The number's at the bottom of every article.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Aimee Heckel at 303-473-1359 or heckela@dailycamera.com.




Brandon Weil, started writing fake missed connections to increase the volume of his posts and to keep the postings interesting on craigslist.org.

By Aimee Heckel (Contact)
Thursday, Nov. 1, 2007
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2007/nov/01/bootie-call-which-boots-should-just-walk-on/

Rubber bands got me to class that snowy December morning.

It was back in the ancient times of the Spice Girls, when mega-clunky platform shoes were The Big Thing. These heels were literally 6-plus inches tall, the kind I would imagine today on transvestite strippers at a cheap Vegas club. But we (well, me and Baby Spice) wore these dangerous shoe stilts on the streets. And on campus, as my story goes.

Mine were black lace-up boots that I'd bought in authentic Spice Girl territory (London). One day, I was walking across the Colorado State University campus with my spicy boots when ... wait, are you listening to me? Yes, I said Colorado State. Yes. Get over it. No, I am not a Rammie posing as a Boulderite to infiltrate the enemy lines from the inside. Seriously, I don't care about cross-state rivalries.

So one morning (go Rams) I was walking across campus when suddenly, my right side dropped about one foot as if I had stepped into a crater. (Go Rams.) But no crater. The entire platform, from heel to toe, had just popped off and was lying, decapitated, on the snow next to my now half-naked foot.

I became "Survivorman," confronted with a quick and decisive crossroads between fortitude and total devastation. Options swarmed me. It was too far to walk home and change shoes. Too cold to forfeit shoes. Too dramatic of a height difference to leave it. When my efforts to pop off the left sole were in vain, I resorted to my backpack. Rubber bands. About 15 of them held on the stilt securely. I made it to class only four minutes late. And nobody noticed my shoe concoction. Or more accurately, no one asked.

Go Rams.

I once heard that our greatest joys in life also cause us the greatest pains. My (expensive) love for boots is no exception.

Andy's Girl was a Boulder business that made exquisite boots — so, nothing like my disastrous London boots — at a price point about 5 miles above me. This month, I found out the sad news that Andy's Girl was closing. Which also brought happy news: of a sale. I now have several new pairs of boots that, alone, are enough reason to continue living. And thus far, I haven't needed to use any rubber bands. Although I always have a few in my purse, just in case.

Boots are the most beautiful part of winter. But they can be the ugliest part, especially this time of year, when it is warm enough to wear dresses but chilly enough to wear boots. Check out my blog "The great winter boots dilemma" at bdcstudio.com/boulder-and-beautiful for the tricky do's and don'ts of that combo.

I asked boots advice from some of my favorite foot fashion fanatics, and received conflicting opinions. Fashionisto Ken Izawa frowned on cowboy boots, which happened to be the staple footwear for my best-footed friend, Annie. And as the news came in from the Big Cities that pointy-toed boots are now "out," I looked down to find them under my desk.

I wore them again the next day. Because when it comes down to it, styles will come and go (and break off your feet, stranding you mid-campus). And we all know that as soon as I sell my pointys, they'll be back on the cover of Lucky as the "new must-have."

Here are some other thoughts on boots:

New York says:

Hot: Boots with tights. Simple T-shirt dress with rugged and slouchy ankle boots. T-shirt, oversized cardigan, super slouchy shorts, tights, worn-in knee-high boots. As the hemline rises, the boots need to become more substantial (in heft, not necessarily height).

Not: Uggs. How many times do you have to hear it before you get it?

— Fashion blogger Brittany Ancell, former Boulderite now living in New York (fashion.typepad.com)

Hot: Patent boots in neutral colors and metallics. Platform boots. Mary Janes and strappy heels with cute socks, which look like boots. Round-toe, wing-tip boots. Equestrian and motorcycle boots without heels. Nude-colored patent leather booties. Cuffed, scrunched, flat-soled or suede boots. Mod boots with big buttons, round toes with thickly stacked heels.

Not: Pointy-toed boots. Spiked heels. Cowboy boots. Moon boots, unless you are in the mountains (or on the moon). Mukluks. Traditional combat boots.

— Fashion blogger Ken Izawa, former Boulderite now in New York (styleforall.blogspot.com)

Chicago says:

Hot: Short booties, if they flatter you. Boots that hit a calf in a nice place to flatter the leg's curves. Check Aerosoles for booties that are comfortable and affordable.

Not: Winter boots with a sundress. Jeans that are baggy around the top of the boot. 1970s-style moccasins.

— Stylist Marian Rothschild, former Boulderite now living in Chicago

Boulder says:

Hot: Classic boots that go to the knee. Leather with subtle detailing. Mixing brown boots with black and gray. If you can only afford one pair, get a neutral, rich brown. The perfect boot array: a pair of brown and a pair of black leather knee-high boots with thin but stable heel; short brown or black boots in suede or with fun details; and one pair of comfy brown equestrian-ish boots. Good extras: boots in olive green with brass or bronze hardware; a pair of cowboy boots; a pair of fuzzy snow boots.

Not: Booties and "shooties" — leave those to high fashion. Platforms and thick stacked heels will go out of fashion quicker than a thin, proportioned heel. Shorts with Uggs. Or any boots, for that matter.

— Stylist Rachael Donaldson, of Boulder (productdenver.blogspot.com)

Hot: Brown paisley skirt with cowboy boots, button-down knotted at the waist or belted. Long cream sweater-dress with cowboy boots. Pencil skirt with tall, pointed boots. Crochet tights.

Not: Bare, goose-bumpy legs in the winter. Boots that hit the meaty part of the calf. Low-heeled boots with too much leather. And of course, rubber-banded-together Spice Girls boots.

— My hot friend Annie Brokaw, of Boulder