Eyebrow cure worse than the problem

She said she wouldn't laugh. Then she laughed so hard she couldn't speak, which just goes to show you: Never let your wife apply eyeliner to your brows.

Wait. There's a story behind it. There's always a story behind it.

It starts several years ago when I realized that my eyebrows (or iBrows, if the deal I'm negotiating with Apple Inc. comes through) are extremely light on the outside. It's hard for someone to notice – partly because no one looks closely at me and partly because I wear glasses.

But it's true. When I mentioned it to Mrs. Brad after my discovery, she doubted it. Then she looked closely. And laughed, because it's true.

Over the years, I've often mentioned it. Other than my ears (lower on my head than they should be, creating a Frankenstein shadow when I walk), my pale, wispish eyebrows are the dominant weirdness on my head. Other than my gray hair. And the deviated septum on my nose. And other stuff.

But the eyebrows are the most conspicuous, because to me, at least, their sparseness on the outside emphasizes the rest. I sometimes feel like either Martin Scorsese or a Muppett character who ripped off part of the brows with duct tape.

Move ahead to a few weeks ago. Having long assumed that my eyebrows were lighter on the outside because they were gray, I looked at them closely and came to a different conclusion: The outside parts of my eyebrows (or iBrows) were wispy and thin.

I smiled.

"My eyebrows are more like baby hair," I emailed Mrs. Brad from work.

(And yes, I'm spending this much time talking about my eyebrows. And no, we don't normally communicate about such things a lot. But yes, I thought it would make her laugh, so I emailed.)

She disagreed.

I insisted.

I showed her them that night.

They are thin, blondish and wispy like a infant's hair. Soft as an angel's breath.

That night as we brushed our teeth before going to bed, Mrs. Brad made a suggestion.

"Let me pencil them in and see what they look like," she said, pulling out the eyebrow pencil.

It was bedtime. I wasn't going to see anyone else. I would shower and wash my face in the morning. After getting assurance from her that eyebrow pencil washes out, I allowed her.

"I won't laugh. I promise," she said.

Sure.

Mrs. Brad concentrated, drawing in the eyebrows to make them darker. She stepped back and looked.

And erupted in laughter.

I looked in the mirror. I looked like my evil twin. Menacing. Or insane. The eyebrows looked wrong.

I tried to tell that to Mrs. Brad, but she couldn't hear. She was literally doubled over, laughing. To her credit, she was apologizing for laughing. Or trying to, but unable to fully speak because she was laughing so hard.

I shook my head, got some soap on my thumbs and scrubbed.

Fortunately, the eyebrow pencil came out. But Mrs. Brad kept laughing. More and more.

My extended eyebrows were gone, but she could still picture it.

Days later, she still is amused by it.

Here's the lesson: You may think things on your face or body are weird. You may think that there's something unnatural. You may shout at TV when guys with long, full eyebrows appear. You may compare yourself to a Muppet.

But if you really want to make your spouse laugh, let them try to correct your defect with makeup.

I'll live with my wispish iBrows. If they're good enough for Apple (hopefully), they're good enough for me.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Name your job? Maybe the other way around

It turns out that your name might be your destiny.

Or at least there's a correlation. According to a study done by Verdunt Labs (which is also a good description of a green Labrador retriever, assuming that you're OK with misspelling "verdant"), there is a connection between names and professions. The group studied the Social Security Administration's database of names and the Federal Election Commission's list of professions and found that certain first names turned up far more often in certain professions.

This isn't anything new. Back in the day, it was the last name – people named Mason were masons, people named Farmer were farmers, people named Smith were smiths and people named Guy Who Eats Other People's Food From The Company Refrigerator worked at your office. That was a standard naming convention.

This is different. This suggests that your first name leads you to a certain profession.

I spent a long time looking at the graphic that ran with the article, mostly it was to see if "Brad" appeared.

It didn't, but my guess is that most Brads are rich, arrogant characters at a country club in California-based coming-of-age movies filmed in the 1980s. But that's a guess based on my history.

In the study, some of the name-career choices seemed obvious, like the fact that rabbis are disproportionately named Shlomo, Judah and Chaim. And the most popular names for golfers are Tommy, Bobby, Johnny and Bud.

But what about guitarists? The study cites Mick, Richie, Trey, Sonny, Buddy and Eddie, which squares up with my experience. It wasn't Sholom Van Halen, was it? Or Bud Vedder? Historians are most often Herbert, Emma or Henry, which fits with the stereotype of old-fashioned names being interested in history.

Still, I was surprised by the fact that Penelope, Stella and Constance are more likely to be social workers. I guess their former jobs as characters in 19th century novels probably didn't last.

I'm fascinated by names. I love the annual lists that the Social Security Administration releases each year of the most popular names. I love when people have great stories about how they got their name or how they named their children. I spend a disproportionate amount of time wondering why people give their kids names that are hard to spell or that are a bad combination with their last names.

But the fact that certain names seem likely to lead you to certain professions is a game-changer for parents. When you're naming your kid, you may be helping them head toward a surprising career choice.

Based on the graphic, my sons were most likely to be a drummer or a football player, neither of which has happened.

Yet.

One last thing that's interesting to me. If this chart were accurate 45 years ago, "Sanford and Son" would likely have been about a lawyer and his son.

Don't bother me with facts. I'm thinking about Fred Sanford as an attorney while contemplating whether we made mistakes in naming our sons.

Shlomo Stanhope?

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Cautionary tale about using spell check

Many years ago, in a story that lives in infamy within the halls of the Daily Republic, the spell-check function on our computers was given too much power and we paid for it.

And I say "our" and "we" in the most royal way possible, since I wasn't involved. At all. Thankfully.

The result was catastrophic, resulting in humiliation, apologies and community shame. It remains a cautionary tale for anyone who writes.

By that, I mean if you write anything. Including emails, text messages, Facebook posts or graffiti. A spell-check function (often unavailable for graffiti) is helpful, maybe necessary. But not perfect. Far from it.

Just spend some time reading social media posts and you'll see the need for spell check. (A hint: Please read what you write before you post it.) But trust too much and it's equally bad.

Like the aforementioned disaster at the Daily Republic. It involved a list of winners for the Arty Awards, which the Daily Republic sponsored, hosted and honored. It was, and remains, a big deal in the local theater world – the local version of the Academy Awards. The year in mention, the big winner was a play called "Bullshot Crummond." The other big winner was "Pippen."

The major mistake came on the list of winners. The regular article about the actual Arty Awards ceremony was correct, with plenty of references to the night's winners by their correct titles. But the winners list that ran in the paper with the story had been spell-checked into misery and listed the names replaced by the first suggestion from the spell-checker. Over and over. And then the "correct" words weren't flagged anymore and nobody noticed.

You can probably guess what the first word in "Bullshot Crummond" came out as in print ("Crummond" remained unchanged). "Pippen" came out as "Pigpen" on every reference.

If memory serves (Hey! I was the sports editor! We just kept our heads down and hoped to stay out of trouble), the newspaper changed policies, had a public shaming and forced one person to spend an hour in the stocks at City Hall, while wearing a sign that said, "It's my fault."

The lesson was learned: You always use spell check. You never trust spell check.

Like money, spell check is a great tool and a terrible master. Use it well and it helps you avoid mistakes. Trust it too much and you wind up apologizing for what makes no sense (or worse, makes sense).

The same thing happens with auto-correct on smartphones. There are some great websites that list outrageous text messages sent by parents or grandparents that are unintentionally extremely racy or embarrassing.

Avoid having that happen to you. It can even happen to big organizations, such as The Associated Press, which had to send out the following correction a few years ago: "An early version of an Associated Press story about the David Petraeus resignation and ensuing scandal mistakenly referred to Jill Kelley as a 'socialist' rather than a socialite."

You don't want to make that kind of mistake. People will think the rest of what you write is bullshot.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Lawsuits, 'Mad Men' finale and more

Time to empty out the columnist notebook with notes, quotes and anecdotes.

It's Mother's Day, which is appropriate, since this is the mother of all notes columns.

On to the topics du jour . . .

• • •

The Golden State Warriors and ticket-seller website StubHub are involved in a lawsuit that every fan should follow.

It seems the Warriors sent notice to season-ticket holders that anyone who re-sells their tickets anywhere but through the Warriors' officially endorsed websites – which included co-defendant Ticketmaster – will be denied future tickets, which had a chilling effect on StubHub's ability to serve as a marketplace for tickets. The website, where the Stanhope family bought tickets to a few Warriors games this year, said its volume of Warriors tickets was down 80 percent.

Why should you care?

Well, if you buy tickets to sporting events or concerts, you benefit from competition. Even if you don't buy tickets from StubHub, the fact that some are sold there helps keep prices down at other resale sites (particularly those run by teams, which are in effect getting two "service fees" for selling the same tickets twice).

What the Warriors are doing is the equivalent of Toyota having the only car dealership in the entire Bay Area and requiring anyone who buys a Toyota to resell their car through a Toyota dealership or be denied the right to buy a second car.

Seems like an obvious outcome, but who knows?

• • •

"Mad Men," which has its season finale next week, is one of the greatest shows in TV history. But can the online fans quit treating the show like it contains the mysteries of the universe?

It's a TV show. And so is "Game of Thrones," "The Walking Dead" and "Hello, Larry."

Yes, I threw in "Hello, Larry" to see how many McLean Stevenson fans were reading.

My guess on the "Mad Men" finale? Don Draper wakes up to find Suzanne Pleshette laying next to him in his Chicago apartment. (Another old reference.)

• • •

By the way, I don't consider TV show creators geniuses. I subscribe to the Joe Theismann Theory. It was Theismann who once said "football coaches aren't geniuses. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein."

• • •

True confession: When I was in elementary school, I thought that Mount Rushmore was a natural phenomenon. That's right, I presumed that the wind had somehow worn down the rock in South Dakota until it looked like four of our greatest presidents.

Of course, that also fed into my belief that God somehow loved America. He made the wind carve out mountains to look like our presidents, after all!

• • •

Am I the only person watching "American Idol" who sees the show flashing "XIV" (for its 14th season) who thinks it's showing Norteño gang graffiti?

I am?

• • •

If you want to have old-school cool, try this: Don't call the Giants ballpark "AT&T Park."

Those of us who have been around for a while call it "American Telephone and Telegraph Park."

I understand they're working on getting a telegraph office there.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Calico's legacy lives on to this day

She lived a full life, representative of her era: She ate a lot, was promiscuous and stayed out late. Yet she was beloved.

Today would have been her 50th birthday. She was gone too soon.

I write, of course, about Calico, my childhood dog. I don't know her death date, which is lost to history (sometime in early 1980). I also don't know how she ended up in our family, another story lost to history. But I know her birth date: May 3, 1965. Fifty years ago today.

Calico Stanhope was a beagle, part of the generation of dogs whose status in society was elevated by Snoopy of "Peanuts" fame. I've seen pictures of her as a puppy, when she was frisky and small. By the time I was old enough to remember, she disappeared from family photos, appearing only in shadows, a family version of the Loch Ness Monster. (In that era, adults didn't waste film on the family dog. Film was expensive to develop!)

Calico was the beloved dog of my childhood, but to my friends, she was an obese, wart-covered, snorting hound who never missed an opportunity to hump their legs.

She loved eating garbage. In the days before you had to leash a dog – I lived in a rural community, where there still is likely no leash law – Calico wandered the neighborhood. That meant that garbage night was often Mardi Gras for her – an opportunity to take advantage of mysteriously tipped-over cans and enjoy the spoils of coffee grounds, egg shells and other treasures. Like a generation of Americans that followed, she learned that if you eat garbage, you get fat.

She was definitely portly. Her belly was inches off the ground and sometimes the warts on her paws nearly rubbed her stomach. Her weight made it tough for her to breathe, causing her to snort when she walked. My friends often thought she was growling at them, which they assumed was as bad as it would get. Wrong on both counts.

I loved Calico, despite her bad habits, which included a tendency to sit on the lawn in front of my bedroom window at night and howl, then respond to her echo. My sisters loved her, too.

Unfortunately, as much as she was loved, she gave love. Uncomfortably so.

Calico was "fixed" at an early age (Dogs undoubtedly don't consider that being "fixed."), but had no qualms familiarizing herself with the legs of my friends. The 10-year-olds who had earlier been terrorized by her growling (grunting) would suddenly find her attached to their legs, fully enjoying the sexual revolution of the 1970s.

"Just shake her off," I would tell them, unaware of how inappropriate it was.

Calico's later years saw her mellow. She slept more, ate more, and kept going. She lived past her 14th birthday (98 for dogs) as an indulgent, gluttonous, oversexed dog.

She was the canine Keith Richards, a dog who overcame all obstacles to survive.

We finally had her "put down" when the entire family left on a two-week vacation and determined that her quality of life was terrible, which sounds much harsher now than it did then. In fact, it sounds like we killed her so we could enjoy a vacation. Could that be right? Nevermind.

Regardless, her legendary life ended.

She has been gone for 35 years, but her influence endures.

Whenever a dog eats from the garbage or barks at something invisible or wanders a neighborhood, it is paying tribute to Calico. Anytime a dog familiarizes itself with the leg of a terrified fourth-grader, it's a tribute to Calico.

She lived slow, died old and left a hideous corpse.

But what a legacy!

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.