Want to look younger? Shave!

 In an era when many young men grow beards that make them look like Civil War soldiers and others work hard to maintain a look that suggests they lost their razor three days ago, I take comfort in this fact: Facial hair makes you look older.

Clean-shaven men, rejoice!

The end of Movember – the made-up monthlong event where men supposedly grow facial hair to show support for men's health issues (no need to see a doctor, contribute money or change your lifestyle. Grow a beard! That will draw attention to men's health issues!) – is an appropriate time to point out the science: Facial hair makes you look older.

Here's the science, or rather "science": A recent study in Britain – performed by Crown Center, the nation's leading hair-transplant center – revealed that the 300 people were shown pictures of various celebrities who occasionally have facial hair and were asked how old they were. According to the survey, people said a beard made the celebs look up to 10 years old.

This is a good reminder.

If you're 20 or 25, it doesn't matter much if you look three, five or 10 years older. Most guys in their mid-20s don't want to be 30 or 35, but they don't mind if someone thinks that they're that age. It gives them gravitas.

However . . .

If you're 40 or 50 and grow a beard or goatee, you run the risk of looking 60. (Not that there's anything wrong with being 60. I write for a newspaper! I'm talking about our readers!) If you're 60 and think it's time to bust out a mustache that flashes back to the Tom Selleck-style 'stache you had in 1983, it may make you look 65.

And if you're 55 and decide to grow a stubble, realize . . . well, it will make you look like a homeless guy on an old movie.

I have no problem with facial hair. I wore a goatee for several years, starting in my late 30s. I think guys should do whatever they want with their facial hair. And you can make the case that a guy who has maintained a mustache or beard for decades shouldn't shave it off at age 50, just to look young.

But keep the "facts" in mind: A group of British people said that George Clooney and David Beckham looked older with facial hair. (Although, no surprise, people thought Brad Pitt looked younger than he is both with and without facial hair.) Facial hair has a good run, but research indicates a down side.

If you don't believe me, think about this: All those guys who started growing facial hair on Nov. 1 are now a month older – and might look several years older.

Think also about this: December starts Monday. It's the month where we will see the most celebrated icon of any holiday over and over and over.

And over.

We see Santa Claus, the bearded icon of Christmas.

Did you know he's just 35? It's the beard.

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

Time to start a local hall of fame

 I don't mean to brag, but I'm in a hall of fame.

At least I think I am.

The honor came several years ago at an annual banquet for the Fairfield Expos baseball program. I was the emcee and we announced the newest members of the organization's hall of fame – primarily former players. Either someone didn't show or there was a mistake, but there was an extra cap with "Fairfield Expos Hall of Fame" stitching.

Brad Hanson, the king of the Expos, gave it to me and acted like I was in the hall of fame.

No one took back the hat.

I still have it and I occasionally mention that I'm in a baseball hall of fame.

Such as I did in this column.

That being said, today I debut the Fairfield-Suisun Hall of Fame.

It's simple: A collection of  people, places and events that hold a special place in the area. I reserve the right to revisit it occasionally, adding new members. Once you're in, you remain, unless I decide to make a change.

The initial class? It's several people and a restaurant.

The actual hall of fame will be in my imagination (kept under my Fairfield Expos hall of fame hat. Did I mention I'm in a hall of fame?)

Here are the initial inductees:

Captain Robert Waterman and Captain Josiah Wing. They get the credit for founding Fairfield and Suisun City, although there were already people living here. Waterman, also known as "Bully Bob," founded Fairfield in 1856 and named it after his former hometown in Connecticut. Wing founded Suisun City a few years earlier, then brought his family from Massachusetts and named Jim Spering mayor (I may have the timeline wrong). What good is a hall of fame if the city founders aren't in it?

B. Gale Wilson. Newcomers may know him only as the namesake of the school and boulevard, but he's more than that.

Wilson was the city manager of Fairfield from 1956 until 1988 – the man in the top seat when Fairfield added the Budweiser brewery and the Solano mall. Fairfield grew from a few thousand people to nearly 100,000 under his watch and went from being a sleepy rural town to a significant Bay Area and Sacramento Valley city. Like him or not (and there were plenty of people in each camp), he was a difference-maker.

Joe's Buffet. The first entry that's not a human, it's the iconic downtown Fairfield sandwich shop that's been here since 1949, existing under the leadership of three owners – only one of them named Joe. Decade after decade, downtown workers (including those from City Hall and the county Government Center) pack this place daily. It's a Fairfield landmark.

Alicia Hollowell. The most-decorated athlete in city history, the Fairfield High softball pitcher was the national player of the year in 2002 and set a gazillion state and national records. She's still among the top five nationally in most pitching categories. And then? She played at Arizona State University, where she was a four-time All-American, NCAA champion and Olympic alternate. She's simply the greatest athlete in Fairfield-Suisun City history.

Brothers Wade. Let's see, there's Tony and Kelvin, who write columns for this paper. Then there's Scott, O.T., Groucho, Harpo, Peyton, Eli, Marlon and Tito (the last six are guesses). The Wades moved here in the 1970s and nobody loves Fairfield more than Tony. Nobody also writes two columns a week like Tony nor is as consistently engaging as an opinion columnist as Kelvin. The big flaw? They're Raiders fans. And Tony is my arch rival. He's in this hall of fame, but not the Fairfield Expos' version.

Reach Hall of Famer Brad Stanhope, a former Daily Republic editor, at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

It's not my fault the shower broke!

 There I was, facing a great moral dilemma: Do I tell someone the shower is still running?

Sure, it seems obvious now. How could I keep quiet? We're in the middle of a drought and, well, the shower was running, unchecked. At my new job.

But . . . I'm the new guy. And, how can someone be unable to turn off a shower? I could already hear Mrs. Brad laughing at me: "These kinds of things only happen to you!"

They don't.

I don't think they only happen to me, at least. I'm sure someone else has been unable to turn off the shower at my office, right?

Maybe not.

Let's go back to the start.

A few weeks ago, I started a new job in another city. One of the coolest things about the gig? It has a full gym and two modern shower rooms.

(I already hear the jokes: "A gym? How do you use a gym? Look at you!" Well, smarty pants, it has really nice benches and a big-screen TV!)

On the day in question, I completed my workout (seriously!), then hopped in the shower to avoid being the stinky, sweaty new guy.

When I finished, I turned the knob.

Water kept coming.

It is one of those ultra-modern showers, like the ones hotels often have these days – with multiple, concentric knobs to control water flow and temperature.

(Oh, for the days of hot-water and cold-water knobs, both of which turn off to the left!)

I tried the main knob again. Nothing. I turned the second knob. Nothing. The water kept coming.

I turned both of them all the way to the left. Water kept coming. Both to the right. Water got hotter.

How could this be happening? Especially to me?

I turned them both back to the left, got out and hoped the water would slow to a trickle.

It didn't.

What was I supposed to do? There are five floors in my building! Who do I even tell that the shower won't turn off? And how do I explain it in a way that prevents them from thinking I'm a moron who can't operate a shower?

I got dressed, hoping it would magically turn itself off. No luck.

I considered my plight.

Do I slink out and let someone else figure it out? Do I tell my boss, who will be shocked by my incompetence?

The water kept coming.

Fully clothed, I reached in and tried again. Nope. Just got my sleeve wet.

I walked upstairs toward my office . . . sweating enough to offset the value of the shower.

Magically, I ran into one of the guys who is in charge of all the extra stuff in the building (I'm pretty sure that's not a job title: Guy in charge of extra stuff). I told him the story, emphasizing that I'm not an idiot and (barely) avoiding the claim that I've successfully operated showers.

He graciously acted like it happened before and said he'd take care of it.

I slinked upstairs, hoping he'd keep it quiet, but knowing that he'd likely regale coworkers with the story of how the dopey new guy couldn't turn off the shower.

Then I sent an email to Mrs. Brad and told her.

She said she couldn't see her computer screen because she was laughing so hard. Then she pointed out that those kinds of things only happen to me.

They don't! Right?

Plenty of people can't turn off a shower!

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

Correction: I may regret this column

 Once you get past the crazy crime stories, Dilbert comics, Tony Wade columns and the sports-on-TV listings, the most interesting thing in any daily newspaper is the corrections.

That's where editors hang out their dirty laundry, admitting they had the wrong starting time for that City Council meeting or that flour was left out of the recipe on the food page or that President Obama's first name was misspelled on the front page (I did that once, by the way). It's a modern version of humiliations of the Middle Ages, when people were put in stocks and had bad fruit thrown at them.

Correction: In the previous paragraph, stocks were described as a Middle Ages punishment. Those punishments actually were used as late as the 19th century and were not limited to bad fruit being thrown at those kept in them.

See? They're amusing, while allowing you to feel superior to whomever made the mistake.

My most difficult correction came after a writer who didn't work for the paper "covered" spring training for the Daily Republic in the late 1980s. He wrote about a woman sportswriter kissing San Francisco Giants manager Roger Craig, but he used the wrong name for the writer – identifying the woman by the name of a male writer who had one of those difficult-to-tell names. A few weeks later, the male writer contacted me and demanded a correction.

I first wrote that "(Writer's name) isn't a woman, but is actually a man," which made the problem seem worse. Then I tried "(Writer's name) didn't kiss Roger Craig. It was actually a woman who did," which similarly confused the matter. Finally, I came up with "(Writer's name) was misidentified in a story."

See? Corrections can be funny. They also are cleansing in a way – in how many other areas of life do people publicly admit they made a mistake?

With that introduction, I'd like to take the rest of my space today to set the record straight on previous columns I've written in the Daily Republic:

In a June 5, 1971, column, I wrote, "Richard Nixon will undoubtedly go down as the most honest president in United States history." I regret the error.

In a Nov. 16, 1993, column, I identified George Lopez as "the father of our country and the first president of the United States." Lopez was actually the third president.

In a Feb. 22, 2007, column, I referred to the Oakland Raiders as "a once-great franchise that is now in competition to be the worst team in professional sports." That sentence should have excluded the phrase "in competition to be."

Despite what I wrote in an Aug. 3, 1984, column, there actually is an "I" in Daily Republic.

In a Jan. 10, 1996, column, I wrote that Mickey Dolenz and Davey Jones were members of The Beatles. They were not. They were members of The Rolling Stones.

In a March 18, 1987, column, I quoted the lyrics to the Canadian national anthem as being "Oh Canada, we stand on cars and freeze." The real lyrics are, "Oh, Canada, we stand on guard for thee."

Finally, in the first paragraph of this column, I wrote that Tony Wade columns are one of most interesting things in newspapers. It should have said Kelvin Wade. I regret the error.

Oh, and go ahead and add a cup of flour to every recipe we've ever published. Just in case.

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

It's time to make elections more interesting

 Tuesday is Election Day, which means we get a chance to vote on all kinds of things that we don't know much about (who can tell me what the difference is between the state controller and the state treasurer?). But we love voting – we vote for people on American Idol, we vote for baseball All-Stars and we vote in the Daily Republic weekly pulse poll. Or we should.

But isn't it time we vote on things that really matter? (By saying that, I'm not diminishing the importance of the pulse poll. Or the initiative about the state reserve, as if I know anything about that.)

Still, I'm ready for something bigger. I'm ready to suggest some initiatives that will make us care.

Don't you think there would be a bigger voter turnout if the ballot included things like:

Grocery store item relocation initiative. Forbids grocery stores from rearranging items more than once every four years – and that can't be done without advance notice and public input. They're allowed to set aside two aisles per store that can be used experimentally – but they must be the aisles now being used to push Christmas items or Raiders and 49ers gear. They're already experimental.

The you-can't-change-it-so-stop-complaining initiative. Mandates that adults over 50 can't complain about things that won't change and have been around for a long time. The two most obvious items: That young men's pants sag (it's been happening for more than a decade) and that homeless people have cellphones (It's 2014. Get used to it. Everyone has one). The exception is for things that bug me.

Election mailer limitation. Makes it illegal for political candidates to send multiple mailers to every home in their district on the same day. You can't stop them from doing mailers, but this will limit them to no more than one per day per candidate. Multiple mailers on the same day is ridiculous. That's right, Jim Spering and Pam Bertani. I'm talking about you.

Dumb sports graphics elimination. Requires TV networks to quit using stupid graphics during sports events, especially ones like the pitch-tracking graphic used by Fox during the World Series. Yes, a pitch leaves the pitcher's hand and sails downward until it hits the catcher's mitt. We don't need a yellow line to see that, Fox. A companion bill would limit replays to three per play during sporting events (did you see the World Series? Each close play was shown a dozen times).

Daylight saving time provision. Allows individuals to opt out of the daylight saving time program, keeping the same hours year-round. It allows the rational people among us to retain daylight saving time all 12 months and also allows the Flat Earth Society folks, who hate daylight saving time, to continue their old-timey lifestyles all summer long while riding their mule-drawn carriages to their jobs. It would require employers and all transportation services to adapt a flexible plan and publish schedules using some universal (daylight time!) standard.

Corporate voicemail maze elimination act. Requires all voicemail systems to give you an option of pressing a number to speak to a human within the first two minutes and that the discussion with the human beings occur within five minutes. The penalty for failing to follow law? The company's top executives must spend a full day navigating the phone system of a business in another industry, only to have their calls dropped several times.

Giants win every other year law. Oh, never mind. We don't need a law. It just happens.

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