I was thinking about Captain Kirk this morning as I shaved. 

Maybe you don't know what I'm talking about.  It was long, long, long ago, in a generation far, far, far away.  There was a device called 'television' and on the television was a show called 'Star Trek'.  Star Trek featured an actor, William Shatner, as Captain James T. Kirk, of the Starship Enterprise. They went around the universe solving problems at warpspeed. 

The show had some commercial success, and a number of people enjoyed it. I think they made a movie, maybe two, about Kirk and the Enterprise, and there may have been a few other shows related to them, what some media outlets refer to as 'spin-offs'. I hope I'm not getting too technical.

I was thinking of Kirk's sideburns. They were long and pointed. A friend once told me he knew of this show, 'Star Trek' with its Captain Kirk, and he didn't like it or Shatner because of Kirk's long pointed sideburns. He thought they were silly and he couldn't get over them enough to consistently watch the show. 

Kirk's sideburns were on my mind because I was shaving, trimming my own, along with my goattee and mustache. (Isn't that a weird word, 'mustache'? Doesn't it seem like some sort of stew? "What sort of meat is in the mustache today? Chicken? Okay, I'll have a bowl of the chicken mustache. Does that come with bread? Good. And bring me a beer.")

Star Trek's future men rarely had mustaches and facial hair in the original show. Was that a reflection of the time when it was created and aired? I was young then and not yet growing facial hair so I didn't think about it at the time, but when I saw it later, in airings that the industry calls 're-runs', and realized no one had facial hair, I thought of my own mustache and felt alienated. 

What was the thing about the uniforms, too? All the clothing looked like uniforms, whether they were part of the crew, a visiting ambassador or scientist, or people being saved on some planet. I'm sure someone interviewed the show's creators about it, and there is the reasoning that in the future when the Federation is born, we move to more utilitarian clothing and away from these quaint notions of 'fashion', abandoning the idea of wearing clothes to present an image. 

Anyway, I sort of hope that happens, because every day, I ponder, what to wear, what to wear...

Then I grab some jeans and and a polo shirt. It's not quite a uniform but it comes close.