I was looking at rockers the other day. Not the Springsteen/Bon Jovi variety; the kind you sit in. The big, cushy sort that recline, sport a built-in foot rest ... you know, that whole BarcaLounger, La-Z-Boy sort of thing.

I was just browsing, not really thinking about making a purchase. I'm not unhappy with my current recliner, a slightly battered, brown corduroy deal given to us by my in-laws when they bought new five or six years ago. It was old then and it's older now, but I like it a lot.

This is a good thing, as a recliner, to an American male, is Very Important. I spend a lot of time in mine, reading, watching television, writing this column, cruising the Internet ... that recliner knows my backside like a politician knows pork. I would go so far as to say I love my recliner.

The Lovely Mrs. Taylor, alas, does not.

When she looks at my recliner, she doesn't see an enticing oasis of comfort and familiarity, she sees a shabby lump of frame and fabric that smells vaguely of dog. And it's just sitting there in the middle of her otherwise charming living room.

The rest of the room is comprised of attractive antiques, carefully coordinated furnishings and artfully selected bric-a-brac chosen less for its usefulness than its ability to make women say, "Oh, my, what a lovely home you have!" when they walk through the front door. Or, rather, they would say that if not for my big, brown lump of a recliner hulking there before the television like a pagan alter, something you might strap a virgin to just before the sacrifice.

But like I said, I love that recliner, so Mrs. T for the most part tolerates it. Still, in my more lucid moments, I can see she's right. It does look like hell and it does smell vaguely of dog, this last despite the fact the dog never sits in it - he has the sofa. This leads me to believe that perhaps I smell vaguely of dog, but I won't be willing to admit to this - even to myself - until much later in life, if ever.

At any rate, every so often I find myself toying with the idea of purchasing a new recliner. Heaven knows there are a lot of them out there, and some are truly amazing to behold. Recliner technology has advanced at an exponential rate since my humble brown lump rolled off the assembly line 20 years ago.

As I strolled up and down the crowded aisles of the furniture mega-store, I saw recliners with cup holders, TV clicker holders, heated and refrigerated cup holders (no, I am not kidding), back massagers, built-in TV clickers, tiny built-in refrigerators, stereo speakers, computer/video game hookups ... these were chairs that, if they added a "flush" option, you could sit down in and never have to get back up again.

I have to admit I was impressed. Compared to these living room yachts, my modest brown lump looked like a paddleboat with a hole in the bottom. Granted, the price tags attached to most of these recliners bore a strong resemblance to the national debt ($8.3 trillion, as of last Monday), but since I wouldn't have to make any payments for 90 days, and then it would be the "same as cash," I figured a purchase was, in theory at least, do-able.

I sat in one, a real monster. Four cows, at a minimum, died to supply the leather for this beast. As I sank slowly into the marshmallow-soft cushions, I noticed a complete lack of dog smell. Also, this chair was comfortable. Real comfortable.

I tried a few more chairs. They were all comfortable and none of them smelled of dog. But the more recliners I sampled, the more I realized they would seem comfortable to anyone who sat in one. They were not selective. Like the overly made-up girl at the end of the bar who will smile at anybody with enough money to pay for a gin-and-tonic, these recliners were, well, easy.

My brown lump of a chair is comfortable to me and only to me. And I'm comfortable with it. I'm even comfortable with the smell; there's something reassuring about the smell of dog. I think it goes back to our cave-man days, when dogs kept the saber-tooth tigers away from the mouth of the cave. Whatever it is, I like it.

So I didn't buy a new recliner. I'll spend the $8.3 trillion on something else, maybe dinner and a movie. (With the cost of movie theater popcorn, the $8.3 trillion should just about cover it.)

With any luck, and with proper maintenance, my recliner could last another 50 years. By then I'll be dead. Maybe they could bury me in the chair, a cold beer in one hand, the TV clicker in the other.

When archaeologists dig me up 500 years in the future, I'll be the skeleton with a comfortable smile on its face, the one that smells vaguely of dog.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or fabric-cleaning tips, e-mail mtaylor325@gmail.com or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429.

Two mundane, everyday occurrences came together for me this morning, creating an epiphany the likes of which have not been seen since Albert Einstein asked himself, "Hmm, I wonder what ‘E' equals?"

I don't mean to wax messianic here, but the insights I gained from brushing the cat, then shaving (my face, not the cat) will no doubt irrevocably alter civilization as we know it.  I just hope the rest of humanity is ready to make the leap into this brave, new world along with me.

Like all truly great ideas, this one can be summed up in a very few words.  Sadly, I have about 20 inches of column space to fill here, so I'm going to have to drag it out a bit.

We'll start with the cat.  He's one of those godawful Siamese cats, owned not by me, but by The Lovely Mrs. Taylor, who imbues the feline with all sorts of positive personality traits he does not, in actuality, possess.  Like all cats, he tolerates the human presence in "his" house only because the hairless monkeys (Mrs. T and me) know how to use a can opener.  Contrary to Mrs. T's delusions, he does not love us, he is not loyal and if he were 200 pounds larger than he is, we would immediately become part of his menu.

Still, he does catch the occasional bat, and for that, I am grateful.

Though cat maintenance is mostly Mrs. Taylor's purview, I occasionally brush him out, just to be doing my part.  It only takes a minute, and frankly, the cat loves it more than coyotes love the sweet taste of roadrunner.

While brushing the fuzzball this morning, I noticed that, despite the fact he's nearly 14 years old - which qualifies him for an AARP card in the cat world - he still looks great.  Not a day older than he did when he was hitting puberty.  (Actually, he never hit puberty, thanks to a trip to the vet early on.  Sorry ‘bout that, kitty.)

At any rate, to the naked eye, he's still a young cat.  Putting away the brush, I thought about the inequity of this; why does a cat, one of the least-favored of God's creations (can you tell I'm not a cat person?) gets to stay young forever, while I get older with each passing moment?

Like most "deep thoughts" I have throughout any given day, this one flitted in and out of my consciousness like an inebriated butterfly, here and then gone.

I went upstairs to shower and shave.  Standing before the mirror, my face lathered up for its daily scrape, I took a good, hard look at the 51-year-old countenance gazing back at me.  Though I've held up amazingly well (if you know me personally, don't break the truth to me, please) for a man of my years, I in no way look as good as Mrs. T's cat.

Why?  In a word, wrinkles.  I have them.  Like all geezers, I've accumulated my share of rumpled facial clefts and valleys over the years, and no amount of anti-wrinkle cream, surgery, Botox, cleansers, fillers or scrubs is going to do much to hide that fact.  A bag over my head might work, but I'm afraid I'd make the clerk at my neighborhood party store nervous if I went in there like that.

As I stared at my crinkly visage, something occurred to me.  Something wonderful.  Something that would hide my age ... forever!

Hair.

Long, beautiful hair.  I mean, it works for the cat, right?  I'm sure that somewhere under that luxurious coat of fur, the little hairball looks like Yoda's great-grandfather.  But the hair hides his age even better than would a paper bag over the head, and it doesn't scare most 7-11 clerks.

Now, by nature, I'm furrier than Chewbacca anyway (will the Star Wars references never end?), so all I have to do is ... stop shaving.  Granted, thanks to the devious nature of evolution, I do have a few "bald patches."  My forehead, the palms of my hands, the bottoms of my feet ... that's about it.  But I figure I can rub those down with Rogaine once or twice a day and in no time I'll be hairy from head to toe.

What's underneath all that hair?  Could be a 22-year-old stud muffin, could be an old geezer.  The point is, no one will be able to tell.

As an added bonus, I'll never have to shave or pay for a haircut again!  Turns out the dirty, filthy hippies had the right idea all along. 

Let the sun shine in, baby!  In this new Age of Aquarius, nobody will need sunscreen.  And we'll all look young forever!

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or complaints about the fact he used the word "evolution" in this column, e-mail mailto:mtaylor325@gmail.com or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429.

I'm dating myself by admitting this, but my father and I used to argue about the length of my hair. This was back in the 1960s, a few years after the Beatles made their American debut on the Ed Sullivan show.

I really, really wanted to be John Lennon, or at the very least, to look like him. I'm not sure why. Probably because the Beatles - in both their movies and in real life - always had girls chasing after them. Even at age 13, that seemed like a lifestyle I could learn to appreciate.

So I grew my hair. By today's standards, my little fringe of bangs wouldn't qualify as long at all, but in 1965, baby, I was considered a real hep cat. This, according to my folks, was a bad thing.

My "Beatle" haircut really did help attract the ladies, though; the "ladies" in question being 13-year-old girls who also thought the Beatles were cool.

My dad, especially, hated my haircut and rarely failed to mention this fact whenever he got mad at me, which was pretty much hourly. Regardless of the nature of my transgression, my hair was at least partly to blame. Every so often pop would get really cheesed about something and drag me off to the barber for a buzz cut in the hopes that this would completely alter my personality, straighten me out and get me to fly right. It never did.

The nice thing about hair is, it grows back. (Knock on wood; as I approach yet another birthday I realize this may not forever be the case. But so far so good.)

Anyway, with the passing of the ‘60s, ‘70s and all the decades since, hair has more or less become a non-issue for most Americans.

When my daughter died her hair blue, I barely raised an eyebrow. When my oldest son spiked his hair and my younger son grew a (gasp!) mullet, I didn't look twice. These days, no one cares.

Not in America, anyway.

But in North Korea ... oboy! There, they have hair issues big-time, owing mostly to that country's doofy communist leader, Kim Jong Il. Jong Il - a man known the world over as having the only haircut goofier than Donald "You're Fired" Trump's - not long ago decided the only good commie is a well-groomed commie.

The North Korean government is currently waging a major public relations battle with longhaired citizens, calling them "unhygienic anti-socialist fools."

In taking the word to the street, Jong Il has gone so far as getting his own dorky, bouffant-style locks trimmed to more closely conform to the communist ideal (no longer than five centimeters).

Being a product of the American educational system, I haven't a clue what a centimeter is (one of those many-legged bugs?) but I'm guessing a hair length of five of them wouldn't help you land a job as front man for the "Poison" or "Twisted Sister" reunion tours.

Pundits say Jong Il is trying to get all the men in North Korea to look more like soldiers in his 1.1 million-member Korea People's Army, the "loyal backbone" of Jong Il's rule. (That army is also the reason more people don't make fun of Jong Il's hair, at least to his face.)

As part of Jong Il's anti-hair campaign, state run television stations are airing advertisements claiming long hair hampers brain activity by preventing oxygen from getting to the nerves in the head.

According to many western scientists and cosmetologists, this notion is - to quote the experts - "stupid."

The ad campaign fails to mention why it's OK for women to wear their hair long. Apparently, in North Korea at least, it's all right for women to be a little dumber than men, though how anyone of any sex could be dumb enough to believe Jong Il's clumsy propaganda campaign is beyond me. (Then again, I grew up bombarded by Pepsi and Coke commercials, so I've been brainwashed by the best!)

Jong Il isn't the first tin-pot dictator to focus on hair length, however. Just across the border, in South Korea, the late dictator Park Chung-hee banned both miniskirts and long hair. This was way back in the 1970s, though, and he was trying to combat "declining morals" among the country's youth.

Chung-hee, it should be noted, was murdered by one of his own top-ranking officers.

I wish I'd had this little fact to share with my old man back in the days when he was still dragging me off to the barber. He might have reconsidered.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or styling tips, e-mail mtaylor@midmich.net or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429.

I should preface this column by admitting I have a cell phone. A lot of folks hate cell phones in much the same way as their great-grandparents hated electricity, television, the automobile and "American Idol."

The fact is, there are people who are going to resist any new technology regardless of how beneficial it may prove to be in the long run.

I'll admit, however, the reasons most folks have for hating cell phones are good ones. It's not the fault of the phones themselves, but of the idiots yakking on them at the top of their lungs while invading your "sonic space."

Not everyone who owns a cell phone does this, of course. Mostly, it's just self-important twits that still think owning one is some sort of status symbol. It's not. My cell phone costs about half what my "land-line" phone does every month. If it weren't for the fact I can't get anything but dial-up internet service at my house, I'd have my regular phone service discontinued altogether.

At any rate, I like to think of myself as a conscientious cell phone user. I shut the thing off at theaters, restaurants, birthday parties, while getting romantic with The Lovely Mrs. Taylor. At family gatherings, I usually leave it in the car.

Still, there are people who are so "anti-cell phone" they consider the mere sight of one to be an affront to their delicate sensibilities. These folks, by and large, are offended by any technology more advanced than what you'd find in your average Amish household.

Both ends of the spectrum are badly in need of some "ejamucashun." To that end, I now present a brief quiz from Chapter One of "Mike Taylor's Guide to Cell Phone Etiquette" (available soon in bookstores everywhere, assuming I can find an agent willing to market this turkey). So take the quiz! Test your cell phone I.Q.!

QUESTION 1: You're on a first date at a fancy restaurant when your cell phone rings. Do you...

a) answer the phone and talk loudly for 20 minutes about your stock portfolio in an effort to impress your date?

b) push the little button that stops the ringing and apologize for the interruption?

c) let the phone keep ringing and tell your date, "It's probably just the president calling again for advice on foreign policy. I'll get back to him later."

QUESTION 2: You're in a romantic restaurant having a quiet meal with your wife when the guy at the next table makes a call and proceeds to talk long and loud about his new Lexus. He's on one of those "walkie-talkie" phones, so not only do you have to listen to his side of the conversation, you get to hear the bored, harried voice of the poor sucker on the other end. Do you...

a) ask him politely to keep it down?

b) ask him firmly to keep it down?

c) grab his cell phone, jump up and down on it, then insert savagely the remaining fragments into his left ear with the aid of a salad fork and pepper grinder?

QUESTION 3: You're car pooling with a co-worker when his cell phone goes off. He answers it and is soon embroiled in a raging argument with his teenage daughter over whether she can use the car this Saturday. The debate drags on interminably. Do you...

a) ask him politely if he can call her back later?

b) put your "AC/DC Live" CD into the stereo and crank it to full volume?

c) open the passenger door and push him out?

QUESTION 4: You've had a cell phone for a couple years now and have been more or less happy with the price, coverage and service. You see an advertisement for a "new and improved" cell phone offering more minutes, free long distance and a personally signed 8-by-10 glossy of Catherine Zeta-Jones. Do you...

a) ignore the ad?

b) sign up for the new service only to discover several unexplained "mystery charges" on your next bill (such as "alt-sys stp, $13.95" and "rm txs st, $32.19" and "mst chrgs, $12.22")?

c) get a job as Catherine Zeta-Jones' limo driver, wait until she's not looking, then open the passenger door and push her out?

QUESTION 5: You're driving down a busy street while eating a Whopper, smoking a Camel, drinking a Slurpee and trying to find "The Bob & Tom Show" on your radio. Your cell phone rings. Do you...

a) answer it and hope nobody gets in the way of your SUV?

b) ignore the phone, since it takes two hands to handle your Whopper and you're already doing it with only one?

c) open the bun of your Whopper, place your cigarette and cell phone on top of the all-beef patty, and throw the whole mess out the window, followed by the Slurpee?

QUESTION 6: You have one of those cell phones that takes and sends photos. While gassing up your SUV (for the third time today) you see a robber cleaning out the gas station's cash register. Do you...

a) grab your cell phone and dial 911?

b) shoot a photo of the robber and e-mail it to the police?

c) take off without paying for your gas, knowing that in all the confusion they'll never notice your minor - ahem - "indiscretion."

QUESTION 7: It's Friday and you're driving home from work at the end of a long work week. You're looking forward to the weekend off. Your cell phone rings and - checking the caller I.D. - you see it's your boss calling, most likely to ask you to work the weekend for some schmuck who just called in sick. Do you...

a) ignore the call in the hopes your boss will give up and call some other employee?

b) answer the phone, then make a bunch of "static" noises and pretend you can't make out what your boss is saying?

c) open the door and push yourself out.

YOUR SCORE: If you answered "a" to questions 1, 3 and 7, but "b" to questions 2 and 6, or "c" to questions 4, 5 and 3, or "a" to 1 and 2 but "b" or "c" to 7 but not 3 ... well ... look, basically, if you took this test at all you get an "A" as far as I'm concerned. The only thing the test really indicates is whether you have too much time on your hands.

If so, maybe you should call a friend on one of those walkie-talkie phones and have a long discussion about it. Just don't do it in my car.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or offers to change cell phone carriers, e-mail mtaylor@midmich.net or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429.