Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to wear boy ponytails.

Lord knows I love me some comedies, and the recent Baby Mama was a rather happy surprise. Despite the trailer, which gave every evidence of being one of those where you no longer have a reason to see the movie, actually the movie had plenty of comedic surprises, one of them being Steve Martin doing a hilarious bit as one of those eco-CEOs who swims with the dolphins and believes he can save the world by selling it back to us, one organic fairtrade mango at a time. And how does a movie signal to us that he's a type? As the Bible preaches it to us: by their ponytails ye shall know them, the graying hippie men who've found a kinder, gentler capitalism to purvey.

The iconic graying ponytail: what a sad, sad thing it is, turning otherwise pretty good-looking men into sorry stereotypes. You know who you are, late-night jazz talk hosts. You already have the good navy blue suit and you know how to rock the white dress shirt, so why don't you get a haircut already? Get a haircut!

Tonight, at Red Rock before the movie, I saw yet another dejected ponytail on an aging man. (The ponytail itself looked forlorn, a coiffure adrift in an alien land.) He was wearing--wait for it:--black jeans, a mock-neck, short sleeved black turtleneck, a belt with some studs on it, and the 'tail. It was not good--so not good, in fact, that I was momentarily struck dumb, and my friends, that does not happen so often.

There oughta be a law, and if not a law, some absolute penalty: men, if you're too old to be sporting that ponytail, you shall summarily be shorn and made to wear golf shirts with tiny polo players embroidered at the breast, for a season.