Locals raise stubble, money for cancer research
Let’s talk frankly for a minute about the moustache, the ol’ lip bear, the handlebar, the Tom Selleck, the nose whiskers.
Moustaches get little to no respect these days. Long-relegated to late-night repeats of 80s detective shows like Matt Houston and Simon and Simon (in which Rick also sported mutton chops) and 70s porn movies (seriously, just way, way too much hair back then in general), the moustache is a relic, a punch line on a Saturday Night Live skit.
It wasn’t always so. Clark Gable wore a pencil thin moustache for most of his adult life and still made the ladies swoon, as did Errol Flynn, who apparently made the boys swoon, too. After Hitler knocked them out of vogue again for a couple of decades, the hippy generation made various ‘staches – predominantly those that involve the least actual grooming – an option once more, before they were returned to the summit of manliness via the Marlboro Man, Burt Reynolds, Tom Selleck and, to a lesser extent, Lee Horseley and Eric Braeden.
The clean-cut 90s killed the ‘stache again, and its retro cheese value – doubtless buffered by Selleck’s insane Republican ramblings – has made it prohibitively uncool to many a hipster, hipster doofus or just plain ol’ fashionista. Beards? Beards will be cool for as long as Sam Roberts writes good music.
But this week, this most moustachioed of weeks, a few good men are striving to revive the cred of the lip dred, the facial fur, the ol’ nostril ticklers. No, they’re not putting the world out of its misery by executing writers who employ cheesy wordplay … they’re growing moustaches to raise money for charities fighting cancer, in the Movember campaign.
You can check out a variety of local events and find contacts to sponsor participants at this nifty site.
We raise the matter only because it would be easy for it to become lost among the other heady subjects this week, namely Judas Priest, Big Sugar, The Uncas, and GWAR, whom you’d think would’ve been here for Halloween, but we digress.
So here’s our challenge to you: every dollar you don’t spend on GWAR merchandise, at the very least, gets put towards growing a ‘stache and kicking cancer’s narrow ass. It probably won’t bring the septum pelt back into fashion … but it may help some nice people out of a hairy situation.
