There’s been a torrent of controversy about mustaches in the world press lately, no doubt sparked by the volatile situation in Pakistan, where President Musharraf tearfully relinquished his mustache to civilian authority. All over the web, “top-ten mustache” lists are cropping up like “top-ten anything else you can think of” lists, and after a long slumbering exile to the lips of every single white man in Major League Baseball, the mustache is back with a fervor not seen since Teddy Roosevelt reached puberty.
I speak with some authority on this matter, having consistently cultivated lip hair since I was a young man waiting tables in Chicago, eleven thousand years ago. And though I aspired to an urbane gentility, I was never able to conjure anything more than a vague resemblance to Wade Boggs. 
Even so, I wore my mustache proudly, meticulously and with the dedication of a life-long moustachier, until the day early in our marriage when my beloved partner Jane tenderly suggested that the look was a bit dated, implying that I’d begun less to resemble the storied Mr. Boggs than a porn star of indeterminate ethnic origin. Quickly I amended my mustache with chin hair, and have since alternated my rapid weed-like growth like a Wooly Willie toy to include, variously, a Zappa-like Fu and soul patch, close-cropped Garibaldi, full-blown Confederate General-grade chest warmer and at present a dull, non-threatening Van Dyck.
Thus the culture’s return to mustachery is fraught with hazard; I assume not even today’s porn stars want to resemble a porn star. Genetics being the strongest factor in successful mustache cultivation, one person will end up with a luxurious Village People Biker-Guy Riding Mustache, while others will find that Freida Kahlo had more to work with. Most of us will fall in the middle, like Morgan Spurlock; but then, who the hell wants to look like Morgan Spurlock? Would it be any kind of a compliment to spruce up for a big family holiday gathering only to have your cousin’s sexy fiancée brush your cheek with her delicate hand and say, “You look like that guy in the hamburger movie”?
The answer is decidedly “no;” and further, there’s something deeply disturbing about you if you look on your cousin’s fiancée with any form of lust. And if you absolutely must cave in to the trend and bemustachiate yourself, please take care in its grooming. Don’t grow a Dylan or Jon Waters lip-liner unless you are astonishingly gay, insane or both. Keep in mind that Jason Schwartzman now looks like Ron Jeremy on Jenny Craig, and that baseball players are supposed to look that way. And no matter what the top-ten lists tell you, there were only two great mustaches in the last hundred years: the one worn by Sam Elliot, and the one painted on by Groucho Marx.
13 responses so far ↓
1 Horace Rumpole on Dec 3, 2007 at 8:32 am
Not in the last hundred years maybe, but the previous hundred was an altogether different story:
2 Horace Rumpole on Dec 3, 2007 at 8:33 am
Let me try that again:
http://mustachesofthenineteenthcentury.blogspot.com/
3 Tim on Dec 3, 2007 at 10:56 am
You could do much worse than to look like Mr. Wade Boggs, sir! Think of the disheartening results of resembling Robin Yount. Or John Kruk.
4 R.A. Roth on Dec 3, 2007 at 2:17 pm
My fuzzy lip period was a brief torpid affair. It never evolved past a patchy teenage burnout’s sad excuse for facial hair, so off it came way back in the year of our Lord 1986. So for 21 years my upper lip has stood naked and afraid and scarred from two plus decades of being shorn bald like a New Zealand sheep. The constant humiliation has made my upper lip a rebellious scamp of sorts, as it seems to peel back and stay really stupid things at inopportune times, like screaming out “That bike is for total pussies!” to a pack of Hell’s Angels soaked in blood.
Solid food, how I missed you!
Randy
5 Jon Schell on Dec 3, 2007 at 3:11 pm
While very funny, well written and entertaining, any article about mustaches that doesn’t include the mention of Freddie Mercury (even in passing) is an article that his missed its true potential.
6 Libby on Dec 3, 2007 at 5:37 pm
7 Libby on Dec 3, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Oops. I meant to say, having a sizable handlebar mustache with curls at the end could be good.
There are jobs where looking like a silent movie villain isn’t always a bad thing–like someone who actually evicts people and forecloses on their homes, like Snidley Whiplash.
Or someone who….ties people to train tracks for a living?
Ok, forget I said anything.
8 ern2150 on Dec 4, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Wait, so your wife didn’t like the Bob Bagadonuts look?
9 ern2150 on Dec 4, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Agh! Worlds colliding! Get back to Queenzone and discuss SINT! And then do a remix
10 Natureboy (Ken) on Dec 4, 2007 at 1:06 pm
I just recently grew my snot catcher back…..and I demand you include my name in the discussion of the great mustaches. My flavor saver has a thickness that would have made Poncho Via proud.
11 Clint on Dec 9, 2007 at 11:15 am
I happen to think Tom Selleck had a perfectly respectable mustache at one time. That is, up until he shaved it off in the late 90s – around the time he played Courtney Cox’s foremost semen supplier on that NBC sitcom. Seeing him without his ’stache was jarring – not unlike returning home from abroad to discover that not only does your dog have the mange, but your wife has been elected president of the local chapter of the Michael Stipe fanclub.
12 Brain Blog Round-up: Short, Late Edition « deep ape on Dec 14, 2007 at 12:32 pm
[...] Kevin Murphy Speaking of Facial Hair… [...]
13 Jamie McLargeHuge on Dec 16, 2007 at 5:44 pm
HA!
Michael Stipe fanclub?
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