Thursday, June 21, 2007

Wozzeck Would Have A Shit Fit

Dear Residents of Chapel Hill/Carrboro:

I once grew a mustache. I grew it as a joke, mind you, to creep out the fellow employees at Asbury Hills, the summer came where I worked. And I succeeded, because mustaches are fucking creepy. It's hard to find a mustache that doesn't look awful*.

And yet it's somehow acceptable around here for much of the male population to wear a mustache past the Crossroads of Humor, to the top of the Mountain of Detached Irony, where it makes its home in the Lean-To of Skeeve. Why is this okay? No matter how fucking cool you are, a mustache is still a mustache. It's still gross, it still collects food, it's still something that is really only easy to pull off if you're a cop, Lou Marini, or Ted Nugent (and c'mon, he's really pretty ridiculous).

It pains me to write this letter, not only because I feel that its message should go without saying, but also because I feel like maybe I'm somehow out of the loop. I understand that I'm not exactly "hip,"but am I that far detached from what is hip that I have almost no reference point for understanding why people do this mustache thing? Or are you the un-hip one, mustache boy?

No, you probably aren't.

I'm being unfair, I know. I'm just lashing out at you because I'm uncool. That said, mustaches are fucking gross, and if you insist on having one, please groom it, and keep it cleaned, because I hate mustaches even more when they look like a wire brush that got in a fight with some grimy couscous.

Respectfully yours,

Joe Stanton

PS: Crazy long beards, fuzzy soul patches, Amish-style beards (which are characterized by their lack of mustache, actually), and beards that have been braided are all bad for different reasons, but still bad.

*-ly hilarious, sometimes.

4 comments:

Nick Faber said...

I hope this post wasn't inspired by you sitting near me at work.

FYI, I have a 'beard' because I don't like to shave. Irony has little to do with this undertaking. Let's start pointing the finger at apathy.

a.p.heckel said...

several enterprising members of the man-population in norfolk, virginia (honorary hometown to one miss alison heckel and on mister osiris rankin) have a little tradition called . if you think you'd get grossed out, don't click the link, but if you think it's worth it, there's a lot of dudes wearing a lot of facial hair (for a good cause).

Joe Stanton said...

Nick: I think your beard is acceptable, it looks good, you keep it clean, and it isn't a mustache. Besides, this is mostly just a vanity piece so I can complain about something.

Alison: That is very cool and something I would participate in, even if it did mean me getting grossed out. Do you call it a mustache-thon?

marsman57 said...

Dear Joe,

Do not forget Tom Selleck.

Brandon