Year Of The Selfie: Project Mustache

Since linguist Geoff Nunberg nominated the 2013 Word of The Year to be selfie, I decided to play my part in flighty puerile narcissism.

So over the holidays, I birthed, harvested, and slaughtered a mustache… on my face!  Its lifespan represented the duration of a six-week two-tailed double-blind randomized control trial.

(Day 1)

…My coworker, who has near-superhuman olfactory and auditory faculties, is particularly un-fond of mustaches.

She objected to mine, even in its fledgling stages.

Coworker (rounding the corner of my cubicle): “Eww. I knew it! Are you growing a dis-gustache for Movember?”

Me: “What’s Movember? And how did you know I was growing a mustache?”

Coworker: “I can smell a mustache from a mile away.” 

Me: “My mustache smells fine.”

Coworker: “I just knew one was in the building.”

One time she was listening to the Diane Rehm Show and she accurately determined that one of the panelists had a mustache—on the radio.
(On the radio.)

(Day 7)

 By now another friend referred to me as a
"1980s Porn Star, Turned Angry Porn Star Director."

I wish this had been my Senior Year Book picture… instead of this one.

(Day 14)

A friend of mine is dating my officemate who has the distaste for mustaches. Contrarily, he cheered me on, and wanted a growth update at 2a.m. on a Friday. I texted him that a tiny bat-shaped UFO was spotted flying around my bedroom, and it imbued my mustache with a telepathic messaging system. Benicio then made his presence known. Benicio The Mustache. 

(Day 15)

Weird shit afoot: the following night, a tractor beam manifested in my trophy room and began imputing modifications.

(Day 16)

The next morning, my reflection in the bathroom mirror revealed a terrible, terrible new wave album cover from 1983.
I wasn’t sure how to face the day this way…

(Day 20)

Benicio doesn’t say much. He tends to just leer and glower. Irritability and discontent are percolating, and I think my boxer briefs are riding up.

(Day 22)

Sometime during the night, my mustache suffered a sprain, and I didn’t feel so great myself. The dweomer of Benicio seems to have vacated the labial region. Admittedly, I was confused… and bereft.

  

  (Day 25)

Whilst driving today my mustache sprouted a pair of my uncle’s aviator shades, and a butt-cut. Terrifying.

  

Driving at dusk on these short winter days proved challenging. Fortunately, the shades were of the yellow night vision variety, As Seen On TV. Eventually I persuaded my mustache to loose its grip on the shades in exchange for a Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks.

(Day 27)

No new developments, except that my wife declared her resolve to shave off this atrocity in my sleep. I could only reply that she must refer to him as Porter, and Porter was not beruffled* by her threats.

*Totally just made up that word , Dr. Nunberg.

(Day 30)

A quiet evening at home with Porter.

(Day 35)

‘Stache holds steady. …Meanwhilst, hair on head develops an unruly
Conan O’Brien issue…

(Day 38)

Unexpectedly, Porter flew the coop. What remained became known as Calrissian, giving me an extreme sense of serenity and self-satisfaction. Unfortunately, culmination of the project is nigh.

(Day 41)

I really wish I had some leather suspenders, dirty jeans,
and a bored-looking broad with itchy gams.

I sooo wanted to be like this unemployed steel worker from 1937.

(Day 42)
Day of Reckoning/Final Phase

The Vincent Price rendition is a FAIL.

Results:
1 vote FOR; infinity votes AGAINST.

Apropos of nothing, two of these men are married—to women.

They even have children. The other is my sole champion of Porter and crew, who is dating my officemate, who hates mustaches.

NEXT PROJECT:  Soul Patch or Flavor Saver?

NB: All photos taken with iPhone 5. None altered with photo-editing software except Day 16.

-- ADDENDUM 1 --

[February 21, 2014]

In solidarity with an unnamed Division 1 men's college basketball team who incidentally won the 2013 NCAA Championship and is very close to my heart, a beard is happening.

[The coaching staff vowed no shaving
for the remainder of the season lest they lose.]

May we all be hirsute come April...

-- ADDENDUM 2 --

[March 1, 2014]
 
Rat farts. Team lost. Beard stays.
There is time left yet for redemption.

 
-- ADDENDUM 3 --

[March 26, 2014]

Aforementioned team went on seven-game winning streak.  
Apotheosis of beardage?

 
-- ADDENDUM 4 --

[March 28, 2014]

Persistence of beard hangs in a delicate balance.
Tonight, aforementioned team plays highly adversarial state rival team in
NCAA Tournament to advance to Elite 8.
Whatever the outcome, it remains unclear how the plight of a fledgling mustache can wend its way into the intricacies of March Madness…

-- ADDENDUM 5 --

[March 30, 2014]

Pressure's off.
State Rival Team proves its mettle and gives my guys the boot.
All that’s left to do is a grow a regionally appropriate Fu Manchu,
and maybe go hang out at the Flying J Truck Stop on I-65 South.

...In the end, it's good to know that I am like most other people in that I have vestigial memories and random thoughts. So while the connection to Project Mustache is tenuous at best, at the gym yesterday it occurred to me that the blow-up auto-pilot from Airplane! the movie
was the spitting image of my dad 25 years ago.

He really looked sharp in that uniform.

Surrre You Were Playing 'Grand Theft Auto V'...

Stumbled across this at www.ask.com...

I cannot help but read the asker's explanation of his question at the bottom, and become giddy at the human condition.

Take Life By The Balls

Sister, I'm No Poet

William Carlos Williams’ minimalist work of early 20th century literature titled This Is Just To Say is considered a piece of found poetry. The story goes that Dr. Williams* left his wife a note that later he published, which the American literati deemed a classic. I love the work of Dr. Williams but in today’s world of incessant communiqués delivered willy-nilly on touch screens and discovered instantaneously—or ignored and acknowledged later—it seems by the law of large numbers theorem we are bound to accidentally produce something akin to this particular poem. Something which doesn’t necessarily convey a profundity, nor which is particularly artful. 

My recent text to a friend might fit these two criteria (not profound but found, and certainly not particularly artful). So, in spite of their mundane topics, are the samples below more alike than antithetical?

This Is Just To Say   

by William Carlos Williams (1934)

This is just to say
I have eaten

the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which

you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
 

This Is Just To Text You

by Waarlowe (2013)

This is just to text you
that I am pinching a loaf
and it got me to thinking about
how many loaves I've pinched today.
I have pinched a total of five loaves,
all completely healthy and firm loaves, too.

One loaf was delivered at home this morning,

and then the second loaf came along at Panera.

Back at home I pinched a late afternoon loaf after feeding the dogs,
and myself.
(I watched them loaf around in the yard and then... guess what they did?)

Then I found myself in the evening at a different Panera where, by golly,
I pinched a loaf!

So now it's 11pm and I find myself pinching the conclusive loaf of the day—
or at least I hope so.

What does all of this mean?
Three loaves came into the world at home,
while forty percent of my loaves were set free at a place where they sell...
loaves of things!
Also, not one of these loaves was pinched at a strip club.

Sent from my iPhone

 
******************************************

*William Carlos Williams was a practicing physician.
 

"HE ORT" (The Worst Day)

Throughout elementary and middle school, each person in my class was forced to come up with a story for the Young Authors program. It had prizes, which I never won. So I wrote at least eight of these terrible things.

My eighth and final attempt was wrought in rebellion. I decided to ditch the languagey part of storytelling and make a picture book. Basically a 72-frame comic strip. Surely my peers
—the rightful judges of this contest—would appreciate not having to actually read anything else forced upon them in the halls of Westport Middle. Consequently, I produced the only book I cared to keep for prosperity on my bookshelf. But it didn't win shit either.

While it bore the dazzlingly original title The Worst Day, it became known by my sister and I as "HE ORT" because most of the construction paper lettering fell off.

Because I wrote it in February of 1989, I was extremely pleased by the subsequent release of one of my favorite films of all time, Falling Down, which screened in the winter of my senior year of high school (1993). I won't say my little book was exactly a crafty portent of the movie, but, you know, there is a shotgun and a briefcase in the movie poster.

So here's a story from the mind of a healthy 13 year-old, who may or may not have known what S&M stood for (see penultimate page) at the time. Maybe that part was portentous.