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Of Men and Mustaches

By Staff | Apr 22, 2008

Where to start and where to begin? The mustache is so iconic for some people it IS their identity. I have no idea where I was when Kennedy was assassinated (OK, I wasn’t born, nor were my parents probably), but i remember being at my grandmother’s house when I heard that Alex Trebek shaved his hippy lip. Waiting for the show to start with baited breath, I recall seeing a stranger take the stage … this surely couldn’t be the Trebek we’ve all known and loved?!

Even when we as humans personify ourselves through ink, we use the mustache as a sense of identity. Where would Flanders be without ‘Dr. Fuzzinstein’? What would grace redneck mudflaps if not for Yosemite Sam’s red tufts? And Cleveland Brown, “You are just the height of just-too-much-ery.”

We obviously chose to leave out a few notable mustaches for the sake of class, Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler both bore very identifiable nose-neighbors. If fact we shied away from most political figures despite some famous people having some very famous mustaches, the real Franz Ferdinand for example. Athletes are another area which could have been better represented. Wilt Chamberlain, Keith Hernandez, Mike Ditka and Rob Beck all had memorable ‘staches. No milk mustaches either.

The bottom line, if we’ve overlooked one of your favorite mustaches, we apologize. The world, and Graffiti, is just not big enough for all that hair.

— Brad Tennant

Did You Know?

Mustache!

In the strange (yet oh so real) bizzaro world of Duluth, Minn., there’s a band called “Mustache!” In an attempt to round out our coverage of the mustache, we felt it almost necessary to get in contact with these heroic rebels of rock and ask for a comment about how their name came to be. The following was the response they sent us, verbatim, and hilarious:

“We are called Mustache! Because mustaches are the balls. Having a mustache on your face is like having a second dong. Its a womb broom. We added the exclamation note because we rock that hard.”

The Mustache Curse

In March of 2003, Iraqi envoy Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri (say that five times fast!) was talking some serious smack on Kuwait’s Foreign Minister Sheik Sabah al-Ahmed al-Jabbar for allowing U.S. forces to expand in his country. He then moved from the minister to some lackey who stood up for him, saying, “Shut up, you little man, you traitor, you monkey,”shouted Ibrahim, “Curse be upon your mustache!”

Isn’t that awesome?

Alabama is strange, face facts

I think everyone knows the American south has some pretty strange laws, like in Louisiana it is illegal to rob a bank and then shoot at the bank teller with a water pistol, or in Florida it is illegal to sing in a public place while wearing a swimsuit. But Alabama has the most mustachioed law we’ve ever heard. In Alabama, it is illegal to wear a fake mustache in church that provokes laughter.

This means, that somewhere along the line, people wearing fake mustaches in church must have reached such epic portions that laws were being made to help steer people away from this popular practice.

So who wants to drive to ‘Bama and break some laws?

— Compiled by Ben Spanner