Mustache: Endgame
David Wolinsky, stachin' it (not creepy)
David: This is it. The end of Mustache Road. Wednesday night, 38 mustachioed people (and mustachioed in spirit) gathered at the Globe Pub (or were at least there in spirit) for the final meeting of 826CHI's Moustache-A-Thon fundraiser. Goodbyes were said. E-mail addresses were exchanged. It was pretty emotional.
Last week, Steve predicted I’d take home the gold in an unexpected dark horse maneuver. He was wrong. Sorry, everybody, but I just didn’t have what the judges were looking for. Actually, it isn’t really clear what, if anything, they were ever looking for. 826CHI Associate Director Kait Steele told me last week’s winner at the Blue Stem was largely determined by a drunk guy not affiliated with the competition wandering over to the judges and boorishly voicing his opinion. Who can compete with that kind of random sway? Not me. Maybe Steve can; he took home the Moustache Tiara, but I’ll let him tell his rags-to-mustache story.
What we all did receive, though, in the spirit of grade-school bullshit, were honorary paper-plate awards. I took home the paper plate for “Mr. Pink,” a presumably back-handed nod to the creepiness of both my mustache and Steve Buscemi’s in Reservoir Dogs—and pretty much every other movie he’s in. “Yeah, it was that,” Judge Ryan told me as the proceedings were dying down. “But he’s also always cool in all his movies, too.” I’ll choose to focus on the latter in my autumn years, as I look fondly at the paper plate hung over my space-mantle.
Unlike Mr. Pink, however, I actually raised some money for charity. To date, it’s around $80.25 (yes, somebody donated a quarter). Remarkably, Judge Ryan donated a crisp dollar bill to my mustache as last night started, which brings us to the elephant in the room. We haven’t done a hard-sell to anyone in our office or otherwise, but if you are so inclined it isn’t to late to do so through Tuesday: You can PayPal funds directly to our mustaches, which are then benefit the 826CHI writing center. Outreach Coordinator Patrick Shaffner told me this has been the most-donated-to Moustache-A-Thon yet, netting about $6,500 so far. Not bad for a three-year-old fundraiser. Although I imagine Steve will paint a different picture, for me, this was never about “winning” or “losing.” It’s always been about the journey.
This brings me to today, post-Moustache-A-Thon. I’ve decided to keep my mustache for reasons I haven’t yet discovered. It’s an instinct I’m choosing to trust. It certainly isn’t laziness—it’s more like a feeling I want to chase. But before I find out where this thing is taking me, I know I need to give it a nickname.
So far, the top three are:
- “The latchkey kid”
- “Primetime”
- “The summer hombre”
Actually, those would all be excellent names for Steve Buscemi movies, too. So at least they won’t go to waste.
Steve: Right up until two hours before last night's presentation, I was seriously dreading it. I had ideas, but none of them was grabbing me. At first, I wanted to write a song on the guitar about the opposite of growing a mustache, which to me is a mustache growing a person. I wrote a melody over the weekend, but by Monday I was realizing that while it sounded good to me, it really didn't lend itself to singing (too bluesy and not enough chord changes). Also, I have always had a problem writing song lyrics, so I was struggling to, you know, accurately convey that I was writing a humorous song about a mustache that grows a person. "My mustache grew a person / That person is me," somehow, just didn't seem fitting.
Other than abusing SongLyricGenerator.com, I was at a loss, and time was running out. Tuesday night, while tossing-and-turning in bed because of this mustache stress, I remembered a good friend of mine had once written a song called "I Wanna Make Love To Your Grandma." Grandma would become a mustache, I'd splice in a few lip-scarf references, and I would be golden—I already knew the melody and 99 percent of the lyrics. I headed to work, confident I would only need about an hour to "compose" myself.
Only another buddy of mine turned me on to an even better idea: See, there's this Mickey Avalon song circulating the Internet, and I think the best I can do is point you below to the video, and we'll pick up afterwards (warning, EXTREMELY NSFW words):
Welcome back. Yeah, it's pretty raunchy. (If you couldn't watch, the song basically consists of two rappers going back-and-forth about how much their dicks are better than "your dick.") The phrases "My dick" and "My stache" aren't that far off. Even better, the verses are super fun to write, and easy to boot. Win win… win!
First order of business: I used Audio HIjack on my computer to rip the audio from the YouTube clip. There's only one part of the song that doesn't contain words, and it's right at the beginning. So, I then had to go into GarageBand and figure out the exact tempo of the track (it's actually between 99 and 100 beats per minute; argh!) so I could cut out the intro and loop it until I was satisfied. That took, roughly, an hour. Then it was time to write 16 verses. That took, roughly, 15 minutes.
My tiara-winning performance is on video below, but sadly a little got cut out from the beginning—plus, it was really dark in there. So, for the rest of you all, here's the lyrics. Imagine them awkwardly spurted:
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
My mustache, is big and strong
Your mustache, ain't too long
My mustache, is flavor of the week
Your mustache, is flacid and meek
My mustache, freaky mc nasty
Your mustache, big ol' patchy
My mustache, thick and bushy
Your mustache, like my great aunt's tushy
My mustache, makes people exuberant
Your mustache, pre pubin' it
My mustache, boom shaka laka
Your mustache, castrated Chewbacca
My mustache, gets better with age
My mustache, puts Magnum to shame
Your mustache Judy Dench, Dame
My mustache, high IQ
Your mustache, Blink 182
My mustache, flys first class
Your mustache, sexual harass
My mustache, pencil thin
Your mustache, Dr. Quinn
My mustache, clean and simpler
Your mustache, Hitler
My mustache, trimmed to perfection
Your mustache, can't get an erection
My mustache, not too squashy
Your mustache, eats Jello with Cosby
My mustache, like a drink of Cherry Cola
Your mustache, virus, ebola
My mustache, wins a tiara
Your mustache, sionara
I also want to second David's call for donations with my own. So far, I believe I have earned $5 (from the very generous Genevieve Koski, of The A.V. Club fame). But there's still time to donate.
David and I started this blog cuz we were bored and wanted to write about stuff. In the process, I've interviewed Mike Ditka, angered some white supremacists, and mastered some one-hand puppetry. I'd call the experiment a success.
