MOVEMBER: NO MO FO MOI

Man I used to love growing a mustache in November.  Growing a stache would cost nothing and took little effort to harvest; and this was such small gesture in the grand scheme of joining my mates in the international rally for the cause and the research for prostate cancer in men.  Movember used to be mod and a la mode.  I loved Movember so much I even blogged about it!  (See my blog entry Sunday November 14^th, 2010, The Hirsute of Happiness.)

But now Movember has changed.  Movember has adverted, not only to beards, but to other causes (mental health issues among men being one example).  I am in agreement for raising money for men’s mental health concerns (after all, I do busk, on a regular basis for the Canadian Mental Health Association and the Schizophrenia Society of Saskatchewan);  I am just not in agreement  that issues other than prostate cancer be linked to Movember.  Movember has become thinner than Errol Flynn's mustache.  Movember has become abstruce and just another macedoine of causes, all of which I care about, none for which I want to grow a mustache. 

Oh, and I do have a history of growing a mustache!

I had a mustache in the 70’s as I attended university.  There was I, in my t-shirt and jeans and hiking boots, sporting a black and thick mustache, rolling stogies with Shakespeare and Chaucer, and banging around on my black 750 Honda.  

I had a mustache throughout the 80’s.  In fact, my kids those days, never knew me without one.  My stache was the envy of the other dads in the neighborhood (this is how I remember it).  I stood tall with my stache while I mowed the lawn, trimmed the trees, and hauled rubbish to the dump. My mustache added to my roll-up-the-sleeves working man persona   

I had a mustache in the 90’s when I taught high school English.  I cut quite the literary figure with my always-needing-a-haircut do, my sports jacket buttoned over my t-shirts, my ripped Lees recycled from my university days, and my black steel-toed work boots.  By design, I projected the stereotypical English teacher, in similar costume to that of my university days, but certainly more polished in presentment.

When the century turned, I minified my mustache to the bare skin, growing it back only when the Movember movement began.  Each sweet Movember my workmates and I styled and waxed our obligatory staches, transmogrifying and cosmeticizing ourselves into the good, the bad, and the ugly for everyone in the cause.  Man, do I miss that Movember mafficking amongt the other mustachioed contestants!

Alas, but soup-strainer Movember is no mo fo moi, no more experiencing those imaginary sex symbol mustache movie moments, as in the ilk of  Errol Flynn (Captain Blood), Clark Gable (Gone With the Wind), Burt Reynolds (nude centrefold for Cosmopolitan), and Tom Selleck (Magnum and Quigley).  (Australian actor, Errol Flynn and Australian setting, Quigley Down Under remind me that I've kept my self-mand not mention my didgeridoo in this blog:)

And what has all this rant to do with busking?

As a social entrepreneur, the thirty days of stache hath November is personal essay of a common cause that I once shared amongst the mobros.

As a buskologist it is a commentary of a not-so-projected image for one designated male month of hirsuteness.

As a busker this rant is a necessary confession … that these days in this Movember , I am but a nudnik, a cranky busker abrogating myself not to compete and join in the grow-bro cookie-duster camaraderie … abrogating myself only to squinny at the porn Selleck staches of others.