A Vacation From Myself
>> 10 September 2008
You need to watch this clip in order to understand the title of this entry:
About three weeks ago, my friend Josh M and I were discussing facial hair, and lamenting the fact that our half-Japaneseness left us severely handicapped in our ability to grow any sort of respectable beard, goatie, etc.
Long story short, we decided to have a mustache-growing contest -- just for the hell of it. I think we settled on mustaches because: 1) the sparseness of Josh's facial hair wouldn't allow him to grow a beard of any sort; 2) we are both huge Tom Selleck and Burt Reynolds fans; and 3) neither of us had filled our mistaken-for-someone-caught-on-Dateline's "How to Catch a Predator" quota for the year.
In essence, we needed "a vacation from ourselves."
(No, this was not one of those "I was restricted by the Honor Code at BYU from growing facial hair so now I am going to exercise my individuality by growing facial hair" decisions)
Needless to say, it was a hard, lonely road that we walked. Remember in Field of Dreams where Ray initially builds the baseball field and everyone thinks it's a joke, but then they realize how serious it actually is when he can't make the mortgage, and accuse him of being crazy? This was something like that. People joked during the first week, then realized that we were actually trying to grow them.
Here are the sad, pathetic results:
(Josh M - Took the Creepiness Prize)
(Me)
By Week 2 1/2, the growth of both of our faux-staches'* plateaued. In one last ditch effort to accentuate his, other Josh bought some "Just for Men" and tried to dye what he claims were "tons of blond hairs" in order to make it look thicker. A "game-changer," as one of my friends put it. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of his dyed upper lip.
The stats under what I came to term the "Faux-stache Era":
0 - Phone numbers received by women
18 - "What the hell is that??"s
8 of 10 - # of people capable of looking me in the eye during a normal conversation
3 - Number of neighborhood watch lists I was placed on
1 - Pulled over by a cop and asked way more questions than I should have been for, in his words, "no observed erratic driving behavior"
I shaved it on Sunday -- thank goodness it's over. A burden has been lifted.
*I use "faux-stache" because there's no way it could be considered a real one. Also, much like the faux-hawk, it wouldn't surprise me if a bunch of guys living at Belmont Condos in Provo started growing a faux-stache; not because it actually looks good, but because they saw some Abercrombie ad-guy with one.
About three weeks ago, my friend Josh M and I were discussing facial hair, and lamenting the fact that our half-Japaneseness left us severely handicapped in our ability to grow any sort of respectable beard, goatie, etc.
Long story short, we decided to have a mustache-growing contest -- just for the hell of it. I think we settled on mustaches because: 1) the sparseness of Josh's facial hair wouldn't allow him to grow a beard of any sort; 2) we are both huge Tom Selleck and Burt Reynolds fans; and 3) neither of us had filled our mistaken-for-someone-caught-on-Dateline's "How to Catch a Predator" quota for the year.In essence, we needed "a vacation from ourselves."
(No, this was not one of those "I was restricted by the Honor Code at BYU from growing facial hair so now I am going to exercise my individuality by growing facial hair" decisions)
Needless to say, it was a hard, lonely road that we walked. Remember in Field of Dreams where Ray initially builds the baseball field and everyone thinks it's a joke, but then they realize how serious it actually is when he can't make the mortgage, and accuse him of being crazy? This was something like that. People joked during the first week, then realized that we were actually trying to grow them.
Here are the sad, pathetic results:
(Josh M - Took the Creepiness Prize)
(Me)
By Week 2 1/2, the growth of both of our faux-staches'* plateaued. In one last ditch effort to accentuate his, other Josh bought some "Just for Men" and tried to dye what he claims were "tons of blond hairs" in order to make it look thicker. A "game-changer," as one of my friends put it. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of his dyed upper lip.
The stats under what I came to term the "Faux-stache Era":
0 - Phone numbers received by women
18 - "What the hell is that??"s
8 of 10 - # of people capable of looking me in the eye during a normal conversation
3 - Number of neighborhood watch lists I was placed on
1 - Pulled over by a cop and asked way more questions than I should have been for, in his words, "no observed erratic driving behavior"
I shaved it on Sunday -- thank goodness it's over. A burden has been lifted.
*I use "faux-stache" because there's no way it could be considered a real one. Also, much like the faux-hawk, it wouldn't surprise me if a bunch of guys living at Belmont Condos in Provo started growing a faux-stache; not because it actually looks good, but because they saw some Abercrombie ad-guy with one.
8 ideas preached:
Hah! When Arthur grows facial hair, he he lets it grow forever without trimming it, because he wants the longer hairs to cover up the sparser areas. I call it the "combover goatee".
That's not a stache. This is a stache! [Insert picture of my mustache here please.]
It doesn't look too bad actually. You should have gotten a non-weird-closeup-shot, which may have had it looking better (also, do your hair a bit, get out from in front of your messy closet, you know, class it up a little). You probably need to give it more time to ripen too, a few weeks at least. And loose the under-lip part. Do you see that on Tom or Burt? No, you do not.
josh m's close up is so chestery i love it...
I can see you and Josh M. having a similar, Seinfeld, conversation. Very funny. I agree with Ben though on the "setting"/"composition" of the photos. Clearly you were not trying to enhance yourselves for your patrons. Still I think it's a great idea to grow a whateveryoucallit and take pictures so that later, when this comes up again, and my guess is it will, then you can refer to this post and talk yourselves out of it! Know facial foliage=no chicks. No facial foliage=know chicks. Its a formula.
If you want to feel better about your facial hair, challenge Casey...
I am pretty much speechless...I guess all I can say is I'm glad I didn't have to live through it in person...
Dude you both got me beat by a mile. . . or a centimeter, or whatever length you achieved.
Hilarious.
Post a Comment