Jack Knox
Slightly Skewed
"Honey, where's my skinny leather tie?"
"You left it in the downstairs closet."
"How about my Frankie Say Relax T-shirt?"
"You left it in the 1980s."
Time to turn back the clock, boys. Going retro, gonna grow me a mo.
So are a dozen guys in my office. All this month, we're putting down the razors, sprouting moustaches for the annual Movember prostate cancer campaign.
This is not new territory, just long unexplored. Back in the'70s and '80s, everybody had a moustache: Elliott Gould in MASH, Lanny McDonald on the Leafs. Burt Reynolds, Tom Selleck, Frank Zappa, Hulk Hogan, Freddie Mercury, Lech Walesa, Harold Snepts, the Village People, your mother-in-law.
Think of it as early body art for a time when only sailors and convicts had tattoos.
Indeed, history is full of famous soup strainers: Albert Einstein, Wyatt Earp, Kaiser Wilhelm, both Karl and Groucho Marx. Even Gandhi had a non-violent little tickler. Nietzsche looked like someone glued a cocker spaniel to his face.
Not today. People don't trust facial hair. All our heroes are clean-shaven.
They might cover themselves in more ink than a drunken pressman, sport more piercings than a knife fight, but their faces are smoother than a politician. (Speaking of which: Canada hasn't had a prime minister with a moustache since Robert Borden in the 1920s. Jack Layton is doomed.)
Bad guys, on the other hand, always have a sinister growth above the lip: Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Snidely Whiplash, your mother-in-law.
But now, at least for November, moustaches are cool again. Not since 9/11, or perhaps Girl Guide cookie season, has the workplace rippled with such energy, the staff speculating on how facial hair will change their co-workers.
Consensus is that our business editor will resemble either the Marlboro Man or a porn star, maybe both. Jeff will still look boyish, even though he is 93 years old.
Andrew is hoping for a Rollie Fingers/Yosemite Sam handlebar, but anticipating a tent caterpillar. One of the advertising managers has joined in, but he will have to learn to dress like an unmade bed if he wants to fit in on the newsroom team.
Some will have to hack back the weeds before planting a new facial garden.
Our music writer is already hairier than a bar brawl. We have a copy editor named Bob who has prepared for his first shave since the 1980s by taking a machete to a beard that normally measures somewhere between Russian Revolutionary and Angry God on the Bristlemeter. None of us, including Bob, knows what he looks like under there.
As for me, who knows, my moustache might take longer to come in than this year's strawberries.
Someone suggested I go back to a full beard, though when I shaved off the last one a very pretty woman said "Losing your beard made you look a lot younger." That made me blush and squirm until she added "A lot uglier, but younger." (You know what's really underrated in men? Jowls. But I digress.)
Someone else suggested Chia hair, or some of that spray-on crap for the top of my head.
It was also mentioned that I should have consulted my wife before committing to Movember, but considering my other sins, her getting mad about a moustache would be like Tiger Woods' wife ditching him for leaving the toilet seat up.
Anyway, it's for a good cause. Movember is about men's health in general and prostate cancer in particular. It's a disease that affects one in six men at some point in life. It isn't foreign to our workplace, nor yours (unless you're a nun).
Last year, Movember raised $7.8 million for Prostate Cancer Canada. Check it out at ca.movember.com.
Not too late to join in. Don't forget your puka shell necklace, or the Miami Vice white sports jacket.
