Medal of Mustache Awards

The Medal of Mustache awards.

 

          In honor of the prostate cancer charity Movember (that’s Mustache November for those of you out of the loop).  I’ve decided to do a follow up to my popular inaugural mustache post to kick off my blog.  As many of you may now be aware, men with mustaches face discrimination in this country every day (Unlike the middle east where the mustache is held up on a pedestal).  I’d like to bring light to some pretty impressive mustache displays in our country’s great history and recommend them all for the inaugural Medal of Mustache award.  

          First I’d like to start out with what will be a little known courageous stache representation that probably went largely unnoticed because you all were too busy reading a yahoo news article about Justin Bieber’s weak stache (more on that later).  I have worked with this man for the past couple years and he is a true great American.  His name is Kenny Brodhead and he was on the cover of Newsweek magazine in November 2012.  Kenny is everything a senior Warrant officer should be grumpy, sarcastic, and a fantastic senior instructor pilot.  

 

 

              While being on the cover of Newsweek for the extraordinary mission his crew flew is in itself impressive, what’s even more impressive in my mind is that he did so while rocking one of arguably the best mustaches the modern army has ever seen. 

If you are reading this and are unfamiliar with the discrimination that the United States military shows mustaches stop reading this now and go back and read my first blog post.

 http://wp.me/p3Xo1Z-4.

For the rest of you let’s proceed. 

Now I am not aware of many soldiers (With the exception of a few Medal of Honor winners) being on the cover of national magazines, much less an Army Medevac helicopter crew,  so it’s something everyone in our unit was very proud of… except for one.  For those of you in the Army can you guess who that was? If you said the Sergeant Major (SGM) you would be correct.  I was sitting next to Kenny when the article came out and the only thing the SGM had to say was something snarky about his mustache.  As an army officer this was a ballsy move and I salute you Kenny for your courage both in and out of the cockpit.

                   The second man may be known only to the Yoopers, Canadians, and die hard hockey fans out there.  His name is Tim “Muddy” Watters and he played in the NHL from 81-95 as a defenseman for the Jets and Kings and then briefly as coach of the great Michigan Tech Huskies before getting canned in 2000. 

What was courageous about Watters mustache is that he used to skate around without a helmet wearing that thing.  Although, I guess it did protect him a bit when he got punched in the mouth (Which is what he may want to do to me after reading this post), but can you imagine how much faster he would have been without that thing slowing him down.  I imagine his coach was giving him grief on a daily basis for his lack of hustle, but it was the 80’s and little did he know that the stache was increasing his coefficient of drag. 

Also, on a side note, his mustache probably did help him bag that babe of a wife Sally Watters, so for that we salute you Tim.

Watters was a stud on and off the ice 

                       The next gentlemen I’d like to honor is Robin Olds.  He was a famous WWII and then Vietnam fighter ace.  He was pretty much the man we all want to be, a West Point football star, Fighter ace jet pilot, and all around badass.  He even married a Hollywood movie star. But what really made him great in my mind was his blatant disregard for the military’s mustache regulations. 

He grew one hell of a mustache as commander of the 8th tactical fighter wing in Vietnam and then shortly after at the Pentagon he reported to the Air Force chief of staff at the time General McConnell.  McConnell walked directly up to him stuck a finder under his nose and said “Take it off”, to which Olds replied “Yes, sir”.  This man was quite literally a war hero in every sense, yet the one thing the general was concerned about was his stache. 

If Robin went to high school with the most interesting man in the world (The Dos Equis guy), he would have been giving Robin his lunch money every day and if they ever had to share a prison cell the most interesting man in the world would be the one who would have to pee sitting down. 

I urge you all to read more about Robin after finishing this post. I can guarantee you women will wish you had bore his children and you men will have man crushes… He’s that awesome.

Robin would have bitch slapped Iceman while giving Maverick a wedgie, before making Goose his bitch and they all would have thanked him for it. 

 

My fourth and final submission for the Medal of Mustache is Justin Bieber.  That’s right I’m putting the Beebs up there with two war heros and a NHL player and this is why. 

It took balls.  

His mustache sucked beyond belief, but you know what? That’s ok.  

Not everyone is blessed with the testosterone of a bull shark (It’s a curse). 

The Beebs gave it a shot and low and behold everyone made fun of him for it.  

Especially you judgmental women. 

How many of you pussy’s reading this tried to grow a mustache when you were 18? 

Probably none of you unless you were on the Baraga, Michigan little league team.  Those kids had full mustaches at like 12 and I can remember being intimidated in the dugout as they warmed up, “Coach those guys already have mustaches”. 

But I digress, The Beebs while subjecting himself to international ridicule raised untold sums of money for prostate cancer research by bringing light to the charity Movember.  But go ahead and hate on him, he writes his own songs, he can dance, and can play three instruments.  Yeah he acts like a douche bag sometimes (actually most of the time), but I’m sure you all would handle millions of dollars and international fame great at 16 too. You can hate on his music, but don’t hate on him. 

Oh and how much have you raised for prostate cancer awareness.  Step up to the plate haters.

Here is a group of American Heros fighting your nation’s war and growing badass mustaches in the process.  

www.mobro.co/sjones275

Prostate cancer reports more new cases each year than breast cancer yet receives about half the funding.

A quick update for my first blog,  We’re still waiting on Mark Paul Gosselar to step up to the plate and be our mustache spokesman.  I think at the very least he should grow one for Movember.  What say you people.  Send him a message and let him know what you think.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s put an end to mustache discrimination

Recently it has come to my attention that my mustache is disturbing some, most notably the women in my life. My girlfriend, mother, sister, and 5 year old niece are unanimous in their decision that it’s horrendous and makes me look like a child molester (Damn you skype).  Fortunately for me, I am in Afghanistan roughly 3000 miles away from all of them, so I really don’t care.  In fact I find it quite hilarious just how much the mustache is hated.  In the army they pretty much do everything they can to prevent soldiers from growing mustaches.  There’s actually a regulation that covers the exact specifications my mustache can be. 

(c) Males will keep their face clean-shaven when in uniform or in civilian clothes on duty. Mustaches are permitted; if worn, males will keep mustaches neatly trimmed, tapered, and tidy. Mustaches will not present a chopped off or bushy appearance, and no portion of the mustache will cover the upper lip line or extend sideways beyond a verticalline drawn upward from the corners of the mouth (see figure 1–1). Handlebar mustaches, goatees, and beards are not authorized. 

It’s a neutered version of the stache and it basically makes you look like Hitler. As an officer it’s become “frowned upon” to grow a mustache and my commander regularly informs me of his disgust with mine.  Of course all this mustache hatred only makes my resolve stronger and my mustache more amazing.  I wonder if Burt Reynolds ever received this much grief about his stache.  I doubt it, it was glorious. 

Can you also imagine one of Teddy Roosevelt’s senior Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs) asking him prior to charging up that hill in Cuba “Excuse me Sir, before we go into battle I’d like if you would please trim your stache, you see it’s a discipline thing Sir”.  He probably would have nut punched him and then charged up that hill laughing with the rest of the Rough Riders at what a pussy that guy was.  

In today’s military there’s a sect that somehow believes the length of facial hair translates into lack of discipline in the cockpit, tank, or whatever vessel you may be commandeering (Ironically our best soldiers, the spec ops community, are encouraged to grow beards).  It’s as if having an awesome mustache would somehow empower me to go out and do barrel rolls in my helicopter.  I actually got into a heated argument with a senior NCO recently about the length of my stache (Apparently he thought I looked like Rollie Fingers heading out to the mound to close a game), he felt it was way out of regulations and that I had a lack of discipline that would carry over into our junior enlisted soldiers.  

This person was so upset about my stache that he was actually angrily yelling at me before I pulled him aside and asked him to chill out.  As a side note, I love trying to explain these types of situations to my non-military friends, “You see he was yelling because he was mad at me for my mustache”.  Unless you’re in the military or play for the Yankees you probably will never understand this mentality.  But I digress, back to the judgmental women in my life.  Can you imagine if the next time any one of them got a haircut and I told them it looked disgusting and compared their haircut to a female prison inmate (no offense to female prison inmates).  I would be dubbed the biggest Jerk in the world and promptly stoned in the street.  Yet it is perfectly acceptable for women to discriminate us for our staches.  I’m not sure when this blatant contempt for staches started, but somehow I think it may be Ron Jeremy’s fault, it was him or maybe Saddam. 

 

 

Either way it’s wrong and it needs to be stopped.  Hipsters recently have started somewhat of a mustache resurgence, but I think most people secretly hate hipsters too so they may be doing more harm than good. Truthfully I really don’t enjoy this mustache, I just find it hilarious that people hate it and feel it’s my duty to bring light to the plight of the great American Stache.  I think we need a national mustache spokesman, someone with dark hair and the popularity to bring the mustache back into the limelight.  A man women want and men want to be.  His intense manliness would paralyze women and give them no choice but to embrace the stache.  Personally I think that man should be Mark Paul Gosselaar,

but until he steps up to claim the throne I’ll keep it warm for him.