Readers Digest Mustache Linkbait

Perhaps the most shocking thing about this mustache-themed linkbait from Readers Digest is that it is the first evidence in many years that there is still a publication called Readers Digest.

Movember: Alexi Lalas

We here at Stacheforge appreciate Deadspin's enthusiasm, but it is improper to declare Alexi Lalas The Winner of Movember until all the completed staches are compared!

Still, though, that is one seriously manly facebrow.

Stachebrawl

Stacheforge endorses Stachebrawl: "One dad. Two sons. Three mustaches against man-cancer." This is a project by friend-of-the-site Chris Plehal.

Movember 2012

It's back! Movember!

Rex Velvet

Seattle has a new super villain named Rex Velvet. Stacheforge officially endorses Mr. Velvet's sense of style.

 

Jess McCarter, San Francisco, CA

Nice stache, Jess! Much like the finest marble statues emerge from rough stone slabs, this fine mustache emerged from the ugly full-face beard which immediately proceeded it. This mustache lived a sadly short but glorious life of one day, on Halloween 2011, when Mr. McCarter shaved his beard into this lip sweater as part of a halloween costume, where he dressed as Humbert Humbert. Yes, that Humbert Humbert.

After his friends associated that mustache with that character, he felt as though he could not keep it. He made the shameful decision to shave of that beaut, but he reports that "my lady friends were highly disappointed that I didn't rock it for a whole week". Many times, after ladies enjoy a mustache for a week, suddenly they decide they love it and want to see it grown out for a month. It's a slippery slope for the ladies, one which ends in a world full of sweet, sweet lip whiskers.

Jess is the co-founder of Easy Creole catering company in San Francisco, California. Anyone who is nearby can find them serving at locations around the city, and everyone else can follow them on Twitter. Easy Creole serves the best creole food in the city, bar none. No word whether the other co-founder has a mustache.

At Stacheforge, there are no beards allowed. Jess was nervous about that rule when he submitted the second picture of him sitting in his vintage Austin Mini, but the stubby pricklers showing on his face in this picture hardly constitute a beard. If anything the face seen in this second picture is a face which cries out for a mustache.

Mustache Film Festival

Stacheforge readers will be interested in the Mustache Film Festival to be held in Maine this week.

Move over, Cannes. Maine will be playing host to its first-ever international mustache film festival, part of its annual pageant that celebrates the bristly facial hair. 

The festival set for March 30 in Portland will feature short films with storylines that involve mustaches or a main character who wears a mustache, said Nick Callanan, head of No Umbrella Media, a video production company organizing the event. 

The idea for the mustache film festival, believed to be the first of its kind, grew out of an annual mustache pageant held locally to benefit arts and cancer research organizations, he said. 

This year's 2012 Stache Pag will feature contestants wearing all manner of mustaches, from handlebars to horseshoes, Callanan said. There are also the walrus and Fu Manchu styles, he said. 

"It's just about men expressing themselves," he said.

Mustached Americans seek tax break for grooming products

As Congress pays lip service to Americans seeking tax reforms, an underrepresented constituency has a hairy proposition -- getting lawmakers to approve a $250 tax refund for mustached Americans.

Members of the American Mustache Institute traipsed up to Capitol Hill Monday -- while lawmakers were out of town for President's Day -- to seek a tax break for men with facial hair, who (AMI-authored studies show) are 38 percent better-looking than the rest of America.

But demonstrating that the organization is not biased, AMI Chairman Aaron Perlut, who claims to personally spend "somewhere between $1,000 to $1,500" annually on grooming products, said anyone with hair care costs would be eligible for the $250 annual tax refund.

Marc Sikkes, London, England

Nice stache, Marc! This mustache was grown for Movember 2011, as part of a team of men who work at the British Ministry of Justice, in the Legal Directorate. Cheerio! Their team name was the Dashing Tashers of Justice, but no word on how many tashers of justice were dashing. No, we have only this picture of Marc, comfortably reclined before this stately red accent curtain, with his carefully coifed faux bedhead and a lipbrow remarkably similar to his eyebrows.

Marc says that, as a lawyer, he entered into tense negotiations with his fiance, regarding ownership of his upper lip. She insisted that the exclusion principle in real property law gave her eminent domain over his facial hirsuteness, while Marc maintained that nuh uh, it was his face and he would grow whatever he wanted on it. This legal defense became known as The Castle Face Doctrine (because a

man's face is his castle), or colloquially, "Sikkes Said So". Nevertheless, despite having won the legal case, Marc succumbed to an embargo his wife placed on their private behavior, and he negotiated to give her artistic control over the mustache.

His fiance was aiming for "a 1940s look, like Clark Gable." For reference, here is a picture of Clark Gable -- judge for yourself the uncanny resemblence.

As always, send pictures of your sweet mouth hat to submit@stacheforge.com!