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.