Pippa and I strolled down the the dining hall at Princeton Seminary as is our habit on Fridays, and as we were finishing up our meals, we heard an announcement from the podium at the front of the hall. It turns out that — unbeknownst to us — today was Burt Reynolds Day at PTS, which means that today the seminary held its annual Best Mustache Contest (a spectacle that will live in my memory as comparable only to the year I was in St Jean-de-Luz for the Fête de Thon and the coronation of the Tuna Queen). The panel of three judges awarded prizes in the categories of “Best Effort,” “Newcomer,” “Most Creative,” and overall “Best Mustache” to contestants and their named mustaches (names such as “The Big Red Wave,” “The Finish Line,” “Fred Sanford,” “Dirty Jersey,” and (our favorite) “The Feminine Mystique” — a contestant in the “Best Effort” category who, sadly, did not win).
Pippa wondered how I would have done if they’d run that contest back when I taught here. She decided that my PTS-era ponytail would have helped “The Porcupine” make a strong showing, anyway.
I have tried many times to grow a mustache, but the best I could do has only been referred to by my family and friends as “the catfish”. Most of it only grows closer the sides, nothing in the middle.
Maybe you should add “catfish” to the Wikipedia article on mustaches — or “moustaches,” as I would have spelled it apart from passive intervention from the Oxford American Dictionary. They really ought to illustrate a list of varieties such as that one, though; I sense that I’m missing some of the subtler variations.
It might be categorized as ‘The GG”, but that one is a shaved style, this one is all me. I’d love to have something more full and Zappa-esque, but no luck here.
I think I have always spelled it mustache, I have a serious attitude problem with ou, and Canadians adding it to everything! 😉