July 23rd, 2010 / 1:26 pm
Random

Mustache mediation

Some say Leo D’s “Mona Lisa” was him in drag, that he was gay. Some say gay is the last chapter of evolution, that we reach a point where ppl. get to make love without the threat of babies, which leads to child support, etc. An effeminate man is often deemed sophisticated, at least in our liberal-progressive artsy business. What used to get you beat up in the playground is now considered “interesting,” a word used in place of a compliment. Testosterone is boring. Toblerone is fattening, so much for semantics. So Duchamp turns Mona back into Leonardo, or at least signifies his convoluted wants quicker, while turning himself into Rrose Sélavy. Look at the poetry of Rrose, how it looks like Prose.

The only time one should be allowed to have a Dali print on their walls is during college, or in the immediate 2 -3 months after college. After this 2 – 3 month grace period, one will be considered to have bad taste. When an artist acts geniusy, it means it’s not. Speaking of geniuses and mustaches, one can’t but not invoke Adolf — whose ‘stache was perhaps the original Dirty Sanchez (which is horribly racist, but we are talking about shit and Hitler). Duchamp was an artist who turned to playing chess; Adolf was an artist who played chess with real people. Chess’s one lesson is this: there’s always a perfect place to hid a pawn. Speaking of assholes, the Dirty Sanchez is a sexual favor in which the sodomizer adorns the upper-lip of his subject with a mustache fashioned from the latter’s fecal residual matter generally coaxed out during said sodomy. The ploy is rather Duchampian: the imposition of value over a passive subject/object.

Like anything ironic, an Ironic Mustache is a mustache that ambivalently points towards its cultural precedence with affected detached superiority (though I’m much more impressed with Ironic Pubes, see Trichotillomania, a fashion practiced by this contributor during former OCD-ridden years). On the left, a young artist gives a nod to Chuck Close; the difference being the latter spent about 1000x more time on his painting, as supposed to a quick photo. It’s been argued that smoking has less to do with nicotine addiction than oral fixation, sucking in the apparitions of need, those wisps of gray air moving upwards.

There is a tragedy in all this mustache business: girls who have them. This hopeful one can flash amorous gang signs till midnight but no guy wants a prick, or a prickle, during courtship. Her handmade heart is an aviary for gone birds, she alone in her room wondering why the boys don’t call. God, like Duchamp, like Biff in the gif, draws in a mustache to humiliate its host.

Life is cruel. Hitler was here; Chuck Close is paralyzed; girls who just want to be loved are being loved in the wrong orifice; and guys who just want to love are too blinded with dissuasion by the mouth’s uni-brow. We are shallow, but it only takes one inch of water to drown. When this girl’s hollow heart folds into a prayer, prom night will be over, and she will be speaking in a language we do not understand.

22 Comments

  1. marshall

      chen stroker

  2. Tony O'Neill

      jimmy

      fantastic post. i just shaved of my own mustache. i still have it on the pic on my new book, so now i can read my own stuff on the train and people will assume i’m not me, and i wont seem like a self-obsessed asshole.

      i grew a big old handlebar, and then tried to shave it into a pencil, drunk, after watching eric roberts’ turn in ‘star 80’. i took too much off one side, and my only choice was to go for a hitler. i chickened out, and went back to a bald upper lip. the hitler (of the toothbrush to give it its proper name) really fell out of fashion after that whole holocaust thing. the only person i can remember sporting one in living memory is the keyboard player from sparks.

      i dont understand the logic of ironic mustaches, though. mine was definitely done with the purest of intentions, and meant to be taken at face value.

  3. Steven Augustine

      “Wearing a mustache renders making fuck-you speeches perilous. Opens him to ridicule unless he remains within a narrow range of gestures and poses and modes of speech. People tittering, laughing uncontrollably, before you’re halfway through it. It wasn’t always thus.”

  4. Igor

      Two years ago campus was full of beards, now it’s mustaches. Whatever.

      But I’d like to see someone bring back the Hitler. That’d be balls.

      BTW, Frida rocked that stache good.

      Good post Jimmy.

  5. marshall

      Do girls/guys not like kissing people with facial hair?

  6. marshall

      Not sure why I wrote “girls/guys.” Maybe meant “people.”

  7. magick mike

      i am both gay and mustachioed
      does that mean i am the future
      i only read half this post so i’m not sure

  8. Janey Smith

      Me, too. Wanna make out? (Love your blog, by the way.)

  9. gene

      michael jordan.

  10. Guest

      chen stroker

  11. Tony O'Neill

      jimmy

      fantastic post. i just shaved of my own mustache. i still have it on the pic on my new book, so now i can read my own stuff on the train and people will assume i’m not me, and i wont seem like a self-obsessed asshole.

      i grew a big old handlebar, and then tried to shave it into a pencil, drunk, after watching eric roberts’ turn in ‘star 80’. i took too much off one side, and my only choice was to go for a hitler. i chickened out, and went back to a bald upper lip. the hitler (of the toothbrush to give it its proper name) really fell out of fashion after that whole holocaust thing. the only person i can remember sporting one in living memory is the keyboard player from sparks.

      i dont understand the logic of ironic mustaches, though. mine was definitely done with the purest of intentions, and meant to be taken at face value.

  12. Steven Augustine

      “Wearing a mustache renders making fuck-you speeches perilous. Opens him to ridicule unless he remains within a narrow range of gestures and poses and modes of speech. People tittering, laughing uncontrollably, before you’re halfway through it. It wasn’t always thus.”

  13. Igor

      Two years ago campus was full of beards, now it’s mustaches. Whatever.

      But I’d like to see someone bring back the Hitler. That’d be balls.

      BTW, Frida rocked that stache good.

      Good post Jimmy.

  14. Guest

      Do girls/guys not like kissing people with facial hair?

  15. Guest

      Not sure why I wrote “girls/guys.” Maybe meant “people.”

  16. magick mike

      i am both gay and mustachioed
      does that mean i am the future
      i only read half this post so i’m not sure

  17. Janey Smith

      Me, too. Wanna make out? (Love your blog, by the way.)

  18. gene

      michael jordan.

  19. magick mike

      Janey Smith Are You A Real Person. I like your blog, i like your bookshelf. I think maybe I will make a blog post with pictures of my room because I like my room. I washed my comforter today, though, and I need it to finish drying so I can put it on my bed before I take pictures.

  20. magick mike

      Janey Smith Are You A Real Person. I like your blog, i like your bookshelf. I think maybe I will make a blog post with pictures of my room because I like my room. I washed my comforter today, though, and I need it to finish drying so I can put it on my bed before I take pictures.

  21. Igor

      Personally, I like how it feels.

  22. Igor

      Personally, I like how it feels.