After the Malarkey
It's still early days, yes, too soon to draw any conclusions or make any decisions, but at this moment I cannot deny that I miss my moustache. Two days on, my shorn face doesn't look right, even though it's the face that stared back at me from the mirror up until six months ago. Has a bridge been crossed? Is there no going back? Am I a facial hair guy now? (Not referring to the imperial that I've sported beneath my lower lip for most of the last dozen years.) Early days, early days. Or, in the words of the supervillain Deadshot from Keith Giffen's brief, brilliant Suicide Squad, "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it." (Quite coincidentally, because I've loved that quote since first I read it seven or eight years ago, Deadshot, real name: Floyd Lawson, sports a pencil moustache underneath his costume's full face mask.)

I'm not including the snapshots taken on Day 49 (a week hence), because my mother chose not to focus the X-700 during that series and the photographs are quite blurry. I'm assuming this was an artistic choice on her part, not simple negligence. (Those wishing to see those photos may find them on the Farcebook.) For the photographs posted below, taken on Day 54, the end of the Magnificent Moustache Malarkey, I angled the X-700's flash by forty-five degrees. This made the shadows cast by the flash much less harsh and also more accurately captured my hair color; with the straight-on flash, my hair appeared much darker than true. The downside of this accuracy is that the pencil moustache is not as distinct as it would have been with the artificial darkening of the previous flash setting. That's a shame, because the pencil worked much better than I'd thought it would. Behold!










And now, the moustache wax.







The "cop" moustache, seen by society as reasonable, even though it is almost intolerably dull.









I was confronted with a choice. I could experiment with either the pencil moustache or the toothbrush moustache, but not both. No offense to Charlie Chaplin, but I went with Errol Flynn.









And a little bit of pith helmet-style fun with the straw Trilby I've been using to defend myself against the onslaught of the Accursed Sun.





And then, the party was over. Six months to the day after the beginning of the Banzai Beard Bonanza II, the curtain fell on the Magnificent Moustache Malarkey.







I used not to have a widow's peak, but with my receding hairline I'm beginning to look like Doc Savage. Mike Wilson, the Man of Bronze?














And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the Magnificent Moustache Malarkey, the epilogue to the Banzai Beard Bonanza II: Bonsai's Revenge, a bit of tomfoolery five years in the offing, a six-month run of biological process and grooming as performance art. I hope you enjoyed the show; myself, I had more fun than was allowed by law in Salazar's Portugal. Thank you for your interest, for your comments, and for your kind attention.

What does the Japanese word banzai mean? "Ten thousand years." In Western culture, we'd render the meaning as "long live." Long live the Bonanza, long live the Malarkey, long live my beard, long live my moustache. Banzai.

Banzai!

The Rebel Black Dot Songs of the Day
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, "You Gotta Go!" from A Jackknife to a Swan (T.L.A.M.)

Montag, 28 Juni
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, "Over the Eggshells" from Pay Attention (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary:

"I don't give a fuck about the apple cart,
I'll upset everyone."