The Citizen, 2013-03-14, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 2013. PAGE 5.
According to the Guinness Book of
World Records, an Indian gentleman
by the name of Ram Singh Chauhan
has the longest one in the world (4.2 metres if
you can believe it). Groucho Marx had a rather
splendid attachment and the Oriental mystery
solver, Charlie Chan was very well endowed
indeed. Hitler? Well, it’s no wonder the man
was nuts. He had just a stubby little tuftlet
about half the length of your pinky finger.
Get your mind out of the gutter, madame –
we’re talking about the moustache here; AKA
soup strainer, cookie duster, Fu Manchu,
handlebar, walrus, toothbrush, pencil and,
Canada’s contribution – the lush and luxuriant
Lanny McDonald Stable-broom Special.
Growing a moustache is an unrepentant man
thing and it’s an altar that males have been
genuflecting before probably since we bunked
down in caves.
For no good reason, as far as I can see.
There are few physical affectations more
useless than a moustache. Aside from storing
toast crumbs and frightening small children,
they’re not much good for anything.
But don’t try to tell that to Selahattin
Tulunay. He’s a plastic surgeon who practices
in Istanbul. Tulunay specializes in a surgical
technique called ‘follicular unit extraction’
which is a fancy way of saying he re-seeds
body hair. He plucks healthy hair follicles
from one place – say, your back – and replants
them in an arid zone. Say....your upper lip.
This does not sound like an operation many
North American males would line up for, but
Tulunay does a brisk business in the Middle
East, where moustaches – particularly big,
bristly, walrus-style moustaches – are serious
symbols of virility.
The procedure is painful, unsightly and
takes six months to show results. Oh, and it
costs about $7,000 per upper lip. Mister
Tulunay is booked solid for months in
advance.
According to Andrew Hammond, a
journalist based in Saudi Arabia, having a
huge, substantial moustache is, well, huge, for
Arab males. “Most Arab leaders have
moustaches or some form of facial hair. I think
culturally it suggests masculinity, wisdom and
experience.”
The converse is also true. A few years ago
militants in Gaza kidnapped an opponent and
inflicted on him the most severe and
humiliating punishment they could devise,
short of death. They shaved off his moustache.
You want to smear a Middle Eastern man
with the worst spoken slander possible? Don’t
belittle his politics, make fun of his belly or
cast aspersions on his family. Just look him in
the eye and growl “A curse be upon your
moustache!”
When I was a teenager I cursed the place
where my moustache wasn’t. Long after my
pals had sprouted facial hair the area between
my nose and my upper lip remained bare.
I rubbed it, I scrubbed it. I slathered on
gobfuls of hair restorer and even shaved it, for
an Old Wive’s Tale said that the surest way to
make a beard come in thick was to scrape it
with a straight razor to ‘stimulate the follicles’.
Not.
Every morning I rushed to the bathroom
mirror and pored over my facial pores looking
for anything, just one small sprig or
microscopic frond, that would indicate my
manhood was on the way. Nothing.
Now, decades later, I am trying to appreciate
the fact that somebody up there has a divine
sense of irony, if not humour. I finally have my
coveted moustache – it’s no Lanny McDonald
but it’s respectable.
Meanwhile, – the top of my head is as bare
as a Sylvania 60-watt bulb. Good one, God.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Male vanity – its inhairited
Last week Canada lost one of its most
enthusiastic flag-wavers in Stompin’
Tom Connors. No stranger to local
folks, Connors, who was profiled in The Ballad
of Stompin’ Tom at the Blyth Festival in 2006,
died at the age of 77 last week at his home in
Halton Hills.
Connors, who died of natural causes, left a
note for his fans on his website. Anticipating
that his time was coming, Connors planned for
the note to be launched on his website after he
passed away.
It is the best Canadian feel-good note since
Jack Layton’s legendary words of 2011. Most
will remember Layton’s closing lines, “My
friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better
than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So
let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And
we’ll change the world.”
Connors will be remembered as a man who
loved Canada and who loved his fans, an image
that his final words to his fans only helps to
advance.
“It was a long hard bumpy road, but this
great country kept me inspired with its beauty,
character and spirit, driving me to keep
marching on and devoted to sing about its
people and places that make Canada the
greatest country in the world,” Connors’ note
read. “I must now pass the torch, to all of you,
to help keep the Maple Leaf flying high, and be
the Patriot Canada needs now and in the
future.”
These are certainly strong words from a
strong man. At a time when Canada is
embraced as one of the great cultural mosaics
of the world (a salad bowl as opposed to the
melting pot of the U.S.) he is urging Canadians
to be Canadian and remember all that this great
country offers us.
Connors resisted the notion that artists and
musicians had to travel outside of Canada to be
successful. He was opposed to the idea that
Canadian-born musicians may win a Juno
while conducting the majority of their business
in the U.S. He took his protest to
unprecedented levels when he returned six
Juno Awards he had won. He also retired from
music for 12 years as part of his protest of the
system.
He returned his Juno Awards along with a
letter that read “I am returning herewith the six
Juno Awards that I once felt honoured to have
received and which, I am no longer proud to
have in my possession... I feel that the Junos
should be for people who are living in Canada,
whose main base of business operations is in
Canada, who are working toward the
recognition of Canadian talent in this country
and who are trying to further the export of such
talent from this country to the world with a
view of proudly showing off what this country
can contribute to the world market.”
He said that until the Juno nomination
process resembled his vision, he would not
stand for any further nominations and he would
accept no more awards.
Connors is also the man who told the CBC to
“shove it” just a few years ago during a dispute
over a television special.
While many of Connors’s songs flirted with
light subject matter and Connors never took
himself too seriously, his views on being
Canadian are essential to who he was and who
he felt every other person in this country
should be.
Connors will be remembered as a man who
was at home both making us feel good about
being Canadian and telling us to shove it if we
were ever envious of another country’s way of
life.
A true Canadian
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Iwas struck by something today (being
Monday) and it was more than just the
exhaustion that perpetually follows that
whole incredibly bad “Spring Ahead” daylight
saving time being on a Sunday thing.
Do you remember the name Eric Clinton
Kirk Newman?
I didn’t.
Despite the fact that day after day I read
stories about him, I didn’t recall his birth
name.
The name he came to use, when he changed
it to further his career, however was a bit more
identifiable.
Do you remember, readers, the name Luka
Rocco Magnotta?
For those of you who need a refresher,
Magnotta is on trial right now for several
charges including first-degree murder,
committing an indignity to a body, publishing
obscene material, criminally harassing Prime
Minister Stephen Harper and members of
Parliament and mailing obscene and indecent
material.
He has previously pled not guilty to all the
charges and, as per his request, will be tried by
judge and jury instead of just a judge,
I remember, as a young school student,
being ushered into the Park Theatre in
Goderich for a special showing of Bowling for
Columbine.
The film took a hard look at the firearm
culture in the United States and what led up to
the shooting at Columbine High School.
For those of you who have a hazy memory
of the event, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
entered the school and killed a dozen
individuals with semi-automatic handguns,
shotguns and a carbine.
For me, this was a shocking event.
While the rest of the world may remember
the defining violent act of my generation as
9/11, for me it will always be the shooting at
Columbine.
Anyway, we watched the movie which asks
the question, since the duo went bowling
before they gunned down their classmates, did
bowling have anything to do with it?
There are all sorts of ideas as to why Harris
and Klebold did what they did, from drug-
induced aggression from anti-depressants they
were prescribed to Marilyn Manson’s music to
violent video games. None of that mattered to
me at the time, however.
While the event struck me in a way that
nothing else really has, the movie struck me as
well.
It was the first time that I saw a division
between the United States and Canada.
As a child I travelled to Florida many times
and was warned of the dangers of wandering
off or going somewhere my parents didn’t
know because things were different down
there, or so I was told. I just never believed it.
Until I saw Bowling for Colombine, I didn’t
know the facts that Canadians had so little
violence and were so trusting that they left
their doors open made us completely different
than our neighbours.
It filled me with a sense of pride to know
that we literally had a fraction of a percentage
of the gun violence that our U.S. neighbours
had.
Lately, however, that division seems to be
getting blurrier and blurrier.
Magnotta is a perfect example of that.
While Canada has had its share of massacres
in the past, we tend to keep our violent
disagreements on the ice. Magnotta, however,
allegedly murdered someone in cold blood,
according to early reports, and mailed his body
parts to various locations.
There was a time, shortly after body parts
started appearing from the body of Lin Jun, a
Chinese national studying in Montreal,
when everyone was talking about the case.
Everyone knew the names of the people
involved and everyone was up on what was
happening.
The case permeated our lives. You couldn’t
turn on a computer, a television or a radio or
open a magazine or a newspaper without
seeing some kind of reference to the situation.
Now, however, Magnotta is the bottom of
my recommended reading list on several
website, after stories about “being ready for
Daylight Saving Time.”
It kind of reminded me of a lot of my report
cards as a kid, before this ridiculous new
curriculum nonsense and standardized report
cards came out.
The most common things teachers said
about me was some variation of the fact that,
while I loved learning and had plenty of
energy, I didn’t pay attention enough and was
often distracted or distracting.
I guess you could say that I was the avatar of
modern day Canada.
The way I see it, the entire nation seemed to
have this great wealth of energy and attention
to devote to something like the Magnotta trial
the moment it happened and in the days
following. That energy, however, is quickly
redirected the second an F-35 fact comes to
light or the Queen is ready to sign a historic
document regarding equal rights.
It is important to be informed on all issues
but I feel that, as a country and as a member of
first world countries, we’re creating people
like Magnotta who (allegedly) commit these
heinous crimes.
We’re so quick to bounce from issue to issue
that the wild and outrageous needs to be there
for a story to have any staying power.
I know that we can’t remember the name of
every victim and every criminal, but the more
we forget, the more we encourage people to try
and make us remember.
It isn’t enough for someone to be murdered
anymore to make front page news, they have to
be dismembered, or it has to be an honour
killing, or it has to be something to do with
some foreign ideal that we have trouble
understanding.
These stories need to stay on our radar. We
need to face these realities and not become
desensitized by them.
If we don’t, this will truly be a world where
every headline has to be “Man Bites Dog”
because anything else will be seen as the daily
grind.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Good energy, but a sloppy follow through