Face furniture
It’s not even Movember, and yet the Spudniks have moustaches on their minds.
WE’RE fast running out of TV topics ... help! So this week, we decided to write about famous TV moustaches ... yep, we’re creative that way. In preparation for writing the column, we thought it would be a good idea looking up synonyms for the topic at hand. Because, how many times can one actually use the word “moustache” in a story without making readers squirm, right? So we looked up “Other Names and Synonyms for Moustaches” on nowthatsnifty.com ... and guess whose mug we stare at straightaway? None other than Tom Selleck, the pin-up guy for soup strainers. Ahem, you could also call it a lip toupee or snot mop. Yuck.
The etymology of the word “moustache” is complicated, according to the site, and derives from 16th century French “moustache”, which in turn is derived from the Italian “mostaccio” (14th century), dialectal “mustaccio” (16th century), from Medieval Latin “mustacium” (8th century), Medieval Greek “moustakion”, attested in the 9th century, which ultimately originates as a diminutive of Hellenistic Greek “mustax”, meaning upper lip or facial hair, probably derived from Hellenistic Greek “mullon” or lip. Too much info?
Not to worry, we proceed to less intelligent things.
Tom Selleck from Magnum PI, Friends, Blue Bloods
Indra: The best moustache on TV for me has got to belong to Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV — or simply Magnum, the dashing and super macho private eye played by the droolworthy Tom Selleck in the 1980s detective series Magnum P.I.
For those of you who are not old enough to remember Magnum P.I, think Frank Reagan from Blue
Bloods, only years younger, driving a chilli-red Ferrari, wearing a pair of white shorts and loud Hawaiian shirts (hey, it was the 80s when the fashion was questionable).)
Magnum’s moustache was thick because and black I wonder — the kind about I usually am freaked out by the crumbs of food that may be hidden between the strands. But on Magnum, the full moustache is really quite perfect – macho, manly, playful and debonair.
Here’s a bit of trivia: Selleck wanted to shave off his famous moustache before shooting Blue
Bloods but wasn’t allowed to by the producers! Guess they think he looks hot too!
Ann Marie: I hate moustaches. And I think Tom Selleck in the 80s is one of the reasons I hate them so! Having said that, however, Selleck without a moustache paints an even worse picture. So I guess, if you’re going to have to cast Selleck on TV, you’d want him to have his moustache in shipshape. Yuck.
Jon Hamm from Mad Men
Indra: OK. Jon Hamm is almost always clean-shaven as advertising executive Don Draper in Mad Men. But, the handsome fella has a perpetual stubble that’s just so sexy. It’s like his masculinity is just oozing out, you know? He’s definitely a man’s man (and a ladies’ man, too)!
Ann Marie: There’s not enough column space here to rave about the wonder of Jon Hamm. And including him in this list of stars with famofamous moustaches may be ccheating, but you certcertainly cannot argue the fafact that if a guy has to have facial hahair, you’d want him to look like Hamhamm. That designer stubble look only adds ruggedness and an oh-so dangerous appeal to the already super-duper dishy-looking star. Other celebs who wear a fine stubble include James Denton (Mike Delfino in Desperate Housewives).
Sean Bean from Game Of Thrones
Indra: Practically all the men on Game Of Thrones have large amounts of facial hair. But at the top of my list is Sean Bean who plays Ned Stark in the awesome series which debuted on TV last year. A colleague of mine commented that Bean (who was Boromir in The Lord Of The Rings trilogy) seems to have been born with a sword in hand. I think he was also born to be a warrior/hero and wear a beard and moustache. He gives Magnum a tough fight, I must concede.
Ann Marie: Yep, gotta admit that Sean Bean looks all regal and authoritative with all that facial hair. Plus, winter was always coming, so he probably needed it to keep warm.
Josh Holloway from Lost
Indra: I never watched Lost so I amnot qualified to wax lyrical about Josh Holloway. But I have colleagues who used to, at the height of Lost, drool over pictures of Holloway that I feel I know him well. Yeah, the hair on the face works for him but to me, it looks a little manicured, if you know what I mean.
Ann Marie: Sawyer oooh! How could all the men in Lost not have had more facial hair, you just have to wonder? It’s one of those unsolved mysteries of the island, no doubt. But are we complaining? Uh-uh. Sawyer, to me, was without a doubt the yummiest lost person in the universe.
Hugh Laurie from
House MD
Indra: I am so completely over Dr House frommedical drama House MD. I really am. I couldn’t take how obnoxious he was last season and so I’ve severed ties with him (not that he or anyone else cares). But, I am far from over Hugh Laurie and so I am including him on this list of TV characters who rock the facial hair look. House’s stubble goes with his crumpled shirts, illfitting jackets, sneakers and messy hair. It’s adorable. It’s sexy. You don’t agree?
Ann Marie: Ummm, so OK, I do think House is hot but it’s so much more about his personality than his style. I mean, I didn’t find him attractive in Stuart Little, but I doubt it was anything to do with his clean-shaven look there.
Eric ‘Mcsteamy’ Dane from Grey’s Anatomy
Indra: If anyone should be a poster boy for plastic surgery, it has to be Dr Mark Sloane. He’s gogot just the right amount oof facial hair to accentuate the perfect features that sit on his perfect face. Forget the fact that he is a pretend doctor in a non-existent hospital in a fictional (and by fiction I mean fairytale) medical drama. Forget all that. If I was gonna get myself a perfect face/nose/lips/derriere — I’d go to Dr Perfect.
Ann Marie: If only my doctor looked like Mark Sloane.
Ned Flanders from The Simpsons
Indra: Nose Neighbour, Mr Tickles, The Soup Strainer, The Cookie Duster, The Pushbroom – these are just some of the names given to Ned Flanders’ moustache! As annoyingly righteous as he is, I have grown to quite like Flanders. He’s moralistic and annoyingly optimistic and too happy all the time but I tend to agree with Homer who once said that Flanders seems to be hiding something under that moustache of his – literally and figuratively. He’s a conflicted guy – so girly in his mannerisms but with such a masculine moustache? There’s got to be something more.
Ann Marie: I think Ned Flanders’ moustache makes him who he diddily is, along with his goofy glasses and green sweater. There’ve been more than a couple of episodes of The Simpsons that have revolved around his facial hair – once he shaved it because Homer said he should, another time it got pulled off by a vacuum cleaner, and again when he refused to shave it because there was an unofficial ban on facial hair. I actually happen to think there’s a huge similarity between Flanders’s and Selleck’s walrus whiskers ... right?
Jason Lee from My Name Is Earl
Indra: This is one moustache I don’t dig at all. I like Earl Hickey but his moustache is really, really unappealing. It is totally unkempt, makes him look clumsy, irresponsible and even a little bit of a loser. But hey, that is the point, right? He is supposed to look like a hick. Well, apparently, wearing the moustache was harder than looking at it on the TV screen. In an interview with The Star some time back, Lee admitted to senior writer Mumtaj Begum that he regretted his own decision tomake his character wear such a bushy moustache and that he shaves it off on the very same day the shooting of a season is done.
Ann Marie: Again, here I think Earl’s moustache is spot-on. You’d expect someone like Earl to have this completely overgrown, equatorial jungle-type looking moustache. And the weird thing about it is that he still looks great! Oh Earl, I wish karma would lead you to my front door.