If you’ve ever seen Yoni or Jeff K, you would know that I have absolutely no chance of competing in a facial-hair competition with them on raw natural talent.  Thus, for the 2010 Cinco de Mustache event, I felt compelled to compete on ingenuity and engineering.

To the disgust of myself and my wife, I collected shavings for approximately 4 months in a plastic cream cheese jar labeled “Not Cream Cheese.”

This last weekend, I took a trip to AC Moore Arts & Crafts and bought some clay.  I fashioned a mold into that clay of a mustache that would dominate all other mustaches.

Into that mold, I poured elmer’s glue, hair shavings, 14 gauge electrical copper wiring, more hair, more glue, more hair.

This morning, the plan was to simply glue the assembled mustache on to my real mustache.  Unfortunately, the plan involved entirely too much super glue and the assembled mustache pieces proved to be entirely too heavy.  My previous experience with krazy-glue-on-skin is probably like most people’s…stick your thumb and index finger together.  Thanks to callouses, a lack of hair on your fingertips and the relative strength of your digits, it’s not that big of a deal.  I also don’t remember the glue burning like lava on contact.

A split second before squirting a liberal does of krazy glue on the mustache I wondered: “is this really a good idea?”  But not wanting to pysch myself out, I quickly brought the assembled mustache up to my lip and pressed down hard.

The first thing I remember thinking is that this was going to look really good.  Like, maybe champion-quality entry.

That thought was quickly replaced with a rising alarm about the rapidly increasing burning sensation I was experiencing between the mustache and my lip.  That alarm was then replaced with the growing realization that I was inhaling quite a bit of vapor and that my throat was starting to burn.

Not-quite-panicked, but not totally calm either, I gently tried to remove the mustache and got as far as pulling my lip about an inch off my face before giving up.  Over the next 10 minutes I was able to saw, snip and shave the ‘stache down with a combination of electric shaver, electrical pliers, scissors and razor blade.  By that time, of course, the fumes had dissipated and the burning was just a low heat and my grand mustache plans were wrecked.

The redness of my eyes is due to the fumes and pain.

There’s always 2011…