Here's the buzz: At least one competitor used a banned substance at the World Beard and Mustache Championships last month in Carson City, Nevada.
In a sport where Vaseline provides more of an edge than creatine, one top-ranked competitor in the Goatee Natural division was later found to have used mustache wax -- more of a controlling substance than a controlled substance but illegal nonetheless -- to help keep every whisker shiny and in its proper place.
Rather than causing a tousle trying to determine a real winner, first-place trophies were presented to both competitors. (There was no splitting hairs in the Goatee Freestyle, won by Jurg Biland, a butcher from Switzerland.)
PHOTO: NY TIMES
"We handled it like they did in the Olympics with pairs figure skating," said Phil Olsen, a bearded, 54-year-old lawyer who organized the event. Olsen's side gig helps decide such matters -- he is a settlement conference judge for the Supreme Court of Nevada.
Judges included the mayor of Carson City, Ray Masayko (mustache); the chief justice of the Nevada Supreme Court, Deborah Agosti (no mustache); a Mark Twain impersonator named MacAvoy Layne (beard); Miss Nevada 2003, Christina O'Neil (no beard); and Danny Rotter, the Carson High School senior class vice president (the president, apparently, had other obligations).
Held for the first time in the US -- previous championships were in Norway, Sweden and Germany -- this festival of facial hair featured 123 contestants from nine countries who competed in other categories like Imperial Mustache, Wild West Mustache, Full Beard Freestyle and Sideburns.
Official programs (US$3) included a ballot for spectators to predict champions in each category. The winner received a T-shirt, US$100 and two plane tickets to Berlin, where the next championship will be, in 2005. Guidelines for each category were strict. Rules of the Fu Manchu mustache, for example, read: "Areas other than the upper lip or up to 2cm past the corner of the mouth and downward along the side of the chin must be shaved. Ends long and pointing down."
The overall champion was Karl-Heinz Hille of Germany, 60, representing the Berlin Beard Club and Imperial Mustache wearers everywhere.
Each look was accentuated by a costume that reflected the spirit of the individual style. Hille looked razor-sharp in an 1890s-style silver tuxedo and top hat with white gloves and a cane, and one Wild West hombre rode into town wearing a 10-gallon hat and a six-gun (or was that a hair-dryer?) dangling from his holster.
"Beards can be a sign of great character; think of Abraham Lincoln, Santa Claus and Jesus Christ," said Olsen, who is co-producing a DVD documenting the event with Firelight Films of Tahoe City, California, to be released tomorrow.
"When it comes to sporting mustaches and beards," Olsen said, "Germans are the most competitive."
And so they came. Not just from Germany, but from Switzerland, Britain, Sweden, Norway, Italy and Hong Kong, all fit to be trimmed, their duffel bags filled with the tools of a trade necessary to groom potential champions -- shampoos, conditioners, hair spray, hair pins, gels, foams, combs, tonics, brushes, curlers (curlers?), picks, razors, scissors, rubber bands, shaving cream, compact mirrors and, yes, mustache wax.
That morning, some of the biggest names in bearding marched past 40,000 spectators at the annual Nevada Day parade. Among them was Ted Sedman, president of London's Handlebar Club, who took first place in the Fu Manchu category.
Contestants from the host country included Bruce Roe, the first American to win a trophy at these championships, as well as the six-time beard champion of the Iowa State Fair, Gary James Chilton.
Chilton, 60-something, took it on the chin-whiskers in Carson City, finishing fourth in the Full Beard Natural division. While his 1.04m salt-and-pepper beard hid his kneecaps, nothing could hide his displeasure.
"Yes, I was disappointed," said Chilton, a celebrity in his hometown of Sioux City, Iowa. "I didn't wear a costume, and that probably hurt me. But just based on sheer length, I should have won at least third place."
Chilton, whose beard recently celebrated its 26th birthday (that's how long it has gone unshaven), describes a man with a beard as "open-minded, nonjudgmental and a free spirit."
He describes a clean-shaven man as "someone who has been told what to do." He added, "The kind of man who walks around and says, `No, my wife wouldn't like that.'"
And a man with a mustache?
"Well, that's more of a compromise," Chilton said. "The wife wouldn't allow a full beard, but a mustache? Well, OK, honey."
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby