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What do you call a November fund-raising activity in which you grow a mustache to raise money for a men’s health issue? Movember.
ADAM GARONE is my new cult hero. He has supplanted Jim Halpert, the comically subversive salesman from The Office. Insomuch as Garone is a real-life overachiever, and Jim is a fictional TV character, perhaps I’ve gone in a useful direction. Jim is still to be admired for the way he makes merriment and finds levity within the dreary cubicles of Dunder Mifflin. But Garone has done something even better. He found a way to make prostate cancer awareness . . . fun.
Garone’s plan was hatched in Australia on a Sunday afternoon in a Melbourne bar. It was 2003. He and his mates were downing Victoria Bitters and chatting boozily about everything and nothing. After four or five beers, the boys got to wondering: What styles from the 1970s never recycled back into the mainstream? Why, macramé and moustaches, of course.
Macramé held no sway for the fellas. But moustaches——that was something you could literally sink your teeth into. They rounded up 30 brave and foolish men (Garone’s description) and held a mo’-growing party. Prizes were given. And an odd tradition was born. The next year, Garone got a charity involved: the Prostate Cancer Foundation. He handed the foundation a check for $55,000 after that year’s “Movember” party.
Mo is Australian slang for moustache. Movember is so named because the facial follicle incubation period takes place during November. Movember is the male version of a breast cancer walkathon——but without all the pink ribbons. The final gala party where all mos are judged is held in, duh, a bar.
The Movember movement is becoming epic. Mo parties in Australia and New Zealand raised $1.5 million in 2005; $8.5 million last year. This year, the momentum expanded to the United Kingdom, Spain, Canada and the United States. Official Mo parties were thrown in New York, Aspen, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. Our local host was downtown’s Bondi Australian Bar & Kitchen. The bar itself raised $13,000 for prostate cancer research, says Bondi COO Michael Cameron. And Garone estimates when the accounting is done, 133,000 cheesy moustaches worldwide will have helped raise $18 million dollars.
Astounding. The money and the growth are even more amazing than Garone’s whimsical bar chat turning into a full-time job. The cofounder and director of the Movember Foundation describes his job thusly: “I travel around the world and encourage men to grow moustaches.”
WE HAD TO GET INVOLVED. A San Diego MOgazine team was formed. We were seven strong and backed by several Mo Sistas——an official Movember title designating those who help the cause but are gender-challenged at growing upper-lip hair.
We were a motley crew. But we quickly became a band of brothers. We often had to duck for cover, and watch each others’ backs as the criticism and catcalls rained down upon us.
Magazine sales rep Jim Ely went for the 1970s Marlboro Man look. “The mo experience was interesting and frustrating,” says Ely. “People stopped looking at me and focused on my mo——like a caterpillar had come to life on my face. About 80 percent of people told me they didn’t like it. And a lot of people thought I looked like a ’70s porn star. What amazed me was how many people know exactly what a ’70s porn star looks like.”
Ely and our office assistant Eloy Chouza agree——the best all-time mo belonged to flamboyant Queen front man Freddie Mercury. Chouza wearing a mo looks like Sasha Baron Cohen being Borat. Very nice!
Sales rep Steve Jahn says pro pitcher Rollie Fingers has the best-ever mo, hands down. For the Bondi gala party, Jahn came out swinging, choosing to go as ultimate fighting champ Chuck Liddell. Circulation manager Sam Ruiz——who joined the mo team on his first day working here——got into personality and danced on the ceiling as singer Lionel Ritchie.
Rookie Internet sales rep Greg Hazelhofer has FHGD (facial hair growth deficiency). But he bravely strove to portray mustachioed actor Sean Penn. “Movember was tough on me,” says Hazelhofer. “I had to endure a lot of ‘Hey, you have dirt on your lip,’ and ‘Did your mom just make you some Ovaltine?’ ”
Sales rep Rich Clark picked a classic: Tom Selleck, circa Magnum, P.I. Clark thinks the mo could someday make a real comeback. “In some circles it already has,” he says. “It just takes a committed few who are man enough to stand up to the ridicule.”
Perhaps, however, those who want to bring back the mo should themselves be committed. In the third week of my My Name Is Earl mo, I eyed the razor every morning. My bushy, salt-and-pepper ’stache filtered everything I ate. It tickled, and it itched. In the course of a month, I estimate my mo needed to be scratched or stroked at least 9,417 times. I nearly went to the Bondi party with a razor tied to a string around my neck.
AS BORAT WOULD SAY, the Bondi party was “Great success!” The San Diego MOgaziners won first place in the team competition. We made magazine covers with our celebrity faces on them. Then we cut out eye and mo holes——so our actual mo seemed to appear on the faces of the celebs. The tale of our creative artistry is soon to become mo legend, no doubt. Yes, this may come across as vainglorious. But mos and ’tudes always ride together.
About 300 sleazy, unshaven revelers showed up at Bondi for the mo affair. Head mo Garone was on hand——he’d just flown down after attending the San Francisco Movember party the night before. He reports there were 750 on hand for the New York party. Bondi marketing director Michelle Whitehurst has attended four Movember gala parties in Melbourne and Sydney that she says attracted 4,000 to 6,000 mo worshipers.
General consensus is that Movember is going to blow up in the United States next year. “I’m seeing the same interest and excitement here that was in Australia when this started out,” says Garone. He’s getting corporate sponsorship inquiries, and this year landed Playboy, Quicksilver and Philips.
“When you look around at all the fund-raising done for women’s health issues, it makes you wonder why there isn’t more done for men’s health issues,” says Garone. “Movember is really helping fill a void.” (Nearly a quarter-million U.S. men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year.)
Garone didn’t invent creative fundraising. But his $18 million beer-sopped idea has been hitched to a rocket. Former Chargers punter Darren Bennett was at the Movember party. His son, Will, has muscular dystrophy. Bennett has hosted fund-raisers for MD——golf tournaments, silent auctions and the like. He says the success of Movember is getting him to look at alternative ways to drum up research funds.
Movember has also moved me to seek similar inspiration. And that’s why every Sunday——and any other day I can find the time——I intend to hang out in bars, letting the alcohol loosen my tongue and mind, Garone style.
I’ve got this idea involving Mohawks and the month of March, but it’s not something I’ve fully fleshed out yet . . .
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