>>After touring southern Wisconsin yesterday, returning my daughters to school, I caught up on three NFL football games on the recorder and noted a disturbing trend. Three of the league's most recognizable quarterbacks -- Aaron Rodgers, Eli Manning, and Jay Cutler -- are now wearing mustaches. Not that they are especially hirsute mustaches but given the popularity of the NFL it's inevitable that the look will trickle down. The male look of the 1970s may be coming back.
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>>You've been warned.
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>Do I sense a grain of antimustachism here? You may need to politically rectify your attitude, boy...

Guilty as charged to antimustachism. They were the fashion in my youth and I wore them for a while myself. Now they are the symbol of male looks in the 70s, and not in a good way. Picture Mark Spitz, Tom Selleck, and any number of porn stars. And most college students. I wasn't alone. (Young women were similarly hirsute, but I better not go there).

The funniest time was when my daughters were young. I had moved back to Evanston, where I had a student banking account in college, and reopened an account. The account specialist who helped me, a woman in her golden years, went in back and returned cackling in delight at the photo they still had from when I was 18. She gave me a copy and Tricia thought it was hilarious. She magneted it to the file cabinet in "Emily's office" and Allie spotted it not long after. It wasn't the mustache that delighted her, it was the hair on top. "Emily, come quick! Dad had hair!" Kids.