Saturday, February 9, 2008

Moustachioed men and me

Growing facial hair has never been so popular and I got in on the trend Friday.

The Charlotte chapter of Mustaches for Kids held its final 'Stache Bash to celebrate the end of the guys' 30-day growing period. Over the past month, about 80 men around Charlotte have been recruiting 'stache sponsors and soliciting donations to benefit donorschoose.org, a nonprofit that provides funding for teacher-submitted projects to improve North Carolina public schools.

I had the honor of judging the best and worst mustaches during the party at Madison's uptown.

These guys went all out. The costumes were hilarious, the guys were able to laugh at themselves and it was all for a good cause. Some of my favorites: the guy who dressed like Goose from "Top Gun," an Erroll Flynn lookalike and, of course, Magnum P.I.

But there could only be one sweetest 'stache, and that honor went to Rd Covington, who -- in a point of contention -- bent the rules of corner-to-corner conformity and grew his whiskers down the sides of his mouth. Appropriately, he was dressed as Ben Stiller's character from "Dodgeball."

There was also a prize for the less hairy guys: worst mustache, won by Josh Waters. His was so faint that it was hard to see from more than a foot away. He worked it, though, by dressing as a prepubescent child.

What was most impressive was the amount of money raised in such a short time. The original goal was $25,000. That was then upped to $30,000. The final tally? $51,000. It should also be noted that the new Charlotte chapter's first foray into fundraising has pushed it to No. 1 in the national organization. Way to go, guys.



Rd Covington (left) and Josh Waters, best- and worst-stache winners.



Michael Szarowicz (aka Borat) raised the most money of all the guys -- more than $7,000.



Kevin Croke won for best costume as Lt. Jim Dangle from "Reno 911."



My fellow judges.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ashley Kosikowski is the bomb!

Anonymous said...

Who is she?

Sarah Aarthun said...

Ashlea is the one on the right. She's a reporter for WSOC.

Derwood said...

It was a great event, we raised a ton of money in a short time and yes, we had some very nice looking judges!