I had planned my whole week around watching the first Cher TV show, I couldn't wait to write about the sequins. Instead, I've decided that it's time to make a statement about mustaches; the situation has gotten out of hand. Then I can talk about the sequins. Actually, the two aren't as far apart as one might suppose.

Mustaches, back in the early 1960's, were "hip" - hip in the sense that they were pretty rare. I'm not talking about old beatniks, or the Yankee styled old salt. . . I'm referrring to the occasional bartender, or rock musician who would sport one of those long, droopy David Crosby ones that started to appear with frightening regularity along with the general lengthening of hair. I'm trying to remember just how much Sgt. Pepper had to do with this; with some dismay I think all four Beatles wore mustaches on that LP cover (I can't be sure because the album is - I'm pleased to note - nowhere to be found in my house), which may mean that this record had more to do with ruining visual style as well as musical taste than we had thought. Maybe the sociological implications are heavy; perhaps it has something to do with wars, industrial revolutions, unemployment, radical politics. I seem to remember hearing that around the turn of the century men all had mustaches. All my great uncles in those sepiatoned photographs did; maybe it was just Eastern European immigrants. But what has this to do with advertising agency art directors? Doctors . . . rock musicians from Ringo to Ron Mael (who, with that absurd Charlie Chaplin mustache has helped to make Sparks one of the most, if not the most visually offensive groups in all of rock and roll; with those fake English accents ... such effete posers I have never seen) .. . policemen . . . hairdressers . . . men from all walks of life have mustaches these days, and I simply cannot understand why.