The Golden Globes this year were precisely the kind of mess I usually find tiresome, but in these extraordinary times, as we all celebrate the grim anniversary of one beautiful year spent living in a global pandemic, Sunday night’s offerings were truly just the ticket. Every celebrity who was nominated for something either did the most or the absolute least, and in the case Jason Sudeikis, a sad man who did the latter, it worked.
Sudeikis won a Golden Globe for his performance in Ted Lasso, a TV show that I’ve never seen, perhaps because I don’t have Apple TV, and also because I cannot focus on anything other than old episodes of Drag Race. This is lovely news for Sudeikis, who could probably use a bit of nice news, seeing as Olivia Wilde has apparently left him for Harry Styles. The news of his win also seemed to come as a bit of a surprise to Sudeikis, who did not have a speech planned, and was dressed like a sad, recently-heartbroken man working through the Kübler-Ross model of grief, lingering somewhere in between depression and acceptance.
Many people who think they are funny on Twitter made jokes about how Sudeikis was stoned or maybe drunk, or just like, had woken up out of bed and was forced to sit on a Zoom call with a bunch of famous people that he hasn’t met before. Also, he was Zooming in from London, where he’s filming the second season of the show that he won the award for, so there’s a time difference at play. Regardless, Sudeikis looked like the hottest sad dad at the bagel shop, a retired hypebeast wearing quietly expensive sweats and a hoodie he bought on a whim, standing in the back by the exit and hoping that no one notices the thin line of white skin where his wedding ring used to live. The outfit and his general mien contribute to this sad midlife crisis chic, but also, it’s the mustache? Please, men. Consider a mustache.I’ve been informed by a colleague that the mustache is integral to the plot of Ted Lasso, and that the titular character, played by Sudeikis, is a recently-divorced or separated man experiencing a midlife crisis that results in him going to England to coach football (soccer). I love it when life imitates art! But mostly, I love it when a man of a certain age adopts a mustache because mustaches are the superior facial hair choice, and I am not ashamed to say it.
My love for the mustache knows no bounds. Gardner Minshew II, a football player who looks like a 43-year-old single dad in a porno, has a lewd little mustache that skews towards irony, but might actually be genuine. In February 2020, shortly before everyone went inside their homes, the CDC argued that beards were no longer sanitary for coronavirus reasons and that if men wanted to have facial hair, they should consider any variety of mustache instead. A mustache is better than a “fuck-it-I’ve-given-up” beard, but it is in the same family. A mustache indicates you may have given up, but not entirely; the ‘stache still has to be trimmed so that its little hairs don’t brush the top lip, and the sides need to be maintained in order to avoid a Yosemite Sam situation. But other than that, a mustache is a beautiful friend to have on your face, more formal than a beard, and slightly more rakish. You want to ride a mustache but you’d rather just pet a beard; though sex with Jason Sudeikis is not something I see in my future, I’d argue that the strength of his mustache and its power is enough to convince any man to just give it a shot.