An important part of any office environment is making sure that your employees feel loved. At least that’s what employees keep telling the biggest-of-the-wigs. Therefore, the company I work for made good on this idea last Friday with their annual "Employee Appreciation Day." It was a fiesta themed romp about the building and grounds involving karaoke, American Gladiator style jousting (both clearly traditional to Mexican Culture), horseshoes (I repeat…), colorful paper decorations, piñatas, word searches and crossword puzzles (they spelled the Mexican President’s name wrong), Mexican folk music, and Mexican food as fine as those in Vermont, who probably don’t know what Mexican food is, could muster. I, of course, responded to this día del aprecio del empleado by dressing as Pancho Villa. Granted, the serape was a bit warm for the ninety-five degree weather, but I felt that the fake machine gun rounds I wore as a sash and the slightly upturned ‘stache and sombrero worked as the ensemble with or without added traditional Mexican Blanket.

I would like to take this opportunity to give mad props to any man who rocks the facial hair successfully because A.) It itched. I could attribute this to the fact that it was a stick on, but judging by the fact that if I go a day without shaving my legs I feel like I’m walking on two working ant farms, I think not. B.) HOW DO YOU DRINK ANYTHING?!?! In traditional Mexicano style, we had coffee and donuts for breakfast… I’ll leave that without further comment. Point being, I kept dunking the ‘stache! Eventually I settled on a straw to consume my bountiful brewed beverage, but I haven’t often seen many a male exec running around with a bendy straw. How, men, HOW?! Is there some sort of upturned lip trick? I tried that, but I looked like a Largemouth Bass on collagen. Not getting the image? Picture Courtney Love. No, no pre-rehab… there you go. I then tried to extend my face, hoping that perhaps I might increase the surface area in betwixt my faux fuzzy and my lips. I’ll be damned if the ‘stache hadn’t packed it’s travelin’ bags and moved right on down my face with his good friend, Mrs. Upper Lip. (‘Stache is only friends with chicks, you understand.)

Needing further research, I turned to cartoons. I remember as a young upstart that Yosemite Sam, although I don’t recall him drinking much of anything, used to do this angry flip thing with his panhandle. You know the groove; he kind of twitched it back and forth with his lip. I tried this, but it made the already sketchy glue pad start to come loose. While I don’t think many a man has this particular issue to contend with, I also don’t see it helping with the drinking problem.

In order to solve this conundrum I (just now) decided to channel the spirit of Pancho Villa himself. If I were a bandito with a bad attitude who had not only a donkey with a bad attitude, but also a posse with a bad attitude, how would I avoid coffee in my face fur? The simple answer would of course be that I wouldn’t care. I’m a fucking bandit! Bandits don’t give two shits what’s in their ‘stache; it’s what’s in their stash that counts! On the other side of the peso, however, a bandit seems an intolerant sort and therefore would have naught to do with crap in their beards, ‘staches, Fu Manchu’s, etc. Especially one who has to pose for wanted posters lookin’ mean. Can you look mean with half a D.D. Munchkin and a Mocha Latte splashed across your mug? (I’d like you to note that we did NOT get Latte’s. It was regular coffee and crappy at that.)

The answer of course, since you’ve had time to ponder, is FUCK NO you can’t look mean like that! You can look full like that. Or dirty like that. By this time, I feel like drinking from the complexities of this issue. But that’s IT! No, not that sentence, that isn’t it. This is it (coming up in the next sentence…)!!!! I’d already answered my own question! [See paragraph three, last line… “I also don’t see it helping with the drinking problem.”] As noted in the previous reference, I used the common phrase “drinking problem” as an unwitting double entendre, just like a legendary swimmer and Olympic Gold Medalist used it in ’88! Oh wait, that was a double backward gainer with a step out, not an unwitting double entendre. OUT OF MY HEAD A.D.D.! *Deep breathing.* To summarize the previous five or six sentences that you shouldn’t have had to read, Pancho Villa was a drunkard and a lout. He wouldn’t have gotten any bevies on his facial ‘fro because he was drinking cheap tequila straight out of the bottle! (Exclamation mark of discovery!)

This calls for some field-testing…