Manolo for the Men

Manolo says, behold the power of the photoshop makeover!

And, what would motivate such dramatic potential changes? It is all about the Benjamins!

Richard Rodriguez, the gang member who was kicked in the head by an El Monte police officer after a televised car chase, has filed a $5-million legal claim against the city. But before he appears in court, he’ll possibly be undergoing a serious makeover.

Rodriguez’s attorney, Nick Pacheco, has suggested that his client ditch his thuggish look (seen in his mug shot on the left), in favor of a more conservative — albeit less eye-catching — visage (seen in the photoshopped version on the right).

In the booking photo, Rodriguez’s head is shaved, and the name of his gang hangs over his lip. Tattoos climb his neck. In the “after” rendition, he’s wearing a black suit with a metallic gray tie, neatly combed hair and a lush mustache.

Pacheco hopes Rodriguez’s makeover will allow the jury to be sympathetic to Rodriguez, who claims to suffer headaches and blurred vision as a result of his arrest.

“People get past looks when you put on a suit and your hair is grown,” said Pacheco.

Even with the “lush mustache” Mr. Rodriguez is no George Clooney, but still, his lawyer is essentially correct: the power of good grooming (and the necessity of avoiding facial tattoos) is perfectly self-evident.

Manolo says, here is the idea whose time has not come.

I admit it: I like guys in makeup.

Not just any guy, though. I’m a sucker for those sexy, bird-flipping bad boy rock stars in their skinny jeans, smudged kohl eyeliner and just-rolled-out-of-bed hair. Think Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day or Good Charlotte twins Benji and Joel Madden. Better yet, picture a deliciously sinuous Scott Weiland from the Stone Temple Pilots, for whom I’ve always nursed a distant crush.

But my guy in makeup? Well, why not. According to Jane McKay, senior makeup artist with M.A.C Cosmetics, he wouldn’t be alone.

“There is a trend emerging from the rock world that’s filtering to the street,” says McKay. “When you look at people like Adam Lambert from American Idol, he’s androgynous and willing to wear makeup and shows men that other men look quite good.

“Men in eyeliner is not as bizarre as you’d think. In evolution, a lot of animals have a dark rim around their eye. It’s just evolved from nature.”

Evolved from nature, just like prehensile tongues and using long sticks to extract termites from their mounds.

The entire trend towards the man makeup is misguided and unlikely to endure. Indeed, the Manolo agrees with Guardian writer Paul MacInnes

A man wearing makeup is like a toddler with a mortgage. It’s unnatural and likely to end in disaster.

Good haircuts, clean teeth, proper skin care, and the moderate fitness regime, this is all the average man requires to look his best.

Now sporting a full beard, darker than his blond locks, Britian’s Prince William is looking excedeedingly kingly—and it also happens to emphasize his eyes (royal blue?). But will he continue the bold style when he takes the crown? As far as Izzy can tell, the last leonine King of Britain was George V, who ruled from 1910 to 1936.

In a bit of nose-in-cheek marketing, Burger King is selling a fragrance called “Flame,” which it describes as “the scent of seduction with a hint of flame-broiled meat.” The fast-food chain has set up a special website for the whopper of a body spray, which features clichéd scenes of romantic enticement, including the hairy-chested, incredibly creepy King character reclining in front of a fire while wearing nothing but a strategically placed blanket (an homage to Burt Reynold’s near-nude appearance in Playgirl?). If the site doesn’t bring a smile to your face and make you exclaim “Ohhh yeaaah” in your best imitation of Barry White, you must be a vegetarian.

Izzy hasn’t inhaled Flame yet, but if it smells as advertised, you can be sure it is exactly the wrong thing to wear when trapped for weeks in a lifeboat with a starving lecher.

While political corruption is a dog-bites-man story, according to the New York Times the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama has been “charged in [an] 101-count indictment with taking over $230,000 in cash, clothing, and jewelry.” Could this be an alleged crooked pol Izzy can sympathize with?  Not if the mayor’s ill-gotten gains include that painfully loud Burberry-esque shirt.  He does have great hair, though.

While recently reading Piers Brendon’s excellent new book The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, Izzy came across this fascinating digression on how the imperial British moustache largely originated in India:

Also reflecting the customs of [India] was the growth of “the Moustache movement.” Some British officers had begun to sport hair on their top lip during the Napoleonic Wars. They did so, largely, it seems, in dashing imitation of coxcombical Frenchmen, who took the Spanish view that an “an hombre de bigote” was a man of resolution, their whiskers evidently being “appurtenences of Terror.” The mode became imperative in India, where beards were deemed sacred but the moustache was a symbol of virility. . . . So in 1831 the 16th Lancers hailed with delight an order permitting them to wear moustaches. . . . In 1854 moustaches were made compulsory for European troops of the Company’s Bombay army and they were enthusiastically adopted elsewhere. . . . 

Moustaches were clipped and trimmed until they curved like sabers and bristled like bayonets. Their ends were waxed and given a soldierly erection. Imitating warriors, civilians too stiffened their upper lips: Frederich Engels mocked Anglo-Irish aristocrats with “enormous moustaches under colossal noses.” . . . For different reasons sailors and parsons eschewed the fashion but it was jealously guarded by the beau monde. Edwardian tuskers rebuked servants who aped the “fancy hairdressing” of their betters. Nothing would be permitted to devalue these military insignia, which achieved their apotheosis in the crossed scimitars of Lord Kitchener and gained iconic status in the famous Great War recruiting poster. So the moustache became the emblem of empire, roughly coterminous with the Raj but largely derived from it—much as the Romans derived the habit of wearing trousers from the barbarians.

The tradition of warriors choosing to be proudly hirsute lives on in the U.S. Special Forces, whose soldiers are the only American troops permitted to wear facial hair (and not just so they can blend in with locals abroad). It’s hard to quantify such things, but sometimes it appears that an outright majority of Navy SEALs wear mustaches. Of course, such facial hair is also a badge of honor, allowing the elite to stand out from the ordinary rank-and-file.

In honor of the belated release of Guns N’ Roses’ latest album, it’s worth remembering why no one regretted Axl Rose’s disappearance from the collective consciousness. Most men, even the most aesthetically clueless, know that the world does not want to see a vast swath of denuded pinkness.  And is it Izzy’s imagination or is that cross trying to get as far as it can from Axl’s chest?

Prince Charles meets the Sultan of the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta. Notice how the Sultan’s decoration is barely visible in the midst of his technicolored top, while the Prince’s poppy, well, pops.

Whether or not this Obedient Sons suit is made of wallpaper, curtains, or drapes, Izzy thinks it would be wunderbar were it from the designer’s Von Trapp collection.

There are only two ways to wear an open collar under a jacket: 1) firm and erect, 2) limp and flaccid. Someone, please get Mr. Clooney some Viagra for his shirt.

Born a slave, the nineteenth-century abolitionist Frederick Douglass was not only one of the best orators in American history, he was also one of the most dashing—whatever it takes to captivate an audience. Izzy would love to see someone resurrect Douglass’ romantic hairstyle, a sort of a combed-over afro.

Werner Herzog, the obsessive director of obsessives real and imaginary, a filmmaker whose career began with his stealing a camera from film school, serves as a stark example of a gentleman who ought to have kept his moustache.  That horizontal strip of hair flatters a long face and de-emphasizes a mountainous nose.  Given that one of Herzog’s chief fixations has been the nature of manliness, it’s all the stranger that the director of Fitzcarraldo deforested the wide swath between his nose and mouth.