Short Stuff: Mullets: 'Nuff Said

Business in the front, you know the rest. Listen in as we discuss the lifestyle choice that is the mullet.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
This is gonna be kind of short, which Chuck and
I were just discussing. So let's go on with a long,
meandering intro that has nothing to do with anything. Chuck. Well,
maybe it's going to be short in the front and
then maybe you know what we should have done is
we should have done like two minutes and then a

(00:26):
commercial break and then ten minutes. That's a great idea.
Maybe we will the mullet of podcasting. Well, edit out
this part where we figure it out as we're doing
it to you. All right, maybe we should take a
break night man. That's an ultra short mullet right there. Alright,
so we're talking about the mullet um business. In the front,
party in the back always I thought was very funny

(00:48):
of this hairstyle where your hair is short in the
front and top and long in the back. The one
that really got me that I've never heard before. I know,
I know, it's fine, the Missouri compromise. Yeah, that way,
or that's a good one. Kentucky Waterfall. I hadn't heard
that one before either. I hadn't either. That one got me,
But for some reason, this Seri compromise really gets me.

(01:12):
It's like the hair is working it out, you know, right,
or the the teenage Judas priest fan is working in
out with his mom. So let's go ahead and level
set here and talk about our own history with a mullet.
Have you had a mullet ever? Have you? I have?
What I did? Man that there was a time, believe

(01:34):
it or not, in the eighties where the mullet was
sort of a skater haircut. It was kind of short
and spiky and then a little longer in the back.
And this was pre Billy Ray Cyrus and pre sort
of anyone calling it a mullet. But looking back, it
was definitely what you would consider a mullet, but it
was kind of like a cool skater kid haircut. Yeah,

(01:55):
Tony Hawk had one, did he? Yeah? And one of
the differentiators too, was like it wasn't short bangs on top,
like it would come over the one eye from the side,
but yeah, it would be spiky on top and then
long in the back. It totally was a mullet. I
never put two and two together like that, but no,
I still never had one. But there is a very
embarrassing picture from me from like the tenth grade from

(02:18):
a church uh whatever album? Uh annual yearbook? What are
they called when their churches? I have no idea. Well,
churches used to put these out every few years. It's
a bible and we were all in it. But I
had a mullet. This is the only picture of me
with a mullet in existence. And I was wearing a
mullet and Paisley maroon suspenders and a tie. And my

(02:43):
brother still threatens to that's sort of his big thing
he holds over my head. Attention, Scott, I'm speaking directly
to you now. We demand to see that photo. Yeah.
I will say that I got wise pretty quick, and
by the end of tenth grade. It was a short
lived haircut, and I had sort of the other skater look,

(03:06):
which was just like long bangs, right. Yeah, So so
you just lopped off the back of that tony hawk cut. Yeah,
and there was still a little hair back there. But
I mean, actually, the most embarrassing haircut I had in
high school was the that mushroom when you would shave
around your ears and the and then the bottom of
the back and just have sort of a big poof

(03:26):
on top. I'll take a picture. My my high school
haircut was a Caesar. You remember those? Oh I had
one of those for years and years and years. Didn't
look it on anybody, especially not that guy on the
original C S I series. Do you remember him? Did

(03:47):
you ever watch that? No? I never saw it. There
was a guy who was a very well he was
an old, older guy, like well into middle age, who
had a Caesar and it wasn't like accidental, like he
had a Caesar haircut and it was just an odd
hairstyle choice, I think for him. All Right, maybe we
should take a break and we'll actually talk about the

(04:07):
mullet when we come back. Does that sound good? It
sounds great. If you want to know, then you're in luck.
Just chuck shoot sho alright, chuck. So let's get down

(04:38):
to the mullet a K hockey hair that's another term
for it. Yeah. Um. Some credit the Beastie Boys with
popularizing the term mullet. Uh. That had a song in
il Communication called mullet Head where Ad Rock says, you
want to know what's a mullet? Well, I got a
little story to tell about a hairstyle. That's a way
of life. Have you ever seen him? Bullet wife. It

(05:02):
doesn't make that much sense, but it does seem to
be like the first real reference to this hairstyle using
the word mullet from what anybody can tell. Yeah, and
the term mullet head has long been around just as
a general derogatory term for a dummy, which had nothing
to do with the haircut, and they think that may

(05:23):
have come over from the British derogatory term mull head.
It's still yeah, that's what they said, but it still
doesn't explain and maybe they just aren't related how the
haircut got this name after this weird looking fish. Right, so, um,
I guess Mike d wrote a little article about what
they were talking about in that song mullet head, and
he said that the mullet fish, the mullet fish is

(05:47):
basically just like one long. It's like oblong, It's like
a drawing of a whale. Basically, it doesn't have any
kind of anything that would suggest its head is separate
from its body. And apparently when it rots, it rots
from the neck down, which kind of gives it the
appearance a bit of a mullet or people who have
the mullet hairstyle look a little bit like a rotting

(06:08):
mullet fish. I guess as far as Mike D. R
ad Rock thought, and that that's how he explained where
that term came from, but that the the use of
the word mullet had to mean kind of a dummy.
Um makes uh. Mark Twain frequently cited as the guy
who turned coined the term mullet, which is way off

(06:29):
because he was using it in that sense that you
were saying, which is kind of thick headed or or
dumb or something like that. Yeah. I think the fun
thing about this article, which we got from How Stuff Works,
was um kind of tracing back the actual hairstyle through history.
And if you go back and look, there's a great
article on history dot Com. Woman named Linda Lacina writes

(06:51):
about the ancient Greek poet Homer and the Iliad. Wripes
writes about this group of spearman called the Abantes. They
had their forelocks cropped and hair grown long at the backs.
That's a full mullet. Yeah. And and Homer wrote the
Iliad in the eighth century BC, so almost three thousand

(07:13):
years ago at at the at the latest, people were
already wearing mullets. And there's this other article um from
Dage Dazed Digital by Oliver Lunn that talks about and
I've seen pictures of prehistoric peoples that look like they
kind of have a mullet, And practically that kind of
makes sense because you you know, if you're hunting and gathering,

(07:36):
you need that hair out of your eyes, so you
might cut it off with a stone tool up front,
and then you wanted a little further in the back
to protect from sun or from rain, or to help
keep you warm. Yeah, the sun is a big one.
I suspect that's why Andre Agassi had one, because he
had to go play tennis in the sun all the time.
It was very sensitive about his neck getting sunburned. Yeah, agassy.

(07:58):
You think of mullets, You think of Agassy, You think
of Billy Race Cyrus and uh. There was a basketball
player for the University of Florida named Dwayne Schintsus that
I think he played pro for a little while. But
he was a big, tall center and he had a
fantastic boxy mullet. Did he really Okay? I always think
of um Sean Thomas Scott, Sewan, William Scott, Kristen Scott

(08:21):
Thomas one of those. Um he was in Dude, Where's
My Car? The non Ashton Cuture guy. That was Kristin
Scott Thomas, right, Um his he had a really fantastic
mullet in Old school You remember that? Oh yeah, Old Schools.
That was a good movie. Yeah, yeah it was. It
was funny. It was very funny. But he's the guy
who shows up with I can't remember what kind of

(08:44):
animal to the birthday party of the kids party as
a drunquil. As you're going that, Will Farrell accidentally shoots
himself with is this Stiffler? Yeah, Stiffler? That's right. Yeah,
he's funny. You know another movie he was in that
was underrated and underseen a is uh not Step Brothers
Big Brothers? Oh yes, is that the name of it?

(09:05):
Where role Models? That's it? That is a good movie.
You know Paul Rudd wrote that himself. Oh he did.
That was a David Wayne directed movie. So it all
makes sense. It was good all around everybody and that
was great. Yeah, he was very funny, very underrated movie.
I think should we talk about a couple of the
cool examples of mullets in in rock history? That's a

(09:27):
kind of you're about to step into some controversy, but
I'll watch you do it. Well, there's two that I
can really think of. The one this article mentions is
David Bowie. That's the controversial one. Yeah, I mean, if
you look at Ziggy stardusts in the era, he definitely
has what you would consider a mullet, but it's also
died red and he's wearing the Ziggy Stardust outfit, so

(09:47):
it's hard to call that a mullet, even though it
kind of is, well from what I saw. The people
who say it's not a mullet just basically say David
Bowie was literally too cool to have you would call
a mullet even when he was wearing a mullet. That's
their argument basically, which I mean, that's pretty pretty impressive

(10:09):
as far as the cool factor goes. That people will
defend you like that. Yeah. The other example is there
was a time in the seventies where both Paul and
Linda McCartney had matching mullets and it was really puffy
and spiky on both of them and very long in
the back, so, uh, you know, it was a look.

(10:30):
It was a look for a couple for sure. What
about Jane Fonda include that that wasn't a mullet? Really,
My mom had that haircut for a little while in
the seventies, that sort of. I mean, it's a feemullet
as anything. Did you just coin that term? Oh no,
you never heard that. Now, the lady mullet was always
called a feemullet. But I know what haircut you're talking about.

(10:52):
It was. It was sort of like a haystack with
a little bit in the back. Yeah, I guess that's
a good way to put it. Florence Henderson had one
for a little while, kind of on the Brady Bunch too.
I think of I think of Jane Fondaz is a
straight up mullet, but maybe maybe it is just a
female clute. Was such a good movie. I never saw it.
I'm not even sure what it's about. Oh man, you

(11:13):
should check it out. It's awesome. Okay, well it's a
it's a mystery. Okay, don't spoil it for me. Hey,
speaking of mysteries and movies, get this. I went back
and watched the original, uh seventies Sydney Lumette version of
Murder on the Orient Express. That was a good m

(11:33):
It is delightful. Albert Finney plays her Cuel poor Row,
and I couldn't even recognize him for the first thirty minutes.
He does such a good job. It's a it's a
really great movie. It's a it's it's on the internets.
You can find it. Uh. One final mullet wearer we
should mention is none other than President James K. Polk.

(11:55):
If you go look him up, he's certainly he has
a mullet. Yeah. And what was the name of I
want to say Maguai, but it wasn't the the bad guy. Um,
he wasn't a mohawk. I can't remember what he was.
But in the Last of the Mohicans, do you remember
the bad guy played by West Study, he had I
don't care what's you call. It was a mullet he

(12:17):
was wearing. And that was a great movie too. Uh. Yeah,
I was trying to think of a PC joke, but
I can't. Okay, we'll just leave it at that. Then. Uh,
that's it for short stuff, everybody. That's it. We Ah.
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(12:38):
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