On the 1st of the month, I shaved off the goatee I’d sported for the last 10+ months. Kelly was there supporting me, and she shed some tears as I immediately aged 15 years backward and I looked 13 all over again.

The whole point of this ridiculous effort is to get the word out about cancers that affect men. People ask about my looks, and my answer is clear: the hair above my lip is my ribbon in show of support for survivors, and my desire to find a cure and better treatment.

If you’d like to make a donation to the cause in the name of my Moustache, just click right here. Your donation is tax deductible, and will certainly be put to good use. It’s not just about giving men all across the globe an excuse to look dapperly handsome, the Movember foundation is certainly making positive outcomes a reality.

Last year, we started the City of ReMO team, and reached out to hundreds of citizens of our little city to raise just a bit over $11,000 for the cause. It was great, and we did a good job at getting the word out.
Building on what we did last year, this year the City of ReMO is a network of teams, covering over 400 people with one common goal: raising $25,000 in one month. As of this writing, we’re right on track, but check out the network’s official page to see the amount raised live: http://us.movember.com/mospace/network/remo.

This year I’ve been interviewed a lot, which has been fun! See for yourself:

• I was on the “15 minutes” of the Reno News & Review.
• The Nevada Sagebrush wrote a pretty good article, and I’m quoted there for yet another bit of immortality.
• Chris Payne from 100.9 KRZQ FM hosted us for a 15 minute PSA that aired on a Sunday morning. It was great chance to spread some information, and you can listen to it here: http://tindeck.com/listen/egej.
• Channel 2 news (KTVN) interviewed me and I was on TV three times on one day (slow news day, yay for me!). I can’t find the video up anymore, but a transcript of sorts is available right here.

The other cool side-note about Movember this year is that I’ve taken the opportunity to take some creative self-portraits. It’s been a lot of fun, getting goofy in front of my camera, and you can witness the full set here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicoyogui/sets/72157625283171459/

Seriously, if you think any of this is interesting, cool, funny, innovative or worthwhile, please make a donation to the cause. Even though I put humor into it, it’s a serious fundraiser, and I’d appreciate your support of my efforts. Just go right here and donate what you can. Even a dollar makes a difference.

Donate to my silly Mo!

Our City of ReMO team kicked ass. When Don and I talked about Movember at the end of last year, we had a few things in mind:

• Better planning and organization: Plan things in advance, spread the word, and try to make things run smoothly.
• Bigger focus on the actual goal of Movember, and put the fun and good-looks on the second plane.
• Raise a lot of money.
• Reach out to more people in Reno.
• Get local businesses involved.

It’s a big source of pride and accomplishment to be able to say that we can check all of those.

At the end of September, we laid out a list of things that we’d like to do, and we set our minds to make them happen. Before Movember officially started, we had a pretty well outlined calendar of what was going to happen, when and where. This helped us spread the word. This was a much better approach than planning things on the go, since most people make plans far in advance… So this year, we gave them notice, and the plans they made were to attend our events. Fantastic!

Talking about Men’s Health issues was easier than imagined, and it came naturally. When people asked us about Movember, it was the first thing we talked about. (The second thing was about how sexy we looked). I think this was in part because of our “experience” in the subject, and the conscious decision to focus on getting the word out.
Certainly, humor had its part and no talk about the actual reason behind Movember went without crude mentions of balls and assholes.

Our goal for this year was to raise $5000. At first, that seemed like a huge number, considering that last year we’d raised right about $1600. We figured that it was a good goal, a nice round number, and something that would definitely identify us as a “serious” group committed to the cause.
To our surprise and joy, the $5k mark was met before half of the month even passed, and this was before most of us even had decent moustaches to be asking for donations!
The first thought was to call it good and declare “Mission Accomplished!”, but we were just starting to gather steam and MOmentum, so we decided to step it up, and declare a new goal: $10,000. Ballsy move, one could say, but this was after all very much about the balls.
On the day 30, the $10k mark was met with much rejoice. The final number is yet to be computed, because of cash and check donations, but the accomplishment is there, and it’s a wonderful feeling to know that we made it. If $5000 was a lot of money, we raised two lots of money.

Last year, we felt that our efforts in reaching out were successful when Anthony joined our team. We didn’t know him, and he joined because he thought it was a good cause. Our “campaign” had transcended the circle of people that we knew, and I took that to be a very good thing.
This year, that effect snow balled. The members of our team kept growing and growing. I received an email when someone joined the team, and I remember being excited when it showed that we had 25 members in our team. Quickly after that, our total was up to 40 people. And fifty… and a hundred.
Who were these people? Some of the names sounded familiar, but there were many Anthonies. We even got David Bobzien to join. Way cool!

Eclipse Pizza joined us last year in our official team, and we knew we could count on them again for this year. But what we didn’t know was how well other businesses were going to receive the idea of teaming up, and the response was a very positive experience.
KRZQ (100.9 FM) gave us a lot of airtime with ads, and even put us on a show in the middle of the day! One of the owners of The Sierra Tap House, Zach, became very involved and helped us put together some very successful events. Shannon from SOAK Lounge invited us to her business which caters mainly to women, and organized a very creative and fun occasion. The Biggest Little City Club hosted us on a couple of different nights, and made us feel really good. We went to Butcher Boy for lunch, got Rockstar haircuts and had tons of fun bowling with a lot of the ReMO team at Starlite Lanes. The local restaurant Amendment 21 organized the Reno Beer Crawl with proceeds benefiting our cause, and promised to be a big helper next year.
Long story short: local businesses rocked our world. I’ll be making a longer write up about it all on the City of Remo website soon, so I’ll spare the details for that post.

On a personal note, none of this could have happened without Kelly’s support. Despite almost crying after seeing my clean shaven face after many months of sporting a goatee, she encouraged my efforts to make our team a successful one. As if putting up with a prickly upper lip wasn’t enough, she had to tolerate my distracted attention and need to be involved in a lot of things.
That is the job of a “Mo-Sista”, and she did it well without much reward. Rest assured, I’ll be making sure she knows how much I appreciate her.

Even more personal, and somewhat geeky: I was more or less “the” photographer of the things we did. I won’t be asking for money to take pictures anytime soon, but I’m pretty happy with the moments I captured in still images. Most of the pictures ended up on Facebook, if you’d like to see for yourself.
For the Stache-Bash (aka end of Movember party), I got to play with some fancy photo gear I borrowed from Mo-Bro Kyle Walker. The pictures from this event look specially good thanks to the lighting equipment and the improvised photo booth that I put together. It kind of made me want to have a flash and fancy umbrella to be able to do it more.
At any rate, I took pictures of my moustache growth on a semi-frequent basis, so if you’re ready to see how it all went, check it out right here:

Finally, I’d like to say thank you on a personal level to those who donated to Movember and “sponsored” my moustache. Thank you Kelly, Joan, Elinor, Kathy, Zach, Willie and Roger. My prostate and testicles appreciate it!

The other day, I had an idea that some might consider grand.

On October 4th is the Run for the Cure, a 5k running race. I’ve done this a couple of times, because my work sets up a booth and tells people about what a great job we do with mammograms (which we do, by the way).
I’ve shown up, ran the thing and then hung out at the booth for a bit.

Now, here’s my idea for this year:

• Citizens of MOvember sign up under a City of ReMO team.
• We don’t have to run, just participate. Lots of people walk the whole event, and chat with people. Say hello to getting people to sponsor your Mo! (We should have things to hand out, flyers or cards)
• We wear  a tshirt with our awesome logo.
• We rock out with a lovely hair ribbon, aka Moustache.

I mean, we have time to get ready for this event! First of all, there’s enough time to train to at least be able to jog the whole thing (check out the couch to 5k program!). More importantly, it’s plenty of time to develop some respectable whiskers. Hair growth can happen in any shape, and doesn’t have to be a Mo. It would only become a Mo on race day.

For example, I’d keep my goatee until the day of the event. Easy to do, no body laughs at me. On the morning of October 4th, before putting my socks and shoes on, I shave to leave the Mo.
With my fancy tshirt, I show up to the event with a nice brown ribbon on my lip, where I meet my Mo-bros and we accomplish many goals:

1. We support women in their fight against breast cancer. Because we care.
2. We spread the word about our own cause, because we want people to care about us.
3. We get some exercise, fresh air and -hopefully- compliments about our lovely moustaches.
4. We get to know more Mo-bros.

Wouldn’t that be awesome? I do believe so.