I appreciate a confident mustache.

I sat in the faux-Italian-themed Holland, Michigan restaurant waiting for what I knew would be sub-par pizza to be carried the six feet from the kitchen to the checkout counter.  I allowed my eyes to blur in an attempt to trick myself into thinking I was at least in the Las Vegas Venetian, and a small dust ball rolled across the floor and completed my desert meditation.   Only when the small dust ball focused itself into a mouse, did I really hit Holland jackpot.

A shriek emerged from the waiter helping me. He had one of those bodies that took control of him from the knees and lurched him like a marionette.  A second man emerged from behind the open kitchen area and tried to stomp on the mouse with his boots of rebellion.  I immediately decided that I would still eat the sub-par mouse turd pizza, if only for the sake of talking about it later.

Last week I went to Grand Rapids, aka G-Rap, for the second ice hockey experience in my life.  My first game was in third grade.  I went to a Boston Bruins game with a classmate and his dad and spent the entire game milking the Fruit Roll-up that his had given us for a snack.  Illegal in my house, I wrapped that snack jackpot around my left index finger and when I finally sucked it clean an hour later my finger was pink and wrinkled for a week.

At Grand Rapids Griffins hockey games, pizza falls from the sky.  Like any good Midwestern sporting venue the Van Andel Arena (if you ain’t Dutch you ain’t much) shoots t-shirts out of air canons, hurls hot dogs with sling shots, and drops pizzas with parachutes from the stadium ceiling. My long torso did nothing to help me grab meat and cheese out of thin air, but with a seat right behind the goal net, I had something better. I had Newbury.

Who doesn’t love a good, strong mustache? I finally had something to root for – let’s go Newbury! Bring in Newbury! Newbury for Senate! I eagerly awaited the shift from second to third period so Newbury would be fully featured once again.  Skip to 1:04 for a frontal view and stroke of said Baleen.

I thought of Newbury as I sat and watched the mouse turd pizza place lose stars in real time on my Yelp review.  A third employee came out, looked at the skittering bundle as it easily outran the boots of rebellion, then shrugged with conviction as he looked at me and stated, “That’ll happen.”

He could’ve been wearing a mustache.