Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Short Stuff: Mullets: 'Nuff Said

Transcript

Short Stuff: Mullets: 'Nuff Said · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is gonna be kind of short, which Chuck and
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: I were just discussing. So let's go on with a long,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: meandering intro that has nothing to do with anything. Chuck. Well,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: maybe it's going to be short in the front and
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: then maybe you know what we should have done is
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: we should have done like two minutes and then a
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: commercial break and then ten minutes. That's a great idea.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Maybe we will the mullet of podcasting. Well, edit out
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: this part where we figure it out as we're doing
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: it to you. All right, maybe we should take a
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: break night man. That's an ultra short mullet right there. Alright,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: so we're talking about the mullet um business. In the front,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: party in the back always I thought was very funny
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: of this hairstyle where your hair is short in the
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: front and top and long in the back. The one
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: that really got me that I've never heard before. I know,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: I know, it's fine, the Missouri compromise. Yeah, that way,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: or that's a good one. Kentucky Waterfall. I hadn't heard
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: that one before either. I hadn't either. That one got me,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: But for some reason, this Seri compromise really gets me.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: It's like the hair is working it out, you know, right,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: or the the teenage Judas priest fan is working in
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: out with his mom. So let's go ahead and level
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: set here and talk about our own history with a mullet.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Have you had a mullet ever? Have you? I have?
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: What I did? Man that there was a time, believe
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: it or not, in the eighties where the mullet was
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: sort of a skater haircut. It was kind of short
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: and spiky and then a little longer in the back.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: And this was pre Billy Ray Cyrus and pre sort
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: of anyone calling it a mullet. But looking back, it
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: was definitely what you would consider a mullet, but it
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: was kind of like a cool skater kid haircut. Yeah,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Tony Hawk had one, did he? Yeah? And one of
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: the differentiators too, was like it wasn't short bangs on top,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: like it would come over the one eye from the side,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: but yeah, it would be spiky on top and then
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: long in the back. It totally was a mullet. I
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: never put two and two together like that, but no,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I still never had one. But there is a very
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: embarrassing picture from me from like the tenth grade from
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: a church uh whatever album? Uh annual yearbook? What are
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: they called when their churches? I have no idea. Well,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: churches used to put these out every few years. It's
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: a bible and we were all in it. But I
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: had a mullet. This is the only picture of me
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: with a mullet in existence. And I was wearing a
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: mullet and Paisley maroon suspenders and a tie. And my
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: brother still threatens to that's sort of his big thing
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: he holds over my head. Attention, Scott, I'm speaking directly
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: to you now. We demand to see that photo. Yeah.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: I will say that I got wise pretty quick, and
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: by the end of tenth grade. It was a short
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: lived haircut, and I had sort of the other skater look,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: which was just like long bangs, right. Yeah, So so
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: you just lopped off the back of that tony hawk cut. Yeah,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: and there was still a little hair back there. But
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, actually, the most embarrassing haircut I had in
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: high school was the that mushroom when you would shave
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: around your ears and the and then the bottom of
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: the back and just have sort of a big poof
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: on top. I'll take a picture. My my high school
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: haircut was a Caesar. You remember those? Oh I had
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: one of those for years and years and years. Didn't
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: look it on anybody, especially not that guy on the
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: original C S I series. Do you remember him? Did
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: you ever watch that? No? I never saw it. There
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: was a guy who was a very well he was
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: an old, older guy, like well into middle age, who
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: had a Caesar and it wasn't like accidental, like he
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: had a Caesar haircut and it was just an odd
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: hairstyle choice, I think for him. All Right, maybe we
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: should take a break and we'll actually talk about the
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: mullet when we come back. Does that sound good? It
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: sounds great. If you want to know, then you're in luck.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Just chuck shoot sho alright, chuck. So let's get down
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: to the mullet a K hockey hair that's another term
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: for it. Yeah. Um. Some credit the Beastie Boys with
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: popularizing the term mullet. Uh. That had a song in
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: il Communication called mullet Head where Ad Rock says, you
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: want to know what's a mullet? Well, I got a
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: little story to tell about a hairstyle. That's a way
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: of life. Have you ever seen him? Bullet wife. It
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: doesn't make that much sense, but it does seem to
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: be like the first real reference to this hairstyle using
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: the word mullet from what anybody can tell. Yeah, and
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: the term mullet head has long been around just as
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: a general derogatory term for a dummy, which had nothing
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: to do with the haircut, and they think that may
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: have come over from the British derogatory term mull head.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: It's still yeah, that's what they said, but it still
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: doesn't explain and maybe they just aren't related how the
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: haircut got this name after this weird looking fish. Right, so, um,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: I guess Mike d wrote a little article about what
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: they were talking about in that song mullet head, and
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: he said that the mullet fish, the mullet fish is
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: basically just like one long. It's like oblong, It's like
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: a drawing of a whale. Basically, it doesn't have any
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: kind of anything that would suggest its head is separate
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: from its body. And apparently when it rots, it rots
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: from the neck down, which kind of gives it the
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: appearance a bit of a mullet or people who have
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: the mullet hairstyle look a little bit like a rotting
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: mullet fish. I guess as far as Mike D. R
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: ad Rock thought, and that that's how he explained where
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: that term came from, but that the the use of
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: the word mullet had to mean kind of a dummy.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Um makes uh. Mark Twain frequently cited as the guy
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: who turned coined the term mullet, which is way off
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: because he was using it in that sense that you
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: were saying, which is kind of thick headed or or
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: dumb or something like that. Yeah. I think the fun
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: thing about this article, which we got from How Stuff Works,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: was um kind of tracing back the actual hairstyle through history.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: And if you go back and look, there's a great
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: article on history dot Com. Woman named Linda Lacina writes
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: about the ancient Greek poet Homer and the Iliad. Wripes
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: writes about this group of spearman called the Abantes. They
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: had their forelocks cropped and hair grown long at the backs.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: That's a full mullet. Yeah. And and Homer wrote the
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Iliad in the eighth century BC, so almost three thousand
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: years ago at at the at the latest, people were
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: already wearing mullets. And there's this other article um from
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Dage Dazed Digital by Oliver Lunn that talks about and
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: I've seen pictures of prehistoric peoples that look like they
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: kind of have a mullet, And practically that kind of
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: makes sense because you you know, if you're hunting and gathering,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: you need that hair out of your eyes, so you
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: might cut it off with a stone tool up front,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: and then you wanted a little further in the back
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: to protect from sun or from rain, or to help
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: keep you warm. Yeah, the sun is a big one.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: I suspect that's why Andre Agassi had one, because he
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: had to go play tennis in the sun all the time.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: It was very sensitive about his neck getting sunburned. Yeah, agassy.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: You think of mullets, You think of Agassy, You think
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: of Billy Race Cyrus and uh. There was a basketball
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: player for the University of Florida named Dwayne Schintsus that
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: I think he played pro for a little while. But
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: he was a big, tall center and he had a
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: fantastic boxy mullet. Did he really Okay? I always think
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: of um Sean Thomas Scott, Sewan, William Scott, Kristen Scott
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Thomas one of those. Um he was in Dude, Where's
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: My Car? The non Ashton Cuture guy. That was Kristin
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Scott Thomas, right, Um his he had a really fantastic
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: mullet in Old school You remember that? Oh yeah, Old Schools.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: That was a good movie. Yeah, yeah it was. It
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: was funny. It was very funny. But he's the guy
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: who shows up with I can't remember what kind of
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: animal to the birthday party of the kids party as
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: a drunquil. As you're going that, Will Farrell accidentally shoots
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: himself with is this Stiffler? Yeah, Stiffler? That's right. Yeah,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: he's funny. You know another movie he was in that
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: was underrated and underseen a is uh not Step Brothers
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Big Brothers? Oh yes, is that the name of it?
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Where role Models? That's it? That is a good movie.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: You know Paul Rudd wrote that himself. Oh he did.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: That was a David Wayne directed movie. So it all
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: makes sense. It was good all around everybody and that
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: was great. Yeah, he was very funny, very underrated movie.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: I think should we talk about a couple of the
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: cool examples of mullets in in rock history? That's a
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: kind of you're about to step into some controversy, but
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: I'll watch you do it. Well, there's two that I
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: can really think of. The one this article mentions is
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: David Bowie. That's the controversial one. Yeah, I mean, if
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: you look at Ziggy stardusts in the era, he definitely
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: has what you would consider a mullet, but it's also
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: died red and he's wearing the Ziggy Stardust outfit, so
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: it's hard to call that a mullet, even though it
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: kind of is, well from what I saw. The people
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: who say it's not a mullet just basically say David
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Bowie was literally too cool to have you would call
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: a mullet even when he was wearing a mullet. That's
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: their argument basically, which I mean, that's pretty pretty impressive
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: as far as the cool factor goes. That people will
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: defend you like that. Yeah. The other example is there
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: was a time in the seventies where both Paul and
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Linda McCartney had matching mullets and it was really puffy
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: and spiky on both of them and very long in
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: the back, so, uh, you know, it was a look.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: It was a look for a couple for sure. What
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: about Jane Fonda include that that wasn't a mullet? Really,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: My mom had that haircut for a little while in
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: the seventies, that sort of. I mean, it's a feemullet
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: as anything. Did you just coin that term? Oh no,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: you never heard that. Now, the lady mullet was always
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: called a feemullet. But I know what haircut you're talking about.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: It was. It was sort of like a haystack with
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: a little bit in the back. Yeah, I guess that's
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: a good way to put it. Florence Henderson had one
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: for a little while, kind of on the Brady Bunch too.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: I think of I think of Jane Fondaz is a
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: straight up mullet, but maybe maybe it is just a
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: female clute. Was such a good movie. I never saw it.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: I'm not even sure what it's about. Oh man, you
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: should check it out. It's awesome. Okay, well it's a
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: it's a mystery. Okay, don't spoil it for me. Hey,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: speaking of mysteries and movies, get this. I went back
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: and watched the original, uh seventies Sydney Lumette version of
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Murder on the Orient Express. That was a good m
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: It is delightful. Albert Finney plays her Cuel poor Row,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: and I couldn't even recognize him for the first thirty minutes.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: He does such a good job. It's a it's a
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: really great movie. It's a it's it's on the internets.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: You can find it. Uh. One final mullet wearer we
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: should mention is none other than President James K. Polk.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: If you go look him up, he's certainly he has
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: a mullet. Yeah. And what was the name of I
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: want to say Maguai, but it wasn't the the bad guy. Um,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: he wasn't a mohawk. I can't remember what he was.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: But in the Last of the Mohicans, do you remember
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: the bad guy played by West Study, he had I
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: don't care what's you call. It was a mullet he
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: was wearing. And that was a great movie too. Uh. Yeah,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: I was trying to think of a PC joke, but
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: I can't. Okay, we'll just leave it at that. Then. Uh,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: that's it for short stuff, everybody. That's it. We Ah.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Stuff you should Know is a production of I Heeart
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Radios How Stuff Works for more podcasts For My Heart
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Radiocus at the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.