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 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 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. 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 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,
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 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 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, 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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, 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. 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 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 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? 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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.
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 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. Stuff you should Know is a production of I Heeart Radios How Stuff Works for more podcasts For My Heart Radiocus at the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.