On Beard Protocols

My roommate mocks me for how long I take in the shower, being a man. It takes a lot of work to be a Not-Ugly Man, though. Men, with the glaring exception of Ryan Gossling, are not naturally predisposed to being "pretty." And yes, my male friends also make fun of me, but the ones who do are gnarly little C.H.U.D.s, so let's not take them seriously.


I take a solid hour in the shower.

Now I'll freely admit 15-20 minutes of that is my sitting on the floor with my back to the door, bleary-eyed and half asleep, waking up to the warming steam filling the bathroom while I check my comics and news sites for the day. Let's say 30 min for the actual shower, including stand-under-the-water-philosophising time. The rest is drying off and shaving, or trading off with shampooing I guess.

The shaving is the tease, though, because I turn off the water, but you can't get into the bathroom to pee for another ten minutes. It's got to be, though. Shaving a man's face is like shaving a woman's vagina: you have to be absolutely sure to get every last hair, but careful not to cut the thing people interact with, and sometimes you have to sculpt a little shape into what's left at the end.

Except unlike a healthy vagina, every person I meet is going to see my face on a daily basis.

Ways to Describe My Beard

• One week into a really bad breakup

• My head-start on No-Shave November

• For that matter, my all-year tribute to the mighty ball sac

• Chia-Face

• Cousin Itt bukakke

• In a completely different way: A Japanese man's wet dream

• Your girlfriend who shaved for you for Valentine's day, on March 1st

• Waffle Fries (because it's so bad, but feels so good)

• That weird button you found in the wash, in that you're afraid to ever really get rid of it

• Sampson's Mane

• Hipster's ski mask

• Lopsided and shitty

Movember Trivia

First and foremost, let me say that I do not support No-Shave November, and only tentatively approve of "Movember," insofar as I am for raising money for prostate cancer research but against shaving the rest of the year.

I've been running pretty solid with my #MustacheMillennium, having grown a mustache in 2000 and never haven shaven it since. Sure, sideburns lengthen and shorten, full beards come and go, even the connective tissue for the goatee changes for Comic Con, but the mustache never falters. So pardon me, if I resent the implication that growing my mustache out for only a month is predicated on shaving it first. Next year, my mustache can get in to see PG-13 movies by itself. Don't hassle him.

That said, I'm a huge proponent of other people experimenting with mustaches. It's something everyone should try, preferably in a safe environment, supported by friends and loved ones' understanding, and just usually in or soon after college. There's a time and a place for it.

A coworker recently hit his "It's long enough, let's do something fun stage." The result was a mustache connected to a thin line of sideburns, modeled after Lemmy of Motorhead fame, and generally appearing as though he plans to portray General Ambrose Burnside in a school production of Gods and Generals at end of term.

Here's the catch, there really isn't a name for this facial hair. Ostensibly, it's more "sideburns" in the classic sense, though that original style of sideburns itself has long been out of style, so much so that it'd be almost unrecognizable by that name to the General himself, who sported what we would now call muttonchops with a connective mustache. This is much longer than what my coworker currently wears. His is more akin to a handlebar like Hulk Hogan, curving up across his jawline into sideburns. A handlebar a biker might keep.

A "sissy bar."



Let's make this a thing.

The Goatee - Secrets

• The goatee is the universal sign for evil. The trickster god Pan was typically depicted as sporting a goatee, so when Pan's likeness was ported to Christianity as a representation of Satan, the whiskers acquired a more sinister air. Later, Leonard Nemoy cemented this transition with Mirror Spock (though in novels Mirror Spock later turned things around, kind of). To this day, children without prior conception fear goatees out of sheer cultural memory.

• When combined with a mustache, it becomes a Vandyke, so long as the two remain unconnected. Luckily for all Jewish boys, this connective tissue doesn't actually grow in until about the age of 21.

• It is surprisingly difficult to rock the goatee before 30. Remember the early '90s? Didn't most handsome leading men in Hollywood look like utter scumbags? Yeah, it's rough. Even Ethan Hawke looked pretty crumby. Even Robert Downey Jr. in the late '80s. Now, though? Depp, Downey, even the dad from "Malcolm in the Middle" in "Breaking Bad." Old guys can nail it. It's a beard of experience.

• The internet will always tell you you look like Robert Downey Jr. Yeah, speaking of, "Look-Alike" apps will be broken forever. Put a Mirror-Spock on a picture of a moose and it'll come back 40% to your face.

• No one else will think it's cool but you. (And every other guy who wears one.)