Nothing will ever be better than this.

So I’m hunting the Intertubes for confirmation as to whether the kinda sorta grayish market GF1 camera I bought online locks shutter at 1/100 (Canadian version) or 1/120 (US market) in Flicker Reduction Mode when word comes from Young Petrovich that one of our jointly favorited sites, Rands in Repose, has kinda sorta grayishly mentioned this very site you are reading right now with an increasing sense of exasperation borne of not getting that immediate slug of tasty sugarmilk you’ve come to expect from this reporter.

Why can you not hazz your shaveburger already and get the hell out of here, you ask? Because all of the above — I’ll be honest with you — irks me just a little bit. No, a lot bit. Here’s my thinking on this.

I’m not a linkwhore. I don’t go jacking other D-listers off just to get linkrolled all over the faux-hipster blogosphere. It’s not why I do this (I know, I know, did is the more honest tense). I don’t write nice things about Gillette or King of Shaves just to get linkrolled by the mammoths. Couldn’t care less. I don’t ever think about this stuff, because I spent 20 years eating corporate-owned media shit and now I can’t even taste anything anymore. My tastebuds are permanently shell-shocked. It takes me a bottle of Habanero sauce in the morning just to get to normal.

So why am I irked by a nice mention by a blog I’m frankly honored to be to be on their radar? Because it’s a mention that isn’t really a mention. In fact, when Young Petrovich pointed me to the post, I reread the whole thing half a dozen times scratching my head because I couldn’t find the damned mention. Because there isn’t one. There’s not even a mention of the msnbc article which is where many people first became aware of Shaveblog, even though that article’s a watered down version of my original.

No, in order to even know why Shaveblog played any role at all in the Rands thing, you have to go read through their Twitter stream. And scroll, scroll, scroll, fuck me, I don’t have time for this — ahh, there it is, May 6th, thanks @rands (and by virtue of his retwatting, @johnwilliams713).

Fact is, I don’t know how to react to this stuff anymore. I should by all rights have sent Seth Godin, Titan of Industry, a box of Montes for his mentions. I haven’t done fuck-all lately to merit the barest periphery of his attention. And now Rands has blown a little bit of oxygen on the embers, keeping them glowing just a bit longer, and all I can respond with is wretched, miserly carping that they didn’t take their whole goddamn site down and replace it with a towering 72-pt link to Shaveblog on the center of the page and nothing else, and leave it like that, just walk away from the URL, find something else to do.

Anywho. Have a super day.

Seriously, Lifehacker, enough with the shaving tips. Between this and this and this, you keep reminding me why ever since Trapani left your site’s become the joke of the Intertubes, and considering this site is also in the running, that’s saying a lot.

Extra threw-up-just-a-little-bit-in-my-mouth points for casting the Colonel from Boogie Nights as the Shirtless Rotarian who’s somehow lived all these years without getting any smarter about shaving than your average 20 year-old Lifehacker editor.

I don’t usually like to argue semantics with naked seniors, but for fuck’s sake, if you’re gullible enough to think you can sharpen a razor cartridge with your FOREARM, and your only supportive data point is a naked old guy on YouTube, we need to talk.

Sheesh, where to begin.

It’s called a strop, not a strap. It’s made of leather (Horween shell cordovan in the good old days just like my favorite shoes, nowadays it’s mostly cowhide), and yeah, it looks like a strap, sort of. But it’s called a strop.

“Your grandfather” did not use a leather strop to sharpen his straight razor. Strop’s don’t sharpen blades. Sharpening stones (or “hones”) sharpen blades. “Your grandfather” lightly swiped his straight razor across a sharpening stone to hone and restore its sharp edge. A leather strop, on the other hand, is used between honings to realign the molecules on the very edge of the blade so it’s not curving to one side or the other, and here’s where Shirtless Rotarian’s claim falls apart:

You can’t strop a blade if you can only get to one side of it. Which is all you can get at with a cartridge like the Fusion he’s holding. Even setting aside the argument of whether he’s actually achieving anything at all by running the blade along his forearm (he’s not), even if he were achieving some level of stropitude, he’d only be rolling the blade edge over to one side instead of realigning it to point straight ahead as is the goal of straight razor stropping.

Your arm is not made of something like leather. Even Shirtless Rotarian’s arm isn’t made of something like leather. Leather is thick animal hide that’s been dried, cured, treated, coated, manipulated, and toughened to the point where it can withstand a great deal of abuse, such as forcing the edge of an extremely sharp steel blade to move back into shape. This is why they make strops out of leather instead of Shirtless Rotarian skin, which tends to either get cut by the blade if they meet head-on, or do nothing at all if the blade is stroked along the forearm as demonstrated in the video above.

My guess is Mrs. Shirtless Rotarian is secretly replacing his Fusion blade every week without telling him. I hope so, because I’d really like to think he’s not so out of it that he believes rubbing a Fusion cartridge on his arm keeps it shave-sharp for TWO YEARS, and that he believes this such an important discovery that he’s moved to shoot shirtless bathroom video of himself and post it on YouTube.

Hey, could be worse. He could be somebody’s doctor.

Seriously, you guys are the best. I love you all.

Corey-

I’m tempted to switch to old school shaving, but have a question – would your methods/equipment change for a bald(ing) man who shaves his entire head 2/3 times/week?

Thanks,
Landesman

Landesman,

Not being bald myself I can’t state for certain that what’s good for the puss is good for the pate, but feedback from some of my readers who do chop it all off seems to indicate that the bon temps definitely continue to roulet when you shave your head with an old-school safety razor.

You do need to be careful and take it slow when you first transition from a modern multi-blade to an old-school, single-blade DE (double-edge). You’re still swiping a blade-onna-stick across your skin, but beyond that it’s a whole different trip — how much pressure you apply, how much more attention you need to pay to your hand/razor/skin relationship to keep the blade angle right, the audio feedback from the cutting of the whiskers. It’s like learning how to shave all over again, although what it really is is learning how to shave right for the first time. Most guys (me included) need a week or so to get to the point where they can get through a DE shave without a nick.

If I was balding I’d definitely chop it all off. Because if I’m going to be bald I want to be bald, son. None of that Gallagher crap with the party in back — when this glorious Michael Landonesque Jew Mane starts falling out in clumps because of all that 1st-gen Blackberry phone RF I soaked up back in the day, that’s it, issue me my Player’s Club card and get out of this bald, virile man’s way.

And no modern multi-blade razor, be it the Fusion, Mach3, Quattro, Sensor, whatever, gives me as close or as long-lasting a shave as a good DE. Forget those little hand-grip “headshavers” on the drugstore shelves that take multi-blade Gillette cartridges — nobody who uses those things is getting as close a shave as they should be.

Back in the day, when balding guys went Full Monty they had their barber do it with a straight razor, and that’s why these guys looked absolutely clean, I’m talking “Mr. Clean” clean, not with that faint skinhead “rough trade” stubble that all modern cartridge-fed “head shavers” leave behind. Unless you’re trying to rock that look, which is a personal choice and also a wrong one, because for the life of me I can’t understand why a guy would want to look like the Commish when Michael Chicklis would be plenty happy if he looked like Eric Banna even when he was Chopper.

If you want to shave your head old-school, the same rules for face shaving apply up top. You need to soak your stubble in warm water for at least 2 minutes, to waterlog the hair so it’ll slice through neatly like wet noodles. Use a high quality glycerin-based shaving cream or shaving soap, and of course a good shaving brush is mandatory. Short, careful strokes, not those ridiculous eyebrow-to-Adam’s-apple glides you see on the Gillette commercials. I got news for you, there’s as much actual blade in those prop razors the male models are miming with as there is sexual interest in the towel-wrapped girls hugging them from behind.

If you’re shaving your head with a DE for the first time, I recommend laying down a protective layer of Jojoba oil to smooth the runway a bit for your first few forays. Five or six drops rubbed between your hands and spread over your skull should do it. A little Jojoba makes everything glide along just that much more smoothly, and it helps you get the hang of the much less forgiving nature of an old-school DE razor. When you’ve got your technique and touch down, you won’t need to use the Jojoba, although you may want to continue anyway as it’s really good for freshly-shaven skin and you may even find you won’t need to use moisturizer up on the dome anymore, as Jojoba does the job better and with less expense.

The guns I get. The ammo, sure. And the speedloader, the mags, the black Speedo, even the odd discoloration on the upper thigh near the crotchular region. I get all that.

Why the Guitar Hero controllers?

WHY?

Glad to see one of my favorite new blogs gets Rule #1 exactly right.

What’s doubly cool is Walker and his wife ended up having a girl, but he continues to advise his future son anyway.

It’s been the Summer of Dunce, and with a bang and a whimper, it’s finally over. I mean, I knew this country was 75% Deliverance Boy but ye gods, after this summer I feel like there are eight sensate Americans left and seven of them are sterile.

Speaking of idiocracy, I freely admit that making fun of the “advice” found on such unpaid intern written sites as Lifehacker, Digg, and Instructables is only slightly North of shooting fish in a barrel, but when these clueless naifs who don’t even bother to shave more than once a month in the first place claim any kind of expertise in the Manly Ablutive Arts, it’s time to load the Glock for carp.

Let’s see…shaky video cam, check. Simpsons’s Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel accent, check. Wiping a 5-blade dung-razor on your jeans to get more shitty shaves out of each cartridge? Check and checkmate, Jonas Salk.

As Fake Steve would say, Namaste, Jake T. Robinson. Your corn liquor wisdom is only exceeded by the tidal wave of drool in your comments section.