Today I tried QED’s lime shaving soap, to see if it was a better match for my skin than the company’s sandalwood soap.

Even before Charles had sent me his new soaps to try, he’d sent me one of his new lavender shaving sticks along with an order I’d placed awhile back. The QED shaving sticks are made of the same cold-poured glycerin-based formula as the QED soaps that come in the tubs, so I removed the cylinder of lavender soap from the QED push-up stick, put it in a glass mug, and microwaved it for 25 seconds till it melted nicely into the bottom of the mug.

After it cooled and hardened again, I used it just like a regular shaving soap. The QED lavender worked well enough, but didn’t live up to the initial shavegeek hype. Personally, I thought it was no better or worse than the other hard glycerin shaving soaps I’ve tried like Col. Conk, but it sure did smell a lot better — QED’s liberal use of pure essential oils gives these soaps a strong and wonderful scent, especially after you’ve whipped it up into a lather. Still, the shave itself wasn’t as smooth and close as what I get from my favorite creams, so I used the lavender a few more times to make sure my initial take was accurate, and then went back to Trumper’s voilet, Taylor’s avocado and Proraso.

As I said before, QED’s sandalwood didn’t work as well for me as the lavender soap, so I was eager to see how QED’s lime compared with the two other soaps. Well, as far as scent goes, the lime wins hads down — this stuff smells nutty, nutty good. It smells exactly like the Green River sodas we used to drink as a kids at the Sweete Shoppe while sharing a giant porcelain plate of fries. It’s an intensely sweet lime scent, and it knocked me out so much I couldn’t wait to lather up.

Like the other QED soaps, lathering with the lime is a bit of an adjustment if you’re used to the old-school creams from Taylor, Trumper et al. You can waterlog your brush all you want, and swirl it on top of the soap all you want, but you’re not really going to get a properly thick lather from the QED unless you use a mug or (shudder) a shavegeek bowl. When I tried making lather the usual way I do with hard soaps — i.e. soak my brush in a sink of hot water, swirl the tips of the badger hair over the soap about 10-20 times, and then begin lathering right on my face — the QED made a pretty thin and not very substantial lather, and clearly wasn’t ready to shave with.

No, you need to work the QED soap with a mug, really pump and beat that sucker, to get a usable shaving lather from it. This is why I don’t like the QED shaving sticks as much– if I use them the way they’re intended to be used, which is get my face wet with hot water, rub the stick over my face and neck, and then start beating away with my wet brush, it’s just not happening at all. I like the form factor, but this stuff works far better in tub form than in a rub-on stick.

Beaten to a properly thick and rich lather, the QED lime worked much better with my skin than QED’s sandalwood soap. I didn’t suffer from any of the drying or irritation I have from other lime shaving products like Trumper’s and Coates’s lime shaving creams. There was still that same razor drag on my face I experienced with QED’s other soaps, but this is the hallmark of every hard glycerin shaving soap I’ve used — the blade “squeaks” on my skin (especially sgainst the grain) instead of gliding over a smooth layer of lube. With the best of the glycerin rounds, which I’d rank QED’s lime and lavender soaps right at the top based on scent alone, I can usually get a decent, and occassionaly a very good, shave, but it takes more time, is less effortless and enjoyable, and my skin always feels just a wee bit tighter and drier than is good for it.

For what it’s worth, my face feels the same way when I wash it with glycerin facial soaps like Neutrogena and the othwerwise wonderful South Of France bath soap I use in the shower — while the rest of my body does just fine with the glycerin soaps, my face is much happier with Cetaphil cleanser. Maybe oily skin just isn’t a good match for a hard glycerin soap when it comes to creating the slipperiest surface possible for the best shave.

QED’s lime soap is my favorite of the company’s three scents available in tubs. If it didn’t give me as good a shave as I routinely get from my favorite creams, at least it didn’t cause any skin irritation or razor burn, and the scent was among the very best I’ve experienced from a shaving product. In fact, it was so wonderful, I finished things off with Trumper’s Lime Skin Food and Taylor’s No.74 Lime cologne for the full-on citric acid trip. Cue the Anton Karas..

Still suffering from the cruel lashings at the hand of that irritating cad Sandalwood, I let myself fall once again into the waiting arms of Taylor Avocado. Moist, slippery Taylor. Always there to salve my wounds, soothe my skin, and pleasure me as only a gentleman’s cream can.

He covered my face and neck with soft, silky lather, his scent an intoxicating mixture of avocado, rosemary, and lavender, his touch hot on my bare skin.

There would be no bodice ripping, though had I been wearing one, I shan’t doubt it would have been dealt with as such, given Taylor Avocado’s reputation as the misunderstood rogue among the Taylors of Old Bond Street. There would only be the shave. A smooth, flawless, moisturizing shave that did wonders for my face which had, only a few days before, seen the back of that cruel blackguard Sandalwood’s hand and still harbored memories of its sting.

And I was reunited once more with my beloved old flame Vulfix Badger, now that my return to Cremo Cream was put off another day or so. Denying myself the pleasures of the brush is, I’m coming to feel, the only reason I may never be able to swear allegiance to the wondrous Cremo.

As heavenly as my shaves with this brushless cream have been, I can’t help but confess to a deep longing for my precious Vulfix, and the tingle of his soft yet firm touch on my face. If dear Vulfix and fair Cremo cannot share sweet embrace with me together, I fear I may come to a crossroads, with the romance of the brush and the science of the lube presenting two divergent paths, only one of which can spell eternal shaving happiness.

But dare I even think such thoughts while Taylor Avocado’s milk-white cream still soaked the matted patch of hair at the base of my Vulfix? For now, I could only think of the romance and pleasure of a brush and a cream meant to be enjoyed forever together.

And with that, I surrendered to Taylor once more, with a final pass under my chin that left naught but bare, lamb-pink skin in its wake.

Yesterday’s shave with the QED sandalwood shaving soap left my skin feeling a bit more raw today than usual, especially on my neck and under my chin. There were some red marks on the base of my neck as well — this is sign-language for my neck saying, “Please go back to the Proraso shaving cream and stop dicking around with all these different products. You’re a grown man, not a demented kid. Enough with the guinea pig routine already — just use what you know works best and be done with it, you @%#$ shavegeek!”

I was planning to try the QED lime shaving soap today, but my neck needed some TLC. And when it comes to shaving, that means one thing and one thing only: Taylor’s rose shaving cream, that most maternal of all wetshaving products.

Same brush, same razor, same shaving routine. But today’s shave couldn’t have been more different than yesterday’s. The Taylor rose builds to a much thicker and more dense lather than the QED sandalwood’s, but that doesn’t really matter when it comes to shaving — Cremo Cream goes on thin and transparent, and barely registers as a “lather” at all, yet it shaves incredibly well.

What does matter is how well a lather lubes your skin and lets the blade glide over your face without skipping, catching, or dragging. In fact, it’s the only thing that matters. It’s why you use shaving cream, instead of simply shaving on a wet face.

The Taylor’s rose cream has never given me anything less than a superbly slick, highly lubricated, yet extremely soothing and comforting shave, and today’s shave was no different. This cream, moreso than most I’ve tried, is just plain a pleasure to shave with. It smells great, it lathers great, it shaves great, and it helps your skin recover from whatever beating it’s taken elsewhere. It’s the cream I always come back to when I’ve strayed with an untested cream, razor, or blade and I need to recuperate.

My skin already feels and looks better. If it looks fine tomorrow, I’ll give the QED lime a go. As I said, I’ve already gotten good results from the lavender QED soap, so I know this stuff can work well. I’m eager to see if the lime version is a better match for my skin than the sandalwood.

Yesterday I said I’d try using the Cremo Cream with a shaving brush, but I say lots of things. Charles at QED sent me some of his recently launched shaving soaps to try — lavender, lime and sandalwood, as well as a really intriguing shaving stick of an anise/lavender mix — so I figured I’d take a break from the Cremo and try these new QED soaps which have become the toast of the shavegeek forums.

Actually, this wasn’t the first time I’ve shaved with QED’s new glycerin-based shaving soaps. Awhile back, Charles had sent me a lavender shaving stick to try, and since the soap’s the same in the sticks as it is in the tubs, and since I’m not really down with the whole rubbing the stick all over your wet face before you whip up the lather with your brush thing, I removed the hardened soap from the plastic push-up stick, put it in a vintage Old Spice glass shaving mug, microwaved it for 25 seconds, and waited for it to cool down and harden again.

The lavender QED soap gave good shave, but the most impressive thing about it was the scent. It’s made with real lavender essential oil, and quite a bit of it, from the smell of things. If you’re an old lady like me and you love lavender, you’ll love this QED soap, if for no other reason than it throws up a pretty intense lavender force field around your head for the duration of the shave.

As for the shave, I have to say that while I like the QED soap, I don’t share the prevailing shavegeek sing-along that it’s the best shave lube on the market. It’s good, and the scents, all derived from essential oils, are extraordinary. But I don’t find that the shave I get from the QED soaps are better than what I routinely get from Taylor, Trumper and other traditional creams. And while I haven’t used the Cremo Cream long enough to really decide whether it’s really the best shaving cream I’ve ever tested or simply a case where something new and different gets you excited and all jizzed about it, I definitely got better shaves with it this week than I’ve been able to get from the QED soaps.

One thing I do know, though, is that I strongly prefer the lavender QED soap to the sandalwood, which I tried today. The sandalwood irritated my skin a bit, and, strangely, smelled more like patchouli to me than sandalwood. I realize that many “sandalwood” colognes like Taylor’s have additional notes along with the sandalwood, and I also know that QED uses very expensive, pure sandalwood essential oil in its shaving soap. Maybe every other sandalwood scent I’ve smelled has been mixed with other stuff, and pure sandalwood really does smell like a guy in a dancing bears t-shirt playing hacky sack. It’s a nice scent, if you like patchouli, but I guess I was expecting something that smelled more like Taylor’s sandalwood cologne and shaving cream.

It’s also possible that glycerin shaving soaps work better for some skin types than others. On my face, which is very oily, the QED doesn’t slick up my skin so much as get squeaky. The same thing has happened with other hard glycerin shaving soaps I’ve tried, as well as when I’ve washed my face with a glycerin soaps like Neutrogena. The only way I can describe it is that my skin almost squeaks when I rub my hands over it.

The problem is, so does a razor. And when you’re shaving with a sharp double-edge blade, that’s the last thing you want. What you do want is slick lubrication so the edge of the blade glides smoothly across your skin. On my face, hard glycerin soaps like the QED make the blade pull and even stutter a bit at times. Even a new blade feels like one that’s a day past its due date. I can adapt to this and get a decent shave, but I can’t really get the kind of super close, super comfortable shave that I can with the traditional English creams. Even the inexpensive European creams like Proraso and Musgo Real are a better match for my skin type than hard glycerin soaps.

Clearly, other guys are getting much better results from the QED soaps than I’ve gotten — some shavegeeks have even claimed they dumped their other creams and soaps because the QED soaps are the best they ever tried and they’ll use nothing else. I wish I could get as excited about these soaps, but so far, I haven’t been able to get the same results. I will say, though, that the lavender did work better than the sandalwood, and I still want to try a few shaves with the lime, and especially the anise/lavender, before I put a period on this line. So tomorrow I’ll try both and see how they stack up.

Yesterday I said I would try shaving with Cremo Cream and foregoing any after-shave whatsoever — just shave, rinse with cold water, and see if my hunch was true that Cremo Cream is so gentle on your skin that you don’t need to calm things down with a post-shave poultice afterward.

Well, today I did just that. Got another superlative shave from just the Cremo Cream and my Merkur HD razor, and did nothing but splash some cold water on my face at the end.

My face felt great. There was that slight exfoliation tingle like I get after a really close straight razor shave, which is a good thing. But there was not a trace of heat, burn, tightness, rawness, you name it. All the reasons you pamper your puss with fill-in-the-blank after a shave just weren’t there at all.

About an hour or so later, though, my face started to feel a bit, well, dry. I’ve got very oily skin to begin with, so when my skin feels dry, even slightly, something, as Miss Clavell would say, is not right.

My face didn’t hurt. Nor did it seem irritated, itchy, or raw in the slightest. It just felt drier than normal. Drier than it should be.

I’ve been using Trumper’s skin food for about a year now after my shaving, which is a solution of gum and glycerin, with some rosewater and menthol crystals as well. The glycerin and rosewater soothe and moisturize your skin, and the gum dries to cover your skin for a few hours till everything settles down nicely. Used sparingly, you can’t see or even feel the skin food on your face after it dries, but man oh man does it work wonders. It’s easily my favorite post-shave poultice.

The thing is, I think I’ve been taking skin food for granted. It does such an incredible job, and so subtly, that it’s only today, when I skipped it, that I noticed what a big difference it’s been making all this time. The razor, brush, and cream get all the attention, but the skin food is an indispensable part of the shave.

Bottom line: Cremo Cream is a revelation, but it’s miraculous powers don’t extend to relieving you of the need to use a post-shave of some sort.

Incidentally, I called Cremo Cream yesterday to ask them if this stuff could A. be used with a shaving brush without degrading its skin lube mojo, and B. whether any of its atypical ingredients might not be the best thing to get on badger hair. They said it could be used with a brush without any worry about gunking up a badger brush, but that Cremo Cream was designed specifically to work best when applied with the hands only.

So tomorrow I try it with a brush. I need to see if I can cross-breed the modern tech breakthrough with the olde schoole pleasure throb I get from using my favorite Vulfix #2235 badger brush. The Cremo Cream shaves like a dream, but I’m not ready to ditch the brush just yet. My hope is they work well together — even if the brush doesn’t make the Cremo work any better, I want to make sure it doesn’t make it work any worse.

I’m trying to come to terms with Cremo Cream. Yesterday’s shave was so exceptional that I tried it again this morning — just slapped some on my wet face and went to town with the DE — and got an even better shave today than I did yesterday. Quicker, more efficient, and even closer on my problem areas, which are the sides of my Adam’s apple and the billy goat’s gruff under my chin.

This morning’s shave took less than half the time it usually does when I go through the whole routine of filling the sink with hot water, letting my shaving brush soak, opening the tub of cream, lifting the brush out of the water and giving it that quick, calibrated shake to leave it with juuust the right amount of water to build a good lather without making it too runny and messy, then lovingly brushing the lather all over my face and neck, up an down, down and up, side to side, over and over, while I inhale deeply the calming aroma of rose/violet/eucalyptus/lavender/etc., and then finally I’ve prepared my face sufficiently to put down the brush, pick up the razor, and begin the beguine.

With Cremo Cream, all that Edwardian foppery goes out the window. You just step out of the shower, splash some hot water on your face, spread a dollop of Cremo Cream onto your puss and away you go. Time saved: 5 minutes.

Once you begin shaving, you find that instead of having to make a ton of short, steady strokes with your DE as usual, along with the requisite sink dunks to clear the razor of whiskers’n'lather, Cremo Cream lets you shave with long, full-length strokes the entire travel of your face at a time, and each pass shaves closer and more smoothly than anything you’ve used before, so you don’t have to go over the same areas again to get them to squeak. Just a with-grain shave, re-wet your puss, and an against-grain shave, and you’re finished. Time saved: another 5 minutes, easy. Maybe ten, if you’re a real gone shavegeek who won’t quit scraping till every last whisker is floating face-down in the river.

And I may be going out on a limb here, but you may — and I say may, because I haven’t tried it yet, though I will tomorrow — be able to skip the aftershave phase entirely with this unique stuff. Because it’s so slick and lubricating, even an extremely close shave doesn’t seem to leave my face with any irritation whatsoever, and in fact, my face feels perfectly fine and dandy with just a cold water rinse-off.

Even the mighty Proraso, with its legendary ice-cold menthol and eucalyptus cool-down when you rinse with cold water at the end of a shave, clearly leaves your puss in need of some kind of soothing poultice to complete the cycle. Because I’ve tried going without, and my face, while I didn’t think it was irritated in the slightest, nonetheless felt a bit raw later on. Maybe the Cremo Cream will leave me feeling the same way if I skip the Trumper skin food I usually use as a post-shave — I’ll know tomorrow when I try it.

So clearly, this Cremo Cream presents a dilemma to the serious shavegeek. Sure, these guys all swear it’s the shave, stupid, but then you go to the forums all the tittering is about the gear. Like guitargeeks who can’t play an open E chord but can talk your ear off about every fuzzbox and delay pedal ever made, or why any wah-wah that doesn’t have a genuine Italian-made Fasel inductor from the ’60s SUCKS (see footnote 1).

Hey, I love all the man-toys — the badger brush, with its cool looking ivory handle and centuries-old link to the great figures throughout history, and especially the traditional scented creams and soaps with their timeless scents of florals, aristocratic colognes, and Kool cigarettes. I love this stuff to death. Building up a fine lather in my palm with a high-quality shaving brush made of the finest badger hair and swirling it all around my face is a sensual, decadent experience, and does much to turn what used to be my least favorite part of the morning routine into my most eagerly anticipated time of the morning.

But if you can get a better shave without them, well, then what?

Do you put your brush back in its box, and relegate all those fine-smelling English creams and soaps to your junk drawer, and give up the nicest part of the wetshaving experience, because rather than help you reach your stated goal of the perfect shave, they may be — can I even think this? — unnecessary?

Do you come to terms with the fact that the best DE shave you can get is one that only takes a few minutes of your time and requires only a razor and a $14.50 tube of Cremo Cream?

Do you willfully give up the toys, and the comparisons, and the variety, and the quilting bee chats with your shavebuddies, and the skyline of brushes, creams, soaps, razors, pre-shaves, post-shaves, mugs, bowls, barrels, and other assorted salmagundi that crowd your bathroom sink and lead guests of your home, when visiting the loo, to worriedly question your rank in their lives?

Do you accept Cremo Cream as your savior?

Well, do ya, geek?

1. I don’t mean to insult guitargeeks by comparing them with shavegeeks. Some guitargeeks have made positive contributions to society, such as Les Paul, Rick Nielsen, Billy Gibbons, and the guy who did the theme to the TV show “Police Cops” in that “Simpsons” episode where the cool Police Cop in the pilot was named Homer Simpson but was then changed into a bumbling oaf when the show was picked up by the network.

Awhile back, I noticed my wife having trouble shaving her legs with one of those oval-shaped Lady Sensor razors, the ones that use the same twin-blade cartridges as the men’s Sensor Excel. She’d get nicks on her shins all the time, and just hated the whole routine. Of course, me so not being a shavegeek at all, I suggested she try shaving her stems with a DE.

In fact, I had just the razor for her to try — a clean vintage long-handled Gillette “Slim-Twist” that was part of a gaggle of DEs I scored on eBay. One of those razor assortments you see in the listings, probably culled from jails and funeral homes. But a half-hour in a boiling teakettle later, and who cares whether it was the community shaver at a leper colony? You’ve got yourself a nice, shiny, squeaky clean razor.

Actually, the long-handled Gillette I gave my wife was in great shape when I got it. The rough-grip plastic handle is slightly tapered toward the end, and the non-adjustable silo-loading head seems ideally suited to gam shaving, being just a bit more aggressive than the fixed-head Gillettes meant for a man’s face.

Along with the razor, I also gave my wife a bunch of creams to try with it. Some standard English top-shelf stuff, plus a few new creams I hadn’t gotten around to trying yet.

Needless to say, she loved the DE and now uses it exclusively. As for the creams, she gave them all back to me except for one.

“I’ll keep the Cremo-Cream,” she said. “It’s the best one by far.”

Hmm. The best? I even went out to Whole Foods and got her a pump bottle of Kiss My Face shaving cream, the sweet smelling stuff that’s supposed to be so good. But she stuck to her guns.

“It’s okay, but the Cremo-Cream is much more lubricating. You can have the Kiss My Face. I’ll just use the Cremo-Cream, thanks.”

Kiss My Face, my ass. I got twelve tubs of Taylor, woman! But now I was curious.

Cremo-Cream is a very different beast than other shaving creams. Its biggest departure from the norm is that it contains no glycerin, which is practically the main ingredient in most top-shelf shaving creams. Hell, some of the most highly-regarded shaving soaps are pretty much pucks of solid glycerin. And there’s other non-traditional ingredients like Macadamia seed oil, aloe leaf juice, and papaya extract.

And the differences don’t stop there. For starters, it’s a brushless cream — you just slather it onto your face with your bare hands, not a brush. So you miss out on the most feel-good part of the whole wetshaving routine.

Second, the Cremo-Cream smells like a pina colada. Hey, I love my Taylor rose, my Trumper violet, even Taylor avocado. But pina colada? “if you like making love at midnight, in the dunes of the cape..” I can enjoy the scent of fresh cut violets and still feel like a man, but the smell of pina coladas makes me feel like a kid working at the LA Four Seasons back in the 70s whose hotel manager just told him to take off his shirt and wear nothing but shorts and a bow tie to deliver a tray of drinks up to Peter Allen’s orgy in the Mae West suite.

Be that as it may, my wife isn’t known as the BOTO (brains of the outfit) for nothing. So when she tells me Cremo-Cream is that good, I have to try it, so this morning I did.

It was plenty weird not using a shaving brush for the first time in years, probably. Even back in my Mach3 days, I used a brush. But the Cremo-Cream’s instructions are very specific — just your hands. So I got out of the shower, splashed more hot water on my face at the sink, and slathered on maybe a quarter-sized blob of Cremo-Cream all over my face and neck.

Not surprisingly, it didn’t lather up thick and opaque like the traditional English creams. But it felt incredibly slick on my skin, much moreso than my usual creams. And you know, that pina colada scent kind of grew on me, I have to admit. Not what I want to smell like all day long, but for a few minutes while I’m catching a shave, it’s not a bad thing to whiff. Kind of pleasant, actually.

But the real surprise was the shave itself. This Cremo-Cream stuff is for real. My Merkur DE just glided over my face like it never has with any other cream or soap I’ve tried to date. Honestly, I was eerie how slick and frictionless the Cremo-Cream shave was, even compared with the high-end stuff I normally use. If you told me this stuff had little Teflon balls floating around in it, I’d believe you. It’s that slick.

The shave I got was extremely close and smooth, like what I get from a hard shaving soap. But unlike a hard soap, my skin wasn’t irritated at all — in this respect, it was more like a shave with an extra comforting cream like Taylor’s rose and avocado creams, or Trumper’s violet.

In fact, the Cremo-Cream gave me such a close shave, my entire face had that same kind of freshly exfoliated tingle that I’ve only felt in the past when I’ve shaved or had someone else shave me with a straight razor. I kept rubbing my cheeks afterward, marveling at the shave, just like my reaction to that incredible straight razor shave I got at the Truefitt & Hill barbershop in Vegas. And my skin felt so smooth and moisturized afterward that I probably could’ve skipped the post-shave Trumper skin food and left my face alone.

My wife was right — Cremo-Cream is excellent stuff. Not only is it the only brushless shaving cream I’ve tried that’s worth a damn, but it actually delivers a quality of shave on a par with the best traditional creams and soaps. The fact is, there are quite a few highly-regarded English creams and soaps which don’t shave nearly as well as Cremo-Cream. Heresy, I know. But it’s true.

Old-school wetshavers will never go for this stuff, unfortunately. A brushless cream that smells like a pina colada is just too far out there for guys deep into Ye Olde customs. Which is a shame, because this stuff is right up there with the best. I didn’t think there was anything new under the sun when it came to shaving cream because the best formulas are centuries old, but Cremo-Cream is the real deal.

If you can keep your mind focused on the results and forget about not being able to use your favorite brush, and the fact that your face smells like a frothy drink your mom would order while on a cruise because she’s “feeling a little crazy!”, you’ll be floored by this very different, incredibly lubricating shaving cream. Highly recommended.

Tonight the ReplayTV went into self-maintenance mode right in the middle of the Simpsons, so we switched over to the dish and caught the last half of one of our favorite recent movies, “Love, Actually”.

When this first hit the theaters I saw the preview and went “nahhhhhh”, but some rough, tough NBC crew guys who’re so manly they kind of scare me to be quite honest told me it was actually very good, so I said what the hell and Netflixed it, and now we must’ve watched it ten times.

Actually, love has been on my mind lately as I think about online communities and how they uncannily mimic real social networks. I really love that about them. It’s a wonderful thing to behold.

I love that guys who think nothing of throwing libelous, scurrilous tantrums on forums about how this shaving brush company betrayed that retailer, when what it really boils down to is that the company decided to choose a different retailer as the sole US source, one whom the tantrum thrower has had a longtime feud with, nonetheless take great offense when criticized themselves.

I really love that.

I love that guys who think nothing of tracing an anonymous poster’s computer to “out” him just because he disagreed with them, and then kill the thread when others start to complain about freedom of speech, spend the rest of their time talking about fun, brotherhood, and all things gentlemanly.

I really, really love that.

I love that guys who think nothing of making fun of a certain self-proclaimed shaving guru for promoting his own “method” of shaving can be so shocked and appalled when someone makes fun of them.

Sigh. Head over heels — that’s me!

I love how beta-monkeys screech and flare their nostrils as they cower behind the spoor of the loudest, most bullying chimp — as any anthropologist will tell you, this is a sign of a healthy community.

And what’s not to love about that?

If “Love, Actually” teaches us anything, it’s that yes, love really is all around us. All you have to do is open your nostrils and let it in.

Oh, and today’s shave: Merkur HD razor, Vulfix #2235 brush, Taylor’s rose cream. Wet hands so I dropped the tub of Taylor’s on the bathroom floor, cracking open the outer plastic shell. Remembered I’d squirrelled away an empty outer shell from a spent Taylor’s avocado tub, for god knows what reason. Swapped out the shells (most of the English shaving creams have a soft plastic insert that’s like a bowl within a bowl, and a hard plastic outer shell that’s what you see as the tub. You can crack the shell and the cream won’t leak, because the insert will usually be fine). Breathing returned to normal. All was well. Still absolutely positive I’m not a shavegeek.

I sling the term “shavegeek” around a lot, and I realize that some readers, unaware of the confederacy of dunces what am the online shaving forum elite, might think that I’m making fun of anyone who takes extra care in the way he or she shaves.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I have the utmost respect for those wise and kind experts who, on the MSN Wetshavers discussion board, helped me get a grip on shaving with an old-school safety razor. These true gentlemen were a godsend to a DE newbie like me. Thank you: Gordon, Harry, and all the other good eggs who contributed so much to my understanding of this very different kind of shaving, and helped me in putting together the shaving segment on the Today Show which in turn helped so many other guys discover a better alternative to a Mach3 and a can of pressurized goo.

And I’m in stark, raving awe of the guys who hang around the straight razor forums like Straight Razor Place. Webmaster Lynn Abrams’s how-to video is an underground classic, and did much to help me get my knees to stop knocking long enough that I could try it myself (still haven’t quite gotten the hang of it, but thanks for the video, Lynn). These guys scrape their faces with knives every morning — they’re the He-Men of wetshaving, and I’m unfit to launder their barber towels.

Do you like to shave? You’re not a shavegeek. Do you like thinking about shaving? You’re not a shavegeek. Do you frequent online shaving forums looking for tips on what products to buy and how best to use them? You’re not a shavegeek. Do you frequent online shaving forums and help newbies sort all of this stuff out? You’re not a shavegeek. In fact, you’re a great guy.

No, when I refer to shavegeeks, I’m talking instead about a certain breed of online shaving fanatic. The kind of boorish, obnoxious, reactionary, clueless, arrogant, tacky, aggressive, irresponsible, childish, churlish, cowardly, lying, petty, small-minded, bitter, paranoid, ugly, stinky, poopy, doo-doo head that seems to populate most every online discussion group involving male hobbies, of which wetshaving somehow — incredibly, given its longtime status as the most loathed of the three sh___s you do every morning — has become.

At the risk of getting all Foxworthy on you, here are the Shavegeek warning signs:

1. You have more than five different shaving creams, and every morning you stand there and can’t decide which one to use.

2. See above, except substitute razors for shaving creams.

3. See above, except substitute shaving brushes for razors.

4. See above, except substitute blades for shaving brushes.

5. See above, except substitute aftershaves for blades.

6. See above, except substitute colognes for aftershaves.

7. See above, except substitute underpants for colognes.

8. See above, except substitute multiple personalities, all of them damaged, for underpants.

9. See above, except substitute fantasy scenarios involving a much less pear-shaped you and a woman wearing a bikini and high heels who’s lying on the hood of a black Porsche 911 and holding a bottle of tequila aloft — basically all of the elements (minus the less pear-shaped you) in the poster you bought at Spencer’s Gifts at the mall and which you’ve thumbtacked on the wall in your bedroom — for multiple personalities, all of them damaged.

10. See above, except substitute creeping feelings that despite the five razors and five brushes and five creams and five aftershaves and five underpants, your shaves are actually worse now than when you used to use a Mach3 for fantasy scenarios involving a much less pear-shaped you and a woman wearing a bikini and high heels who’s lying on the hood of a black Porsche 911 and holding a bottle of tequila aloft — basically all of the elements (minus the less pear-shaped you) in the poster you bought at Spencer’s Gifts at the mall and which you’ve thumbtacked on the wall in your bedroom.

Why am I so down on shavegeeks? Because they’re the kind of people who wind up ruining nearly every interest I seem to have. Instead of banding together to help one another optimize their experience, they confuse the issue so thoroughly with a rodent-like focus on every aspect of the process except for those which actually make a real difference.

It’s almost like they don’t really want to get to the top of the mountain, for fear that once they summit, they won’t have anything to geek about. So they chase infinite rabbits down infinite holes, because that’s a game you can play forever. The fear of actually figuring it out, whether it’s getting a stereo to sound like music, or using a DE razor to get a shave that’s both baby smooth and free of irritation, is what lies at the heart of eternal geekhood. The rest of us figure it out and move on to more important challenges.

Like, say, writing a daily blog about shaving.

When I first became interested in trying to shave with a double-edge safety razor, everyone I talked to advised me to start with a fixed-head, non-adjustable razor. Which made a lot of sense — when you’re new at this, a fixed-head razor that’s pre-set for a medium level of cutting aggression keeps you out of trouble while you’re learning the ropes.

So I bought a Merkur HD from leesrazors.com, and I fell in love with it. After a week or so of nicks and bleeding, everything started to fall into place and I began getting the very best shaves of my life — closer, smoother, and more comfortable than with any other kind of razor I’d ever tried.

Of course, that wasn’t enough. Even though the shaves were going great, I wanted better. Everyone on the shavegeek forums seemed to use adjustable DEs, which let you dial in the degree of cutting ferocity to perfectly match your skin, shaving style, and blade choice. So I bought a few adjustable Merkurs, and trolled eBay for some vintage Gillette adjustables, and relegated my fixed-head HD to the dresser drawer.

Big mistake.

Immediately, my shaves went downhill. I nicked the hell out of myself. My neck got all red and bloody again, and shavebumps rose around the base of my Adam’s apple. Things were no better than when I used a Mach3.

My problem was, I stupidly thought that cranking up these adjustables would mean they’d cut closer, so I dialed them in at their highest, most aggressive settings, and proceeded to slash my own throat. This is a classic rookie mistake. Everyone does it. Even if you’ve read this before you get your first adjustable DE, you’ll still screw up. Trust me. You can’t escape the temptation to crank things up for that “extra” whatever. It’s human nature.

Once bitten, I dialed the adjustables back to their middle settings, and started getting shaves that approached the high water mark set by my trusty fixed-head Merkur HD, which I felt guilty enough about abandoning that I fished it out of the drawer and put it back into the rotation.

Why do I bring all of this up? Because I’m at the point where, even though I’ve become very good at shaving with a DE, I’m beginning to think that I’m not the adjustable razor type personality. Because if I have some adjustment range, I’ll use it. Every day, I’ll futz with the setting, depending on yesterday’s shave — if I felt stubble too soon after the shave the day before, today I’ll crank the razor open a bit more. And if yesterday’s shave was too aggressive and I got some skin redness, today I’ll dial it back a bit, and wind up with stubble a few hours later. I go back and forth, back and forth, without ever finding the one true setting that suits me best and sticking with it for good. Doesn’t matter whether it’s the Merkur Futur, Vision, or Progress, or the vintage Gillette adjustables — I can’t stop dicking with their settings, and I can’t ever get reliably great shaves out of any of them day in and day out.

Which I can, with the greatest of ease, with the fixed-head HD. It’s very non-adjustability is its best feature. Merkur designed this razor for one setting and one setting only — it’s perfect for my skin and technique, or maybe I’ve subconsciously adapted to its blade geometry and become one with the HD. Either way, as long as the cream’s decent, I never get anything less than a fantastic shave with this simple, unassuming, very un-shavegeekesque safety razor.

I know, I know — if I just held up the HD and one of the adjustables side by side and dialed in the adjustable razor so it had the exact same blade exposure as the HD, I should be able to get the same quality of shave from it as I do with the fixed-head razor. But I’ve tried this, repeatedly, and it doesn’t work. If a razor can be adjusted, I will dick with it on a daily basis, sometimes even in the middle of a shave. It’s just my nature.

This morning I decided to haul out the Merkur Progress, seen above, for a spin, seeing as how I haven’t used this model in quite awhile. I love the Progress the most of all the Merkur adjustables, even though it’s the cheapest. It looks the least futuristic, for starters — with its cream-colored plastic adjustament knob at the end, the Progress looks like a century-old design, unlike the space-age Futur and Vision razors. And its smaller shave head — same size as the HD’s — lets you get under your nose for better shaving there.

I’ve determined that the Progress’s “3″ setting, on its 1-to-5 scale, is equivalent to the blade setting of the HD. So, of course, what did I do this morning, after weeks of perfectly perfecto shaves with the HD? I set the Progress for 4. You know, for more “more”.

And the shave sucked.

Naw, it didn’t really suck. It was a good shave. It just wasn’t as close and comfortable as the HD, that’s all. I felt stubble hours later instead of at the very end of the day, and I reddened my neck a bit, which I never do with the HD.

I think one of my problems with the Progress is that it makes a much more audible cutting sound when mowing down your whiskers than the HD does. You can actually hear the Progress pinging away as it hits your hairs, which sets up a rather nasty behavioral feedback loop where I keep shaving till I stop hearing that cutting sound, which never really completely goes away, so I keep shaving over the same areas until my skin starts to get raw. When shaving with the HD, this sound is far more muted, and once you shave an area closely, you stop hearing the cutting noise, so you feel good about things and move on. This, I’m convinced, is the main reason I get such vastly better and more consistent shaves with the el-cheapo fixed-head HD than I do with the more high-end adjustables. It’s not that they can’t shave as well — I just keep hearing that cutting sound, and it leads me to keep shaving over the same spot too many times.

Maybe if I listened to my iPod while I shaved I wouldn’t hear the cutting sound and I’d get just as good a shave from the adustables as I do the HD. If I get to the point with this shaveblog where I’m out of material and I’m grasping at straws for something to talk about, I’ll try the iPod.

The more I delve into this wetshaving thing, the more I’m convinced that there’s no “best” razor, brush, or cream. It’s whatever combo works best for your skin, hands, and personality. My personality doesn’t do well when afforded a lot of options. I wind up tweaking till the cows come home, which they never do, so I’m screwed. Give me a basic, non-adjustable tool and let me focus on my technique, instead of endlessly dicking with the settings thinking that somehow I’ll hit upon the magic config that launches the rocket. It’s the same reason why, when I’ve got a Stratocaster, all I do is play with the settings, and when I’ve got a Telecaster, all I do is play guitar.