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.

Shavegeek dogma indicates that only the best possible grade of badger hair be used for a quality shaving brush. Some real gone geeks pay upwards of $500 and more for a brush made from “high-mountain” or “Manchurian” silver tip badger hair, taken from the back of the badger’s neck. For whatever reason, the Chinese who pole-axe these poor animals (they are not road kill — whatever your politics regarding animal rights, be aware that all badger hair shaving brushes are made of bristles “harvested” in China, meaning a Chinese guy went out into the woods and killed a badger for its hair — if it makes you feel any better, badgers are plentiful in China and elsewhere and are considered a pest, thus the relaxed legalities surrounding their pole-axing — if it doesn’t make you feel any better, the good news is you can use any shaving cream I’ve talked about without a brush using your bare hands to spread it on your face, although you won’t get quite the same quality of lather) rank the hair in several grades, from “pure” or “fine” at the bottom of the scale to “best” or “super” at the top. Well, not quite the top — “silvertip” is considered the ultimate badger hair used in shaving brushes, because it’s the softest and has the most water holding ability.

All of the above is total bullshit, by the way. The fact is, the Chinese kill badgers, they remove their hair, and they sell the hair to companies that make shaving brushes. The Chinese have developed a grading system and the British manufacturers of shaving brushes have expanded upon it to invent terms like “pure”, “fine”, “best”, “super”, “silvertip”, “high mountain”, “Manchurian”, you name it. Sometimes the labels are broadly accurate, but often they aren’t. Some inexpensive “fine” badger brushes actually have a better grade of badger hair than some pricey “silvertip” brushes. It’s all a goddamn crapshoot. The more you look into it and ask these people direct questions, the more bullshit they give you. I’ll expand upon my findings in another entry — suffice it to say, there’s way more bullshit when it comes to shaving brushes than any other area of wetshaving, and maybe even life itself.

Want to really shave on the wild side and bypass all this elitist nonsense? Get a boar’s hair brush. They’re cheap — I got my Omega shown above for 12 clams, or a fraction of what a decent badger brush costs — and believe it or not, they’re the preferred shaving brush among the European master barbers who give the world’s best straight razor shaves. Why? Because they work well for what they’re supposed to do, which is build up a thick lather with water and shaving cream, and spread it on your face for shaving. Boar’s hair is also stiffer than badger, so it exfoliates your skin better and raises your whiskers more effectively, too.

What it doesn’t do quite as well as badger hair is smell good. Quite frankly, boar’s hair smells like somebody’s ass. And the cheaper the brush, the more rectal its bouquet. Don’t even try those useless $5 Burma-Shave brushes you might find on the bottom shelf of your drugstore — I bought one on a lark awhile back and literally gagged when I raised it to my face. The Italian-made Omega pictured above had a far less cheeky aroma, and after a few shaves it pretty much went away.

Do boar’s hair brushes work as well, overall, as badger brushes? No — they don’t hold nearly as much water, and they’re not as luxuriously soft on your face. But boar’s brushes definitely work, and they work well. For 12 bucks, they kick ass. Unfortunately, they smell a bit like it too, but you can’t have everything, right?

I used my Omage brush today with Proraso semi-hard soap in the tub and a Merkur HD razor. The shave I got was just as good as any that I’ve gotten when using a badger brush. The experience is a bit less luxurious, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Sometimes you have to get off your high horse and live like a real person, if only for a shave or two.

Perhaps it’s fitting that opinions on Merkur’s Slant Bar DE safety razor have always been, well, slightly askew. The Slant’s tilted shave-head, unique among all razors, was designed to cut the whiskers on your face with a slicing motion rather than a straight-on cut, which is said to make for a closer, smoother shave. The tilt also opens up the blade exposure at one end of the edge, making the Slant the most aggressive of any fixed-head DE razor I’ve come across. While almost all other fixed-head razors range from so-mild-you-can-shave-drunk-in-the-dark (old Gillettes) to moderately aggressive (Merkur’s fixed-head family: the HD, Classic, Long-Handled, and “1904″-style DEs), the Slant Bar is actually one of the most aggressive DEs available, moreso than even many adjustables.

The Slant is loved and loathed in equal measure. Most of the major online wetshaving vendors don’t even carry it, because, in the words of one such gentleman, “This isn’t a razor for a jackass.” I second that emotion — I thought the open-comb (or “rake”) style DEs were too aggressive for my face, but the Slant Bar is even moreso.

Still, the Slant Bar has its charms. It shares the Merkur HD’s heavy weight and thick, grabby handle, the best of any razor I own. It’s wacky looking, which is always a plus in my book. It’s rare. At 35 bucks or so, it’s cheap. And if you can learn to shave properly with it, it might even shave a few minutes off your shave, since its shave is designed to be closer for each pass than the regular fixed-head Merkurs.

So this morning I lathered up with Proraso and gave the Slant a second chance.

I will say this for the Slant Bar — I definitely get the closest shave with it out of any other DE razor. On the first pass, that is. If all you do is shave your face with a single, downward, with-the-grain pass, the Slant shaves so close that most guys, I bet, would be perfectly happy with this kind of shave, as it’s closer and more comfortable than going with and then against the grain with modern multi-blade razors like the Mach3.

That said, the Slant is far less of a good thing on the upstroke as it is on the down. The same over-aggressive blade exposure that makes for such a close with-the-grain pass is just too much for my skin when shaving against-the-grain. I reeeealy lightened up on the pressure for the upward pass, but I still felt more fire than I know my skin can take on a daily basis.

With Merkur’s HD, or any adjustable DE used at a sensible setting, I can shave against-the-grain for two or more passes without irritation. With the Slant, even once is too much. In this sense, the Slant reminds me of a straight razor — the with-the-grain shave is almost close enough to stop right there, but I can’t for the life of me shave against-the-grain without scoring some burn. It’s hours later and I still feel it under my chin, which has always been my bellwether for shaving irritation.

And here’s the clincher, for me at least — no matter how much closer the Slant Bar shaved me on the initial pass, at the end of the entire shave (one down, one up, and one “cleanup” pass targeting the stubborn billy goat’s gruff on my neck and underchin), I didn’t get any better of a shave than I routinely do with the kinder, gentler HD. The HD may not cut quite as close as the Slant does, but it cuts pretty damn close, and does it in such a way that doesn’t irritate my skin at all, so I can shave in any direction I need to, as many times as I need to, and wind up with a baby’s butt shave every time without a hint of irritation. That’s what I’m after, and that’s why I still strongly prefer the HD over the Slant.

If you want a DE razor that can give you a much better shave with but a single downward pass than anything else short of a straight razor, the Slant’s your best bet. You won’t get baby’s butt smooth, but your face will feel and look a lot better than if you used something like a Mach3.

Fair warning: if you are new to DE shaving, you really shouldn’t mess with the Slant Bar. It is by far the least forgiving safety razor I’ve tried, and at this point I’ve pretty much tried them all. I don’t care how cool or tough or “kick-ass” you are — the Slant Bar, in the hands of a newbie, equals buckets of blood.

Like today, for instance. I just lathered up with Trumper’s violet, did two passes with the Merkur HD razor plus a final touch-up pass, rinsed and rubbed some Trumper’s lime skin food onto my face and neck. Done. It was all good. Didn’t have to think about any of it. I knew all the pieces of the puzzle always work well for me, so all I had to do was go on auto-pilot and let the perfect shave happen.

I don’t mean to make it all sound so boring, but in a way, it was. Today’s shave was perfectly optimized, but that perfection was fully expected given my track record with Trumper’s violet shaving cream and lime skin food, Merkur’s HD safety razor, and the Vulfix #2235 badger brush. They’re all old-fashioned, they’re all reasonably priced, and they all lock together for a shave that’s so uneventfully great that you begin to take it for granted.

It’s only when I decide to try something different, like the Mach3 Power, or that plastic Wilkinson DE razor they only sell overseas, that I beat up my face a bit and the fur flies. Bad for the way my face feels and looks, but good for generating interesting blogfodder, I guess.

Tell you what. In the interest of blogfodder, I’ll give the Merkur slant bar razor another go tomorrow morning. I haven’t really given this unique “crooked” DE a proper trial, and its controversial rep calls for, at the very least, a more in-depth stab than I’ve given it thus far. So tomorrow I leave the comfy comfines of the Merkur HD and wander into the wilds of the slant bar, the most wickedly aggressive non-adjustable DE ever made. Anything to entertain you people.

The thing with wetshaving is you slowly acquire all these different shaving creams, because each new one you try seems to lather and smell better than the last. That first leap from canned gel that smells like a urinal cake to a traditional English scented shaving cream in a tub that smells a thousand times better than any cologne you ever thought made you smell suave and de-boner is a mind-blower. Forget the shave — you never smelled anything this good, this close to your face, in your entire life. It opens up a whole new world of pampering yourself in the morning, and goes a long way toward turning what used to be the worst part of the grooming routine into your favorite.

At this point, I’ve smelled all of the flavors from the “big three” of English shaving creams — Trumper, Taylor, and Truefitt & Hill. The Truefitts are all scented with their own proprietary men’s colognes, while the Trumpers hew more to the traditional lineup of shaving scents — you got your sandalwood, your lime, your almond, and a few unique scents like coconut and violet.

Taylor of Old Bond Street goes both ways. Half of its shaving creams are cologne scented, using the firm’s legendary in-house scents: Mr. Taylor’s, Eton College, Shaving Shop, St. James, and their wicked-good Sandalwood cologne. Taylor’s other creams are traditional florals — lavender, rose, lemon/lime (more of a fruit, really), avocado (again with the fruit), and almond (okay, so that makes two floral, two fruits, and a nut).

Beyond issues of scent, all of these creams react markedly differently depending on your unique skin type. For instance, while I love the way Trumper’s lime shaving cream smells, it dries my skin out something fierce, and doesn’t lube the shave as well as the others. And I have oily skin, which is what the lime cream is meant for.

On the other hand, the two creams my skin loves best are both florals — Trumper’s violet and Taylor’s rose. To my nose, the violet is the best smelling shaving cream I’ve ever sniffed. It’s addictive. The rose, though, gives me a marginally better shave. I say marginally because both Trumper’s violet and Taylor’s rose are as good as shaving cream gets, and I always get a great shave with either one of them. But the rose always seems to protect and soothe my face just a weensy bit more, besides the fact that it smells so good you never want to rinse it off.

I’ve been shaving with Proraso for quite a few days in a row now but this morning I felt like a change. Not because I wanted a better shave — you can’t get a better shave than you do with Proraso — but because I just wanted a new smell. So rose it was.

This pink cream lathers white once you beat it around with your brush, but the rose scent intensifies as you lather your face and neck, to the point where you find yourself lathering for far longer than you usually do because you’re having such a good time smelling this stuff. It’s a calming, relaxing scent, and it has uncannily the same effect on your face. If I get irritation from a new razor, blade, whatever, it’s Taylor’s rose I always turn to to make it all better on the next shave.

This is the kinder, gentler shaving cream every guy should have in his arsenal. Even if you don’t want to use it all the time, it’s great for coddling your face if you happen to beat it up with some harsh piece of crap like, oh, say, the Mach3 Power. A few shaves with your trusty DE razor and Taylor’s rose cream will make it allllll better.