When I lived in Utah pre-1998, I would grow out my beard for the winter months. It didn’t hurt that I was in a couple of bands, and the varied phases of beard experimentation helped the alt.rock image I was going for.
Recently, I grew out the beard again, after a 7-year hiatus. The wife loved it. My shaving time decreased by about 300 hours over the course of cultivation. As the weather has gotten warmer I have had the realization that it gets a lot hotter in Utah, for a lot longer, than Los Angeles. San Francisco is hot one or two days out of the year. A beard is a good idea in San Francisco. Plus, the beard is totally liberal. I digress.
Point is, it was time to remove The Beard for the impending home purchase/home improvement/summer. I’m a messy decorator and didn’t want to spend 70-100 hours cleaning various colors of DuLux Satin Luster Finish Acrylic paint from my beard.
Because this shaving event was going to be traumatic for my beautiful wife, I decided to give her a brief history of my beard in reverse, with a few fun steps to make the process less painful.
To wit:
1. Full beard. Mostly for verification purposes.
2. It might look like I am gay, but really I’m just going for something unusual.
3. The previous look was, in fact, very gay, so let’s go for something less so. This one might also be called “Country-Style Alt Boy”.
4. That damn moustache zone is problematic. There is nothing Alt or Rock about Number 3. I present: Satan, Jr. The sideburns are slightly preppy.
5. I never actually sported this one. It should be called “I wish I played the sax” or “Speed Metal Buddy”.
6. I wish I played sax II: Where’s my latte?
7. Clean n Easy.