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Some days I feel like puttin' on the shaving ritz, and sometimes I just feel like who gives a damn? It's just a shave.

Not that I don't care about getting a great shave, or enjoying the experience. I just like stripping it down to the bare essentials, like Lee Marvin probably shaved with his DE. Lots of shavegeeks pine for that upper-crust British aristocracy trip when it comes to wetshaving -- they want to make like Sir Winston, who had his driver deposit him at Truefitt & Hill's for a straight razor shave, the barber taking special care not to get any shaving cream on Churchill's Romeo y Julieta which he puffed on throughout. These guys want the ritual snapping of the hot towel, the squeak of the leather barber chair as it reclines, the dusting of talc at the end.

Me, I want to shave like Lee Marvin. Lee Marvin didn't smoke Cuban cigars, he smoked Cubans. Real live Cubans, some of them soldiers in Castro's army. And when Lee Marvin shaved, you can bet there was no overstuffed leather barber chair anywhere nearby. No talc. No niceties. There was a DE razor, a blade, and whatever lube to be found at arm's length and no further. A bar of jail soap? Fine. Some spoiled catsup? Even better. Motor oil sopped off of a slick on the side of the road from a car that just rolled over six times and exploded because you shot the driver through the eyeball right before you stepped out of the path of the oncoming vehicle because he slapped a whore with a heart of gold who once saved your life back when you were a kid yeah a dumb stupid kid who still had laughter and dreams and a heart made of flesh and blood instead of rusty pig-iron? Now you're spoiling me.

Today I wanted to shave like Lee Marvin so I did the unthinkable --

I lathered the Proraso cream in my hand, instead of doing it in a shaving mug.

Yes, the lather was not as thick'n'rich as it is when you beat it like egg-whites with a brush and a mug. I just squeezed off a dab of Proraso on the tips of my badger brush, and swirled it around in my left palm till it whipped up into a white lather. Then I lathered my face with the brush and shaved. No niceties, no top-o'-the-mornin'-Guv'nah, no tuppence flipped to the bootblack who spitshined my spats while I got my shave. I just made some quickie no-nonsense lather in my bare hand and got on with the task at hand.

The shave was perfect. I always hesitate to use that word, because there's always room for improvement, but what do you call a shave that's baby's butt smooth, with no irritation whatsoever even at the base of my neck which is the most prone to such redness? It can't be closer, it can't be smoother, and it can't have less irritation. It was perfect.

The "Dirty" part of the Dirty Dozen came from Lee Marvin telling them they couldn't shave because one of them had the balls to complain about the fact that the water he had to shave with was too cold. Now that's what I'm talking about!

I should start shaving with cold water from now on.