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Today Gillette announced the launch of its long-anticipated successor to the Mach3, to be called the Gillette Fusion. While the new razor avoids the jazz-rock cliches of such 70's bands as the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return To Forever, it does feature something shavegeeks, stand-up comics, and "Cracked" Magazine have long joked about but never dreamed Gillette would ever dare to actually come out with:

A razor with five blades.

What was once satire is now reality. When Schick upped the Mach3's ante with its four-blade Quattro shaving cartridge, most industry analysts felt that the Razor War had finally gotten so silly that further advancements would instead focus on increased blade longevity, sharpness, or perhaps, as Lincoln put it, a more perfect lubra-strip.

Nope. It's five blades after all. The Gillette Fusion will sport a disposable shaving catridge with five blades in a row, which the company says are mounted closer to each other than the trio of blades on the Mach3. And of course there will also be a vibrating version called the Fusion Power. I tried coming up with a joke for this, but I can't top the simple fact that there will actually be a battery-powered, vibrating, five-blade razor called the Fusion Power, and that millions of men will eagerly buy it.

What's most interesting to me about the Fusion is its name. Rather than call it something playing off the number five, like the Mach5 (Speed Racer and Pops threatened to sue) or the Quintelligent Design, Gillette chose a name that's got nothing to do with five blades. Why?

Well, because the Fusion is a six-blade razor -- there's an extra blade on the back of the head, meant for easier and more precise sideburn and goatee trimming, which has always been the biggest complaint of Mach3 users.

I find this fascinating, and revealing. First off, Gillette's admitting that a single blade is better at precision shaving that a multiple array of blades. But if that's true -- if that single blade on the back of the new Fusion is so much better at trimming sideburns and goatees than the quintuple blade array on the front of the cartridge -- won't you be able to just go ahead and shave your whole face with the single-edge side, and then face the unavoidable comparison with the five-blade shave?

Imagine this scenario: a guy buys the Fusion, loads his first cartridge, and commences slashing. The shave's going well enough, but then he flips the razor over to trim his sideburns with the single-edge side, and what do you know? The single-edge shaves just as closely as the five-blade side, but a lot more comfortably. He keeps shaving with the signle-edge side in disbelief, getting a much closer and far less burning shave than he ever got with the Mach3.

The next shave he goes back to the five-blade side, but after he nicks the sensitive parts of his neck for the umpteenth time, he flips the Fusion over again and gets another exceedingly close yet comfortable shave. So now what?! Keep buying the $3 apiece cartridges just to shave with the "wrong" side of the razor?

Or go on Google to find that lots of other guys discovered the same thing he did -- that a good single-blade razor shaves closer, feels better, and leaves their skin looking healthier than any of the multi-blade systems, which led them to try other high-quality single-edge razors like the disposable Bics and traditional safety razors like the DE and the Injector, all of which cost much less to re-blade than anything Gillette's come out with in the last thirty years.

At this rate, when my little guy is old enough to shave, nanotechnology will have created a razor with thousands of microscopic blades, each spinning in a different direction and at a different angle, powered off a perpetual power source that won't cause cancer unless you hold the razor near your face for longer than the recommended thirty seconds.

And guys will still flip it over to trim their sideburns with the single blade on the back.