.

Man do these Feather blades hit the canvas when they're spent! They shave like a dream for a week or so, then suddenly tank like Gerry Cooney. And today I got cut like Cooney too, right on the chin, which never happens.

The standard Schick Injector blades most guys use in these razors seem to last five or six days for me, then they give you that early warning system where they tug on your whiskers, just a little bit, so you know it's time to change the blace. But you've still got a shave or two left before things get really ugly. Same thing with DE blades, even Feather's. When they start to go South, you've got a few shaves before things get really dicey.

Not so with these Feather disposable straight razor blades I've been clipping down to size for use in my Injector. They give me a week of amazing straight razor close shaves, and then suddenly the eight shave is a bleeder. And the weird thing is, these Pro Super blades don't really feel any different when they go bad. They just nick me, in places I never nick myself.

Schick made some novelty Injectors back in those lazy, hazy, crazy 1970's -- one had a stick shift knob on the end of the razor handle, another had a tennis racket grip, and they even made an "Easy Rider" model with a male symbol stamped on the shave head, for when gentlemen attended all-night social functions at Plato's Retreat:



But the one I wish they'd made was an Injector with an odometer, that showed at a glance how many shaves you'd caught off that blade. Because I've got four Injectors going at once -- one in each of our two bathrooms, one in my gym bag, and one in my travel kit. And for the life of me, I can never remember how many shaves I've put on a given blade. The Feathers never fail to tell me when they've hit their eighth shave, though. Chin, meet alum block.

Still, it's all worth it for the shaves I get from these ungodly blades. So what if I need to buy a $15 tin snip to cut 'em to fit my Injector? So what if I have to order 'em online instead of just popping into my CVS for a 7-pack like I can for the Schicks? So what if I've got to dick with the bare blades to insert them into a Schick Injector magazine so's I can jack 'em into my WWII-era Injector (which, incidentally, has an orange handle the same color as "Suddenly Susan" co-star Kathy Griffin's hair)? So what if I sometimes forget how long the blade's been in a particular razor and it jumps my ass without warning? The seven Bob Beamonesque shaves I get from each Feather Pro Super blade are more than worth it.

And then we're watching "The Simpsons" after dinner tonight and it's the one where they do that reality show where they have to live like it's the turn of the century, and Homer comes to the breakfast table to announce that he's just enjoyed a straight razor shave and that he's through being a slave to Gillette, at which point a dozen geysers of blood shoot out of his face and he passes out face-first into his bowl of porridge.

Mine wasn't that bad, but it's nice to know I'm not the only one.