.

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.

Just look at her -- ain't she a beauty? And she's all mine! ALL MINE! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

I stumbled upon this genuine porcelain toilet-shaped mug while doing an eBay search for an Old Spice shaving mug. I wanted one of the first Old Spice mugs, the earliest ones that were milky glass and shorter than the huge tankard-style shaving mugs you see today. I found what I was looking for, but I also found this once-in-a-lifetime find that somehow snuck into the search results.

Apparently the Rheem corporation used to make toilet-shaped shaving mugs out of the exact same porcelain they used to make real toilets with, and they gave these whimsical mugs out to favored employees, perhaps upon their retirement. Who gives a rat's ass about a gold watch when you can have a pink porcelain shaving mug shaped like a toilet? Nothing says "class" with crisper enunciation.

This particular Rheem mug was custom made for an employee named Ray -- his name was glazed on the mug in the same cobalt blue lettering as the Rheem logo on the top. Ray must have fallen overboard while out to sea, or gone crazy from the desert heat in Arizona and went on a citywide shooting spree that ended in a storm of lead at the end of the last alley Ray would ever duck into, because only death could've wrenched this toilet-shaped mug from any thinking man's hand. Frankly, I'm surprised his heirs let it leave the estate, but then the in-bred offspring of the well-to-do all too often squander the spoils that the previous generation worked so hard to acquire.

As soon as I saw the listing, I knew I had to have this mug. I staked it out, watched it like a hawk for days, and then pounced on my quarry with fury, winning the bidding with a bold $11 stroke at the last minute that proved I was the better man of the two of us who were bidding on it (take that, bruce6773!).

Remember how yesterday I said that using a big cereal bowl to mix up your lather like some of the shavegeeks do is basically admitting you aren't very good at the easiest part of the whole wetshaving equation? Well, building your lather in a shaving mug that's shaped like a toilet bowl and used to be the property of Ray the Rheem Toilet Company employee is the exact opposite of that -- it is, in fact, the most perfect state of latheration there is.

So this morning I gave the Rheem a thorough washing with hot water and soap (God knows what Ray may have done with this thing toward the end, when the insanity began spiking up), and then I showered as usual, left my face and neck wet with hot water as I got out of the shower, thrust my water-logged Vulfix shaving brush into the Rheem's mini toilet bowl along with an inch-long squeeze of Proraso Green shaving cream, and went into high swirlee mode. The Rheem even has a handy handle on the back, where the water tank would go on a real toilet, that's great for holding the mug steady as you beat up the lather. I even pumped the brush a few times into the middle of the lather, like a toilet plunger, to fully saturate the brush with lather all the way down to the handle.

In seconds I had all the beautiful, perfect Proraso lather I needed for another perfect, beautiful Proraso shave. My Merkur HD razor glided over my face like, well, Aloe Charmin glides over your tuchus. I couldn't ask for a better shave.

Will I use the Rheem from now on? It's doubtful. I love this toilet mug too much to use it like a common shaving mug. It belongs forever clean and gleaming atop my dresser, shining like a pink beacon for all to see. Besides, I can lather just fine in the palm of my hand -- I haven't gone loco like Ray did on that fateful day when he finally went to that place where not even ownership of a pink porcelain toilet-shaped shaving mug with your name kiln-glazed on the side matters much anymore.

Not yet, anyway.

Most guys who get into wetshaving do it solely for the quality of the shave. I'm one of these guys -- I hated the shaves I was getting with modern cartridge razors and goo-inna-can, so I tried a bunch of stuff, both moderne (Kiehl's and Aramis Lab Series shaving creams) and old-school (DE razors and traditional English shaving cream), until I hit upon a rig that gave me closer and more comfortable shaves, less irritation, and a greater sense of olfactory pleasure than what you get from Gillette Foamy.

Then there are what I call "shavegeeks". These are the guys who clog the online wetshaving forums and obsess over every aspect of the routine EXCEPT the quality of the shave. To the shavegeeks, everything about shaving is a competition -- which razor ROCKZ, which cream RULEZ, which brush DOMINATES. And there's nothing that typifies the shavegeek mentality more than the stupefying amount of discussion devoted to just how much sheer cubic footage of lather a given shaving cream or soap, or combination thereof, will produce if you mix it all up in a large sized cereal bowl.

Yes, I said a cereal bowl. Right now, there are guys out there whipping up huge mounds of shaving lather in a bowl just like Julia Child used to beat a dozen eggs to make a souffle. I'm not making this up. Just picturing it gives me the willies.

Let's get one thing straight here. If you dunk any decent shaving brush (which means it's made of boar or badger hair and you paid more than ten bucks for it) into a sink of hot water to get it wet, then either swirl it over the top of a hard shaving soap for ten seconds or dip its wet tips into a tub of shaving cream and then swirl the brush around in your other hand's open palm for ten seconds, you will get more than enough perfect shaving lather every time. This is the single easiest move in the entire wetshaving canon. Barely sentient beings do it routinely. It's so not a big deal.

But apparently, it is for the shavegeeks. Go onto the shaving discussion sites and you'll see lazy newbies whining about how they can't get decent lather from this soap or that cream, and then other shavegeeks will chime in with "I used to have the same problem as you, fella, until I started using....a BOWL!"

Here's why: because when you use a bowl instead of the palm of your hand or, even better, a mug, all that extra room means your lather will explode into huge mounds of thick, rich, meringue-like peaks of fluffy white goodness. A dab of shaving cream the size of a quarter and a soaking wet shaving brush will whip up so much lather in a cereal bowl that you'll have enough to shave ten or twenty guys easy.

And this is cool why?

If building up lather in the palm of your hand creates more thick, perfect lather than you could possibly use up in one shave even if you do three or four entire passes, why would you need to make more, unless you somehow equate big gobs of lather with being a big man, etc.? Maybe to a shavegeek, lather = ejaculate, so the more the manlier, etc? But unless you're a horse trying to inseminate another horse, I'm not certain that twenty times the normal amount of ejaculate is a good thing, for anybody involved. Maybe I'm old-fashioned when it comes to this stuff.

I used the bowl method this morning, just to underline my astonishment at this shavegeek fad. I soaked my Vulfix #2235 badger brush in a sink of hot water like I usually do, and I swirled the tips over the top of a tub of Trumper's Violet cream like I usually do, but instead of making the lather in my palm, I beat the brush around and around in the bowl for a good ten, fifteen seconds.

Oh, I got lather. Did I ever. Tons of it. A ridiculous amount. Secretariat couldn't work up this much lather. It was thick, rich, glistening, you name it -- all the good things you want shaving lather to be for the best shave. But it was a disgusting waste. I used maybe a twentieth of the lather in the bowl to shave thrice -- down, up, and once more under the chin -- and then had to dump the rest of the lather into the sink. All that prime, high-end lather, just poured down the drain.

Seriously, if you need to use a bowl to make good usable lather, something's wrong with you. You probably shouldn't be shaving this way. Do you need to use a saw to open an envelope? I just don't understand the shavegeek's obsession with the bowl. It's beyond overkill, and for what?? To Make Lather. Which anyone, even a small child, can easily do just as quickly and easily in the palm of their hand or, if you prefer to keep your hands clean, a mug.

The really gone shavegeeks engage in a lot of embarrassing behavior that makes me shake my head sadly. But so far, their elevation of the cereal bowl to the shavegeek pantheon of accessories to obsess over and titter about like old ladies at a quilting bee -- "Look at the JPG I just posted of my new bowl I bought!" "Wow, where can I get a bowl exactly like that, it's so KEWL! How does it compare latherwise with your other bowls?" -- is the single biggest reason I wonder, late at night when I can't sleep, whether being as interested as I am about shaving automatically makes me a loser.

I got so psyched by yesterday's entry that I decided to put my money where my pie-hole is and actually shave like Lee Marvin would. That is, if Lee Marvin was presented with the scenario of cobbling together a shaving rig from my bottomless dresser drawer full of shaving crap. I've got creams, soaps, razors, blades, aftershaves, balms, brushes, and all kinds of assorted shave-related poultices crammed into a dresser drawer in my home office, ranging from the embarrassingly luxurious to the likes of which a hobo might get by on.

Were Lee Marvin to poke around in my shaving drawer, I think he'd grab for the most no-nonsense gear in the scrum. No rose scented shaving creams. No $120 Merkur Vision razor that comes in a presentation case for cripes sake. In fact, no adjustable razor of any kind -- leave that fancy stuff to the pretty boys eating salads on their lunch break at the florist.

I figured my trusty Merkur HD was Lee-Approved -- it's Heavy Duty after all, and it's the most rock-solid, no-nonsense DE razor I know of. Lee might've shaved with a straight razor -- probably did it in the dark, on a dry face, waiting outside Marvin Michelson's office so he could pound the crap out of him -- but I've put mine away for the time being. I feel pretty good that Lee would've been into the Merkur HD. It's the kind of razor you can huck at a guy's head, like Marvin Michelson's for instance, knock him out cold, pick up the razor, and catch a shave from it without missing a beat. Try that with a Flicker sometime.

For the lube, I did something I haven't done in a long time, but I think it's what Lee would've done. I used a hard shaving soap. Taylor's Sandalwood. If there's a manlier smelling hard shave soap out there -- not that Lee would've given a rat's ass what it smelled like -- look, forget the question, there isn't a manlier smelling soap out there. Sandalwood is the manly smell. What's that, you say? Musk is manlier? Let me tell you something -- if you need to spray some fake musk on in order to give off a masculine spoor, just cut to the chase and be this guy, okay?

Hard shave soap is literally a round cake of hard soap, in a wooden bowl. The concept is as old as the hills -- the first hominids who shaved in a recognizably civilized manner lathered from a bar of hard soap. You can use pretty much any soap you can find, but the traditional English firms who make the best creams seem to know a thing or two about making the right kind of hard shaving soaps, so I went with Taylor.

I don't normally use hard soaps because while they do let you shave a weensy bit closer than a good cream, they don't lube nearly as well, and I always seem to shave too close and irritate the hell out of my skin, especially around my neck. Years ago, when I first began trying different products to get a better shave than what I'd been getting from a Mach3 and goo-inna-can, I got ahold of some hard shaving soap from Art Of Shaving. Lavender, I think it was. I got a closer shave, definitely, but it beat up my neck and left red marks all around my Adam's apple.

I went on to try all kinds of other hard soaps, even some pricey Creed stuff my beloved wife bought me, but I could never shave with any of them without irritation. They all worked much better than modern gels or foams, but once I tried the high-quality creams from Trumper, Taylor and Proraso, I've never looked back. On my face, there's no comparison -- a good cream is miles ahead of any hard soap I've ever tried when it comes to lubing your face and protecting it from nicks and irritation.

But this morning I was on mission to shave like Lee Marvin, so I got out the Sandalwood hard soap and went to town. Soaked my brush in hot water in the sink and swirled it around on the soap till I got a thick head of lather, and then painted my face white. I have to say, Taylor's Sandalwood hard soap smells fantastic -- it's what I wished I smelled like naturally, instead of a zoo's monkey house. Lee Marvin probably smelled like gunpowder and cheap gin from an old Army canteen. Lee Marvin probably didn't muse on what other men smelled like, though.

The thing about hard shave soap is, it starts out fine. But as soon as you shave a swath down your cheek, don't even think about going over that patch again without relathering it, because it'll be just like you're shaving on dry skin. For some reason, the better creams like Taylor and Proraso let me go over the same area a few times with the DE, and my skin is still fairly slick throughout. Not so with the hard soaps. Maybe that's a good thing for some guys and the way they shave. Not for me.

I shaved in the usual way, with my usual razor, and got a very good shave overall. But -- and this is my universal but when it comes to hard soaps, no matter the brand -- I was left with red marks on my neck, and my face felt significantly more raw than usual. I wouldn't call it out-and-out razor burn, but I was definitely feeling a bit of heat. I never feel even a hint of heat after I shave with Taylor's shaving creams, or Trumper's, or especially Proraso -- my face feels so great after I shave with a good cream that I kick myself on a daily basis for not knowing about this stuff twenty years ago.

So I'm not Lee Marvin after all. Like I needed to shave with a hard soap to learn this, right?

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.

Today we're talking blades. Specifically, double-edge blades. The old-fashioned, 100 year-old blade type that some anachronistic idjuts still use to shave their pusses.

If you go visit your grandma, go into her bathroom and open up the medicine cabinet -- dollars to donuts there's a slot in the back of the cabinet that's for disposing used DE blades when your grandpa put a new one in his razor every Monday morning.

Even though American manufacturers like Gillette haven't sold safety razors for decades, millions of DE razors are still in use all over the world, and you can still buy DE blades in most drugstores and even on such modern mom'n'pops as Amazon.com .

But even though all DE blades will fit in any safety razor built in the last 100 years, there's definitely a foodchain when it comes to DE blade quality. And the order of the names from best to god-awful may surprise you.

Gillette invented the safety razor over a hundred years ago, and for sixty years its own double-edge blades were the best a man could get. But then the British company Wilkinson got in the act and introduced a new DE blade, fully compatible with the Gillette razors, but of noticeably better quality, so cutting edge wetshavers switched over to the Wilkinson blades for their Gillette DE razors for the best of both worlds, setting the wheels in motion for Gillette to abandon the standardized razor format in favor of proprietary, patented "shaving systems" like the Atra, Sensor, and Mach3, which other companies were forbidden to make compatible blades for.

Fifty years ago, there were hundreds of different brands of DE blades to choose from. Today, the millions of men around the world who still shave with a DE have but a handful of blades to load their razors with, but the good news is that today's best DE blades are eons better than anything that came before them.

I've shaved with all of the available blades you can purchase today, and they're all noticeably different. By that I mean, once you know what these blades "feel" like, you could tell them apart blindfolded if you shaved with them.

The worst DE blade you can buy today? Surprisingly, it's Gillette. Or maybe not so surprisingly -- some shavegeeks have theorized that Gillette makes their DE blades ragged on purpose, to make their modern shaving systems like the Mach3 seem better by comparison. Either way, stay away from them -- not only are they the most expensive DE blades on the market, but they're the worst I've tried. Nicks and cuts are guaranteed, even if you're an expert wetshaver. Just Say No.

A much better and cheaper choice is the 5-pack of Wilkinson DE blades for 79 cents. You don't see these everywhere, but you can order them online here. The Wilkinsons are super sharp, reliably consistent blades which some shavegeeks prefer over all others, especially in old Gillette adjustable DE razors. I find the Wilkinsons shave a little raggedy the first day, then the next five or six days are really smooth, but you should definitely change them every week like clockwork if you don't want to nick yourself. If you find Schick DE blades, these are the same blades as Wilkinsons -- both brands are owned by Energizer.

By far the most widely available DE blades are made by American Safety Razor's Personna division, and I find these blades to be of excellent quality. Most store brands like CVS and Rite Aid are really Personna Platinums, and you can bank on these blades as a reliably good shave. I bought 200 unlabeled "no-name" Israeli-made blades on eBay for thirty bucks which are clearly Personnas, and they're truly excellent blades.
Smoother and more refined than the Wilkinsons, the Personnas shave close without irritation, and I always get great results with them in any of my DEs, whether they're old Gillettes or new Merkurs.

The two high-end DE blades favored by the shavegeek elite are made by Germany's Merkur and Japan's Feather. Merkur's DE blades, which typically sell for around five bucks for a 10-pack, are the smoothest, most consistently forgiving blades I've tried. These are the blades I always recommend to DE newbies, because they're the least likely to nick and cut someone who doesn't know what they're doing. But make no mistake -- Merkur blades are precisely honed, and they deliver state-of-the-art shaves in any razor you load them in. Of all the blades I use, the Merkurs are my favorite.

But as good as the Merkurs are, there are some shavegeeks who want something mo' better. The Japanese company Feather makes all kinds of surgical blades and barber supplies, and they also make a DE blade that's by far the sharpest you can buy. Feather's Platinum DE blades go for around six bucks a 10-pack, and let me tell you, they shave like no other blade I've every tried. If you know what you're doing, you'll get the closest shave you ever got in your life. If you don't, you'll wish you were never born, because your face will look like you went ten rounds with Tommy Hearns.

Shaving with a Feather blade in your DE means adjusting your entire technique to compensate for a much higher level of cutting sharpness, and I'll be honest with you -- I nearly always nick myself at least once when I shave with a Feather blade, even though the shaves I get with these blades are ungodly close. The Feathers are far and away the sharpest and closest-cutting DE blades you can buy today, but they're not for everyone. My hats off to those guys who can use them routinely without drawing blood. I'm not one of them. But if you think you've got what it takes, the only place in the US you can get them is Classic Shaving.

This morning I popped the week-old no-name Israeli Personna blade out of my Merkur HD and loaded a minty new Merkur Platinum. The two blades shave so similarly I can't really tell the difference -- they're both smooth, close, and consistent. Miles ahead of the Gillettes, more refined and longer-lasting than the Wilkinsons/Schicks, but not quite so ungodly sharp as the Feathers that I have to worry about what I'm doing. Like Mama Bear's porridge, they're juuust right.

The shaving mug is one of very few honored, old-as-the-@%#$-hills part'n'parcels of the old-school shaving routine that I find cheesy, for some reason. I mean, using an XXL mug to prepare your shaving lather in made a lot of sense in the days when gentlemen had nothing but a cheap bar of soap to make lather with -- the mug served as an effective receptacle in which to store the hard soap, swirl a wet brush around and around on the soap till a thick lather formed, and then stow the brush after the shave was done.

But these days -- and for the last several hundred years, since shaving cream first hit the scene -- do you really need a mug? Unless you're a hair-shirt anachronist and you won't shave with anything but a traditional hard soap, shaving cream makes soooo much more sense -- it's creamier, latherier, and lubes your skin so much more effectively than any hard soap I've ever tried. Smells a lot better, too. And one of the nicest things about a good cream is that you don't need a mug to build up a good head of lather -- you just swirl the tips of a wet brush around a tub of cream, just enough to get the tips creamy, and then you can either build the lather right on your face, or swirl the brush around in your other hand's palm for a bit till the lather explodes into a big white mound of meringe.

Still, there are some who claim that even if you use shaving cream, you should still build your lather in a mug. Mixing the cream and the hot water from your brush so that they create the optimim lather with which to shave is best done by beating your brush around and around, and pumping it up and down and up and down, in a goodly-sized shaving mug.

The minimalist in me says phooey to all this hackneyed jizzery. I routinely build shaving cream lather in the palm of my hand, and it's always perfectly adequate. Ah HA! Is adequate good enough? By definition, it must be. But can a mug do better?

This morning I danced with what brung me. The Merkur HD safety razor (loaded with a no-name Israeli DE blade, most probably made by Personna in their factory there), Vulfix #377 shaving brush, and Proraso cream in the green tube.

But instead of sqeezing out a dollup of cream from the tube into my left hand and swirling the Vulfix brush around to build the lather, I pinched off some cream onto the tips of the drenched brush and shoved it into the pewter shaving mug pictured above, beating and mashing and pumping and stirring until the entire mug was filled to the brim with thick, rich, glistening lather. At least five times the volume and density of what I usually build in my palm using the same starter daub of Proraso. The brush was literally choked with lather all the way down to the handle, instead of just on the top of the bristles as it is usually.

And the shave? Perfect. Baby's butt smooth. But then, it was perfect yesterday too, and I didn't use the mug. Just my hand.

Maybe Proraso doesn't need the sky high mashed potato trip to give good shave. It seems to shave equally well whether I lather in my palm, directly on my face, in a mug, or even when I forego the shaving brush entirely and just slather on the cream with my bare hands.

When I get bored with perfection every day and turn to the other umpteen creams in my on-deck circle, I'll see if any of them work better when lathered in the mug versus in my hand. There's no doubt that using a shaving mug makes for much thicker lather, and much more of it. Whether it actually shaves better is another story for another time.

By the way, I'd like to make a prediction on this day of our Lord June 23rd 2005. The psycho kid on shavemyface.com has just roped about twenty grown men into chipping in 100 bucks each for a custom group shaving brush made by the German firm Shavemac. After much Soviet style debate -- i.e. "Here is only choice. You like? Good." -- the kid got all these hapless lonely hearts all ginned up over a wooden-handled shaving brush with each sap's initials printed on the bottom of the handle, along with the date he officially joined the message board. It's icky, but here's my prediction: every single sap who sends this kid his $100 is going to cry bloody murder when the brushes finally come and they look nothing like the pretty, pretty JPG the kid posted on the site. As I write this, they're probably 2-4 weeks away from getting the brushes, if the kid can actually deliver them at all. Want to watch the fur fly? Go here.

Hey, it beats nascar.

The theme for today was “retreat”. Yesterday's foreshortened straight razor shave, a sort of forced hybrid hydra with a Feather cut throat for a head and a Gillette DE for the hindquarters, didn't really do it for me. Neither fish nor fowl. A good shave, all told, but not a great shave.

So today I scurried back to the one tried and true wetshaving rig that's never let me down (of course, just tagging it as such now sets it up to let me down at some point down the road, but in blogging terms that's great because it's built-in fodder for plus-size navel-gaze) -- the Merkur HD safety razor, the Vulfix #377 brush, and Proraso's green eucalyptus cream in the tube.

There's nothing cool or sexy or swank about these components. Being non-adjustable and cheap, the HD is considered nothing more than a beginner's DE -- everyone's “first DE”, the safety razor you graduate to from a Mach3, the loyal first wife you ditch just as soon as you start getting good shaves with it because you're a dumbass just like the rest of us who started with an HD and you think spending some long green on an adjustable DE, whether one of Merkur's upscale jobs or an old Gillette crusted over with some octogenarian's ass whiskers you scored off eBay, is going to magically give you a better shave when you barely know how to use a DE in the first place.

The Vulfix 377 is a nice, big, soft-bristled super badger brush that's more shaving brush than anyone, I don't care who they are, will ever need. But it's reasonably priced for a large, super grade badger brush (90 bucks if I'm not mistaken, or less than a fourth of what a similarly sized brush from Simpson costs), has a non-descript handle that doesn't look like it came out of Churchill's dop kit and is made of ivory-colored plastic instead of pre-ban Dumbo choppers.

Proraso shaving cream I've praise-sung previously. It's cheap, it's abundant, it's 50 years old, and it kicks ass.

When I picked up a DE razor for the first time, it was a Merkur HD shaving on a bed of Proraso lather. It took me awhile to learn the difference between shaving with a modern pivoting catridge razor and shaving with a fixed-head DE, but once I did I was blown away by how much closer and smoother the Merkur shaved my face, and how all the red marks on my neck just suddenly went away for good once I retired the Mach3.

But of course the upgrade bug bit me, and I tried all the expensive razors -- Merkur's Futur, Vision and Progress, as well as the vintage Gillette adjustables I picked up on eBay. In every case, I started off getting a worse shave with each of these razors than I did with the humble HD, and even when I got used to them and became more adept, none of them ever shaved me “better” than the HD. The adjustable Merkurs made more noise when slicing whiskers, which was cool, and the Gillette seemed to allow for much more slop factor without nicks and cuts, but in the end, I never pushed my shaves beyond what I routinely got from the HD.

And today was no different. The combination of the HD, Proraso, and the Vulfix brush is just unbeatable. It's eleven hours after I shaved and my face still looks clean-shaven. Zero irritation, zero complications, zero effort. It's basically everything the Mach3 Power promises you, except that the Merkur actually delivers.

Why I ever shave with anything else is beyond me.

I was all set to use the Feather straight razor again this morning. I had my Taylor's Avocado shaving cream, my Vulfix #2235 badger brush, and nothing to bother me for the next hour's worth of leisurely showering and shaving..

"Honey, remember we have to leave in 15 minutes to take the kids to the doctor!" came BOTO's (Brains Of The Outfit's) shout down the hall.

D'oh! Okay, fifteen minutes for everything -- I can do this. In and out of the shower in five minutes flat. It wasn't comprehensive, it wasn't enjoyable, and it wasn't pretty, but I can pull off a five minuter when it's DefCon 4.

I took a hard look at the Feather razor. No time for a long, hard look, so just a hard look. You rush a shave with the scary-sharp Feather at your peril. My fastest shave ever with this thing was a sweat-poppin' 20 minutes for two passes plus some touch-up under the chin. Could I break my own land speed record if I really, really had to?

I slopped on some lather and went to town. Cold, ruthless efficiency. I did a fairly quick N-S pass over my face and neck, and that's when I heard another, shorter voice outside the bathroom door.

"Daddy? What are you doing in there?"

My three year-old. In an instant I knew the dream was over. I put the razor down. She's the first reason it's laughable to think I can shave every day with a straight razor. The second being, of course, my two year-old. He's all over the place these days. I shouldn't have a straight razor in the house with these two running around, much less in the bathroom cabinet.

I finished the shave with a 1961 Gillette safety razor, and then put the Feather back in its balsa wood box deep in the back of my shaving crap drawer, behind a row of cream tubs and brushes. I'm sure I'll get it out every now and then to practice with, but right now, with two toddlers in the house who like sharing bathroom time with me and who don't give us all that much time to throw ourselves together in the morning, I think a DE makes the most sense from all angles.

The more I think about how badly the Mach3 Power mulched my neck, the madder I get. I still can't believe that a single session with that vibrating egg of a razor left my neck with red marks and shave bumps three days later. How guys can shave with this thing and keep coming back for more is beyond me.

This morning I wanted a shave as far away as possible as the M3P. If the battery-powered Gillette is the future, than take me back, doo doo doo doooo, take me back. All the way back, to how man shaved in the days of yore. Before the multi-blade cartridge, before the Schick Injector, before the safety razor, before the straight razor. I wanted to tweeze each hair out one at a time with a pair of clam shells, just like the ancient Greeks used to.

Okay, that's too far back.

The farthest away I could get from the Mach3 Power this morning was to whip out the almighty Feather straight razor -- the instrument of death I swore I'd never go near again, at least until the next time I felt like futzing with it again out of curiosity. If the Mach3 Power is the razor of the masses, designed to compensate for the most extreme laziness and lack of concentration on the part of the user, the Feather straight razor is the exact opposite. Any laziness, any lack of focus, any day-dreaming while holding this scarily sharp blade to your face, you're sashimi.

I was so mad at the Mach3 Power I wanted to avoid duplicating any part of the regimen I used along with it. I went and got some different cream, Taylor's Rose, and spread some Pacific Shaving Oil on my dripping wet face and neck before brushing on the lather. I had my trusty printed copy of Dr. Chris Moss's excellent step-by-step straight razor guide resting on top of the toilet tank, opened to the relevant chapter. It was time for a fresh coat of skin.

Whether it was boning up with Dr. Chris, or the magical properties of the Rose shaving cream, or the hyper-sharp Feather Super Professional blade having been dulled just a tad from the several previous shaves I'd had with it, I can't say, but this was easily the best shave I've been able to muster from the Feather. I did one downward pass, relathered, and did my first mostly successful completely against-the-grain shave with the Feather ever. I say mostly because I did get some nicks here and there, mostly on my chin, which is the toughest area for me to shave with any straight, not just the Feather. For some reason my chin's the easiest part of the shave when I use a DE, but the hardest to master when I'm using a straight.

But even with a few nicks, the shave was very nice and not irritating in the slightest. Afterward, my entire face had that same "just got a facial" feeling that I had when I got that Straight Razor Shave To End All Shaves at Truefitt & Hill's shop in Vegas. I pretty much avoided the red marks left by the Mach3 Power, to give them some more time to heal, but the rest of my face and neck looked and felt great.

I'm going to try to stick with the Feather for awhile, to see if using this thing day in and day out will help me get over the newbie hump to where I can really start shaving with this thing as easily and confidently as I do with a DE. I know I said I was giving up on the straight after that unfortunate incident with the Dovo Shavette, but that was before the Mach3 Power kicked my ass. Now I must scrape off every trace of that experience that literally scarred me.

I saw in the news yesterday that Gillette gave shopping star David Beckham a diamond-encrusted Mach3 Power as a Father's Day publicity stunt. They say the razor's worth 50 grand. I say who's the 25W bulb in Gillette's PR dept. who chose a guy with perpetual glam-stubble as the poster boy for a shaving system? 20 bucks says those zirconias wind up on a belt buckle by Thanksgiving.

I'm still suffering from my bout with the Mach3 Power. My neck is raw hamburger meat, and I've got red bumps on either side of my adam's apple where my skin's the most sensitive. This is exactly the problem I used to have when I was shaving with the original Mach3, and I haven't had it since I switched to using a double-edge razor. But one shave with the Mach3 Power, just to try it out, and now I'm back to square one.

It's Father's Day, so I treated myself to the swankiest shave rig I've got at my disposal -- Merkur Vision razor, Trumper's Violet shaving cream, and a custom bespoke brush made from real silvertip badger hair (a grade above what's generally labelled "silvertip" or "super" by Vulfix et al).

I went extra soft with the shave, since I'm trying to recover from the beating I took from the Mach3 Power, but I may need a day or two of no shaving to let my neck heal. Even an extra-soft, extra-luxe DE shave hurts after the M3P debacle. I wish I'd never tried that stupid vibrating razor.

Happy Father's Day to me. My neck looks like Zappa's "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" cover.

The Mach3 Power beat the hell out of my face, so I need a few days of TLC shaving to recupe. I've got red blotches on the base of my neck the likes of which I haven't had since I switched from the original Mach3 to a double-edge safety razor. I've got shave bumps, too, on my cheeks and chin. How a razor can simultaneously cut so aggressively it tears your face up and still leave visible stubble even after two back to back shaves in the same morning, I don't know. What I do know is this was the worst and most irritating shave I've had in a long, long time, and I need a few days of extra gentle shaving to let my skin heal.

So today I went back to the Merkur HD razor, loaded with a Personna DE blade, and lathered up with Taylor's oh-so-gentle Avocado shaving cream. I went very, very lightly over my face, and barely touched my neck where the Mach3 Power wreaked most of its havoc.

I should never have tried the M3P. As my people say, never again.

Worst. Impulse purchase. Ever.

I remember when the Gillette Mach3 Power first came out. I had just started shaving with a double-edge safety razor, and thought the notion of a vibrating Mach3 was just about the dumbest idea I'd ever heard (NAMBLA's Toys for Tots campaign notwithstanding). Because the whole reason I'd ditched the Mach3 in the first place was to finally get a good shave. Now they've stuck a vibrator inside the handle and raised the price of both the razor and the cartridges? Please.

I never thought guys -- even American guys -- could be so dumb as to fall for this kind of gimmick, but fall they did, like a ton of bricks. According to Gillette, the Mach3 Power is now its best selling razor! Think about that for a moment. Doctors, lawyers, the airline pilot on your next flight -- all of them educated men, the best and the brightest. And they all ditched their old Mach3 to shell out ten bucks for a newer version that has a battery-powered vibrator which Gillette claims somehow does a snake charmer number on whiskers and coaxes them to stand up even higher than the one, two, three-blade tugging action that's already assaulting your facial hair.

Then I started reading on the shavegeek forums that some of these guys were crowing about how the Mach3 Power was the best shave they'd ever had. One of the moderators of the MSN Wetshavers board is even a full-on Mach3 Power missionary, trying to sway newbies by claiming he gets a month's worth of shaves out of each cartridge, and falling hook, line and sinker for the line that the M3P's blades are somehow more advanced than the older Mach3 blades, justifying their higher price.

All of this just made me scratch my head, and dig my heels in even deeper. No way was I going to drop ten clams on this stupid scam, even if the gadget geek inside of me was kind of curious to see what all the fuss was about. What if it actually did shave better? What if the vibrating shave head really did somehow make for a closer, more comfortable shave? Even if Gillette's marketing blovia was hooey, vibrating razors have been around since the 1940s. Maybe there's something to this whole vibrating blade thing.

Yesterday I'm in the drugstore and lo and behold, the Mach3 Power's on sale for eight bucks. For some reason, ten bucks is a ripoff in my mind, but knock two bucks off and it's go time.

So I buy it. I feel like an idiot buying this ultra-modern piece of plastic junk when I've got dozens of high quality DE razors at home, but I tell myself I have a responsibility as a journalist to try it. If I'm going to get on my soapbox and talk up old-school DE razors as being superior to modern multi-blades, I should at least try whatever new modern razor comes along, just to stay current, right?

I go home, I cut open the hard plastic blister pack, and I observe the Mach3 Power close up. Ye gods this is an ugly razor. It's lime green and fake metallic and looks like one of those awful futuristic Nike running shoes you see at the mall that makes you wonder who the hell buys such ugly, loud, offensive sneakers, until you look around and realize that's what everyone in the mall is wearing, and if anyone's the FREAK it's you, old-timer, in your ten year-old Chuck Taylors. You might as well be Herbert Hoover.

I want to give the new Mach3 Power the benefit of the doubt, so I prep my face in the usual way -- hot shower, Taylor's shaving cream whipped up into a beautiful lather with my Vulfix #2235 silvertip badger brush, just like I do when I shave with my DE.

The Mach3 Power has a little power button on the handle that toggles the vibrator on and off. A light press and the whole razor starts humming and jiggling, moreso than I'd expected from a lone AAA battery Gillette claims lasts for months of daily shaves.

I bring the M3P to the top of my cheek and make the first downward pass. Smooth. Doesn't even feel like I'm shaving, or even contacting the blades to my skin for that matter. Really, it doesn't feel like I'm cutting any whiskers at all, except that I'm clearly leaving a shaved path in the razor's wake. This new vibrating version definitely feels different than what I remember from the original Mach3.

I shave my entire face and neck, then rinse with hot water, relather, and do an against-the-grain pass. Gillette makes much hay of the claim that the M3P excels at against-the-grain shaving, because of the supposed hair-raising magic of the vibrations. I will say this -- the Mach3 Power does indeed shave against the grain without the user feeling much of anything. It's eerily not there, except it is.

I rinse with hot water, then rinse with cold water. And that's when I feel my face for the first time since the start of the shave.

I've still got stubble.

So I splash my face with hot water again, relather, and do another whole shave -- another North-to-South shave, rinse'n'relather, and then another S-N pass.

I've still got stubble. And what's more, my face is seriously irritated. I've got red blotches on my neck (the same kind of blotches I used to get from the original Mach3, which led me to try to find a better way to shave in the first place), and lots of little shave bumps on my neck, jaw line, and cheeks. And I can still see and feel stubble on my face.

I am not going to go through the day with a crappy shave, even in the name of science. I grab my Merkur Progress DE, load a fresh Merkur Platinum blade, and after lathering up one more time with the Taylor cream, I do a quick, light against-the-grain pass, and all of the stubble the Mach3 Power couldn't shave in two entire shaving cycles is gone. My face still shows the beating it took from the "smooth" M3P, but at least it feels good to the touch..

If you love the Mach3 Power and you're screaming at your monitor that I should give this thing at least a week so my face can re-adjust back after using a DE all this time, you're wasting your breath. I wouldn't shave with this thing again if you paid me. It gave me a lousy shave.

I can't believe guys love this thing, and are willing to pay a premium to make it a part of their daily regimen. If anything, I think the original Mach3 is better, at least in terms of leaving your face somewhat stubble-free, even if I never got the kind of glass-smooth shaves with it that I routinely get with a DE. And the older Sensor Excel leaves both the old and the new Mach3s in the dust. If I couldn't use a DE, I'd use the Sensor Excel. It's the only really good razor Gillette still makes. It doesn't shave my quite as comfortably or as closely as a DE, but it comes a lot closer than any of the Mach3s, vibrating or not.

Fifty years ago Gillette teamed up with MIT to design its classic adjustable DE razor, which may be the greatest razor ever. If you're lucky enough to get ahold of one, it'll shave you as well or better than anything you can buy today, and that includes the high-quality Merkur DE razors. It's a precision-made piece of solid stainless steel that cost guys a dollar when it was new and still shaves with the best of them half a century later.

Clearly, making Mach3 razors that force users into a cycle of buying expensive proprietary cartridges is a more lucrative business model than making a safety razor which consumers can load with any competitor's standard double-edge blades, especially when everyone else these days makes far better DE blades than Gillette does anymore. But to hold the classic Gillette DE in one hand and the Mach3 Power in the other is to question so many things beyond mere shaving that words simply escape me.

It helps, when discussing a particular shaving cream, to consider the main ingredient's celebrity spokesperson. Taylor's oft-overlooked and widely misunderstood Avocado shaving cream takes its name from the only produce ever endorsed by Angie Dickinson.

Why did Sgt. Pepper Anderson choose to promote the avocado over all other vegetation? How did Big Bad Mama decide that the avocado, and not, say, the kumquat, was worth the 1982 print campaign that sent sales of avocados skyrocketing? After having had Burt Bacharach, JFK, and Sinatra, what was it about the avocado that entranced the woman who turned down the role of Krystal in "Dynasty" so?

Some fun facts about the avocado:

1. The avocado is a fruit, not a vegetable!

2. The Aztecs called it "ahuacatl", and considered it a sexual stimulant and forbidden fruit!

3. Latin Americans wrap avocados up and give them as wedding gifts!

Taylor of Old Bond Street is the only company that offers an avocado-based shaving cream, and superb stuff it is. Even though it's loaded with avocado oil for an extra slick, extra moisturizing lather, the Taylor cream doesn't smell like guacamole the way I was kind of hoping it would, because I love guacamole. I used to eat it at practically every meal when I was in college in Texas, because every restaurant there, even the Magic Pan, serves guac and chips on auto-pilot, even if you don't ask for it. They just bring it to your table, and who can resist guac and chips? I defy you to show me a man who can. Even if you were deathly allergic to avocados and eating just a trace amount would kill you, you'd still munch on the guac and chips like you hadn't eaten in days. It's one of the most delicious things, and maybe the most delicious thing, of all time. Especially when the chips are really salty.

No, the Taylor shaving cream smells more like cucumbers, or just fresh vegetables in general, than any kind of primary avocado scent. It's a really excellent scent, fresh and pleasant, but would it kill Taylor to make this stuff smell like guacamole? Maybe it's a good thing they don't, because I know some early morning when I was half in a daze I'd probably eat it without even thinking.

And the shave? It's the best of all the Taylor creams I've tried, and I've tried most of them, though not their cologne-based creams. I'm not a big fan of cologne-scented shaving creams, and half of Taylor's line is scented to match their colognes, which are all excellent and smell like old British money, but for some reason my skin doesn't react too well with cologne-based shaving creams -- I do better with florals like rose, lavender, and violet scented creams.

Taylor's rose, lavender, lemon&lime, and almond shaving creams are all as good as shaving cream ever gets -- they all deliver a quality of lather that isn't bettered by anything else at any price -- except Taylor's avocado. As great as its other creams are, the avocado is a cut above in my book. Every time I shave with it, I decide that I'm never going to shave with anything else ever again. Not Proraso, not Trumper violet, not even Taylor's rose, which is one of the best scents to start the day with, and a great choice if you've beaten up your face a bit with an over-aggressive shave and you need a little tenderness. These are all creams at the top of my list, but if push came to shove and I had to choose just one shaving cream to use, I'd pick Taylor avocado. It's just a bit better than anything else I've tried. The smoothness, the creaminess, the incredible moisturizing number this stuff does on your face, which you can clearly feel long after the shave is finished -- these are just some of the reasons why I'd go with the avocado cream if I had to pick just one.

Yeah, it's a weird "flavor" of shaving cream. Avocado doesn't exactly scream Tarzan like some of the more macho creams like sandalwood, lime, and tobacco (yes, the Germans do a whole line of wetshaving products called Tabac!). And even if you like avocados, the Taylor doesn't smell like them much at all. But trust me, buy a tub of this stuff and tell me it isn't the best shaving cream you've ever used. Smells great, shaves great, and it makes you think about Angie Dickinson every time you shave. What's not to like?

I give up. I was so psyched up from yesterday's tale of Italian barbershop shaving that I whipped out my trusty Dovo Shavette disposable blade straight razor to get with the Italian program -- Proraso and a Shavette go together like cinghiale and polenta.

Or at least they have for me in the past. Today I couldn't shave with this duo worth a damn. I don't know what the deal was -- I had all the time in the world, my mind was one with the blade, my hand was steady, and I loaded half of a fresh Merkur Platinum DE blade in the Dovo. All the bases were covered, but my shave sucked.

Or rather, I sucked. I suck at this! No matter how many times I try shaving with a disposable blade straight razor, whether it's the almighty Feather Artist Club or the more forgiving Dovo Shavette, my shaves are about as consistent as Sonny Rollins. Which is to say, sometimes it's brilliant, but all too often it's just not happening at all.

It's not the straight's fault. It's my fault. I just don't have the touch for this kind of thing. Shaving with a straight razor, even a disposable blade type like the Shavette, is a much more difficult proposition than shaving with a DE, which is itself a more difficult proposition than shaving with modern cartridge razors. I was able to climb the first mountain, but summitting with a straight razor is, I think, beyond my natural ability.

Hardcore cut throat guys like the he-men who post on straightrazorplace.com would say I'm just punking out too early, and that I should put in more time to learn how to shave with a straight. They'd also say that shaving with a cheap Shavette loaded with half a DE blade isn't really shaving with a STRAIGHT, and that what I really need to do is get ahold of a real straight and start learning how to shave like a man.

I hear those guys, and am in awe of their ability. But I'm just not cut out for this. I get a much, much better shave with a DE, every time. This morning, I did two downward passes with the Shavette and still felt lots of stubble -- I cleaned it up with but a lone upward shave with a Merkur Progress DE and lo and behold, I had a perfect shave. The first two passes with the Shavette took me ten excrutiating minutes of careful, squinty concentration. The quickie upward pass with the DE took less than sixty seconds.

I know I'll go back on my word eventually and pick it up again, but I really do think I've given the straight razor experience my best shot, and it's telling me I shouldn't quit my day job.

Six years ago my wife and I were in Tuscany and I was still shaving with a Gillette Sensor Excel and that Novocain-juiced Lab Series "Maximum Comfort" shaving cream that numbed your face so you didn't realize how badly the Sensor was beating up your skin.

There was an ancient Italian barbershop down the street from our hotel that we used to pass several times a day, and it fascinated me, mainly because it seemed to be less of a place for men to get their hair cut, and more about beautifully dressed local gentlemen strolling in at all hours of the day to lean back in one of the two ancient red leather barber chairs so that old men in white smocks could give them an old-school Italian barber straight razor shave.

An Italian barber shave is a very different thing than the version we serve stateside. For starters, Italian barbers use real straight razors, which are illegal for barbers to use in this country -- they must use disposable blade razors, and discard the blade between shaves, so nobody shares the same cutting edge. Clearly, we must be protected against shared straight razors and unpastuerized cheese, because they deliver far more pleasure than Americans can plainly stand.

Italian barbers also use different shaving products along with their straight razors. The old barbers in San Gimignano had laid out clean white barber's towels on the counter behind the barber chairs and upon them sat an array of shaving creams, after-shaves, and assorted high-end poultices of a brand which I'd never seen before, which brings us to the shaving rig I used this morning -- Proraso!

Proraso shaving products have been around for over half a century in Europe, and Proraso's famous shaving cream in the green tube (or tub, if you want the slightly harder "shaving soap" version) is the #1 selling shaving cream in Italy. And with good reason -- this stuff is incredible! Really, it's far, far superior to any shaving cream sold at your local grocery store, drug store, mall, or even those weird knife shops that also sell Hummel figurines and shaving stuff. It costs nine or ten bucks for a five-ounce tube that lasts and lasts, and whether you use it with a shaving brush or just slather it on with your hands, it lubricates and conditions your face as well or better than anything else I've tried at any price.

Proraso's secret weapon is eucalyptus oil. It's good for your skin and it smells wonderfully old-world He-Man, but the money shot's when you finally finish your shaving and rinse your face with cold water. Yowza! When the cold water hits your freshly-shaven skin, the cooling effect hits you in a tidal wave of relief from any and all razor burn, irritation, you name it. When I use Proraso, I keep splashing cold water on my face long after the cream's washed off, just because it feels so damn good.

Proraso makes three different versions of its shaving cream -- the famous eucalyptus in the green tube, a wheat germ formula for sensitive skin that comes in a red tube, and a semi-hard shaving soap that comes in this really cool looking green plastic tub. I say semi because it's actually more of a hard paste than a true cake of shaving soap -- unlike the much softer green and red tubed creams, the stuff in the tub is meant to be used with a stiff-bristled boar's hair shaving brush, the kind that all Italian barbers swear by. I bought an Omega boar's hair brush for $12, just so I could use it with Proraso for the full-on Italian shave rig. It really kicks ass -- I'll talk more about it another time.

Proraso also makes a couple of pre-shave and after-shave products that deserve mention. The company's legendary Crema Pre & Dopo Barba is known as the "pre-shave miracle" in Italy, where barbers slather it on the beard to soften the hairs before shaving cream is lathered on top of it. I've used it, and it's great for reducing skin irritation if you shave very aggressively or use a straight razor. Proraso's Crema Liquida Dopobarba is a creamy, milky-white aftershave that's one of the very best I've used. It's got witch hazel and vitamin E, and most importantly, no alcohol (I don't recommend Proraso's more traditional alcohol-based aftershave splash, the clear stuff, because it stings like @%#$ the same way all alcohol-based aftershaves do -- who ever thought this was a good idea?!)

Of the three Proraso shaving creams, I like the green tube the best. It shaves best, at least on my puss, and even if you apply it with your hands instead of a shaving brush, it still lathers up nicely and delivers a world-class shave. The wheat germ Proraso shaves well, but it smells funky, and doesn't have the intense cooling effect with cold water that the green stuff has. The semi-hard soap in the tub gets my vote for the coolest looking of the three Prorasos, but I find it doesn't shave quite as well as the soft cream in the green tube. Still, I will always keep a tub of the semi-hard on hand, because it's the same stuff that the old-school Italian barbers use, and they've forgotten more about shaving than I'll ever know. It probably is the best of the trio, and I just haven't figured out how to use it properly yet. I plan to keep at it with the boar brush till I get as good a shave with it as the green tube.

Some of the more zombified shavegeeks who can't stand when inexpensive products work better than the overpriced totems these types worship poo-poo Proraso because it's cheap compared to the upper-crust English creams, and because it has lanolin, which the cranks claim gums up badger brushes. I think these guys are full of it, and knowingly lying in order to preserve a hierarchy of expensive British products in the upper tier, and lower priced European creams like Proraso and Musgo Real (another favorite I'll discuss another time) below. Me, I use Proraso all the time, with my best badger brushes, and I've never had a problem. And you won't either. It's great stuff.

What's that? Your local grocery store doesn't stock Proraso next to the eighteen rows of forty different types of Gillette and Edge "advanced" gels? Scroll down to the Links section -- every online wetshaving vendor worth his salt sells Proraso because it's the biggest bang for the shaving cream buck there is, and at one time or another all of these guys have told me the same thing, namely that Proraso shaves as well as anything out there, and better, in fact, than many of the most highly-esteemed brands from the UK. I agree wholeheartedly.

Do yourself a favor and get a green tube of Proraso. I can't tell you how many friends I've turned onto this stuff, and everyone goes bonkers over it. It's by far the biggest bang for the buck in the shavosphere.

The West German Merkur safety razors are far and away the finest DEs made today, and certain models have achieved cult status among hardcore shavegeeks. The top o' the line $120 Vision is undoubtedly the most highly coveted Merkur -- it's not merely the most expensive DE you can buy, but it's also, in the opinion of many hardened vets, the only DE that delivers a shave of the same quality and longevity as a straight razor's.

At the other end of the foodchain, the $33 Hefty Classic (aka HD) non-adjustable DE has its own cult, probably because it's the razor most newbies start with (I recommended the HD in my Today Show shaving segment), and it's also the razor that most newbies wind up returning to after they've run the gamut and discovered, as I did, that nothing out there actually shaves better than the HD. And then there's the $50 adjustable Progress, Merkur's version of the classic Gillette adjustable DE, which just may be the best all-around safety razor being manufactured today.

With all the attention paid to these excellent razors, it's no wonder Merkur's $60 Futur gets lost in the shuffle. It's half the price of the Vision, so it can't possibly be as "good". And it's only ten bucks more than the Progress, which, frankly, looks a lot cooler, in that old-school, no-frills way that serious shavegeeks go for. The Futur looks, well, modern. Like something a young guy who spends a ton on young guy grooming aids that suck would buy. Look at it. It looks like the Silver Surfer's organ, and I don't mean a Wurlitzer.

Truth be told, I actually bought a Futur a week or so after I started shaving with a DE. I'd bought a Merkur HD on the advice of Lee at Lee's Razors, and even though I was still nicking myself after a week into shaving with a DE for the first time, I thought I was ready to "upgrade". I am such an idiot.

So I bought a Futur. And proceeded to BUTCHER my face with it. The very first time I swiped it across my cheek I got a gash the full length of the swipe. I tried another pass, and nicked myself something terrible. And again, and again, until I finally gave up -- a sink fulla red will do that to you. Futur? Merkur should rename this razor the Butchur, to ward off all moronic newbies like me who think they're ready for an aggressive adjustable DE before they're even out of short pants.

This is not a razor for newbies. The Futur shows so much more blade than the HD and the other Merkur fixed-head razors that you really, really -- I can't stress this enough -- really need to know what you're doing before shaving with one. I made the universal rookie mistake of thinking that a "better" razor would help me get a better shave, when what I should've done was stick with the HD and get some experience and technique under my belt before jumping up to a much more aggressive shaving tool.

My first shave with the Futur was so bad I immediately put it on eBay, and got back most of what I paid for it. It ended up being a ten buck lesson, one of the best lessons I've gotten when it comes to wetshaving. Don't try to run before you know how to walk.

A few months down the road, I'd become adept enough on the HD that I felt ready to try stepping up to an adjustable razor. This time, I chose the much gentler vintage Gillette adjustable, which I got on eBay. Niiiice! Then I got an adjustable Merkur Progress -- niiiiiiice! Things were going so swimmingly that I decided, like G. Gordon Liddy, to face down my fear. Not by killing and eating a rat, but by getting another Futur and giving it another, more capable go.

This time, it was smooth sailing. Now that I know what I'm doing, the Futur kicks ass! It's a world-class DE, and certainly no more difficult to shave with than the other adjustable Merkurs, the Vision and the Progress. In fact, I prefer the Futur to the Vision, even though it costs half the price. I like the smaller shave head better, and it gets under my nose easier than the Vision can. Plus I just like the way the Futur looks compared to the almost comically outsized, "Lost In Space" looking Vision -- I'll take the Silver Surfer's ball-peen over Robbie the Robot's any day, although I'm sure Dr. Smith wouldn't agree.

As for the Futur versus the Progress, well, if push came to shove I'd go with the Progress. I like its style better, but I also think that the Progress's screw-down shave head is a better and safer way to clamp down on the razor blade than the Futur's flip-off top. I even cut my finger once when trying to adjust the Futur's setting while a blade was in the razor -- it's not as idiot-proof as the Progress, and this idiot needs every bit of proofing he can get from a razor.

That said, I really like picking up the Futur every now and then and shaving with it, like I did this morning. It's a quick, smooth, effortless shave, and like the Vision, the Futur makes a cool cutting sound when mowing down your whiskers, similar to the sound a straight razor makes. It's instant audible feedback on whether you've still got stubble to shave, which lets you know in an instant whether you're done with an area or not. I could be very happy if this were my only razor. But it's not, so I don't have to think about the Silver Surfer's crotch every morning when I'm putting myself together.

Not that there's anything wrong with that..

I forgot to bring a razor with me on our weekend getaway. I was swapping out the Merkur Progress razor in my dop kit with a Gillette adjustable (this is how bad my sickness has become: I have at least three of every kind of razor that I routinely shave with, so I can have the same razor in both of our bathrooms and my dop kit at all times -- which means, of course, that when I decide to use a different razor, I swap out the other two, even if I don't plan to shave in the upstairs bathroom or go on a trip any time soon), but something must have distracted me in mid-swap, because I removed the Merkur but didn't replace it with the Gillette.

When I saw the razor was missing this morning, I knew I had two options. I could run out to the drugstore and pick up some Bic disposables, whatever single-blade jobs they had. Or I could use my sister-in-law's leg shaver, that ubiquitous green oval Gillette with the off-spec men's Sensor twin-blade cartridges repackaged for fem-gam use that every woman I know has in the corner of her shower stall.

Somehow, my wife convinced me there was a Third Way. Just don't shave. It's Sunday, after all, the traditional day of not-shaving that's practically a universal heterosexual male trend these days with near-total adherence.

Don't shave? Was she insane? Surely, she above all others knows that if good shave = good day, and bad shave = bad day, then no shave must mean....well, what, exactly? No day? That doesn't make any sense. All I know is, I look forward to my morning shave like it's breakfast, coffee, a cigar, and the Sunday Times all wrapped into one. I haven't skipped a daily shave since I started this whole old-school wetshaving trip. Haven't wanted to. But even less did I want to cadge a shave off my sister-in-law's Lady Sensor. So I blew the whole thing off.

My wife tells me she likes me with a day or two's worth of whiskers. This is the only time I feel she ever lies to me. Why would she want to be married to a hobo? Some guys' beards grow in evenly, so a day or two's stubble looks like a continuous layer, like the short fuzz beard on '70s black G.I. Joes. Same stuff as black light posters. Flocking, I think they call it.

Me, I grow stubble like a hobo, or an escaped mental patient. A thatch here, a patch there, and whole areas of little or no growth which have no complementary partner on the other side of my face. Trust me, I'd be all the way okay to skip shaving every once in awhile if I looked good while doing it. But I don't. Which is why I'm fanatical about shaving every day, even if it's a weekend, even if I don't plan on leaving the house, even if I won't see another living creature for the next 24 hours. I tell people I live by the adage "A Gentleman shaves every day", but the truth is, I look like a jackass if I don't shave. People stare hard when I venture out in public, and god forbid I smile at a small child -- the torches and pitchforks come out immediately. Society has made it abundantly clear to me over the years that it wants me to shave, and shave regularly, if I want to be a part of it. So I do. I even love it, now that I've found the right way to do it. But I never, ever forget why I do it.

Anyway, I went the whole day stroking my raspy chin until we drove home and I went straight to the bathroom and stole a rewarding, leisurely shave with the most decadent He-Man rig I've got -- the mighty Merkur Vision razor, Trumper Violet cream, and Vulfix silvertip #2235 brush. Took my time, emerged with a face of pure white alabaster, and felt like a human for the first time all day.

I can't trust myself to remember to bring a razor when I travel. I should really just keep on on my person at all times, just in case something like this ever happens again. You think I'm joking.

I had fifteen minutes to shower, shave, and pack the kids into the car for a weekender, so I went to my go-to Quickie rig, the razor I know I can haul ass with and get a perfectly respectable shave without carving my face up like a turkey: my favorite Gillette adjustable dialed down to 4.

I usually shave with the Gillette dialed up to 5 or 6, depending on what kind of blade I'm using. But if I'm really in a hurry and I'm going for the quickest good shave possible, I dial the Gillette back to 4 and buy myself some slop factor. That is to say, I don't have to be quite so careful with my strokes. With the razor set up for a less aggressive shave, I can fly like nobody's business, and get through a shave even more quickly than when I used to use a Mach3.

And the quickie shave? Not bad. Not my best ever, but perfectly respectable, and certainly smoother to the touch than anything I used to get out of the modern multi-blade razors back in the day. I didn't have time for that extra blade-buffing I do to get the problem areas on my neck (more on blade-buffing another time), but I can let that slide on the weekend.

I got a new plastic Wilkinson DE razor today, sent from the UK. Seems Wilkinson still makes a modern-styled safety razor to go with its excellent (and usually very inexpensive) DE blades, but they don't sell it in the US. If you want one, you have to go online and hunt one down from the handful of UK vendors that sell them. At around fifteen and change including shipping from the UK, the Wilkinson DE is a bit more expensive than a new Mach3, but I was dying to see what a modern plastic take on a DE would shave like, since the metal Gillettes and Merkurs we all use now are actually quite old designs, over a century in some cases.

Unlike the classic Gillette adjustable DEs, the Wilkinson is a fixed razor -- but that's not to say it's neutured. It's just non-adjustable. Actually, it's set for a bit more bite than the non-adjustable Gillettes, but it's not quite as aggressive as the fixed-head Merkurs. Of course, the Wilkinson is almost entirely made of hard black plastic, so its handfeel and facefeel are very different from the metal DEs I normally use. The handle is more akin to something modern like the Mach3 and Sensor, and the Wilkinson's stateside corporate cousin the Schick Quattro.

And the shave? It was okay, I guess. I was hoping it would be some kind of miraculous left field find -- you know, the cheap plastic razor that outshaves the heavy metal rigs. Like that incredible el-cheapo Bic Metal disposable that Gordon on Wetshavers turned me on to. 28 pennies apiece and the only thing metal on it is the tiny strip of single-edge blade strung across the head, but man alive does this cheap disposable razor shave like nobody's business! I can get as good a shave with a Bic Metal as I can with my usual array of DEs -- it's only good for two or three shaves, and truth be told it's a bit more touchy shaving against the grain than a good DE, but with a proper lather and a light touch, it's silly good and far and away the best plastic razor I've ever used.

Not so the Wilkinson DE, I'm afraid. Like I said, it shaved me okay. But it wasn't a huzzah moment, and I don't recommend hunting one down like I did unless you just want it for grins, especially since a few bucks more can get you a solid steel Merkur DE which is a far better razor in every way.

It's clear why US vendors haven't gone out of their way to bring the Wilkinson DE over here. It's decent, but it's more of a novelty than a contender, especially when you consider that vintage Gillette DEs are still being won on eBay for under 20 bucks, and any one of them -- even the old brass ones from the turn of the century, or the long-handled "ladies" DEs which were designed for shaving gams and pubes -- would shave circles around the plastic Wilkinson.

Still, I'm nothing if not a sucker and a completist. I had to have it, and I'm glad I got it. Into my drawer o' shaving oddities it goes, to join such never-to-be-used-again razors as the 99-cent Russian aluminum DE (the eBay listing called it "chrome"!)that almost sliced my cheek off -- you shave with this crude, scrapey thing at your peril. Cost me 5 bucks S/H for a .99 razor that arrived in an unpadded envelope, and the best part of it all was that when I complained to the seller that it was cheap stamped aluminum without a lick of chrome anywhere on it, he graciously sent me a refund -- 99 cents. Wotta guy!

Today I decided to go all the way to Crazy Town and take the feared Feather straight razor for a spin.

Thanks to the past week of monogamous shaving, my self-barberizing confidence is sky high. Shaving with the same rig for seven days in a row smoothed out my prowess so much I feel like I could shave with a bench saw. Massaging your baby smooth mug all day for a week straight will do that to a mind.

So this morning I felt like a hardened gambler fresh off a good night on the nickel slots, drunkenly stumbling over to the $500 table while the winner's aura still draped on him like silk pajamas. I went all the way to the top of the shaving foodchain and got out the Feather disposable blade straight razor.

I've spoken of the Feather before. It's a straight razor that uses disposable blades of its own unique design, so you don't have to hone and strop the blade as you do a conventional cut throat. The very lack of routine futzing means that the hardcore vets on the straight razor forums, and yes there are such things, tend to dismiss the Feather as not the "real thing", because it relieves the user of all the maintenace these guys regard as part and parcel of the whole trip. Some of these guys give props to the Feather and point out that its proprietary replaceable blades are the sharpest things outside of an emergency room, and that even the most skilled razor honers can't equal the Feather's sharpness on a conventional straight razor. Where the Feather seems to have found its niche is as the fabled brass ring which competitive wetshavers who think they've mastered the DE and want to move up to the varsity team aspire to.

Some are more successful than others in making the transition from a helluva lot more forgiving safety razor to the utterly unforgiving Feather.

I am one of those who was not more successful.

Oh, I can handle the Feather alright, and if you give me 30 minutes and an hour or two to wake up and down some black coffee, my mind and hand are sharp enough to shave with this unholy scalpel without so much as a nick. That said, the shaves I get with the Feather are all over the map, and it's got nothing to do with the razor and everything to do with me. I get a teensy bit better with the Feather every time I pick it up, but I'm always left with the question of whether I have the right personality type to shave with the world's sharpest straight razor.

I don't believe that all men are created equal. I think some people have special innate talents, and while many of us can train ourselves to become better at certain skills, there's Jimi Hendrix and then there's every bar band guitarist you ever heard who covered "Hey Joe", including me. I know guys who can ride a unicycle -- I've tried, and couldn't if you gave me a million years to practice.

I know what you're thinking. Being an American, you've grown up with that oft-repeated tripe about how you can do anything if you just put your heart into it. Really? Anything? I can shrink down to atomic size and dance the rhumba with protons? Can I have a dialog with a bar napkin? There's things we just can't do, no matter how much we'd like to. And I think one of those things I'm not wired to do is shave as well with a straight razor as I can with a DE.

I just don't have the patience, or the precise touch with my hands, or the mentality to sloooow my brain down and tunnel-vision for the time it takes to shave. This morning I shaved two downward passes with the Feather loaded with its sharpest Professional Super blade, and the resulting shave was just okay. I washed my face, relathered, and reached for my Gillette DE, which, in one easy, no-brainer, upward pass, shaved me baby butt smooth in a minute or two. I've gotten better shaves with the Feather, but that's just it -- I don't have the mastery of this particular approach to shaving to get consistent, easy shaves with it, and I'm beginning to feel that I just don't have the right stuff for this trip.

Now, there are definitely areas of my life where I take the longer, harder road because I know it yields sweeter meat. Barbeque is one of them -- I'll happily smoke ribs for six hours with hardwood charcoal and waterlogged hickory chunks and tend to them like a mother hen the whole time rather than throw a few slabs on a gas grill and come back in twenty minutes. But if I could get pork ribs that tasted better on a gas grill as they do in my Big Green Egg smoker, I'd go gas and never look back. It's quicker, cleaner, and you can pick up the skill needed in about two or three cooking sessions.

That's how I feel about a DE razor. It seems to strike that sweet spot between the brain-dead modern razors like the Mach3 and the "you either got it or you ain't" dextrous touch needed to be a successful straight razor shaver.

I'm sure I'll keep pulling out the Feather every now and then and see if I can get better at it. If that makes me less of a man, then so be it. Anyway, how much of a man can I be if I listen to Maria Callas and wear violet cologne? I just get on with the DE much better at this point in time.

Today, I went back to one of my favorite combos -- the vintage Gillette adjustable DE loaded with a Merkur blade, and Taylor's Rose shaving cream in the tub. Working that Rose into a nice, thick lather with the brush swirling around in my lefthand palm, the aroma that wafted through the bathroom practically gave me a contact high.

Taylor is one of the great wetshaving finds. A genuine UK-made shaving cream that usually sells for less than half what competitors Trumper and Truefitt & Hill cost per tub or travel tube, Taylor is right up there with any cream on the market at any price, and truth be told, many serious wetshavers prefer the lather they get from Taylor creams to anything else. It's a rich, densely whipped cream, and the line features a lineup of scents ranging from Sandalwood to Lemon-Lime that just knock me out (I'll talk at length about Taylor's uniquely incredible Avocado shaving cream soon, as it deserves a whole chapter to itself).

Now, when I first got into this whole traditional shaving trip and encountered rose scented toiletries for me, my first reaction was disgust. I've always hated the smell of roses, whether at a florist or on the over-perfumed bosom of an elderly relative (female, although some of my elderly male relatives have bosoms as well). Nothing spells "old lady smell" more to me than the heavy, suffocating, funereal scent of roses. Just the thought of it made me make a bad peanut face.

But then I started hearing how rose scented shaving creams were designed especially for sensitive skin, because rose water has a soothing and calming effect on skin irritation. So I picked up a tub of Taylor's Rose to try it, and that's when my nose did a complete 180 -- I discovered, much to my confusion as a husband, a father, and a man...

I love the smell of roses!

The smell of Taylor's Rose, and then later Trumper's Violet cream, hit me like a ton of bricks. In an instant, I went from having hated floral scents my whole life to suddenly loving them so much I found myself buying some colognes that were floral as well. Truth be told, I went on a bit of a violet binge after discovering how much I loved the smell of Trumper's Violet shaving cream, and I bought a bottle each of Trumper's Ajaccio Violet and Santa Maria Novella's Violetta colognes, the latter of which my wife now wears -- okay, that sounds like Corky Sinclair from "Waiting for Guffman", I'll give you that. But it's true. And it smells great on her, better than it does on me. But I digress.

Rose. Yes. Taylor's Rose cream smells utterly wonderful, and is a much fresher and more -- dare I say -- manly scent than the cloying, awful rose colognes you're probably used to. Turns out rose and violet scented toiletries like shaving cream have been a staple of the British aritocracy for hundreds of years. Who knew? What I do know is, Taylor's Rose smells incredible, and it shaves like a dream if you find that other shaving creams and soaps cause burning or other skin irritation when you shave with them. It comforts, soothes, never burns or itches, and always results in a spectacular shave and a lingering aroma that perks up my senses. Highly recommended.

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, I'm free at last!

Today was my last day of monogamous shaving -- that is to say, sticking with the same razor, blade, brush, and cream for a whole week. Sounds like no big deal to you mugs who shave with the same rusty disposable "Good News" plastic piece of @%#$ for months at a clip, I know. But for us serious wetshavers, a whole week without swapping out different razors, or different creams especially, is maddening. To not dip into the stash o' varietal delights I've accumulated over the past year or so of serious wetshaving was sheer torture.

The good news: I learned a valuable lesson. By sticking with the same Merkur HD safety razor, the same Merkur Platinum DE blade, the same Vulfix #2235 silvertip badger brush, the same Trumper Violet shaving cream, and the same Trumper skin food post-shave moisturizer, I was forced to focus on my hand technique. And my shave got better, to the point where all the minor, niggling complaints I still had about DE shaving all went away, leaving nothing but a clean, smooth, irritation-free shave behind, day in and day out.

If I'd started out with a DE, a brush, and good cream when I first began growing whiskers, I know I'd be fine sticking to the same rig every day, getting perfect shaves, and none of this would seem exceptional in any way whatsoever. My problem is, I came to this stuff late in the game, after 20 years of shaving with el-cheapo disposables and then over-aggressive multi-blade catridge razors. So it's all amazing to me, and I'm a little more juiced about it than is probably normal and healthy.

Which is why I can't possibly be monogamous when it comes to shaving. At this point, I've given over an entire dresser drawer to my shaving crap. I've got seven different models of Merkur DE razors, and dozens of vintage Gillette DEs I scored on eBay before the gold rush -- adjustables, both short handled and long, as well as non-adjustables, take-apart travel razors, you name it. I've got three disposable blade straight razors -- the German Shavette, the Spanish Filarmonica. and the Japanese Feather. I've got scads of DE blades from Merkur, Feather, Wilkinson, and Personna. Too many brushes to think about. And even more creams than brushes. I've given away more of this stuff than I've kept for myself, but the problem is I keep buying it up, because it's a sickness.

So tomorrow I may shave with a vintage Gillette adjustable set wide open on 9, with a Vulfix #377 brush and QED violet shaving soap. Or I might whip out the new Filarmonica which I've been dying to try, loaded with half a Merker DE blade. Or maybe I'll take the Merkur Progress adjustable for a spin, to remind myself how on any given day I think it's better in some ways than even the vintage Gillette. The handle's less grippy but the added heft makes all the difference.

And when it comes to creams, I may go with Taylor's Rose one day, Proraso the next, then Musgo, Taylor Lavender, Trumper Violet hard soap, and Pacific Shave Oil all by its lonesome. Haven't decided yet. Don't need to. That's the beauty of polygamous shaving. It's like that guy in Salt Lake City with all the wives who drilled cave dwellings into the side of a mountain for each one, and he made the rounds depending on his fancy. He had the right idea. Not about wives, but about shaving.

My hope is that the improved technique I acquired during this experiement carries over to my return to wetshaving tomcattery. I would love to be able to auto-adjust my hand movements to get the same great shave from whatever rig I happen to choose on any givemn morning. On the other hand, maybe it would be just as boring as this past week has been? if I get the same shave from an old Gillete travel razor as I do from the Feather straight razor, then why use different razors in the first place? Same goes for creams, brushes, all of it. So maybe it's better to get different shaves from different razors, so when my face is starting to cry uncle from all the potato peeling the Feather straight razor's been doing, I can settle things down with a few days' worth of mild Gillette adjustable set to a nice, comforting 3. And when that fair-to-middlin' type shave doesn't do it for me anymore, I can kick it up a notch and flail away with the Shavette, till that starts to hurt a bit and I wind up back with the tried and true Merkur HD, which always gives great shave.

Vivre le difference!

Hooray! Huzzah! Excelsior! A mediocre shave! It disproves my entire (feared) theory that shaving with the same razor, blade type, brush, and cream every day, without dicking around all the time with different combos, or moving back and forth between a DE and a straight razor, etc., is the surest route to the Perfect Shave! It's....it's....

It's a lie.

My shave this morning was perfect. Again.

Smooth, effortless, quick. No irritation or red marks on my neck. That Merkur HD zipped across my face like it had wings. Every day since I stopped swapping out razors and creams and decided to try using the same rig for a week straight to see if things improved, my shave's quality has jumped to a new high. And my dread of the horrible truth that I may never be able to enjoy the dicking around of days of yore and still enjoy the same shave o' the gods grows more palpable with each pass of the blade.

The hugely perverse thing about this realization is that the information benefits absolutely no one. The hardcore shavegeeks on the shaving forums couldn't keep with the same rig for two days straight if their lives depended on it -- these damaged psyches are chemically unable to sustain a sensible regimen for any extended period, and crazily whip out the plastic every time some excitable trust fund brat raves about a razor or brush that's the new best thing ever, only to abandon it right after the pack picks up on it. And regular guys who've never heard of wetshaving or the odd online forums which cater to its more codependent devotees are going to stick to their Mach3 and Edge gel anyway, which means their shaves will go on sucking forever.

I admit, it's not easy sticking to this routine. It's boring. Ever since I got turned onto DE razors, and all the different kinds of blades you can load them with, and all the different brushes and grades of badger hair, and especially all the different, incredible smelling creams from Trumper, Taylor, Truefitt & Hill, Proraso, Musgo Real, et al, it's been an orgy of self-indulgent luxury every morning. It's not just about getting a better shave -- it's about holding a precision machined metal razor in your hand instead of some cheap plastic junk, and spreading shaving cream all over your face with a soft badger brush instead of simply wiping it on with your mitts, and having the scent of fresh cut violets hang all around your face instead of an industrial chemical smell that reminds you of when the janitor used to mop the halls of your high school. Everything about this trip spells quality. It's the exact opposite of the Mach3 experience, where even the staunchest 3-blade defenders still bitch about paying two bucks a cartridge when they only give two or three good shaves before they start nicking and dragging on your face anyway.

I've got one more day to go. This experiment was a week's worth of monogamous shaving, and tomorrow's my last day. Will I keep to the routine, now that I've see proof that it works so well?

Are you kidding?!

First off, I just received my Filarmonica disposable blade straight razor in the mail, which I've been chomping at the bit to try ever since it hit my doorstep. Second, while I dearly love my Merkur HD (the first DE razor I ever shaved with), I also love using other DEs -- most notably Merkur's adjustable Progress and Futur models, as well as the mighty vintage Gillette adjustable DE, perhaps the greatest safety razor of them all. And I want to try my Dovo Shavette disposable blade straight razor again, to compare it with the Filarmonica using the same type DE blade snapped in half. One half goes into the Shavette, the other in the Filarmonica, and may the best faux cut throat win.

Also, the feared Feather straight razor continues to haunt my dreams -- the sharpest blade I've ever encountered, by far, and the scariest razor I've ever shaved with. I've gotten good results with it, but not great results, as my straight razor technique could definitely use some work. I want to keep at it until I get good enough to get the kind of shave the vets like Dr. Moss speak of. I am not a man of Dr. Moss's achievement or intellect, but I want to shave like him.

And someday, when the dust settles and I make my shaving bones, I want to shave like Gordon, my wetshaving mentor and eminence grise of the Wetshavers forum. Gordon uses the same old Gillette adjustable DE he's been shaving with for forty years, day in and day out, and watches with barely concealed amusement as the trust fund brat leads the lemmings to drop their trusty rigs and replace them with this over-aggressive razor or that skin-irritating shave soap or this marginally-different-yet-gotta-have-it-cuz-it's-the-BEST!!! brush, which they all do happily, only to find that the TFB's ADD kicked in again and now he's raving about a whole new rig that's the BEST!!! one that will ever be. My hat's off to Gordon, as he lets the TFB make a jackass of himself without commenting upon it, and he's always eminently helpful and kind to the wetshaving newbies who come in off the Net looking for help with their first DE, like I did.

So you see, even as I see how this past week's worth of perfect and perfecter shaves proves, to me anyway, that sticking with the same setup and letting daily repitition hone your technique is the best route to the Perfect Shave, I can't wait to mix things up again. I know I've got some big-ass nicks and slices coming my way, and I've already got the styptic pencil on standby. But how do you keep a guy down on the farm when he's had a taste of the endless variety that is the modern wetshaver's toolbox?

Another perfect shave. This is bad, bad news.

Bad because it seems I've achieved what I originally set out to do with all this old-school wetshaving business, which is get a great shave. This I've done. Repeatedly. At this point, second-naturedly. No more squinting, no more overthinking, no more trial and error, no more experimentation with different razors, blades, creams, brushes, aftershaves, etc. I'm done. I did it. Now I'm supposed to congratulate myself on another goal met, and move on to the next worthy challenge, like finding the perfect wireless headphones.

Except it isn't working out that way. When you boil it all down to the main objective -- achieving a close, comfortable, baby-snooth shave without ugly red marks on my neck on a daily basis -- I have clearly figured this stuff out. Not that it's a brain teaser by any stretch of the word. Men have been shaving like this for hundreds of years, and often with tools and under conditions that were much less effective than what we have at our disposal today. But I do think, though, that it was easier back then to learn proper wetshaving right off the bat because it was all that was available, compared with the process of unlearning all the slop and bad habits which modern multi-blade razors and canned foam/gel were expressly designed to allow. Better to have picked up a straight razor or a DE when you're 15, suffer for awhile, and then be on the right track for the rest of your shaving days than to grow up, as I did, with poor quality disposable razors and multi-blade cartridges and then have to radically change everything I did and knew about shaving once I switched to a DE.

That said, I did it. And I really enjoyed every stage of the process -- the discovery of a whole new school of thought, the gleaning of ideas and advice, the shopping for cool-man razors, blades, creams, and brushes. Everything about this old-school wetshaving thing was much, much cooler on every level than the drugstore crap I'd been shaving with all my life.

And therein lies the problem: maybe it's not supposed to be cool?

Consider the morning bathroom ritual. Showering isn't cool. You do it to get clean. A nice, hot shower is pleasurable, certainly, but unless there's something wrong with you, showering isn't something to obsess or fuss too much over. Shampooing your hair isn't cool. You just do it. You lather and rinse, your hair gets clean, end of story. It's not supposed to be cool. It just is. You wash with soap in the shower and wash your hair with shampoo and it all works fine and you get out and towel off. You do it to get clean, and you get clean, and that's it. It's as it should be.

So why must shaving be this spa-grade pleasure ritual larded with shiny gadgets, expensive implements, sweet smells, bracing sensations, relaxing rituals? I mean, I love the hell out of it, but is this really as it should be?

If it isn't, than I've spent a lot of time and energy puffing up what should by all rights be a simple grooming task into an EVENT. I'm not saying I have, I'm just saying I'm wondering about it. Because the fact is, I'm sitting here with the ability to get perfect daily shaves without any fuss or muss as long as I stick to the same setup, and I really miss the variety and experimentation of the last year or so that I've been exploring this whole wetshaving business.

Right now it looks like a choice between consistently great yet boring shaves, or enjoying the variety of all the different gear I've acquired at the expense of shaves which vary between good and horrendous.

I wish I could have both.

I have a problem with delayed gratification. I freely admit it.

That's why, when I heard that Dr. Chris Moss, author of the excellent Straight Razor Guide and one of the handful of genuine smartees on the shaving boards, liked to shave with a Filarmonica disposable blade straight razor, a cheap Spanish version of the Dovo Shavette I love, well, I immediately went online and hunted one down.

The only place I could find that sold the Filarmonica was Carr's Barber Supply, a place that caters to real barber shops, not onesie-twosie consumer orders. Their minimum shipping charge was a buck more than the razor, but I ordered one anyway.

Only problem is, the next morning, for some reason, I decided to see if shaving with the same exact rig -- razor, blade, brush and cream -- for a week straight made for a better shave than all the jumping around from combo to combo I'd been doing ever since I got into this whole old-school wetshaving thing.

I stared at the Filarmonica this morning for quite awhile. I picked it up, unfolded it, and turned it over in my hand. It's a cheap, stamped metal, poorly finished thing of absolute beauty. It looks like it was designed by someone in a Russian prison in the early 1800's. If Carr's sells it for 8 bucks, they probably get it for a buck or two. If that's what they pay, then it must cost Filarmonica around fifteen cents to make this thing, if it even costs that much. I didn't think anything could make the Dovo Shavette look solidly built, but I was wrong. The Filarmonica has size going for it -- it's closer to the size and shape of a real straight razor than the smaller Shavette -- but beyond that, it's about as finely crafted as a box cutter.

All of which is to say that I can barely hold myself back from shaving with it.

But I swore I would see this experiment through. So I stayed the course. I used the Merkur safety razor, Vulfix brush, and Trumper cream and skin food again for the fourth day in a row. The shave was even better than yesterday's which means it was utterly excellent. Baby's butt smooth, no stubble to the touch, and no irritation or red marks on my neck. The shave even went quicker this morning.

I want to try that Fillarmonica in the worst kind of way. It looks so crude it has to be great.

Serenity now. Serenity now.

I almost hate to say it, but today's shave was the best I've had in a long time. I say hate, because I really don't want to know that the best shaves come from using the same razor, blade and cream every day. I love using different razors, rotating the great smelling creams like Taylor's Rose, Proraso's Eucalyptus, and especially Taylor's extra-moisturizing Avocado, which might give me the best shaves of them all in addition to its unique and wonderful scent.

Switching things up every day is fun, and makes an interesting ritual even interestinger. Still, there's a lot to be said for becoming the master of your shave domain by sticking with the same rig and letting perfection happen. Gordon, the eminence grise of the Wetshavers board on MSN, has been shaving with the same Gillette DE for forty years, and he seems pretty happy with things. I've never seen him whine about how to get a better shave, or whether this new wonder soap or that new wonder razor or this new wonder brush rocked his casbah, only to commence whining a week later when the bloom was off the rose and his shaves still sucked. Because they don't suck. He gets a great shave. He shaves with the same setup, day in, day out. And seems very contented.

Meanwhile, I'm only on Day Three of sticking with the HD/Vulfix/Trumper rig, and already I'm itchy to try something different. Doesn't matter that today's shave was incredible -- I want some variety.

And the worst is, I just got a Filarmonica disposable blade straight razor in the mail from Carr's Barber Supply. Nine bucks (and ten bucks for shipping!) and it looks like it could give the shtupendous Shavette a run for its money.

I want to try it so bad, but I have four more days to go with the shaving monogamy experiment. Even a single stroke on a cheek would taint the data. So I snapped a Merkur blade in half and loaded the Filarmonica, but that's as far as I let myself go. Okay, I shaved a small patch on my leg. Just to test it out. But that's it till I've gone a week with the DE.

Day two of shaving with the same rig for a week straight. I used the Merkur HD razor, Trumper Violet shaving cream, Vulfix 2235 badger brush, and Trumper Skin Food again, and I must say, I think I'm on to something here. Excellent shave, baby's butt smooth, and no irristation on the underchin/neck area, which is usually the bane of my existence.

It's only the 2nd day in my experiment, but I fear that sticking to the same routine day in and day out may be the ticket when it comes to getting the best shaves with an old-school rig like this. Maybe it applies to modern shave gear, too -- I see guys all the time, from knuckleheads to network execs, and they get fine looking shaves every day from disposable razors and whatever pressurized goo their wife picked up at the grocery store for them.

Maybe it doesn't matter what you shave with, as long as you shave with the same stuff every day. Maybe your hand and face have "muscle memory" like dancers, and repetition breeds perfection. Maybe skin cells and hair follicles are living, sentient beings, and when they learn to expect the same cream and blade every day, they submit to the never-changing reality and accept/adapt to it.

Maybe shaving with the same rig every day means you think less about what you're doing, which somehow makes for a better shave -- it would certainly explain some of the guys I see walking around with perfect shaves, on their way to buy the third season of "Mama's Family" on DVD.

The drag of this hypothesis is that I really like using different shave gear when the mood strikes. I like having an arsenal, as opposed to one Mach3 and one can of goo. Where's the fun in that?

What's that, you say? It's not supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be shaving?

I have to think about this some more.

To get the best and most consisent shaves every day, you need to find a good routine and stick to it. Your face and hands become accustomed to it, and everything settles into a nice buttered groove.

But shavegeeks aren't rational sorts. They -- okay, I -- bounce around between a collection of razors, blades, brushes, creams, and assorted poltices, never shaving with the same lineup twice in a row. So their -- my -- face gets beat up and ends up looking worse off than when I began using all this high-end stuff.

So today I decided to quit bouncing around all over the place -- a Gillette one day, a Shavette straight razor the next, a Feather scalpel the day after that -- and try shaving, for the first time in many, many months, with the same rig every day for a week.

I chose my trustiest go-to implements for this week of monogamous shaving. The Merkur Hefty Classic "HD" razor, Trumper Violet shaving cream, Vulfix 2235 shaving brush, and to finish, Trumper Skin Food.



The Merkur HD is the first DE razor I ever used, and it's the one I keep coming back to. While I love the vintage Gillette adjustable DE, the Merkur appeals to me more because of its non-adjustability. You can't crank it wide open for a skin-peeling shave, nor can you dial it too far down for an over-protective, ineffectual shave. It's juuuust right. It's like the Fender Telecaster of razors -- its lack of variables and other funny business forces you to focus on your technique, so your shaves get better and better the longer you stick with it. Most guys sound miserable on the Telecaster, but Steve Cropper got maybe the best sound ever gotten out of an electric guitar, and he got it out of a Telecaster plugged straight into an old Fender amp. If you know what you're doing, the Merkur HD is all the razor you'll ever need for the perfect shave. 30 bucks.



With the exception of its West Indian Limes cream (too drying for my skin, though others love this stuff and it does smell fantastic), I've gotten great shaves with all of Geo F. Trumper's shaving creams. They're expensive, but worth it. But my favorite of all the Trumper creams is their Violet scented version -- a deep purple wonder cream that lathers and lubes like a champ, and smells so intoxicating that you cry when you rinse it off. I hated floral scents till Trumper Violet set me straight, and now I can't get enough of it. 25 bucks for a tub that lasts half a year.



Vulfix is the world's largest manufacturer of shaving brushes, and they OEM most of the premium brushes you see at stores under different names (they do almost all of Trumper's house brand brushes, as well as Taylor of Old Bond St., Savile Row, and quite a few other big names in high-end shaving brushes). I've got a bunch of Vulfixes and they're all great -- even the littlest Vulfix, their travel brush, does a great job turning a nickel-sized dollup of cream into mounds of thick, rich lather. Some of the more insecure shavegeeks go for the biggest brushes they can find, for the same reason short men smoke cigars the size of a Pringles can. Me, I find the really huge brushes make a mess of the lather and get it all over your bathroom when you're lathering, not to mention wasting a lot of cream that's left over at the end of the shave. I prefer the medium sized brushes myself, and my favorite is the Vulfix 2235 in silvertip badger hair. It's got a classic handle shape that feels right in the hand, and the brush is plenty big enough to generate a huge amount of lather without the mess and waste of the oversized brushes. I don't care how big your head is, this is all the brush you'll ever need. $70.



Aftershaves are tricky. Most suck, because traditionally they're mostly alcohol, which stings like a bitch, dries your skin out, and does more damage to your face than good. Witch hazel, particularly the better brands with higher purity like Thayer's, is a far better aftershave -- it's cheap, easy to find, and great for soothing and settling your face down after a shave.

If you want something better and are willing to pay a bit more, Trumper's Skin Food has been the choice of shaving obsessionals for many years. Mostly glycerine and rose water, with a tiny bit of menthol crystals mixed in for a cooling effect, Skin Food has a gum solution that dries to form a micro-thin barrier on your face, protecting the newly-shaved surface from the elements for a few hours while the skin cells heal. Comes in two scented versions, coral (rose) and lime, pink and green, pick your poison. I like them both. Seems expensive, but you only use a pea-size squirt to spread all over your face and neck, and a small bottle lasts a very long time. $25.

At this point I've tried just about everything when it comes to DE razors, blades, brushes, and creams, and this rig is the one that always delivers the best results, on the most consistent basis. My problem is, I get bored easy, and I like trying new things all the time, so I bounce back and forth between different razors, blades, creams, aftershaves, and what I get for my constant tweaking are wildly varying shaves and a perpetually put-upon puss. So I'm sticking to the go-to rig for a week, if for no other reason than this is how a grown-up should behave.