.

Day two of shaving with the Schick Injector and I'm on top of the world, ma. Once again, it's more than nine hours after I shaved today, and my face still looks and feels freshly-shaven. This is a feat I never accomplished in all the time I shaved with the Mach3. Only on my best days with a DE, when all the planets are in alignment and I truly bring my A-game, do I get a shave like this.

And the crazy part is, it was as easy as falling off a log. I even avoided doing the two things before a shave that I know will make the magic happen -- work up a sweat by exercising, and applying hair conditioner to my face and neck while I'm still in the shower. I wanted to see what the Injector could do if I just jumped out of the shower, lathered up, and shaved with no special prep.

Being Sunday, I went with my deep pleasure shaving cream -- Trumper's violet. Soaked it in a sink of hot water, worked up some lather with it in my palm, and I was ready for a bog-standard Injector shave.

Except it turns out that a bog-standard Injector shave is the same as a special prep Injector shave. Meaning I got the same extraordinarily close and comfortable shave today that I did yesterday with the Nioxin conditioner slathered all over my face in the shower to help soften my beard and make things easier for the blade.

So what's next? Do I try shaving without cream to see if the Injector can shave as well without it? How about a perfectly dry shave, with no shower beforehand and no water on my face during the ordeal? What if I lay the Injector on the floor and fall on it face-first with my eyes closed?

I kept feeling my face today and marveling, which is always the sign of a superlative shave. My skin felt like that time at the Truefitt & Hill barbershop in Vegas when I got the straight razor shave of my life -- like a mask of my face had been peeled off, leaving behind perfectly smooth, virgin skin. But unlike the T&H shave, I had no irritation or red marks afterward.

One thing I did notice today, though. That even as it feels milder on my skin than the fixed-head Merkur DEs and the Gillette adjustable DEs at their higher settings, this vintage Eversharp/Schick Injector is still a fairly aggressive razor, with a healthy amount of blade exposure. Toward the end of my shave, I could feel that I'd better ease up with this thing if I want to use it every day. Gordon says the latter-day Injectors from the 1980s and 90s like his are less aggressive than the really old ones like mine, so I'm going to try to score one of those to compare mine with.

The later ones are really boring looking, though -- I know I'm not supposed to care about what a razor looks like, but I do. My 1940s Injector, with its butterscotch bakelite handle and gold-plated brass shave head, looks cool beyond belief, like something decadent Parisians used to sniff ether with when the absinthe ran out. I don't want a razor that looks like an ice scraper for your windshield. Even a wetshaving pragmatist has his limits.

One of the ironies of the online shavegeek community is that the most influential and widely-respected expert on the shaving forums happens to use a type of razor which almost nobody else has ever seen in person, much less tried shaving with.

While the double-edge safety razor is the de facto totem of shavegeek obsession, and the straight razor remains the weapon of choice for the die-hard traditionalists at the upper strata of the shavegeek elite, Gordon (like Cher and Bono, a one-namer) has long sung the praises of the Schick Injector.

In 1921, Col. Jacob Schick patterned his "Magazine Repeating Razor" after the repeating rifles the Army used. Unlike the existing Gillette safety razor which used loose DE blades, Schick's new razor had a unique method of loading the disposable blades -- an "injector" clip like a rifle's, which automatically removed the old blade and inserted the new one, without the user having to touch the blades by hand.

Schick sold his company in 1928 to American Chain and Cable, and the new owners refined the razor's design and introduced what we now know as the Schick Injector in 1935. Like the standard Gillette DE razor, one of the hallmarks of the Injector is that even the earliest 1935 versions work perfectly with today's blades, and if you can hunt down some vintage Injector blades, they'll drop right into a modern Injector razor, which was reportedly still being made, for the Japanese market only, as recently as a few years ago.

The Injector is different from the traditional DE razor in that it only has one cutting edge -- in this respect, the Injector can be thought of as the forerunner to modern razors like the Mach3 et al. But the Injector's lone blade , thicker than a DE's and more like a mini straight razor, places it squarely in the old-school shaving camp.

Which brings me back to Gordon. There's no one else on the shavegeek boards from whom I've learned more about how to shave properly and what products are most worth checking out, but the one bit of Gordoniana I never got around to was the Injector. Gordon's been banging the drum for the Injector ever since I first started checking out the late, lamented Wetshavers board, but I never felt the urge to hunt one of these razors down, mainly because I'd just picked up a DE for the first time and was coming to terms with that whole thing.

But even as I figured out how to get good shaves out of the DE, I kept reading Gordon's comments about his Injector, and how it was the main razor he used, despite owning several vintage Gillette and modern Merkur DEs. So I finally went on eBay and scored one last week, and today was my first shave with it.

Luckily, Injector blades are easy as pie to come by -- I bought some brand new Schick Chromium Injector blades from drugstore.com for $4.89 for a pack of seven-- hell, I could've ordered them from Amazon if I'd wanted to! Amazing that you can buy these blades so easily from such mainstream online vendors. All of my local drugstores sell Personna Injector blades under their own house brands, but Gordon doesn't recommend them as highly as the Schicks due to their plastic case, which he says is more troublesome to deal with than the metal case of the Schick blades.

The Injector I scored looks exactly like the one pictured above, and dates to the 1940s. It's quite a bit lighter and smaller than the heavy metal Merkur HD safety razor I favor, and looks considerably more antiquated. If Gordon hadn't been praising the Injector all this time, I never would've picked this thing up. It looks like some turn-of-the-century bit of crude metalwork, like those mechanical piggy banks with the little tin dog wearing a clown's hat that jumps through a little tin hoop accompanied by a loud grinding sound when you drop a coin in the slot.

Loading a blade couldn't be easier with the Injector -- you just insert the tab into the side of the razor, slide the tab across the clip, and the fresh blade eases right into place. If you had a used blade in the Injector, the tab automatically pushes it out of the razor as the new blade takes its place. Worked like a charm the very first time I tried it, with a newly-manufactured Schick clip and a vintage razor made around the time of WWII.

And the shave? See, here's where it gets tricky. I'll cut to the chase here -- the Injector shaves like a freakin' dream. I got such a wicked close, comfortable with it, on my very first try, that it's almost 11PM and my face still looks and feels freshly shaven. It's uncanny.

But that's not the whole story. See, the Injector shaves so well, and so easily, that it almost takes the fun out of the wetshaving ritual. For someone who came of shaving age in the era of the disposable razor and then the multi-blade cartridge systems like Gillette's Sensor and Mach3, the blade/handle geometry and the one-sided cutting edge are so much more familiar than the traditional DE razor and especially the cut throat. It took me weeks, months even, before I really became comfortable and adept with a DE, but it took me just five seconds to grok the Injector and get a fantastically good shave with it.

From time to time I read comments on the shavegeek boards from pinheads who complain that they can't get a decent shave from an Injector. Listen, anyone who says he can't get a good shave from an Injector doesn't want to get a good shave from an Injector, because they want to stay true to the DE "cause" or whatever. The Injector is the easiest razor to get a superlative shave with I've ever come across.

And therein lies the problem. It's easy. Maybe too easy. Unlike the DE, which even now requires my constant focus on what I'm doing, as well as a command of several other factors at all times, the Injector just shaves you. It mows down the whiskers like nobody's business but it doesn't feel like it's doing much of anything, until you rub your face and it's scary smooth.

If a straight razor is so cool because of its inherent difficulty and hence conferred He-Man status to those who master it (not me, not yet, maybe not ever), the Injector is its polar opposite. It's so easy and so intuitive for anyone who's ever used a modern disposable or cartridge razor that there really isn't a learning curve to speak of at all. And if there's no learning curve, there's no mystique, which means no cult of geekly obsession. Just guys like Gordon who get great shaves, no big whoop.

So I don't know what to do with this Injector. Frankly, I'm kind of disappointed that it worked so well the first time out of the chute. I was kind of hoping for another interesting learning curve, quite honestly, if for no other reason than to generate some usable blogfodder for you people. But that's not going to happen. This thing works great, and I got a shave today as good as any of my super YMCA shaves (I did use some Nioxin hair conditioner on my face in the shower today, to soften my whiskers in lieu of workout sweat, and I lathered up with Taylor's rose cream and my usual Vulfix silvertip #2235 brush) without even half trying.

I'm going to try this razor for a week, to see how I like it long-term compared to a DE. So far, it's faster, easier, and less fun, and the shave is all that I ever wanted from a shave -- exfoliatingly close, irritation-free, and no-brainer to the point that I could probably shave with my eyes closed if I wanted to.

Gordon was right. Again.

I used to shave in the shower every day, back in my 20s. I had that same cheesy "fogless" shaving mirror every guy gets at some point -- the one you have to attach between your shower head and the water pipe, the thought being that the hot water rushing through the mirror assembly will keep it fog-free, though why that might make a difference I haven't the foggiest idea. Of course the mirror always fogged up! It's right there in the steaming hot shower -- what do you think's going to happen? But I bought one anyway and just kept wiping it every time I shaved in the shower.

In those days my shaving rig was pretty pathetic -- the ubiquitous blue plastic Gillette "Good News!" disposable razor, and whatever foam or gel inna can I happened to have on hand. I never put that much thought into shaving back then. It hurt with a fresh razor, hurt with a weeks-old razor, hurt with foam, hurt with gel, hurt in the shower and hurt at the sink. It was a chore to suffer through, in order to look semi-presentable. Nicks and cuts abounded, and rare was the bloodless shave.

But the ritual itself -- the shaving in the shower, with the nice, hot water hitting your chest, the easy rinsing of the razor just by waving it through the stream of water -- was pleasant, and it kept the sink from getting messy with all that crap, so I kept with it.

At some point, though, I finally wised up and ditched the disposables for a more serious razor, Gillette's double-blade Sensor. So I tossed the crud-encrusted "fogless" mirror and began shaving at the sink like a grownup, and it's been that way ever since.

Now that I'm shaving old-school and loving it more than I should, my Me Time every morning at the sink has become sacrosanct (look it up here, shavemyface think-tankers). And ever since I stumbled onto the discovery that shaving at the YMCA after a sweaty workout made for a much better shave, I've been catching most of my shaves at the sink in the locker room.

Which is all good and well, except I seem to be the only guy doing it. And judging from the stares I keep getting, I'm not sure it's a welcome development.

It's not like the sinks are in heavy demand and I'm keeping anyone from getting there facewash time in, but I definitely note a certain chill in the air whenever I'm standing there in a towel with my lather-choked brush and assorted poultici crowded around the sink as I swipe my razor over my face for 10 mins or so. The old-timers seem to approve of my DE and brush, but the younger members don't seem that down with some guy parked at one of the sinks and shaving himself like Ol' Pops.

So today I tried a different tack. I shaved in the Y's shower. I got one of those hanging dop kits from L.L. Bean with the built-in shaving mirror (not fogless), loaded all my crap in it, and tried going back to the shave scenario of my dimly-remembered youth when the beer flowed freely, tests were multiple choice, and you weren't a real playa unless you were wearing parachute pants with no underwear.

Okay, right off the bat, let me just say that this was a terrible, terrible idea. What was I thinking?! Shaving in the shower is for knuckleheads -- the light is terrible, the mirror either fogs up or gets streaked with water, rinsing your razor isn't as easy as I remembered, and above all, where do you put the brush?

Actually, I anticipated the brush issue and went with the brushless Cremo Cream for my shower shave, used as directed instead of with a brush like I like to use it. It still gives a damn good shave without a brush, so I figured it'd be the perfect shower shave cream. The rest of the rig -- Merkur HD safety razor, Trumper's limes skin food -- was my usual combo.

But try as I might, I just couldn't get down with shaving in the shower. After all these years, I'd forgotten just how dumb this idea really is. I guess it's not that big of a difference whether you're scraping your face with a "Good News!" disposable in the shower or at the sink, but shaving with a real razor and cream just doesn't translate well to the shower. Worst of all, if I thought guys were giving me the stink-eye when I shaved at the locker room sink, that was nothing compared to the looks I got during my shower shave today. I think I could've been taking a no-hands wizz against another guy's leg and I wouldn't have gotten the dirty looks I did just for shaving in the shower. As my people say, never again.

Amazingly, I got a pretty good shave for all my trouble. It wasn't the best shave ever, but it was better than it seemed to be when I was in the middle of it, squinting in the water-streaked mirror velcro'd on the front of the L.L. Bean toiletries bag. But screw it, that's the last shower shave for me if I can help it. Zero pleasure, lots of struggle, and all my gear got soaking wet. Not my brightest idea ever.

But heyy, speaking of "Good News!", my latest eBay score arrived in the mail today -- two vintage Gillette adjustable DEs, a fixed-head Gillette silo-door DE, and....an Eversharp/Schick Injector from the 1940s!

And now for something completely different...

Say hello to Remy. He's one of the many terrifying male models you'll see in ads for Nioxin hair care products. Which is a shame, really, because this stuff is excellent. Honestly, the kind of models they use to promote this stuff is unfortunate, because the products themselves are really top-notch. I've been using the Actives shampoo and "Scalp Therapy" (conditioner to youse and moi) for a few months now and I've noticed a significant improvement in how my hair looks and feels.

But the reason I bring Nioxin up is because a number of experienced wetshavers recently emailed me, after reading about my shavesploits at the local Y. They all said the same thing -- if I wanted that kind of revelatory shave without having to sweat like a pig to soften my beard, I should try simply applying hair conditioner to my face while showering at home.

This wasn't the first time I'd heard of this trick. Back in the day, somebody (I think it was the great Harry Jarnock) on the old Wetshavers forum suggested to an African-American gentleman complaining about the difficulties in shaving his tough, curly beard that he try slathering on some hair conditioner in the shower to soften his whiskers before shaving. The guy tried it and reported excellent results.

So this morning I tried it for myself. My schedule was too heavy for a workout today, so I showered in the usual way at home, except today I slathered some Nioxin Actives Scalp Therapy conditioner on my face and neck, and then proceeded to shower while leaving the conditioner on my skin to soften my hair up for the kill.

I've tried using Nioxin conditioner as a shaving cream before, with the almighty Feather straight razor, because the professional barber who did the straight razor demo in my Today Show segment, Mike Orzalli, uses this stuff to shave all of his customers and swears by it. The Nioxin worked fine as a shaving cream -- it gets your skin pretty slick, and leaves it feeling cool and moisturized afterward. But today was the first time I'd used it as a pre-shave prep to soften my whiskers beforehand.

I rinsed my face off, got out of the shower, and went right into the shave. Merkur HD razor, Merkur blade, Vulfix #2235 silvertip brush, and Taylor rose cream. I could still feel the cooling effect of the Nioxin on my skin even after I rinsed it off thoroughly. Felt great. Kind of like how Proraso cools my face down after a shave, when I splash it with cold water.

The shave seemed to go pretty much as usual -- uneventful, in the best possible sense. It was only when I rinsed my face and ran my hands over my skin that I felt just how shockingly close and comfortably I'd been able to shave myself. It was exactly the same kind of extreme closeness and maximal comfort that I'd previously only been able to achieve after a hard, sweaty workout at the Y.

The Nioxin Actives Scalp Therapy conditioner worked like magic to prep my beard for a much closer and more comfortable shave than I'm usually able to get. But the question is, do I want to have to slather hair conditioner all over my face in the shower in order to get a superlative shave?

No, I don't. I'm a minimalist. I want to catch a perfect shave with the barest minimum of tools and poultices. Give me a razor, a brush, and some cream, that's all I want to need to do this thing right. Anything beyond that and I'm in shavegeek territory. I think that's the main reason I take a dim view of the Roberts Method of Wet Shaving -- nothing against Charles or his zombie army, but my idea of hell is having to go through all the motions and jump through all the hoops and have all the crap on hand that an official RMWS shave requires. The cube, the cutting balm, the paste, and getting the exact ratios exactly right -- it's just not how I want to shave in the morning. I want to drink my joe, read the news, take a shower, and then swipe a steel razor across my face. Is that so wrong?

For the past week or so I've had two options. Either get a really good shave at home, or go sweat my ass off at the gym and get an extraordinary shave afterward because of all the good things sweat does to soften whiskers and prep the face for shaving. Now I have a third option -- massage some hair conditioner on my beard, shower as usual, and then get a Bob Beamon shave, without the workout.

Someday I want to be able to get the Beamon shave without sweat or Nioxin. Until then, I'll be using this stuff whenever I shave at home.

Today I had not just one, but two post-sweat shaves. Why did I need a second shave, you ask? Well, because...

The first sweaty shave was less than spectacular!

That's right -- I went to the Y like usual, worked up a sweat like usual, took a hot shower in the locker room as usual, walked over to the locker room sinks as usual, and shaved as usual. But what wasn't usual, at least in the context of a YMCA shave, was the result. It just wasn't a great shave.

I did everything I've been doing when I shave at the Y, and I even tried not wiping the sweat off my face while I exercised, so my beard could baste in the sweat to max effect. Still, the shave did not make the Earth move for me. It was okay, but nothing special.

So I drove home and decided on a whim to paint the exterior door to our tool shed, which had been looking pretty weather-beaten for some time. It was hellishly hot today, and between the weather and the painting, I worked up an even bigger sweat than when I'd exercised earlier in the morning. So when I was finished painting the door, the thought occurred to me -- I'm all sweaty, I didn't like the shave I got earlier, sooo, what are we waiting for? Let's shave!

After a good scrubbing with WD-40 to remove the Rustoleum from my hands, I took another hot shower and did my second shave of the day. Only this time, I did it the way I've been doing it at home for awhile now. I filled the sink with water, turned the faucet off, and shaved in blessed silence save for the pinging sound of the razor cutting whiskers.

I don't know if the first shave set the stage or what, but I'm telling you, the second shave was phenomenal. Just a quick with-grain pass and then a quick against-grain pass, and my face looked and felt like it did when I got that unbelievable straight razor shave at Truefitt & Hill's a few months ago. My cheeks felt soft and hairless, and I could rub my hand under on chin without feeling stubble in any direction.

The tools were the same -- Merkur HD razor, Merkur Platinum double-edge blade, Vulfix badger brush, Taylor's rose shaving cream -- I've been using for months at home. But I'm starting to accept that sweating your ass off before you shave makes all the difference between a merely good shave and an extraordinary one.

Several wetshaving experts have emailed me with the suggestion that I try slathering hair conditioner on my face while I'm in the shower if I can't or don't want to work up a serious sweat beforehand, because hair conditioner softens hair too and that might give me the same kind of shaves as when I work out. I've tried shaving with Nioxin conditioner as a shaving cream -- the professional barber in my Today Show shaving segment uses Nioxin for all of his straight razor shaves and swears by it -- but never as a pre-shave prep. So tomorrow I'll give it a go and see if it can deliver the same kind of shave as does working up a serious sweat.

At this point, I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have about Karl Rove, Valerie Wilson, Bob Novak, --"

"Scott! Scott! Does the White House have any comment on whether Corey Greenberg got the shave he was hoping for after his workout today at the Y?"

"Scott! Scott! What does the President have to say about reports that the sweat Mr. Greenberg was able to work up this morning as he mindlessly stair-climbed to nowhere was, in fact, the 'smoking gun' at the heart of Shavegate?"

"Scott! Scott! Any truth to the rumor that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts once received a barbershop shave at the Federalist Society's 'Shave-Con '98" at the Circus Circus casino in Las Vegas?"

"Scott! Scott! Nobody holds the White House press secretary to the same sartorial standards as the leader of the free world or even a night manager at a Stuckey's, but don't you know that nothing says 'my favorite band of all time is Mike and the Mechanics' like wearing a dress shirt with a second 'fat wrist' button at the shirt cuff?"

I'll be happy to answer of your questions one at a time, thank you.

In answer to the first question, no, the White House has no comment on Mr. Greenberg or what kind of shave he may or may not have gotten today, or any other day.

Second, the President does not concern himself with the sweat of private citizens, unless that sweat happens to be the Vice-President's, in which case he may bite down on either of the so-called 'fat buttons' on my shirt cuffs, which happen to be nitro-glycerin pills. I'm guessing that answered your question as well, David? Okay, are there any more questions before we wrap this up?

"Scott, why is Corey Greenberg hiding behind this charade when he could simply come right out and admit that:

1. He purposefully exercised hard enough at the YMCA today to work up enough sweat to soak his entire head and upper chest with beard-softening sweat;

2. He then shaved in his usual way, with a Merkur Progress DE razor, Vulfix travel brush, and Proraso shave soap; and

3. He did in fact get what has been referred to in the Blogosphere as a 'Bob Beamon' shave, so named for the legendary long jump champion whose flukish record-setting jump in '68 stunned the world?"

John, I think I can answer that question. It's clear that Mr. Greenberg does not want to admit that it's the sweat of a good, hard workout which is the secret to those incredibly close and comfortable shaves he got at the Y locker room last week and yes, again today.

It's also clear that Mr. Greenberg doesn't want to admit this because he's afraid that his obsession with possessing the native ability to shave himself in such a manner whether he breaks a sustained sweat or not will drive him to sweating like a pig before every shave, which of course is impossible.

Finally, Mr. Greenberg doesn't want to be standing there at his bathroom sink at home on the mornings he must, because of his schedule or what-have-you, shave without first sweating, and then be thinking the whole time "I didn't sweat, what do I do, I didn't sweat, what do I do, how can I compensate, what can I do, I didn't sweat, got to watch Wopner, what do I do, I didn't sweat.."

That is all that I have to say about this individual and this so-called "Shavegate". Thank you very much.

(McLellan walks out of the press room, and soon the press corps files out as well, leaving the room empty. A few moments pass, and then McLellan sneaks back behind the podium, grabs the microphone off of the desk stand, and begins to sing.)

All I need is a miracle.....all I nee-eed is you!

Ever go to the doctor knowing he may tell you something you don't want to hear?

"The good news is, you don't have all the characteristics of what we term a 'classic' hermaphrodite."

"Here's something you can wear underneath your clothing to deal with the uncontrollable dribbling."

"I don't mean to alarm you, but please don't move -- something just dissolved the fingertip of my rubber glove."

Thus it was that the esteemed Doc Lox emailed me with his theory for why my post-workout shaves at the YMCA were so much better than the shaves I get at home.

"It's the sweating," he said. "The sweat and exertion softens your whiskers and flushes your face of its oils, which makes for an especially close, comfortable shave."

I know medical professionals are trained to deliver their diagnoses without emotional consideration, but he must have known the pain his words would inflict on me.

Because I don't want to have to factor a good solid huff'n'puff in just to get a great shave -- I want to be able to duck into the bathroom on an airplane, splash some tepid water on my face, swipe my cool-man Merkur travel razor across my puss and emerge minutes later with a Cary Grant shave. The notion of having to break a prolonged sweat before I can get the kind of shave I crave, well, it sucks is what it does.

Desperate to discount the sweaty puss theory, I decided to debunk it with a plan of pure genius. I'd go to the Y, but I'd only do a light workout -- nothing too strenuous, just a few slo-mo miles on the treadmill like the other old ladies on the machines next to me -- enough to rouse the blood but nothing to get moist over. Then I'd go down to the locker room, shower in the usual Y fashion, shave in the usual Y manner, and prove that the secret ingredient in these transcendent Y shaves was something, anything else but the sweat.

I had my Merkur Progress and my Proraso shaving soap, and my Omega boar's hair brush. I had the running water in the sink, to rinse the razor and drown out the sound of my whiskers getting cut. I had my Proraso liquid post-shave balm to slather on for good measure at the end.

But it was no use. What I got was a good shave, but not a Bob Beamon shave. I may as well have spent the last 45 mins sitting motionless in a La-Z-Boy watching "Matlock" for all the good that the sweat-free workout did me.

Fine. Good. Glad I tried it, at least. In science there are no disappointments, only data.

Naw, screw that. It totally sucks.

See, here's the thing. When you first get into this old-school wetshaving trip, you amass a huge pile of razors, brushes, creams, pre-shaves, post-shaves, cutting balms, soaps, blades, every little shaving aid and accessory that might nudge the results a little closer to the ideal.

Then later on, as you get up to speed, you start whittling it down to the bare essentials which happens to fit my minimalist philosophy to a T -- travel light, bring only the tools you need for the job and no more, and leave the sink as you found it, without a trace, as if nobody had ever shaved there at all.

I'd gotten myself to the point where all I needed for a consistently great shave was a razor, a brush, some cream, and a post-shave balm. A simple, pared-down rig that could fit in my pocket if it had to, ready to give great shave anywhere and under any circumstances. And this made me happy. I'd figured it all out. The grok had been reached.

Then I had to join the Y and find out that shaving after a sweaty workout takes the whole trip to another level. And now I'm screwed, because once you get one of these shaves, you're spoiled for anything less. Now I have a new high water mark to compare all my at-home shaves to, and they always come up short. I just can't always go work out before I shave -- it's not feasible.

I haven't fully accepted that it's the sweat and exertion which make the magic happen. All I know at this point is that the other parts of the YMCA puzzle -- the going there, the wearing of the shorts, the shower with the nice-smelling almond institutional soap, the running water in the locker room sink, the other men doing their thing at nearby sinks -- don't seem to matter.

The only thing left to do is go work out again tomorrow, only this time sweat like a pig who happened to wander into the kitchen at Big Bob Gibson's BBQ in Decatur, Alabama. Then, and only then, will I know whether or not it's the sweat that's the secret to shaving nirvana.

What was I doing yesterday, anyway? I tried replicating my YMCA shave at home, to see if I could scale the same heights of closeness and comfort as the shaves I got last week in the Y locker room, but really, all I did was shave like I normally do at home. The only thing I did the same as when I was at the Y was use the same rig -- Proraso shaving cream, Merkur Progress razor, and Proraso liquid aftershave lotion. None of the unique elements of the YMCA shave were present.

I'm talking about the things that made the Y shaves different from my usual at-home scenario. The running water in the sink versus the sink full of water. The gaggle of betoweled geezers standing at the other sinks beside me, in various stages of post-huff grooming. The flush in my cheeks from the first real exercise I've gotten in fifteen years, unless you count "pushing" a powered mower with a stogie in your pie-hole exercise.

None were present and accounted for yesterday, so no wonder my shave was merely good instead of insanely great like it was back at the Y. Clearly, I needed to add one or more of the Y-centric elements to the experience if I was going to figure out why those locker room shaves were so exceptional.

Fish Sticks (surprisingly, not his real name) is a world-renowned wetshaving expert, and he suggested that it was the running water in the sink which was probably the key to my other-wordly Y shaves. He said a sink full of water doesn't rinse the razor as well between strokes, which does make sense.

Also, I'm convinced that the sound of the running water masked the sound of the razor pinging as it cut my whiskers, so I wasn't tempted to go over the same areas again and again because I still heard a bit of the pinging. So this morning I didn't pull up the sink stopper, and I let the hot water run continuously for the entire shave.

The gear was the same as before -- Merkur Progress razor, Proraso shaving cream and liquid aftershave lotion. Soaking my Vulfix brush was, as you'd imagine, not as easy with a running faucet as it is with a full sink of water, but I managed to get it wet enough to do the job. The sound of the running water wasn't nearly as loud as the locker room cacophony at the Y, but it was plenty loud enough to mostly drown out the sound of the Merkur razor's pinging as it cut my whiskers. Rinsing the razor under a stream of running water isn't as dead-easy as simply dunking it into a sink full of water -- you can do that without even looking down -- but I have to admit, it cleaned the razor better than the dirty sink water ever did.

And the shave? Better than yesterday, definitely. But it didn't quite rise to the level of those ungodly locker room shaves. I shaved exactly as I did back at the Y -- no pressure, just one with-grain pass and then one against-grain, with none of the extra diagonal under-the-chin passes I usually do to clean up the stubborn gruff -- but I did not achieve that combination of glass-smooth closeness and zero discomfort that shocked me after my shaves at the Y.

Another pseudonymous wetshaving expert, Doc Lox, emailed me his hypothesis for why my locker room shaves were so much better than what I usually get at home. He explained that exercising does all kinds of things which may be beneficial in terms of prepping a man's beard for shave. I'm going to hit the Y again tomorrow and see if I was imagining things last week or not.

As much as I like and respect RS, I hope he's wrong about this. I can't work myself into a sweat before every shave. It's just not feasible.

What's that, you say? That I've been crowing all this time about what perfect shaves I've been getting at home with this cream or that razor or this technique, so why am I whining about it now?

I'll tell you why. If you could've felt the shaves I got last week at the Y after I worked out, you'd know why I'm obsessed with figuring out their secret. I've been plenty happy with my at-home shaves, but last week I was like Bob Beamon doing his standard-issue long jump when all of a sudden a scirocco smacked his ass and he landed a few impossible feet further, setting a record that would stand for decades because it was such a freakish fluke.

I must find my wild scirocco, and tame it till it nibbles on sugar cubes right out of my hand. Then, and only them, will I learn the secret to the freakish, flukish, Beamonesque YMCA shaves.

Well, this morning I tried duplicating a YMCA locker room shave in my own bathroom at home. I got such wicked good shaves at the Y this past week that I wanted to see if I could get the same results at home. I want to dissect the Y shaving experience, break it down, pinpoint the reason why my shaves were so shockingly good this week despite seemingly suboptimal conditions.

And I don't want the reason to be other men standing around. Look, I'm perfectly comfortable with other towel-clad men standing beside me at the sinks at the Y locker room. What I'm not comfortable with are any possible reasons why I might need towel-clad men standing near me in order for me to perfect my shaving. As Nixon once said, that would be wrong.

What I was able to dupe: the hardware (Merkur Progress DE razor, Merkur Platinum blade); the software (Proraso "green" eucalyptus shaving cream, Proraso soothing liquid aftershave -- the milky-white, non-alcohol stuff).

What I was not able to dupe: an hour of exercise beforehand; other men grooming themselves at adjacent sinks; sense of hurry due to parking meter outside probably minutes away from the red flag.

What I was able to duplicate but didn't, and in retrospect probably should've: running hot water the whole time instead of a silent sink full of hot water for the duration of the shave.

The shave was good but not great. Even after five passes -- one with-grain, one against-grain, and then three more diagonals on my neck and under-chin only -- I not only had more feelable stubble on my billy goat's gruff than I did after the YMCA shaves, but my face didn't feel as perfectly exfoliated and tushy-smooth either, despite the added passes on my problem zones.

Or was it because of the added passes? I think it was. I think that the sound of the running water at the Y is the key to those insanely great shaves I got this week. By drowning out the sound of the Progress razor's pinging noises as it cut my whiskers, I didn't go over the same areas again and again and again like I always do when I shave with the Progress. I basically shave till I can't hear the pinging anymore.

But with the running water at the Y, I couldn't hear anything, so I just did a light downward pass, a light upward pass, and that was it. No added pressure on the razor beyond its own weight bearing down on my face, and no added passes on my neck. Just downward and upward and done.

Tomorrow I'm going all the way and letting the faucet run for the entirety of the shave, to better duplicate the fabled YMCA shaves. If it's not loud enough to drown out the Merkur's pinging without all the other locker room noises to help build the cacophony, I'll plug my ears with my Etymotic headphones and listen to an iPod while I shave. Anything to cut off the feedback loop between my ears and my need to shave till I can't hear the pinging any more.

Yes, it's come to this.

I think I've finally cracked the Da Vinci Code.

No, not the best-selling fiction book. The real Da Vinci Code. Lenny's own personal lifelong bugaboo, the one problem that thwarted his every attempt to grok it like he did so many other brain teasers both profound and not so.

The sad truth is, Leonardo Da Vinci couldn't shave worth a damn.

How do I know this? Because I've studied the man, junior. I've read his journals, probed the margins, watched the Biography Channel special. The guy just couldn't figure it out. It was like he was from Oklahoma or something. The man was designing helicopters half a millennium ago but scraping hair off his puss left him baffled. Bottom line: Lenny was a feeb when it came to sheerage.

"Why can't I get a tushy shave?!" he wrote in in the Codice di Manscapery, right around the time that his beard grew so long and wild that he began to resemble Dusty Hill, noted Texas bassist who wouldn't be born for another five hundred years (even though Dan Brown claims Da Vinci proved, through mathematical equations, that it was Billy Gibbons who actually played bass on every Top track after Rio Grande Mud, and that Dusty was merely a stage prop while sequenced synths held down the bottom, a claim supported by the fact that the single-coil pickup on Dusty's main stage instrument couldn't possibly produce the subharmonic throb heard in the band's live performances, and owing to its lack of a humbucking coil would've hummed like a gospel quartet in the presence of all the elaborate stage lighting which hallmarked the band's shows from its earliest days to the present).

Lenny couldn't cut it, poor bastard. But I can, and have. I have grokked the secret to the perfect shave, and it is this:

Art Shaveau: Shaving as Performance Art.

If you want the perfect shave, you must shave in public. You must uproot your private bathroom ritual, your "Me Time", and take your show on the road.

Yesterday I shaved in public for the first time, in the locker room at the Y where I work out. The shave I got -- nay, was blessed to receive -- was in the top five shaves of my entire life, despite the fact that the cream was unfamiliar, the sink couldn't be filled to rinse my razor and let me shave in blessed and aiding/abetting silence, and I was made bracingly aware, due to the airflow of the Y's formidable air conditioning, that my junk was on semi-display below the bottommost edge of the workout towel I sucked my gut in to wear around my waist.

So today I tried a different tack. If I could achieve such an historic shave with indifferent tools, what if I dialed my rig in a little tighter and really went to town?

Out of my gym bag dop kit came the Trumper's rose shaving cream, rose Skin Food, and Merkur travel brush. In went a tub of the semi-soft Proraso shaving soap, Proraso's liquid cream aftershave balm, and my $12 Omega boar's bristle brush. I kept the Merkur Progress adjustable DE razor, set on "3", and left the still-good Merkur Platinum blade in it.

Hot water running into the unstoppable sink, I commenced to shaving. Today I only had an audience of one -- a 40-something everyguy at the next sink who looked like someone who would, after some deep reflection, name Mike and the Mechanics as his favorite band. While I soaked my brush in the hot water and worked up a lather on the Proraso soap, he rubbed Mennen Speed Stick on his pits and slathered Adidas hair gel into his modified Seacrest.

While I built up a lather with my brush, he looked over quizzically and frowned. Different is always bad. Good, I thought -- tough crowd. Makes you work harder as an artist. I brushed the lather on my face and neck, and ran the Merkur over my face, first with-grain and then, after relathering, against. Mike and the Mechanics guy wasn't frowning anymore -- now he was watching me shave, mentally taking notes, or maybe he was silently singing along to "All I Need Is A Miracle" in his head, I'm not sure which.

I rinsed with cold water and felt that bracing post-Proraso facial freeze deep freeze that keeps this miraculous Italian shaving cream in my regular rotation, and slapped on some of the company's milky post-shave lotion, which felt so good on this hot summer day that I may keep using it till the weather cools down again. Italy gets crazy hot in the summer -- no wonder this combo is so popular over there.

The shave itself was fantastic -- the best I've ever gotten from Proraso. Not a trace of feelable stubble was left anywhere on my face and neck, and the Proraso aftershave lotion left my face so smooth and cool in the summer heat that I'm kicking myself for not breaking this stuff out weeks ago when it really started getting hot here.

As I said yesterday, I don't know if it's the running water masking the sound of the razor's pinging whiskers, or the pressure of public performance, or the post-exercise flush in my cheeks somehow pushing the whiskers out further so they can get chopped closer, but these two shaves I've caught at the Y have been beyond spectacular. I wish I could shave this well at home. Tomorrow's Saturday, my day off my new He-Man regimen, so I'm going to try to do everything in my own bathroom the same as my Y shaves -- running water, Proraso, the Progress razor -- and see if I can match what I'm getting from Art Shaveau. If I can't, then I'll be taking all of my shaves in public from now on.

A few weeks ago I joined our local Y, after a glorious fifteen year run of not darkening a gym door for any reason other than to vote. Man, it was a great decade-and-a-half -- not a single huff nor a hint of puff, and in all that time, the closest I ever came to a jockstrap was watching bar dancers at the Man Hole.

I thought it could go on forever, this life of not exercising. I felt great, ate whatever I wanted, and kept hovering around my fighting weight despite the near total lack of physical exertion. Beloved wife kept lying to me, telling me I looked great. Even my growing man-breasts had the appearance, if you didn't reach out and feel their udder-like softness, of well-developed pecs, from most angles and under select shirt fabrics.

I always thought that the myth about how guys suddenly balloon when they turn 40 was just one of those ha-ha's that went along with the milestone -- like those gag gifts at Spencer's that all have to do with diminished sexual stamina and/or mental sharpness e.g. those big banners proclaiming "Lordy, Lordy, Bob is Forty!" with a crudely drawn cartoon of a senile-looking guy with a big wet mark on the front of his institutional pajamas. I'll grant you, that's some funny, funny stuff. But it wasn't going to happen to me.

Then it did. So now I'm hitting the Y every day, trying to make up for lost time (like that's going to happen). Will I get abs of steel again? Dunno, never had 'em a day in my entire life. No, the best I can hope for at this point is to stave off that wet mark on the front of my jammies for as long as I possibly can. So I huff, and I puff, and I scurry on the Cybex like a hamster in his wheel.

The reason I bring all this up is because today I had my first-ever locker room shave. In all my years of playing high-school and college sports, and of working out in gyms as a young adult, my shaving and my locker room time-spentage never crossed paths. This was a first.

So I came prepared. I packed my gym bag dop kit with:

1 (one) Merkur Progress adjustable DE razor;

1 (one) pack of Merkur Platinum blades;

1 (one) Merkur travel brush

1 (one) tube of Trumper's rose shaving cream;

1 (one) bottle of Trumper's rose Skin Food.

I will say this for our local Y -- the showers in the men's locker room are fit for a king. Great pressure, plenty of hot water, and the soap dispensers are always filled with this really great-smelling almond-scented industrial soap that smells almost as good as Taylor's almond shaving cream, which itself smells like an almond pastry. Nice work, fellas, or gals as the case may be. You could've gone with that blue industrial soap that smells like laundry detergent, but you didn't, and I thank you.

I stand at the row of sinks after the shower and unload my tools, and it's then that I notice, for the first time, that the sinks lack stoppers. They're like the sinks at any public facility -- by design, you can't fill them and hence can't overflow them.

This is a problem. I like to fill the sink with hot water, let the brush soak, and then dunk my razor in after every face swipe to clean off the lather and whiskers. I can't do that with the locker room sink. I have to just let the hot water run, and rinse my razor that way.

Why is this no good? Because with the hot water running, I can't hear the razor cutting my whiskers. That little pinging noise -- especially loud when using the Merkur adjustable razors like the Progress in my hand -- is not only pleasant and satisfying to hear, but the primary sensory feedback agent I use to gauge whether I need to go over an area again or not. I'm like a bat when I shave -- if I don't hear that radar ping that tells me I'm cutting whiskers, I'm flying/shaving blind.

But I'm also acutely aware that other men are staring at me. And not just because I'm trying to wear a small workout towel around my waist. No, they're staring at my junk.

My shaving junk.

The young and the old, the buff and the saggy, they all check out my wetshaving rig. The younger guys are clearly confused, while the older men nod approvingly, and a few even give me fatherly smiles as they pass. I've seen a few guys catch a typical modern guy shave at that sink with a plastic disposable and some gel, but I haven't seen any old-school wetshaving before I broke out my junk and got to work.

I hadn't used a Progress in awhile -- nice. This is an excellent, excellent razor. I don't use it much lately because I tend to dick with the blade settings too much if I'm using an adjustable, but the Progress is my second favorite Merkur after the HD, and I always get a great shave with it.

The Trumper rose was a new one for me. This was the first time I've tried it. I love Trumper's violet and use it often, but never the rose. Just never got around to it, and then I fell hard for Taylor's rose shaving cream, so the Trumper kind of sat there unused. Well, this is good stuff, certainly, but I prefer the Taylor, to be honest. The Trumper isn't as dense, and makes a more runny lather with the same amount of water in the brush as when I use Taylor's rose. With a bit less water in the brush, the Trumper made a much nicer and thicker lather and worked fine, but didn't smell quite as all-out rosey as Taylor's. It's a fine cream, but I prefer the way the Taylor smells, and it's cheaper besides.

I had big misgivings about shaving with the hot water running the whole time, since I couldn't really hear anything that was happening with my shave. But just as a blind man's hearing becomes more sensitive to compensate, so did my sense of touch. Cut off from my usual whisker-blade-ping-hammer-anvil-stirrup-brain-hand-razor feedback loop, I focused on the physical "pings" traveling down the metal shaft of the Progress and into my hand to tell me where I needed to shave and where I didn't need to anymore because it was smooth.

Did I say smooth? I meant glass smooth. Maybe I should plug my ears every time I shave, or maybe I should go back to the Progress, now that I can shave without pressure for real. Whatever it was, I got the best shave I've ever had with the Progress, and that's saying something, because this razor's given me some of my high-water-mark shaves.

A quick slap-on of the Skin Food and I was done. My cheeks and neck felt so clean and smooth I kept caressing my face until I noticed that the guys were staring again, so I waited till I got to my car to start up again with the faceturbation. Remember, junior gumshoes, you can always spot a wetshaver by the disturbing way he caresses his own face, oblivious to public distaste for such odd behavior.

Or maybe it's shaving in public that's the secret to the spectacular shave I got today. Shaving as performance art? Is this the next step after finally mastering the no-pressure DE shave?

I think I'm to something. Now I'm going to haul all my favorite shaving products to the Y and test them out there, naked, in the public eye, with only the sound of the running faucet bouncing off the hard locker room walls to drown out the thunderous applause from the sea of orangutan-teated old men trying to wolf-whistle with no teeth.

This "no pressure" thing is really paying off in triple cherries. Today I shaved with my trusty Merkur HD razor, Merkur Platinum blade, Vulfix #2235 badger brush, only this morning I hauled out my deepest, darkest, guiltiest pleasure when it comes to shaving -- Trumper's violet shaving cream.

I've waxed on about this excellent cream before. While other shaving creams may be slicker (Cremo Cream), more refreshing (Proraso), more moisturizing (Taylor avocado), or more soothing (Taylor rose), no shaving cream is more decadent and delicious than Trumper's violet.

It's purple. It's Trumper. And it smells better than any other shaving cream on the face of the Earth. I unscrew the cap off the tub and jam my nose in there, inhaling deeply and dreamily. This cream single-handedly turned a lifelong flower smell hater into a floral scent queen. I went so nuts after discovering Trumper violet shaving cream that I hunted down some Claus Porto violet bath soap and not just one but two violet colognes, Santa Maria Novella's Violetta (smells better on beloved wife than me, so it's hers now) and Trumper's own Ajaccia Violet cologne (a keeper). I can't get enough of this scent. And the shaving cream is the best smelling of all this stuff -- every time I take a whiff I can't believe how good it smells.

Trumper's violet also happens to shave like the devil, putting it in the top rank of shaving creams I've tested. I've got a lot of tubs of shaving cream, but the only one that's always near-empty is my preciousssssss violet.

I always get a superlative shave with Trumper's violet, but today was the first time I used it without any added pressure on the blade. Just let the weight of the razor do the job for me. And damned if I didn't get the very best shave I've ever gotten from this purple wonder cream.

The funny thing is, the less pressure I use when shaving, the better the shaves get, and the less the cream seems to make a difference. I mean, yes, it pays to use a good quality shaving cream. No doubt about that. But when I don't apply any added pressure to the razor, the differences between these various creams which used to be so stark have now shrunken to near-irrelevancy. Whether I'm shaving with Cremo Cream, Taylor's rose, or Trumper's violet -- three creams which previously couldn't have smelled and shaved more differently to me -- as long as I don't apply any added pressure to the razor, the shaves all go equally well. It's like I've taken what was once a crucial variable right out of the equation. Which is great, right?

Um, right?

I've been going through this weird Queen/Bowie deja vu thing lately.

It started a few days ago when New York's new "Jack" format radio station played the Queen/Bowie song "Under Pressure", a song I haven't heard in years and which I'm pleased to say I can finally enjoy again without thinking about "Ice, Ice Baby".

Then later that same day my mother-in-law's over for dinner and she's talking about the Live 8 concerts, and how none of the acts she watched on TV were as good as when Queen and Bowie teamed up at the original Live Aid to sing "Under Pressure".

Then Saturday, beloved wife and I were out with some friends of ours, and our friend Amy recounted a tale, apropos of nothing, of sharing the same masseuse with the model Iman years ago, and hearing Bowie's voice on the answering machine when it picked up during her massages. So she's listening to Bowie call her masseuse to reschedule his wife's appointment, and at the same time, the masseuse is applying pressure all over her back. Pressure. Bowie. And who in history has probably gotten the most massages of anyone? The Queen of England. Yes, the Queen.

What does all of this have to do with shaving? Well, I have a confession to make. Even though I've always repeated the standard wetshaving boilerplate "when shaving with a DE safety razor, use no downward pressure, and let only the weight of the razor rest upon your skin as you guide it across your face", I haven't totally followed my own advice.

Yes, Dear Reader, I press down on the razor. It's wrong, I know. But what is "wrong" in a world gone mad, I ask you? What's a little English applied to the blade on your face? I mean, isn't this whole wetshaving trip supposed to harken back to Merry Ol' anyway? So applying a bit of English should be a good thing, right?

Hey, it's not like I'm leaning on it with all my might and scraping my skin like I'm removing an old "Live To Ride, Ride To Live" bumper sticker off my car. I just push down a little bit, is all.

See, when I first started learning how to shave with a double-edge razor, I followed the stock advice not to apply any pressure to the blade whatsoever, and my first batch of shaves were mediocre at best. Lots of visible stubble remained no matter how many passes I did. I followed the Shavegeek Elders' orders, but all I got were terrible shaves.

So I started pressing down a little bit. And my shaves began to dramatically improve. Now I could get a super close, super smooth shave, just by applying enough pressure on the blade to force it to cut through the mini redwoods on my face forest. I was heartened to watch Straightrazorplace.com's Lynn Abrams' video and see him clearly pressing down pretty forcefully on his cut-throat razor as he demonstrated how to shave with it. I figured if a He-Man like Lynn was down with blade pressure, how bad could it really be to shave like that with a DE? So that's how I've been shaving all this time, and getting great results.

Then I decided to try the new brushless Cremo Cream, which is about as different from a traditional English shaving cream as Freddie Mercury is from Dick Cheney. This super-slick, super-effective cream makes my shaves so easy they're almost too easy -- the razor glides over my face like it's not even making contact, without the slightest bit of friction, and the Cremo even seems to mute the sound of the whiskers getting cut, too, ehancing the eerie sensation of nothing going on. But then you rub your puss afterward and marvel at the baby tushy shave Cremo leaves you with.

Shaving with the Cremo for a week seems to have had an effect on not just my shaves, but my technique. I noticed today, for the first time, that I'm not applying nearly the amount of pressure to the razor on my face as I've been all this time. For the first time since the very beginning of this whole wetshaving thing, I'm actually shaving the way I recommend to every newbie I talk to -- without any pressure, just letting the weight of the razor do all the work. And the kicker is, my shaves have never been better.

I wanted to see if the no-pressure technique worked with a regular cream and not just Cremo, so today, for the first time, I shaved with just the weight of the razor pressing down on a lather bed of Taylor's rose shaving cream. The Taylor isn't quite as slick and glidey as the Cremo, especially when you use Cremo with a brush, but it's plenty lubricating.

I let the weight of my Merkur HD razor be the only pressure bearing down on my skin, and I got the very best shave I've ever enjoyed from this rose shaving cream. As with the Cremo, I didn't feel like I was really accomplishing anything with such a light touch, but when I rinsed off with cold water at the end, my face was so smooth I couldn't feel any stubble anywhere, even under my chin.

Now, my Merkur HD is a somewhat aggressive razor. Its fixed-head geometry shows more bare blade than the old fixed-head Gillette DEs, so maybe it's better suited to the abosultely-no-pressure shaving technique I've described. I'll try using my Gillette DEs, both fixed and adjustable, and see if they shave as closely with no added pressure as my heavier, more aggressive Merkur.

Clearly, my learning curve hasn't flattened out yet, which is great, because that means my shaves can get even better, if that's possible. I suppose if a shave that takes zero seconds and cuts so close I don't have to shave ever again and leaves me with zero skin irritation is the ideal, then I've got a long way to go. But I took a giant step closer when I finally let up on the pressure and let the blade do all the work for me.

Monday is New Blade Day, so out with the old Merkur Platinum DE blade in my safety razor and in with a new one (the last one of a pack of ten! Why this makes me happy escapes me, but for some reason, it always does).

Unlike so many other DE blades, I find the Merkur Platinums give great shave right out of the wrapper, and stay sharp for at least a week's worth of shaving. Other blades I've used, even the ones I like and keep using like the Israeli Personnas and the Wilkinsons, have a little too much bite on the first shave, then things are great for the rest of the week. Not the Merkurs -- they're nice and smooth right from the start.

Some shavegeeks claim the Merkur blades only work well in Merkur's own DE razors, and are too "mild" for a "milder" razor like the old Gillette adjustables and fixed-head DEs. I think that's just dogma that's been batted around long enough to become a truism. The Merkur blades are the best I've ever used in my Gillette DEs, both fixed and adjustable. There's no blade I've tried that's more consistently excellent.

Today's shave was with my current money-in-the-bank rig -- Merkur HD razor, fresh Merkur Platinum blade, Vulfix #2235 brush, brushed-lathered Cremo Cream, and Trumper's Skin Food for the post-shave. As always, it was pure pleasure. My skin hasn't felt this good in years -- it must like being scrubbed with badger bristles, treated with the aloe in the Cremo, exfoliated with the Merkur blade, and moisturized with the glycerin and rosewater in the Skin Food. That, or the pork fat in the spareribs I ate last night is making its way out of my pores as we speak.

The plan this morning was to use Taylor's rose shaving cream to for a nice, soothing Sunday shave after my defeat at the hands of the Feather DE blade yesterday. I always scurry back to Taylor's rose cream after catching a beating from some over-aggressive razor, blade, or other shaving experiment. The rose cream always seems to calm and heal whatever skin irritation I'm suffering from.

The weird thing is, I've been told the Taylor rose has no actual rose oil in it -- that the rose scent is actually synthetic perfume oil, which might as well be red dye #2 when it comes to possessing any soothing properties. I don't know if this is really so, but I do know that this cream smells great, shaves like a dream, and always helps calm my skin down when I've caught a beating from a shave need to take it easy for a day or two.

As I said, I was going to use the Taylor today, but a houseguest was using the bathroom the rose was in, so it was a no-go. So I figured what the hell, let's see if Cremo Cream is any good at a "shoulder to cry on" shave.

I prepped in the usual way -- hot shower, left my face wet -- and lathered up with a Vulfix #2235 and a dime's worth of Cremo Cream. I'd already ditched the Feather blade from my Merkur HD razor, replacing it with a fresh Merkur Platinum blade. The Merkur blades are the sharpest my skin can take without redness, I've found.

I usually do three passes with the DE -- with-grain, against-grain, and then a bunch of diagonal cutting on my neck and under my chin, to get my billy goat's gruff as smooth as my cheeks. But today I just did the first two passes, and 86'd the extra cleanup pass. I also lightened up on the downward pressure when I was going over the areas on my neck where the Feather shave left red marks.

This Cremo is amazing. I got just as nice and comforting a "take it easy" shave with it as I usually do with Taylor's rose cream. My neck looked and felt great. Now I'm thinking maybe I've been an idiot all this time for doing that third cleanup pass under my chin all this time, just to get baby's butt smooth on that patch which nobody else will ever know is or isn't smooth to the touch. My neck either looks good or feels good -- it's never both. So I either shave it smooth so I can faceturbate all day, caressing my own chin like a demented freak, or have it look perfectly smooth and clean to the world at large. My own pleasure versus not looking like weasels ripped my flesh.

The more I use Cremo Cream, the more it surprises and impresses me. Used brushless as it's intended to be, it gives a shave every bit as good as when you use a brush and a traditional English cream. Last week I learned that it works even better when you use it with a brush. And today I got the kind of kinder, gentler shave I used to think only came from using Taylor's rose. If only Cremo Cream didn't have to smell like a pina colada, and instead came in more traditional scents like rose, lavender, lime, and yes, violet, this stuff could be the only shaving cream I'd ever want to use.

No matter how good I get at this whole wetshaving routine, I can't stop monkeying around, it seems. I've been so psyched with the shaves I've been getting by using a brush with the brushless Cremo Cream that today I think I went one toke over the line, sweet rhesus. I tried shaving with a Feather Platinum DE blade again, after swearing off of them awhile back.

I have a love/hate relationship with the Feather DE blades. They're clearly the sharpest safety razor blades I've ever tried, and in a good razor, they cut so surgically you can barely feel them mowing your whiskers -- they just seem to wipe off the layer of stubble without any sensation of actually cutting.

That's the good news. The bad news, for me at least, is that I've never been able to get a consistently good shave without skin irritation. Even if I pay strict attention and avoid bearing down with any pressure at all on the razor, I still get red marks on my neck whenever I use Feather blades in any of my various DE razors. I love how close and smooth the shaves always are, but the red marks suck.

You'd think I'd learn by now. But my shaves with Cremo Cream have been so amazing that, of course, I couldn't help myself. Since this stuff is so super slick, maybe it would let me get away with using the Feather blades so I could get those crazy-close shaves without the accompanying skin irritation. I broke open a pack of Feather Platinums and loaded one into my Merkur HD.

Today's shaving routine was identical in rig and rigor to my other recent Cremo shaves -- Merkur HD, Vulfix #2235 brush, Trumper Skin Food after to soothe my freshly shaven skin. The only difference was subbing the Feather blade for my usual Merkur.

The shave itself was super, super close. Even my trouble areas like under my chin feel glass smooth. And I didn't have to go over these areas as many times as I do with other blades to get that kind of closeness. Just a few quick passes and I had glass.

Unfortunately, I also had some tiny red marks on my neck. I rarely get these anymore unless I'm using a hyper-aggressive razor like the Merkur Slant Bar or the Mach3 Power, or a poorly lubricating shaving cream or soap. As long as I use a good cream and my trusty Merkur HD, I don't worry about red marks on my neck anymore.

I thought the Cremo Cream's extreme slickness might somehow let the Feathers skate over my skin faster etc so the shave wouldn't irritate, or something along those lines anyway. Nope. So I'm giving up on the Feather blades for now. They're great, and lots of shavegeeks seem to get fine results with them. I'm not there yet, and with my skin, I may never be. I'm not Lee Marvin. I have sensitive skin. The Feathers are too much for me.

Maybe a year from now if my technique reaches the Zen point where I close my eyes and shave with a single, unbroken stroke over my entire face and neck without raising the blade till the last whisker falls in slo-mo into the sinkwater, I can revisit the Feathers and use them successfully. For now, I'm staying with the much more forgiving Merkur and Personna blades in my DE.

Ladies who lunch often enjoy a spot of sorbet to cleanse the palate, and so it was today with my shave. With all this wonder and glee from using the brushless Cremo Cream with a brush, maybe it's good to check in with an ol' reliable and make sure I'm not falling for the oldest reviewer's trap in the game -- the dreaded “I Fall In Love Too Easily” gusher. Oh, it's an ugly one. You're surprised by an intriguing product, or you've just come off a string of clunkers, and you suddenly find yourself with a thumping heart and breathless prose that will make you cringe a few days later when you come to your senses.

So today I shaved with my old school rig -- Taylor lavender shaving cream, Vulfix #2235 brush, and Merkur HD razor loaded with a Merkur Platinum blade.

Lavender is my oldest wetshaving friend. I think it was a tub of Art Of Shaving's lavender cream that first tipped me that there was something better in the world than Edge gel. So whenever I smell lavender, it reminds of the first wetshaving baby steps I ever took.

Now I use Taylor's lavender cream, which is of much better quality. The AOS lavender cream is fine stuff -- miles ahead of the mass market gels and foams -- but the Taylor is better still. Denser, richer, slicker, and purpler. Yes, purpler. Call me crazy but I love the Taylor's purple color. It turns white when you lather, but it looks cool in the tub when you crack it open in the morning.

My shave with this tried and true stalwart cream was excellent, as always. Smooth, close, comfortable. But I have to say, I think the shaves I got from brush-lathered Cremo Cream were better. My skin was slicker, the shaves were closer, the shaving itself was more efficient, and my face tingled afterward like I'd just had a great straight razor shave.

I'm going to alternate my go-to creams like Taylor rose, Trumper violet, and Proraso with the Cremo, to make sure I'm not imagining things. But so far, I'm even more impressed by the Cremo's shave after comparing it with what I've been shaving with.

Yesterday's experiment with using a shaving brush with Cremo Cream was wildly successful. I really didn't expect it to work as well as it did, given its brushless formula, its own maker's admonitions to use it with my bare hands for the best results, and the fact that this stuff goes on thin and translucent when you apply it with your hands as recommended.

But I was wrong. Using a Vulfix badger brush and treating the Cremo just like any traditional English shaving cream like Trumper or Taylor, the lather I got was thick, rich, and just as opaquely white as a "real" shaving cream -- three things it is not when you just use your hands. And if the shave's great when used as prescribed, it's flat-out phenomenal with a brush.

The weird but wonderful thing about using a brush to build a lather with Cremo Cream is that the lather seems to grow in both quantity and lubrication the more you use it. Somehow, there's a bigger, richer head of lather on the brush after three full passes than when you began the shave. The maker says that Cremo's mojo is activated by adding water -- could it be that the water held by the brush's bristles keeps mixing with the Cremo every time you relather, and continues to create more and more lather as you go? With traditional creams, it's just the opposite -- no matter how much water your brush can hold, the lather gets used up each time you relather, until there's no more left. Cremo Cream somehow does the reverse.

For yesterday's shave with Cremo and a brush, I used the recommended amount, about a quarter-sized dollup. But that recommendation is for when you're just spreading it on your face with your bare hands. Clearly, much less Cremo is needed when you're lathering it with a brush. So this morning, I used a much smaller blob of Cremo. Maybe a dime's worth, if that.

A dime, a quarter -- apparently Cremo doesn't care how much or how little you pinch off when you're using a brush, because I got just as much lather today as I did yesterday. After my customary three passes, I had more lather on my brush than when I started. I could've shaved for another three passes, easy.

This is nuts.

So what am I supposed to do here? Use a pinhead's worth?

But which shavegeek's hat size should I ask for?

Today I did the unthinkable.

The unbelievable.

The unnatural.

Even, perhaps, the unholy:

I used Cremo Cream with a brush.

And it kicked ass!

Honestly, it exceeded my wildest expectations. Because I've tried using a shaving brush with brushless creams like Cremo in the past, and it was always a bust. Most of the modern boutique creams like Baxter's, Sharp's, Jack Black Ate No Crack, Kiehl's, Lab Series, Zyrrrhhhhh, you name it, they're all designed to be slathered on your puss with your bare hands. The thought being, later wif dat tired-ass horse'n'buggy routine with the brush and the mug and the barbershop quartet! Just use your hands, yo.

Problem is, none of this crap works, yo. Except for Cremo Cream. Thanks to beloved wife, who tried this stuff out on her gams when I couldn't be bothered to take it seriously, I finally caught a shave with it last week and it knocked me for a loop. Here was a modern, space-age shaving cream inna tube, expressly designed to be used brushless, invented by the guy who came up with the idea for the dry-erase magic marker board for cripe's sake, yet I've gotten some of the best shaves I've ever had with it. Better, in fact, than some of the most jizzed-about creams and soaps in the shavegeek pantheon.

But as unbelievable as Cremo Cream is, the fact that it's brushless gave me pause. Because I like using a brush. No, I love using a brush. As convinced as I am that Cremo Cream delivers a world-class shave without using a brush, I'm not giving up my brush. It feels good on my face. I like using it. I like it, okay? I'm not giving it up.

So the question became: can you use a shaving brush with Cremo Cream and still make the magic happen? Because push comes to shove, if they can't tango, it ain't my brush that's getting the heave-ho.

I called Cremo Central to see what they thought of all this. I also wanted to make sure that the non-standard ingredients in this stuff wouldn't mess with a badger-hair shaving brush -- hey, you never know. Some shavegeeks swear that the lanolin in Proraso and Musgo Real shaving creams gunks up the bristles. But these are the same guys who use "Pip pip!" and "Tally ho, chaps!" online while it's more like "Care for some butter-flavored topping on your popcorn, sir?" in real life, so take it for what it's worth.

The Cremo folks told me using a brush with Cremo wouldn't degrade its performance, but they reiterated that the cream was designed to work best with just a hand application. And no, they said, it wouldn't harm or coat the brush in any way.

So this morning I jumped our of the shower and grabbed my Vulfix badger brush, soaked in a sink full of hot water, and did my usual wetshave routine except with Cremo Cream instead of traditional shaving cream. I squeezed a quarter-sized dollup of Cremo into my left palm and proceeded to pump'n'swirl the waterlogged brush around and around for the usual 10-15 laps.

I had lather! Real, live, honest-to-god lather. If it wasn't quite as opaque, thick, or dense as what I get from the trio above, it was much more opaque, thick and dense than what I got from just slathering it on my wet face with my hands. Much more.

The shave, I'm convinced, was even better with the brush than without. It was breathtakingly smooth and effortless. I thought Cremo Cream was slippery before, but wait till you try it with a brush. And the best part is, the Cremo lather kept getting thicker, richer, and more lubricating for each successive pass. I don't know how or why, but each time I lathered up again, the Cremo got better and better. I did three passes -- with-grain, against-grain, and a diagonal clean-up pass under my chin and on my neck -- and the last pass was even slicker than the first.

And the crazy thing is, after every relathering, the head of lather on my brush seemed to grow bigger. I've never experienced this with any other lather, whether from a cream, a soap, or a shaving oil like Pacific. What else have you ever tried that creates more lather and gets more lubricating the more you use it? Nothing in my experience.

The shave was perfect. Baby's butt smooth. Not a hint of skin irritation. No red marks on my neck. It was as good a shave as I've ever given myself, and it was one of the easiest, too.

I'm sold on this stuff hook, line and sinker. Cremo Cream is plenty good when used as directed, but add a brush to the mix and it jumps to the head of the class. If the Cremo folks could just make it smell like something other than a pina colada, and add a smaller tube to the line for travel, I'd be hard pressed to shave with anything else.

You can order a big 6-oz. tube of Cremo Cream for $14.50 from Ray Dupont at Classic Shaving. Do it. I just ordered two more tubes from Ray, and between beloved wife and me, I know I'll be ordering more. Highly recommended.

Today I tried QED's lime shaving soap, to see if it was a better match for my skin than the company's sandalwood soap.

Even before Charles had sent me his new soaps to try, he'd sent me one of his new lavender shaving sticks along with an order I'd placed awhile back. The QED shaving sticks are made of the same cold-poured glycerin-based formula as the QED soaps that come in the tubs, so I removed the cylinder of lavender soap from the QED push-up stick, put it in a glass mug, and microwaved it for 25 seconds till it melted nicely into the bottom of the mug.

After it cooled and hardened again, I used it just like a regular shaving soap. The QED lavender worked well enough, but didn't live up to the initial shavegeek hype. Personally, I thought it was no better or worse than the other hard glycerin shaving soaps I've tried like Col. Conk, but it sure did smell a lot better -- QED's liberal use of pure essential oils gives these soaps a strong and wonderful scent, especially after you've whipped it up into a lather. Still, the shave itself wasn't as smooth and close as what I get from my favorite creams, so I used the lavender a few more times to make sure my initial take was accurate, and then went back to Trumper's voilet, Taylor's avocado and Proraso.

As I said before, QED's sandalwood didn't work as well for me as the lavender soap, so I was eager to see how QED's lime compared with the two other soaps. Well, as far as scent goes, the lime wins hads down -- this stuff smells nutty, nutty good. It smells exactly like the Green River sodas we used to drink as a kids at the Sweete Shoppe while sharing a giant porcelain plate of fries. It's an intensely sweet lime scent, and it knocked me out so much I couldn't wait to lather up.

Like the other QED soaps, lathering with the lime is a bit of an adjustment if you're used to the old-school creams from Taylor, Trumper et al. You can waterlog your brush all you want, and swirl it on top of the soap all you want, but you're not really going to get a properly thick lather from the QED unless you use a mug or (shudder) a shavegeek bowl. When I tried making lather the usual way I do with hard soaps -- i.e. soak my brush in a sink of hot water, swirl the tips of the badger hair over the soap about 10-20 times, and then begin lathering right on my face -- the QED made a pretty thin and not very substantial lather, and clearly wasn't ready to shave with.

No, you need to work the QED soap with a mug, really pump and beat that sucker, to get a usable shaving lather from it. This is why I don't like the QED shaving sticks as much-- if I use them the way they're intended to be used, which is get my face wet with hot water, rub the stick over my face and neck, and then start beating away with my wet brush, it's just not happening at all. I like the form factor, but this stuff works far better in tub form than in a rub-on stick.

Beaten to a properly thick and rich lather, the QED lime worked much better with my skin than QED's sandalwood soap. I didn't suffer from any of the drying or irritation I have from other lime shaving products like Trumper's and Coates's lime shaving creams. There was still that same razor drag on my face I experienced with QED's other soaps, but this is the hallmark of every hard glycerin shaving soap I've used -- the blade "squeaks" on my skin (especially sgainst the grain) instead of gliding over a smooth layer of lube. With the best of the glycerin rounds, which I'd rank QED's lime and lavender soaps right at the top based on scent alone, I can usually get a decent, and occassionaly a very good, shave, but it takes more time, is less effortless and enjoyable, and my skin always feels just a wee bit tighter and drier than is good for it.

For what it's worth, my face feels the same way when I wash it with glycerin facial soaps like Neutrogena and the othwerwise wonderful South Of France bath soap I use in the shower -- while the rest of my body does just fine with the glycerin soaps, my face is much happier with Cetaphil cleanser. Maybe oily skin just isn't a good match for a hard glycerin soap when it comes to creating the slipperiest surface possible for the best shave.

QED's lime soap is my favorite of the company's three scents available in tubs. If it didn't give me as good a shave as I routinely get from my favorite creams, at least it didn't cause any skin irritation or razor burn, and the scent was among the very best I've experienced from a shaving product. In fact, it was so wonderful, I finished things off with Trumper's Lime Skin Food and Taylor's No.74 Lime cologne for the full-on citric acid trip. Cue the Anton Karas..

Still suffering from the cruel lashings at the hand of that irritating cad Sandalwood, I let myself fall once again into the waiting arms of Taylor Avocado. Moist, slippery Taylor. Always there to salve my wounds, soothe my skin, and pleasure me as only a gentleman's cream can.

He covered my face and neck with soft, silky lather, his scent an intoxicating mixture of avocado, rosemary, and lavender, his touch hot on my bare skin.

There would be no bodice ripping, though had I been wearing one, I shan't doubt it would have been dealt with as such, given Taylor Avocado's reputation as the misunderstood rogue among the Taylors of Old Bond Street. There would only be the shave. A smooth, flawless, moisturizing shave that did wonders for my face which had, only a few days before, seen the back of that cruel blackguard Sandalwood's hand and still harbored memories of its sting.

And I was reunited once more with my beloved old flame Vulfix Badger, now that my return to Cremo Cream was put off another day or so. Denying myself the pleasures of the brush is, I'm coming to feel, the only reason I may never be able to swear allegiance to the wondrous Cremo.

As heavenly as my shaves with this brushless cream have been, I can't help but confess to a deep longing for my precious Vulfix, and the tingle of his soft yet firm touch on my face. If dear Vulfix and fair Cremo cannot share sweet embrace with me together, I fear I may come to a crossroads, with the romance of the brush and the science of the lube presenting two divergent paths, only one of which can spell eternal shaving happiness.

But dare I even think such thoughts while Taylor Avocado's milk-white cream still soaked the matted patch of hair at the base of my Vulfix? For now, I could only think of the romance and pleasure of a brush and a cream meant to be enjoyed forever together.

And with that, I surrendered to Taylor once more, with a final pass under my chin that left naught but bare, lamb-pink skin in its wake.

Yesterday's shave with the QED sandalwood shaving soap left my skin feeling a bit more raw today than usual, especially on my neck and under my chin. There were some red marks on the base of my neck as well -- this is sign-language for my neck saying, "Please go back to the Proraso shaving cream and stop dicking around with all these different products. You're a grown man, not a demented kid. Enough with the guinea pig routine already -- just use what you know works best and be done with it, you @%#$ shavegeek!"

I was planning to try the QED lime shaving soap today, but my neck needed some TLC. And when it comes to shaving, that means one thing and one thing only: Taylor's rose shaving cream, that most maternal of all wetshaving products.

Same brush, same razor, same shaving routine. But today's shave couldn't have been more different than yesterday's. The Taylor rose builds to a much thicker and more dense lather than the QED sandalwood's, but that doesn't really matter when it comes to shaving -- Cremo Cream goes on thin and transparent, and barely registers as a "lather" at all, yet it shaves incredibly well.

What does matter is how well a lather lubes your skin and lets the blade glide over your face without skipping, catching, or dragging. In fact, it's the only thing that matters. It's why you use shaving cream, instead of simply shaving on a wet face.

The Taylor's rose cream has never given me anything less than a superbly slick, highly lubricated, yet extremely soothing and comforting shave, and today's shave was no different. This cream, moreso than most I've tried, is just plain a pleasure to shave with. It smells great, it lathers great, it shaves great, and it helps your skin recover from whatever beating it's taken elsewhere. It's the cream I always come back to when I've strayed with an untested cream, razor, or blade and I need to recuperate.

My skin already feels and looks better. If it looks fine tomorrow, I'll give the QED lime a go. As I said, I've already gotten good results from the lavender QED soap, so I know this stuff can work well. I'm eager to see if the lime version is a better match for my skin than the sandalwood.

Yesterday I said I'd try using the Cremo Cream with a shaving brush, but I say lots of things. Charles at QED sent me some of his recently launched shaving soaps to try -- lavender, lime and sandalwood, as well as a really intriguing shaving stick of an anise/lavender mix -- so I figured I'd take a break from the Cremo and try these new QED soaps which have become the toast of the shavegeek forums.

Actually, this wasn't the first time I've shaved with QED's new glycerin-based shaving soaps. Awhile back, Charles had sent me a lavender shaving stick to try, and since the soap's the same in the sticks as it is in the tubs, and since I'm not really down with the whole rubbing the stick all over your wet face before you whip up the lather with your brush thing, I removed the hardened soap from the plastic push-up stick, put it in a vintage Old Spice glass shaving mug, microwaved it for 25 seconds, and waited for it to cool down and harden again.

The lavender QED soap gave good shave, but the most impressive thing about it was the scent. It's made with real lavender essential oil, and quite a bit of it, from the smell of things. If you're an old lady like me and you love lavender, you'll love this QED soap, if for no other reason than it throws up a pretty intense lavender force field around your head for the duration of the shave.

As for the shave, I have to say that while I like the QED soap, I don't share the prevailing shavegeek sing-along that it's the best shave lube on the market. It's good, and the scents, all derived from essential oils, are extraordinary. But I don't find that the shave I get from the QED soaps are better than what I routinely get from Taylor, Trumper and other traditional creams. And while I haven't used the Cremo Cream long enough to really decide whether it's really the best shaving cream I've ever tested or simply a case where something new and different gets you excited and all jizzed about it, I definitely got better shaves with it this week than I've been able to get from the QED soaps.

One thing I do know, though, is that I strongly prefer the lavender QED soap to the sandalwood, which I tried today. The sandalwood irritated my skin a bit, and, strangely, smelled more like patchouli to me than sandalwood. I realize that many "sandalwood" colognes like Taylor's have additional notes along with the sandalwood, and I also know that QED uses very expensive, pure sandalwood essential oil in its shaving soap. Maybe every other sandalwood scent I've smelled has been mixed with other stuff, and pure sandalwood really does smell like a guy in a dancing bears t-shirt playing hacky sack. It's a nice scent, if you like patchouli, but I guess I was expecting something that smelled more like Taylor's sandalwood cologne and shaving cream.

It's also possible that glycerin shaving soaps work better for some skin types than others. On my face, which is very oily, the QED doesn't slick up my skin so much as get squeaky. The same thing has happened with other hard glycerin shaving soaps I've tried, as well as when I've washed my face with a glycerin soaps like Neutrogena. The only way I can describe it is that my skin almost squeaks when I rub my hands over it.

The problem is, so does a razor. And when you're shaving with a sharp double-edge blade, that's the last thing you want. What you do want is slick lubrication so the edge of the blade glides smoothly across your skin. On my face, hard glycerin soaps like the QED make the blade pull and even stutter a bit at times. Even a new blade feels like one that's a day past its due date. I can adapt to this and get a decent shave, but I can't really get the kind of super close, super comfortable shave that I can with the traditional English creams. Even the inexpensive European creams like Proraso and Musgo Real are a better match for my skin type than hard glycerin soaps.

Clearly, other guys are getting much better results from the QED soaps than I've gotten -- some shavegeeks have even claimed they dumped their other creams and soaps because the QED soaps are the best they ever tried and they'll use nothing else. I wish I could get as excited about these soaps, but so far, I haven't been able to get the same results. I will say, though, that the lavender did work better than the sandalwood, and I still want to try a few shaves with the lime, and especially the anise/lavender, before I put a period on this line. So tomorrow I'll try both and see how they stack up.

Yesterday I said I would try shaving with Cremo Cream and foregoing any after-shave whatsoever -- just shave, rinse with cold water, and see if my hunch was true that Cremo Cream is so gentle on your skin that you don't need to calm things down with a post-shave poultice afterward.

Well, today I did just that. Got another superlative shave from just the Cremo Cream and my Merkur HD razor, and did nothing but splash some cold water on my face at the end.

My face felt great. There was that slight exfoliation tingle like I get after a really close straight razor shave, which is a good thing. But there was not a trace of heat, burn, tightness, rawness, you name it. All the reasons you pamper your puss with fill-in-the-blank after a shave just weren't there at all.

About an hour or so later, though, my face started to feel a bit, well, dry. I've got very oily skin to begin with, so when my skin feels dry, even slightly, something, as Miss Clavell would say, is not right.

My face didn't hurt. Nor did it seem irritated, itchy, or raw in the slightest. It just felt drier than normal. Drier than it should be.

I've been using Trumper's skin food for about a year now after my shaving, which is a solution of gum and glycerin, with some rosewater and menthol crystals as well. The glycerin and rosewater soothe and moisturize your skin, and the gum dries to cover your skin for a few hours till everything settles down nicely. Used sparingly, you can't see or even feel the skin food on your face after it dries, but man oh man does it work wonders. It's easily my favorite post-shave poultice.

The thing is, I think I've been taking skin food for granted. It does such an incredible job, and so subtly, that it's only today, when I skipped it, that I noticed what a big difference it's been making all this time. The razor, brush, and cream get all the attention, but the skin food is an indispensable part of the shave.

Bottom line: Cremo Cream is a revelation, but it's miraculous powers don't extend to relieving you of the need to use a post-shave of some sort.

Incidentally, I called Cremo Cream yesterday to ask them if this stuff could A. be used with a shaving brush without degrading its skin lube mojo, and B. whether any of its atypical ingredients might not be the best thing to get on badger hair. They said it could be used with a brush without any worry about gunking up a badger brush, but that Cremo Cream was designed specifically to work best when applied with the hands only.

So tomorrow I try it with a brush. I need to see if I can cross-breed the modern tech breakthrough with the olde schoole pleasure throb I get from using my favorite Vulfix #2235 badger brush. The Cremo Cream shaves like a dream, but I'm not ready to ditch the brush just yet. My hope is they work well together -- even if the brush doesn't make the Cremo work any better, I want to make sure it doesn't make it work any worse.

I'm trying to come to terms with Cremo Cream. Yesterday's shave was so exceptional that I tried it again this morning -- just slapped some on my wet face and went to town with the DE -- and got an even better shave today than I did yesterday. Quicker, more efficient, and even closer on my problem areas, which are the sides of my Adam's apple and the billy goat's gruff under my chin.

This morning's shave took less than half the time it usually does when I go through the whole routine of filling the sink with hot water, letting my shaving brush soak, opening the tub of cream, lifting the brush out of the water and giving it that quick, calibrated shake to leave it with juuust the right amount of water to build a good lather without making it too runny and messy, then lovingly brushing the lather all over my face and neck, up an down, down and up, side to side, over and over, while I inhale deeply the calming aroma of rose/violet/eucalyptus/lavender/etc., and then finally I've prepared my face sufficiently to put down the brush, pick up the razor, and begin the beguine.

With Cremo Cream, all that Edwardian foppery goes out the window. You just step out of the shower, splash some hot water on your face, spread a dollop of Cremo Cream onto your puss and away you go. Time saved: 5 minutes.

Once you begin shaving, you find that instead of having to make a ton of short, steady strokes with your DE as usual, along with the requisite sink dunks to clear the razor of whiskers'n'lather, Cremo Cream lets you shave with long, full-length strokes the entire travel of your face at a time, and each pass shaves closer and more smoothly than anything you've used before, so you don't have to go over the same areas again to get them to squeak. Just a with-grain shave, re-wet your puss, and an against-grain shave, and you're finished. Time saved: another 5 minutes, easy. Maybe ten, if you're a real gone shavegeek who won't quit scraping till every last whisker is floating face-down in the river.

And I may be going out on a limb here, but you may -- and I say may, because I haven't tried it yet, though I will tomorrow -- be able to skip the aftershave phase entirely with this unique stuff. Because it's so slick and lubricating, even an extremely close shave doesn't seem to leave my face with any irritation whatsoever, and in fact, my face feels perfectly fine and dandy with just a cold water rinse-off.

Even the mighty Proraso, with its legendary ice-cold menthol and eucalyptus cool-down when you rinse with cold water at the end of a shave, clearly leaves your puss in need of some kind of soothing poultice to complete the cycle. Because I've tried going without, and my face, while I didn't think it was irritated in the slightest, nonetheless felt a bit raw later on. Maybe the Cremo Cream will leave me feeling the same way if I skip the Trumper skin food I usually use as a post-shave -- I'll know tomorrow when I try it.

So clearly, this Cremo Cream presents a dilemma to the serious shavegeek. Sure, these guys all swear it's the shave, stupid, but then you go to the forums all the tittering is about the gear. Like guitargeeks who can't play an open E chord but can talk your ear off about every fuzzbox and delay pedal ever made, or why any wah-wah that doesn't have a genuine Italian-made Fasel inductor from the '60s SUCKS (see footnote 1).

Hey, I love all the man-toys -- the badger brush, with its cool looking ivory handle and centuries-old link to the great figures throughout history, and especially the traditional scented creams and soaps with their timeless scents of florals, aristocratic colognes, and Kool cigarettes. I love this stuff to death. Building up a fine lather in my palm with a high-quality shaving brush made of the finest badger hair and swirling it all around my face is a sensual, decadent experience, and does much to turn what used to be my least favorite part of the morning routine into my most eagerly anticipated time of the morning.

But if you can get a better shave without them, well, then what?

Do you put your brush back in its box, and relegate all those fine-smelling English creams and soaps to your junk drawer, and give up the nicest part of the wetshaving experience, because rather than help you reach your stated goal of the perfect shave, they may be -- can I even think this? -- unnecessary?


Do you come to terms with the fact that the best DE shave you can get is one that only takes a few minutes of your time and requires only a razor and a $14.50 tube of Cremo Cream?

Do you willfully give up the toys, and the comparisons, and the variety, and the quilting bee chats with your shavebuddies, and the skyline of brushes, creams, soaps, razors, pre-shaves, post-shaves, mugs, bowls, barrels, and other assorted salmagundi that crowd your bathroom sink and lead guests of your home, when visiting the loo, to worriedly question your rank in their lives?

Do you accept Cremo Cream as your savior?

Well, do ya, geek?









1. I don't mean to insult guitargeeks by comparing them with shavegeeks. Some guitargeeks have made positive contributions to society, such as Les Paul, Rick Nielsen, Billy Gibbons, and the guy who did the theme to the TV show "Police Cops" in that "Simpsons" episode where the cool Police Cop in the pilot was named Homer Simpson but was then changed into a bumbling oaf when the show was picked up by the network.

Awhile back, I noticed my wife having trouble shaving her legs with one of those oval-shaped Lady Sensor razors, the ones that use the same twin-blade cartridges as the men's Sensor Excel. She'd get nicks on her shins all the time, and just hated the whole routine. Of course, me so not being a shavegeek at all, I suggested she try shaving her stems with a DE.

In fact, I had just the razor for her to try -- a clean vintage long-handled Gillette "Slim-Twist" that was part of a gaggle of DEs I scored on eBay. One of those razor assortments you see in the listings, probably culled from jails and funeral homes. But a half-hour in a boiling teakettle later, and who cares whether it was the community shaver at a leper colony? You've got yourself a nice, shiny, squeaky clean razor.

Actually, the long-handled Gillette I gave my wife was in great shape when I got it. The rough-grip plastic handle is slightly tapered toward the end, and the non-adjustable silo-loading head seems ideally suited to gam shaving, being just a bit more aggressive than the fixed-head Gillettes meant for a man's face.

Along with the razor, I also gave my wife a bunch of creams to try with it. Some standard English top-shelf stuff, plus a few new creams I hadn't gotten around to trying yet.

Needless to say, she loved the DE and now uses it exclusively. As for the creams, she gave them all back to me except for one.

"I'll keep the Cremo-Cream," she said. "It's the best one by far."

Hmm. The best? I even went out to Whole Foods and got her a pump bottle of Kiss My Face shaving cream, the sweet smelling stuff that's supposed to be so good. But she stuck to her guns.

"It's okay, but the Cremo-Cream is much more lubricating. You can have the Kiss My Face. I'll just use the Cremo-Cream, thanks."

Kiss My Face, my ass. I got twelve tubs of Taylor, woman! But now I was curious.

Cremo-Cream is a very different beast than other shaving creams. Its biggest departure from the norm is that it contains no glycerin, which is practically the main ingredient in most top-shelf shaving creams. Hell, some of the most highly-regarded shaving soaps are pretty much pucks of solid glycerin. And there's other non-traditional ingredients like Macadamia seed oil, aloe leaf juice, and papaya extract.

And the differences don't stop there. For starters, it's a brushless cream -- you just slather it onto your face with your bare hands, not a brush. So you miss out on the most feel-good part of the whole wetshaving routine.

Second, the Cremo-Cream smells like a pina colada. Hey, I love my Taylor rose, my Trumper violet, even Taylor avocado. But pina colada? "if you like making love at midnight, in the dunes of the cape.." I can enjoy the scent of fresh cut violets and still feel like a man, but the smell of pina coladas makes me feel like a kid working at the LA Four Seasons back in the 70s whose hotel manager just told him to take off his shirt and wear nothing but shorts and a bow tie to deliver a tray of drinks up to Peter Allen's orgy in the Mae West suite.

Be that as it may, my wife isn't known as the BOTO (brains of the outfit) for nothing. So when she tells me Cremo-Cream is that good, I have to try it, so this morning I did.

It was plenty weird not using a shaving brush for the first time in years, probably. Even back in my Mach3 days, I used a brush. But the Cremo-Cream's instructions are very specific -- just your hands. So I got out of the shower, splashed more hot water on my face at the sink, and slathered on maybe a quarter-sized blob of Cremo-Cream all over my face and neck.

Not surprisingly, it didn't lather up thick and opaque like the traditional English creams. But it felt incredibly slick on my skin, much moreso than my usual creams. And you know, that pina colada scent kind of grew on me, I have to admit. Not what I want to smell like all day long, but for a few minutes while I'm catching a shave, it's not a bad thing to whiff. Kind of pleasant, actually.

But the real surprise was the shave itself. This Cremo-Cream stuff is for real. My Merkur DE just glided over my face like it never has with any other cream or soap I've tried to date. Honestly, I was eerie how slick and frictionless the Cremo-Cream shave was, even compared with the high-end stuff I normally use. If you told me this stuff had little Teflon balls floating around in it, I'd believe you. It's that slick.

The shave I got was extremely close and smooth, like what I get from a hard shaving soap. But unlike a hard soap, my skin wasn't irritated at all -- in this respect, it was more like a shave with an extra comforting cream like Taylor's rose and avocado creams, or Trumper's violet.

In fact, the Cremo-Cream gave me such a close shave, my entire face had that same kind of freshly exfoliated tingle that I've only felt in the past when I've shaved or had someone else shave me with a straight razor. I kept rubbing my cheeks afterward, marveling at the shave, just like my reaction to that incredible straight razor shave I got at the Truefitt & Hill barbershop in Vegas. And my skin felt so smooth and moisturized afterward that I probably could've skipped the post-shave Trumper skin food and left my face alone.

My wife was right -- Cremo-Cream is excellent stuff. Not only is it the only brushless shaving cream I've tried that's worth a damn, but it actually delivers a quality of shave on a par with the best traditional creams and soaps. The fact is, there are quite a few highly-regarded English creams and soaps which don't shave nearly as well as Cremo-Cream. Heresy, I know. But it's true.

Old-school wetshavers will never go for this stuff, unfortunately. A brushless cream that smells like a pina colada is just too far out there for guys deep into Ye Olde customs. Which is a shame, because this stuff is right up there with the best. I didn't think there was anything new under the sun when it came to shaving cream because the best formulas are centuries old, but Cremo-Cream is the real deal.

If you can keep your mind focused on the results and forget about not being able to use your favorite brush, and the fact that your face smells like a frothy drink your mom would order while on a cruise because she's "feeling a little crazy!", you'll be floored by this very different, incredibly lubricating shaving cream. Highly recommended.

Tonight the ReplayTV went into self-maintenance mode right in the middle of the Simpsons, so we switched over to the dish and caught the last half of one of our favorite recent movies, "Love, Actually".

When this first hit the theaters I saw the preview and went "nahhhhhh", but some rough, tough NBC crew guys who're so manly they kind of scare me to be quite honest told me it was actually very good, so I said what the hell and Netflixed it, and now we must've watched it ten times.

Actually, love has been on my mind lately as I think about online communities and how they uncannily mimic real social networks. I really love that about them. It's a wonderful thing to behold.

I love that guys who think nothing of throwing libelous, scurrilous tantrums on forums about how this shaving brush company betrayed that retailer, when what it really boils down to is that the company decided to choose a different retailer as the sole US source, one whom the tantrum thrower has had a longtime feud with, nonetheless take great offense when criticized themselves.

I really love that.

I love that guys who think nothing of tracing an anonymous poster's computer to "out" him just because he disagreed with them, and then kill the thread when others start to complain about freedom of speech, spend the rest of their time talking about fun, brotherhood, and all things gentlemanly.

I really, really love that.

I love that guys who think nothing of making fun of a certain self-proclaimed shaving guru for promoting his own "method" of shaving can be so shocked and appalled when someone makes fun of them.

Sigh. Head over heels -- that's me!

I love how beta-monkeys screech and flare their nostrils as they cower behind the spoor of the loudest, most bullying chimp -- as any anthropologist will tell you, this is a sign of a healthy community.

And what's not to love about that?

If "Love, Actually" teaches us anything, it's that yes, love really is all around us. All you have to do is open your nostrils and let it in.

Oh, and today's shave: Merkur HD razor, Vulfix #2235 brush, Taylor's rose cream. Wet hands so I dropped the tub of Taylor's on the bathroom floor, cracking open the outer plastic shell. Remembered I'd squirrelled away an empty outer shell from a spent Taylor's avocado tub, for god knows what reason. Swapped out the shells (most of the English shaving creams have a soft plastic insert that's like a bowl within a bowl, and a hard plastic outer shell that's what you see as the tub. You can crack the shell and the cream won't leak, because the insert will usually be fine). Breathing returned to normal. All was well. Still absolutely positive I'm not a shavegeek.

I sling the term "shavegeek" around a lot, and I realize that some readers, unaware of the confederacy of dunces what am the online shaving forum elite, might think that I'm making fun of anyone who takes extra care in the way he or she shaves.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I have the utmost respect for those wise and kind experts who, on the MSN Wetshavers discussion board, helped me get a grip on shaving with an old-school safety razor. These true gentlemen were a godsend to a DE newbie like me. Thank you: Gordon, Harry, and all the other good eggs who contributed so much to my understanding of this very different kind of shaving, and helped me in putting together the shaving segment on the Today Show which in turn helped so many other guys discover a better alternative to a Mach3 and a can of pressurized goo.

And I'm in stark, raving awe of the guys who hang around the straight razor forums like Straight Razor Place. Webmaster Lynn Abrams's how-to video is an underground classic, and did much to help me get my knees to stop knocking long enough that I could try it myself (still haven't quite gotten the hang of it, but thanks for the video, Lynn). These guys scrape their faces with knives every morning -- they're the He-Men of wetshaving, and I'm unfit to launder their barber towels.

Do you like to shave? You're not a shavegeek. Do you like thinking about shaving? You're not a shavegeek. Do you frequent online shaving forums looking for tips on what products to buy and how best to use them? You're not a shavegeek. Do you frequent online shaving forums and help newbies sort all of this stuff out? You're not a shavegeek. In fact, you're a great guy.

No, when I refer to shavegeeks, I'm talking instead about a certain breed of online shaving fanatic. The kind of boorish, obnoxious, reactionary, clueless, arrogant, tacky, aggressive, irresponsible, childish, churlish, cowardly, lying, petty, small-minded, bitter, paranoid, ugly, stinky, poopy, doo-doo head that seems to populate most every online discussion group involving male hobbies, of which wetshaving somehow -- incredibly, given its longtime status as the most loathed of the three sh___s you do every morning -- has become.

At the risk of getting all Foxworthy on you, here are the Shavegeek warning signs:

1. You have more than five different shaving creams, and every morning you stand there and can't decide which one to use.

2. See above, except substitute razors for shaving creams.

3. See above, except substitute shaving brushes for razors.

4. See above, except substitute blades for shaving brushes.

5. See above, except substitute aftershaves for blades.

6. See above, except substitute colognes for aftershaves.

7. See above, except substitute underpants for colognes.

8. See above, except substitute multiple personalities, all of them damaged, for underpants.

9. See above, except substitute fantasy scenarios involving a much less pear-shaped you and a woman wearing a bikini and high heels who's lying on the hood of a black Porsche 911 and holding a bottle of tequila aloft -- basically all of the elements (minus the less pear-shaped you) in the poster you bought at Spencer's Gifts at the mall and which you've thumbtacked on the wall in your bedroom -- for multiple personalities, all of them damaged.

10. See above, except substitute creeping feelings that despite the five razors and five brushes and five creams and five aftershaves and five underpants, your shaves are actually worse now than when you used to use a Mach3 for fantasy scenarios involving a much less pear-shaped you and a woman wearing a bikini and high heels who's lying on the hood of a black Porsche 911 and holding a bottle of tequila aloft -- basically all of the elements (minus the less pear-shaped you) in the poster you bought at Spencer's Gifts at the mall and which you've thumbtacked on the wall in your bedroom.

Why am I so down on shavegeeks? Because they're the kind of people who wind up ruining nearly every interest I seem to have. Instead of banding together to help one another optimize their experience, they confuse the issue so thoroughly with a rodent-like focus on every aspect of the process except for those which actually make a real difference.

It's almost like they don't really want to get to the top of the mountain, for fear that once they summit, they won't have anything to geek about. So they chase infinite rabbits down infinite holes, because that's a game you can play forever. The fear of actually figuring it out, whether it's getting a stereo to sound like music, or using a DE razor to get a shave that's both baby smooth and free of irritation, is what lies at the heart of eternal geekhood. The rest of us figure it out and move on to more important challenges.

Like, say, writing a daily blog about shaving.

When I first became interested in trying to shave with a double-edge safety razor, everyone I talked to advised me to start with a fixed-head, non-adjustable razor. Which made a lot of sense -- when you're new at this, a fixed-head razor that's pre-set for a medium level of cutting aggression keeps you out of trouble while you're learning the ropes.

So I bought a Merkur HD from leesrazors.com, and I fell in love with it. After a week or so of nicks and bleeding, everything started to fall into place and I began getting the very best shaves of my life -- closer, smoother, and more comfortable than with any other kind of razor I'd ever tried.

Of course, that wasn't enough. Even though the shaves were going great, I wanted better. Everyone on the shavegeek forums seemed to use adjustable DEs, which let you dial in the degree of cutting ferocity to perfectly match your skin, shaving style, and blade choice. So I bought a few adjustable Merkurs, and trolled eBay for some vintage Gillette adjustables, and relegated my fixed-head HD to the dresser drawer.

Big mistake.

Immediately, my shaves went downhill. I nicked the hell out of myself. My neck got all red and bloody again, and shavebumps rose around the base of my Adam's apple. Things were no better than when I used a Mach3.

My problem was, I stupidly thought that cranking up these adjustables would mean they'd cut closer, so I dialed them in at their highest, most aggressive settings, and proceeded to slash my own throat. This is a classic rookie mistake. Everyone does it. Even if you've read this before you get your first adjustable DE, you'll still screw up. Trust me. You can't escape the temptation to crank things up for that "extra" whatever. It's human nature.

Once bitten, I dialed the adjustables back to their middle settings, and started getting shaves that approached the high water mark set by my trusty fixed-head Merkur HD, which I felt guilty enough about abandoning that I fished it out of the drawer and put it back into the rotation.

Why do I bring all of this up? Because I'm at the point where, even though I've become very good at shaving with a DE, I'm beginning to think that I'm not the adjustable razor type personality. Because if I have some adjustment range, I'll use it. Every day, I'll futz with the setting, depending on yesterday's shave -- if I felt stubble too soon after the shave the day before, today I'll crank the razor open a bit more. And if yesterday's shave was too aggressive and I got some skin redness, today I'll dial it back a bit, and wind up with stubble a few hours later. I go back and forth, back and forth, without ever finding the one true setting that suits me best and sticking with it for good. Doesn't matter whether it's the Merkur Futur, Vision, or Progress, or the vintage Gillette adjustables -- I can't stop dicking with their settings, and I can't ever get reliably great shaves out of any of them day in and day out.

Which I can, with the greatest of ease, with the fixed-head HD. It's very non-adjustability is its best feature. Merkur designed this razor for one setting and one setting only -- it's perfect for my skin and technique, or maybe I've subconsciously adapted to its blade geometry and become one with the HD. Either way, as long as the cream's decent, I never get anything less than a fantastic shave with this simple, unassuming, very un-shavegeekesque safety razor.

I know, I know -- if I just held up the HD and one of the adjustables side by side and dialed in the adjustable razor so it had the exact same blade exposure as the HD, I should be able to get the same quality of shave from it as I do with the fixed-head razor. But I've tried this, repeatedly, and it doesn't work. If a razor can be adjusted, I will dick with it on a daily basis, sometimes even in the middle of a shave. It's just my nature.

This morning I decided to haul out the Merkur Progress, seen above, for a spin, seeing as how I haven't used this model in quite awhile. I love the Progress the most of all the Merkur adjustables, even though it's the cheapest. It looks the least futuristic, for starters -- with its cream-colored plastic adjustament knob at the end, the Progress looks like a century-old design, unlike the space-age Futur and Vision razors. And its smaller shave head -- same size as the HD's -- lets you get under your nose for better shaving there.

I've determined that the Progress's "3" setting, on its 1-to-5 scale, is equivalent to the blade setting of the HD. So, of course, what did I do this morning, after weeks of perfectly perfecto shaves with the HD? I set the Progress for 4. You know, for more "more".

And the shave sucked.

Naw, it didn't really suck. It was a good shave. It just wasn't as close and comfortable as the HD, that's all. I felt stubble hours later instead of at the very end of the day, and I reddened my neck a bit, which I never do with the HD.

I think one of my problems with the Progress is that it makes a much more audible cutting sound when mowing down your whiskers than the HD does. You can actually hear the Progress pinging away as it hits your hairs, which sets up a rather nasty behavioral feedback loop where I keep shaving till I stop hearing that cutting sound, which never really completely goes away, so I keep shaving over the same areas until my skin starts to get raw. When shaving with the HD, this sound is far more muted, and once you shave an area closely, you stop hearing the cutting noise, so you feel good about things and move on. This, I'm convinced, is the main reason I get such vastly better and more consistent shaves with the el-cheapo fixed-head HD than I do with the more high-end adjustables. It's not that they can't shave as well -- I just keep hearing that cutting sound, and it leads me to keep shaving over the same spot too many times.

Maybe if I listened to my iPod while I shaved I wouldn't hear the cutting sound and I'd get just as good a shave from the adustables as I do the HD. If I get to the point with this shaveblog where I'm out of material and I'm grasping at straws for something to talk about, I'll try the iPod.

The more I delve into this wetshaving thing, the more I'm convinced that there's no "best" razor, brush, or cream. It's whatever combo works best for your skin, hands, and personality. My personality doesn't do well when afforded a lot of options. I wind up tweaking till the cows come home, which they never do, so I'm screwed. Give me a basic, non-adjustable tool and let me focus on my technique, instead of endlessly dicking with the settings thinking that somehow I'll hit upon the magic config that launches the rocket. It's the same reason why, when I've got a Stratocaster, all I do is play with the settings, and when I've got a Telecaster, all I do is play guitar.

Shavegeek dogma indicates that only the best possible grade of badger hair be used for a quality shaving brush. Some real gone geeks pay upwards of $500 and more for a brush made from "high-mountain" or "Manchurian" silver tip badger hair, taken from the back of the badger's neck. For whatever reason, the Chinese who pole-axe these poor animals (they are not road kill -- whatever your politics regarding animal rights, be aware that all badger hair shaving brushes are made of bristles "harvested" in China, meaning a Chinese guy went out into the woods and killed a badger for its hair -- if it makes you feel any better, badgers are plentiful in China and elsewhere and are considered a pest, thus the relaxed legalities surrounding their pole-axing -- if it doesn't make you feel any better, the good news is you can use any shaving cream I've talked about without a brush using your bare hands to spread it on your face, although you won't get quite the same quality of lather) rank the hair in several grades, from "pure" or "fine" at the bottom of the scale to "best" or "super" at the top. Well, not quite the top -- "silvertip" is considered the ultimate badger hair used in shaving brushes, because it's the softest and has the most water holding ability.

All of the above is total bullshit, by the way. The fact is, the Chinese kill badgers, they remove their hair, and they sell the hair to companies that make shaving brushes. The Chinese have developed a grading system and the British manufacturers of shaving brushes have expanded upon it to invent terms like "pure", "fine", "best", "super", "silvertip", "high mountain", "Manchurian", you name it. Sometimes the labels are broadly accurate, but often they aren't. Some inexpensive "fine" badger brushes actually have a better grade of badger hair than some pricey "silvertip" brushes. It's all a goddamn crapshoot. The more you look into it and ask these people direct questions, the more bullshit they give you. I'll expand upon my findings in another entry -- suffice it to say, there's way more bullshit when it comes to shaving brushes than any other area of wetshaving, and maybe even life itself.

Want to really shave on the wild side and bypass all this elitist nonsense? Get a boar's hair brush. They're cheap -- I got my Omega shown above for 12 clams, or a fraction of what a decent badger brush costs -- and believe it or not, they're the preferred shaving brush among the European master barbers who give the world's best straight razor shaves. Why? Because they work well for what they're supposed to do, which is build up a thick lather with water and shaving cream, and spread it on your face for shaving. Boar's hair is also stiffer than badger, so it exfoliates your skin better and raises your whiskers more effectively, too.

What it doesn't do quite as well as badger hair is smell good. Quite frankly, boar's hair smells like somebody's ass. And the cheaper the brush, the more rectal its bouquet. Don't even try those useless $5 Burma-Shave brushes you might find on the bottom shelf of your drugstore -- I bought one on a lark awhile back and literally gagged when I raised it to my face. The Italian-made Omega pictured above had a far less cheeky aroma, and after a few shaves it pretty much went away.

Do boar's hair brushes work as well, overall, as badger brushes? No -- they don't hold nearly as much water, and they're not as luxuriously soft on your face. But boar's brushes definitely work, and they work well. For 12 bucks, they kick ass. Unfortunately, they smell a bit like it too, but you can't have everything, right?

I used my Omage brush today with Proraso semi-hard soap in the tub and a Merkur HD razor. The shave I got was just as good as any that I've gotten when using a badger brush. The experience is a bit less luxurious, but maybe that's not such a bad thing. Sometimes you have to get off your high horse and live like a real person, if only for a shave or two.

Perhaps it's fitting that opinions on Merkur's Slant Bar DE safety razor have always been, well, slightly askew. The Slant's tilted shave-head, unique among all razors, was designed to cut the whiskers on your face with a slicing motion rather than a straight-on cut, which is said to make for a closer, smoother shave. The tilt also opens up the blade exposure at one end of the edge, making the Slant the most aggressive of any fixed-head DE razor I've come across. While almost all other fixed-head razors range from so-mild-you-can-shave-drunk-in-the-dark (old Gillettes) to moderately aggressive (Merkur's fixed-head family: the HD, Classic, Long-Handled, and "1904"-style DEs), the Slant Bar is actually one of the most aggressive DEs available, moreso than even many adjustables.

The Slant is loved and loathed in equal measure. Most of the major online wetshaving vendors don't even carry it, because, in the words of one such gentleman, "This isn't a razor for a jackass." I second that emotion -- I thought the open-comb (or "rake") style DEs were too aggressive for my face, but the Slant Bar is even moreso.

Still, the Slant Bar has its charms. It shares the Merkur HD's heavy weight and thick, grabby handle, the best of any razor I own. It's wacky looking, which is always a plus in my book. It's rare. At 35 bucks or so, it's cheap. And if you can learn to shave properly with it, it might even shave a few minutes off your shave, since its shave is designed to be closer for each pass than the regular fixed-head Merkurs.

So this morning I lathered up with Proraso and gave the Slant a second chance.

I will say this for the Slant Bar -- I definitely get the closest shave with it out of any other DE razor. On the first pass, that is. If all you do is shave your face with a single, downward, with-the-grain pass, the Slant shaves so close that most guys, I bet, would be perfectly happy with this kind of shave, as it's closer and more comfortable than going with and then against the grain with modern multi-blade razors like the Mach3.

That said, the Slant is far less of a good thing on the upstroke as it is on the down. The same over-aggressive blade exposure that makes for such a close with-the-grain pass is just too much for my skin when shaving against-the-grain. I reeeealy lightened up on the pressure for the upward pass, but I still felt more fire than I know my skin can take on a daily basis.

With Merkur's HD, or any adjustable DE used at a sensible setting, I can shave against-the-grain for two or more passes without irritation. With the Slant, even once is too much. In this sense, the Slant reminds me of a straight razor -- the with-the-grain shave is almost close enough to stop right there, but I can't for the life of me shave against-the-grain without scoring some burn. It's hours later and I still feel it under my chin, which has always been my bellwether for shaving irritation.

And here's the clincher, for me at least -- no matter how much closer the Slant Bar shaved me on the initial pass, at the end of the entire shave (one down, one up, and one "cleanup" pass targeting the stubborn billy goat's gruff on my neck and underchin), I didn't get any better of a shave than I routinely do with the kinder, gentler HD. The HD may not cut quite as close as the Slant does, but it cuts pretty damn close, and does it in such a way that doesn't irritate my skin at all, so I can shave in any direction I need to, as many times as I need to, and wind up with a baby's butt shave every time without a hint of irritation. That's what I'm after, and that's why I still strongly prefer the HD over the Slant.

If you want a DE razor that can give you a much better shave with but a single downward pass than anything else short of a straight razor, the Slant's your best bet. You won't get baby's butt smooth, but your face will feel and look a lot better than if you used something like a Mach3.

Fair warning: if you are new to DE shaving, you really shouldn't mess with the Slant Bar. It is by far the least forgiving safety razor I've tried, and at this point I've pretty much tried them all. I don't care how cool or tough or "kick-ass" you are -- the Slant Bar, in the hands of a newbie, equals buckets of blood.