.

I'm going to Japan for a week to cover a tech show and see the new gadgets that haven't made it over here yet.

I'm not sure if my Blackberry will work over there so I may have to return to the blog when I get back. I could go duck into an Internet cafe in Tokyo to post, but then I'd have to kill myself out of abject shame.

I don't know what kind of cool shaving gear is to be had over there, but I do know that Schick sold the last Injector in Japan -- that all-metal number that goes for a king's ransom on eBay every eighteenth blue moon. Maybe the drugstores will still have some for sale and I'll come back with a nest egg of sorts so I can quit ShaveBlog and escape this millstone around my neck, and return to my first love, sand sculpture.

Okay, so today's shave. Schvitz, Featherjector, Vulfix brush, Taylor Avocado cream, Trumper Lime Skin Food. Room for improvement: nil. Plus afterward had a daddy-daughter day of mall, pizza, chocolate, and Pez. So, the perfect day.

I'll try to post from the land of the Rising Sun and Discontinued Injector. If I can't, I'll be back in a week. Sayonara, shavegeeks.

I've been spending a lot of time in the steam room lately. I go work out most lunch hours at the Y, and I've started winding things up with a nice ten minutes or so in the steam room before I shower. Ours doesn't look like this, though. If you took the photo above and replaced those two young women with a bunch of saggy, wrinkly old men (present company included), you'd have it just about right. Add just a soupcon of urine smell, and you've got it nailed (according to a younger guy I talked to about this last week during a schvitz, some of the older members sometimes lose control in there -- I'm not saying I'm happy about it, but at least it's not a situation where guys are just being lazy) (Plus there's this one guy who always comes in and does naked crunches in there -- like I need to see that).

But who cares about a little pee-pee in the air when you're drenched with sweat and your lungs are about to burst from the hot air? Where has steam been all my life, I ask you?! No wonder old guys sit in these steam rooms all day with towels across their laps. Even the ten minutes a day I catch a steam is heaven.

And of course the steam feeds the shave. Feeds it like a eunuch feeding Dom DeLuise peeled grapes. You haven't really shaved till you've shaved after a steam. There's shaves, and then there's shaves after you've steamed your puss red. I used to think the end-all be-all of shaving was a post-exercise shave, where the sweat detoxes and marinates your skin. But steam is the stuff.

I've been catching a steam, then showering, and then shaving, but today I shaved right after the steam, and showered afterward. A hot shower is still the best at-home shave prep -- the hot water softens your beard and cleans the oils and dead skin off your face for a closer, more comfortable shave. But I figured a hot shower doesn't really bring anything to the table as pre-shave that a tenner in the steam room doesn't give you all by itself.

Listen -- listen, gentle reader -- to my words: any chance you ever get to spend some time in a steam room right before you shave, jump on it. You'll get the best shave of your life.

Today I broke out the usual rig -- Schick Injector razor with Feather Pro Super blade, Vulfix #2234 super badger brush, and Taylor's Avocado shaving cream -- and went to town immediately after exiting the steam room. The sweat was pouring down my face and I was short of breath, but I splashed hot water on my puss and went to town.

The guy at the next sink over was already in mid-shave, with a blue plastic disposable (what is with these Y guys and cheap disposable razors? How much can you possibly hate yourself?) and some Gillette Foamy. I caught a smirk when I took the brush out and soaked it under running hot water, then a stare when I lathered up with the Taylor cream, then a gawk when I unsnapped the leather travel case I got from Lee's Razors and took out my Featherjector.

Some days the planets just line up and my shave is bathed in the pure light of the infinite cosmos. Today was one of those days. I didn't do or use anything different -- I just steamed up first. But that was enough. My god, what a difference. It's eleven hours later and my face still feels smooth.

I've asked around about why steam makes such a difference. Some say your face puffs up a bit and pushes the whiskers out so you cut more off of them, and then afterward when your face cools off, the base of the hair retracts into your skin so your face looks and feels extra glassy. Whatever the reason, steam works wonders.

So let's see, where does that leave me? In order to avoid feelings of inadequacy when it comes to shaving, I must work up a sweat and take a schvitz?

Really glad I'm not a shavegeek.

Was there ever a better show than "Get Smart"? Could any network sitcom today feature a Jewish robot named Hymie? Is there anything on the Web that's more pathetic than a shavegeek forum? (Yes -- this.)

Don Adams always had a great shave on "Get Smart". Most of the other actors had noticeable five o'clock shadows, but Maxwell Smart always looked like he just shaved right before the take. I don't think it was makeup, either. The man just knew how to shave. Even in his last years, he kept up a pencil thin mustache, a grooming choice with much higher maintenance than most older men can keep on top of.

Did Don Adams shave with an Injector? It's certainly possible. These razors had been around for thirty years before the show first aired in 1965. In fact, the novelty "Easy Rider" Injector, with its male symbol engraved on the razor's head, would've been a perfect match for the swinging star of the hippest show on TV, not to mention the voice of Tennessee Tuxedo, which predated "Get Smart" by two years.

The Injector is the ideal razor for Maxwell Smart. First and foremost, it's a cool gadget -- no other razor has a metal clip of blades you jack into the razor like an old Army rifle. And the shave itself is a cool amalgam of old and new. It's as quick and easy as any modern razor, but it cuts as close or closer than any of the old-school safety razors and cut throats. Perfect for the man of action who needs to look his best in a hurry while time's running out to rescue 99 from the clutches of KAOS.

I returned to the Feather Pro Super blades today after revisiting the stock Schick Injector blades. While I'm able to get a perfectly fine shave with the Schicks, I get a better shave in half the time with the Feathers. The first pass is the biggest sign that something seriously different is going on with the Featherjector -- with just a downward pass I get a closer shave than I ever got with the Mach3 going up, down, and sideways. Only a straight razor can give you this close of a shave with just that one downward pass.

Today I went back to my Vulfix #377, a big super-grade badger brush that I've decided is the best shaving brush I've ever used. I've owned Simpsons and silvertips, but nothing feels as good against my face or builds more/better lather than my own Agent 99, the $99 Vulfix #377.

For cream I used Trumper's Violet, in honor of the Purple Knights motorcycle gang in the show's second season, where the Purple Knights kidnap a foreign dignitaryand talk in such a fake British accent they may as well be cubicle wage slaves pretending to be the Scarlet Pimpernel on a shavegeek forum.

As always with the Featherjector, I got a shave as close a straight razor's in no time flat. Would you believe...five minutes tops? Would you believe ten? No, it was five. And that was for three passes. I keep trying different blades, creams, and whatnot, but this combo of the Vulfix #377, Trumper's Violet, and the Featherjector keeps me as clean-shaven as Agent 86 himself.

R.I.P. Don Adams -- we'll miss you.

It's been a bladey couple of days. Me and my shavegeek pals have been trying different blades in our various razors. Why, I don't know, exactly. We're all perfectly happy with our shave rigs. It's like Sir Edmund Hillary and his party playing strip poker on top of Everest. Why? Is it boredom? Creeping dementia? Healthy curiousity?

Dementia, definitely.

I didn't used to be so into blades as a crucial variable in the wetshaving. I got lucky and hit paydirt right off the bat. The first safety razor blades I ever used were the excellent Merkur Platinums from Germany, which Lee at Lee's Razors sold me along with my first DE razor, also by Merkur.

I was lucky to have started out with such excellent blades -- the much more commonly found Gillette DE blades sold in many drugstores here in the US are really harsh and raggedy, and I'm sure I would've ditched the DE halfway into my first shave if I'd started out with Gillettes instead of Merkurs.

After I got up to speed with the DE, I tried some of the Feather Platinum DE blades, the "It" Blade of the shavegeek forums. The rap on the Feathers is they're the sharpest DE blades ever, and I can vouch for that myself. Unfortunately, I can also vouch for the fact that they're not for the squeamish, or the sensitive-skinned -- they beat my face up something terrible. So I went back to the Merkur blades, and that's all I've fed my DE since.

Nowadays I shave with an old Schick/Eversharp Injector, a 1940's "bakelite" model that shaves me as close as a straight razor every time I pick it up. I started out with fresh Schick Injector blades, which, incredibly, you can still buy at Amazon.com and Drugstore.com, if your local pharmacy doesn't happen to stock them. The Schick Injector blades are thicker than DE blades and seem even sharper, and they shave shockingly well for such inexpensive, easily sourced blades. From my very first shave with the Schicks, I got a closer and more comfortable shave than anything I'd been able to muster from my DE.

Then my pal Andy caused a right kerfuffle by hipping me to the almighty Featherjector -- specifically, a 1940s bakelite Injector (gotta be an old shorty -- the more modern long-handle Injectors don't work nearly as well for this trick) loaded with a clipped-down Feather disposable straight razor blade, specifically this one. The first shave I caught off this thing knocked me for a loop, and I've been addicted ever since.

But recently Andy sent me some new Swedish Gillette DE blades to try. Said they're excellent, nothing like the ratty ones sold in the US. Not really being a DE man no more, I plucked one of the five Swedes out and stuck it in my Merkur HD, then sent the remaining 4 to our other pal Gordon to try.

Now, Gordon's the gentleman who set me right when I washed up on Wetshavers' doorstep lo these many moons ago trying to get a better shave than a Mach3 and some face-numbing poultice. He offered plentiful advice on razors, blades, creams, brushes, and god knows what else that goes into the beautiful thing we call wetshaving, and saved me a ton of ramp-up time, not to mention hipped me to top-shelf staples like the Vulfix badger brushes and Taylor shaving creams which I happily use every day and recommended to eight million people around the world on the Today Show earlier this year.

As it happens, Gordon loves the Swedes. Said they were some of the best DE blades he's ever shaved with in the forty years he's been waving a razor. And since Gordon's never wrong, and neither is Andy, well, there you have it. Swedish Bikini Team and Yngwie Malmsteen, move over -- Sweden's got a new star, 'cept you can't buy them in the US, of course. You can buy the Swedish Gillettes on a few UK web sites like Auravita.com, but you're better off getting a friend who lives over there to send you a stash.

Meanwhile, I've been revisiting the Schick blades in my Injector. I was curious as to whether my technique had ramped up at all with the Feather blades I've been feeding this razor, and I wanted to see what a stock Schick would shave like now that I've become as one with the Injector.

So when my last Feather Pro Super went belly-up, I replaced it with a "lowly" Schick, and today after my workout at the Y, I got the best shave yet from one of these stinkin' el-cheapo blades (actually, the high-end Feathers are cheaper per blade -- 55 cents each, versus 60 cents for the Schicks, but once you factor in the ER visit when you slice your finger open like a gutted flounder while trying to clip the Feathers down to fit your razor, all bets are off)!

So what if it took more passes than I need to make with the Feathers? The Schick blades are so smooth and forgiving and yet unfailingly sharp that I really did get just as good a shave today as I normally do with the Featherjector. I just had to work on it a bit more. Bear down a bit harder with the blade. Do a bit more touch-up under my chin than normal.

But what's a few more minutes if I can get the same ungodly close shave with these cheap Schick blades as I can with the Feathers? The naked guy standing at the next sink over and shaving with a rusty disposable and no cream, just water, may not have appreciated the feat I'd just pulled off, but that was his loss, not mine.

Mine was waiting for me outside, in the parking lot -- a ticket under my wiper, for taking too long. So today's shave cost me 23 clams. Considering I paid $65 for a professional straight razor shave at Truefitt's that wasn't any closer, that's not bad.

Behold the larval, protoplasmic blob that collected on the underside of my razor by the end of my at-bat with Ultra-Shave shaving cream. Isn't he magnificent? Speak, Earl, speak!

Yesterday I described what Ultra Shave is -- the first high-end shaving cream designed for dryshaving, i.e. you don't need water to shave with it. You just spread it on your dry face and neck, wait 30 seconds for it to soften your beard and soak into your skin, and then you begin shaving. Oh, and you're not supposed to rinse your razor till you're finished shaving, either. You just keep swiping till you're done.

As soon as I made my first pass across my cheek, I had a strong feeling of deja vu -- my skin was mostly numb, and I could barely feel the razor as it glided over my skin. All I felt was a slight, pleasant tingle, even when I was shaving against-grain.

The sensation was very similar to how my shaves used to feel back when I was using Lab Series Maximum Comfort shaving cream, a brushless product that's chock full of the topical numbing agent Benzocaine, which deadens your skin so it doesn't feel any razor burn no matter how aggressively you shave or how crappy your razor may be. Oh, the razor burn is there -- you just can't feel it, thanks to the Benzocaine.

I asked the folks at Modern Gent who sent me the Ultra Shave whether it has any numbing agents in it, and they said it didn't. They listed Ultra Shave's ingredients as: Purified Water, Glycerine (vegetable, not animal, based), Stearic Acid, Grapeseed Oil, Grapeseed essences and extracts, and Geogard 221 (a preservative). No numbing agents I can see, but my face felt remarkably like it used to when I numbed it with the Lab Series cream.

Ultra Shave also happens to be Kosher, Halal, vegetarian and vegan, and its formula is described as being "respectful of all religions and lifestyle choices", which is a welcome rebuke to such avowedly anti-Semitic shaving creams as Castle Forbes Lavender and Salter's Mint, as well as homophobic creams like Coates Lime and Musgo Real. Will their wanton, hollow demagoguery never cease?

The shave itself was odd but surprisingly good. Odd because I kept reflexively going to wash my razor in the sinkwater after every swipe, and I had to keep reminding myself not to. Odd too because I couldn't really feel the blade on my skin, despite the fact that I was shaving with my Featherjector -- a vintage WWII-era Schick Injector loaded with a modified Feather Pro Super disposable straight razor blade --- which is a pretty aggressive razor. Surprisingly good because let's face it -- it's a lotion on dry skin, and they tell you not to rinse your razor the entire time. But damned if this stuff didn't lube things up nicely and deliver an excellent shave without a hint of razor drag and no irritation whatsoever, though I can't say for sure whether there really was any irritation, since my face felt comfortably numb the whole time.

Ultra Shave surpassed my expectations, which I admit couldn't have been lower. A dryshave? C'mon! Every shavegeek worth his saltpeter knows the whole point of a great shave is to keep your face as wet as possible the whole time, so the blade rides on a bed of water and never actually comes in contact with your skin. The lather is there to hold the water on your skin. Ultra Shave turns this whole scenario upside down, but I'm here to tell you that this stuff does what it claims. You get a damned good shave with it.

What you don't get is the pleasure of a wetshave. By benching the badger, 86ing the warm water, and swapping your favorite decadent-smelling shaving cream for this scent-free, latherless, thin, translucent lotion, you're as far away from the usual posh, relaxing, sensuous shavegeek ritual as you can get. The shave's good, but the sex is nowhere to be found. If you're purely pragmatic about shaving, you'll love this stuff. But if you dig the feel of the brush against your face, and the wake-me-up splashes of water on your skin, and the intoxicating scents of your favorite shaving creams, I don't think you're going to enjoy a dryshave. It's a very, very different trip.

I see Ultra Shave as a huge upgrade for someone who's been using one of the Edge or Gillette shaving gels, or worse, foam in a can. To someone who normally shaves with these kinds of products, Ultra Shave will be a revelation and a tremendous improvement, and its lack of scent won't be such a big deal when compared to modern gels and foams. But for someone like me who likes his brush, likes the feel of warm water on his face, and likes his rose and voilet and lavender scented creams, Ultra Shave is a tougher sell. The shave's good, but fun it's not.

That said, I'm not one of those guys who believes that progress in men's shaving stopped a long time ago, and that a Vulfix badger brush, a bit of English shaving cream, and a safety or straight razor is the best that will ever be. Even centuries-old shaving cream was once considered a "newfangled idea" with suspect merit when compared to the bars of hard soap men used to lather with. At some point, someone will come along with a better idea, and the whole she-bang will lurch forward.

That's why products like Ultra Shave are interesting to me. Guys are out there trying to come up with the shaving prep that really does boldly go where no cream has gone before, and it's important to keep an open mind about them. So while I don't personally plan on dumping all my great smelling shaving creams and my badger brushes to use this scent-free, brushless cream, and while I wonder why it numbed my skin when there aren't any obvious numbing agents listed in the ingredients, Ultra Shave does deliver a good shave, and does so in a manner that couldn't be more different from that of the usual shavegeek wetshave.

Today I dryshaved. Let me back up and explain.

The whole point of being a shavegeek is to worship the wetshave -- getting and keeping your face as wet as possible for the entire shave, so the blade rides above your skin and cuts only the whiskers above the skin's surface. This is the whole idea behind lathering with a traditional shaving cream or shaving soap -- the lather keeps a layer of water against your skin, so the razor glides over the surface and doesn't scrape your face up the way blades do with modern gels and foams.

But what if we're all wrong, and it's really the dryshave which works best? That's the idea behind a new shaving cream called Ultra Shave. It's the first shaving prep, in my experience, that recommends you use it on a totally dry face for the best shave.

The other day I got an email from "Modern Gent" at moderngent.com asking me if I was interested in trying Ultra Shave.

Interested in the product? Yes. Interested in trying it? Well...

See, I love the wetshave. It feels good, it works great, and now I finally understand how wrong I was all these years to lean on the dryshave, because it just beats up your face. Even if you can deal with the pain and the scraping, your face winds up looking like leather before long. I see these old guys at the Y dryshaving at the sink in the locker room and I feel like grabbing them by the shoulders and yelling, "Why do you do this to yourself, man?! You could be looking like a young Audrey Hepburn right now, instead of one of those talking trees that throw the apples at Dorothy in 'The Wizard of Oz'!!"

In fact, I am going to grab an old naked man at the Y tomorrow and shout this very thing at him. What's the downside? Only good can come of it, I'm convinced.

Ultra Shave goes in the opposite direction of wetshaving. It's actually more of a lotion than a shaving cream, and the maker is very clear in that you should wash your face, dry it off completely, and then spread some Ultra Shave onto your face and neck, letting it sit for 30 seconds. Then you shave.

And here's the really wacky part -- they tell you not to rinse your razor till you're done with the shave. That's right -- you know that involuntary dunk in the sinkwater you do after each and every swipe of razor across freshly-shorn puss? With Ultra Shave, you don't rinse your blade at all -- you just keep shaving and shaving until you're finished, and then, and only then, are you supposed to clean the whiskers and cream and dead (well, it's dead now) skin off your razor before putting it away.

Why does Ultra Shave want you to do this? In their words:

"Your razor blade will collect the hair as you shave, thanks to the inclusion of stearic acid in the cream. Stearic acid is not an acid at all - it's actually a very high grade soap formulation made from alcohol! Stearic acid enhances the lubricity of Ultra Shave. It forms a thin barrier that makes it almost impossible for the blade to cut you. Stearic acid stays on the surface of your skin and also on the surface of the hair, so that when you cut the hairs off they are held together by this thin film and gathers them on your blade."

So even though I've been getting incredible wetshaves lately with D. R. Harris's Lavender shaving cream, I figured I'd give Ultra Shave a try. While I do think that old-school wetshaving is clearly a better grooming method than the modern paradigm of a triple-bladed vibrator and blue goo in a can, I'm always open to the possibility that someone will come along with a way to shave that's even better.

I shaved with Ultra Shave this morning. I'm going to shave with it tomorrow morning too, and then I'm going to talk about how it went. Because this stuff is very different from anything I've ever used before, and I also emailed "Modern Gent" with some questions I've got about this stuff, because in some ways it's deja vu all over again.

Part II tomorrow.

I shaved again with the D. R. Harris Lavendar shaving cream today, which makes it four shaves in a row I've been using this exquisite stuff, and I'm left with just one question:

Why no Harris?

Of the four most popular online wetshaving vendors for shavegeeks -- Classic Shaving, Lee's Razors, Em's Place, and QED -- none of them sells D. R. Harris.

My local fancy-pants toiletries shop sells all kinds of high-end wetshaving stuff -- Trumper's creams, soaps, Skin Food, and colognes, Coates's creams, the Art of Shaving's creams, Kent, Simpson, and Vulfix brushes, Merkur razors and blades, and even those Marseilles cubes that the Method Shaving geeks swear by. But no Harris.

I don't understand it. I can't throw a rock in this country without hitting a store that sells The Art Of Shaving products. Trumper's all over the place. Trufitt & Hill is opening up new shops in NYC and elsewhere, and their products are sold in malls across the country. Even Taylor, the biggest bang for the buck in traditional English shaving cream, can be found in shops in many cities. Why no Harris?

This D. R. Harris Lavender shaving cream I've been shaving with is terrific stuff -- it's easily the best lavender-scented shaving product I've come across. The packaging, with its metal tube and hardy toothpaste-style cap (not the E-Z-Break caps found, for example, on Coates' plastic tubes) and elegant graphics, is the best I've seen on any wetshaving brand yet. The whole thing exudes quality and refinement, and it's no more expensive than Trumper.

So why can't I buy this stuff anywhere locally? And why, if I buy it online, do nine out of ten vendors exist only in the UK and charge an arm and a leg for shipping to the States?

Is Harris a smaller company than Trumper/Truefitt/Taylor, so it can't spread itself too thin? There must be some reason why this absolutely top-shelf English wetshaving company's products are so hard to come by in this country, when the other classic British brands are everywhere.

Is it the curse of Franco Harris? Did the Steeler running back run out of bounds to avoid a hit once too many times for this country's appetite for cowardice? Did Richard Harris's singing career anger the gods? Or was it Katherine Harris?

I blame Katherine Harris.

When you hang with the shavegeeks, you hear a lot of jibber-jabber about the "three T's", but they're not talking about those eye-talian yodelers with the tuxes and white scarves. No, the "three T's" of wetshaving are Trumper, Taylor, and Truefitt & Hill. These legendary English firms have been supplying gentlemen with high-quality shaving goods for a couple of centuries now, and their shaving creams, aftershaves, and other assorted poultices are the most popular among those with a bent for the best.

But there are other, smaller firms that also make up the British shaveocracy, and D. R. Harris is one which seems to pop up regularly as a brand highly favored by older, more experienced wetshavers who've been there, done that, and know enough to know what they like. And what they like most is D. R. Harris.

Harris has been around since 1790, and to look at their current goods, you'd think they hadn't changed the labels since that first batch hot off Sy Gutenberg's press. Okay, so they do make a "Crystal Eye Gel" these days, but that's their only sop to modern tastes. Their traditional hard shaving soaps, soft shaving creams, and especially their uniquely soothing Aftershave Milk are as old-school as can be had, and while Harris may be harder to find than the three T's, it's well worth hunting down.

Did I say hard? It's damn near impossible to find D. R. Harris locally, and online isn't a walk in the park either. Google 'em and you'll find a mere handful of vendors, with prices high enough to make you pause and wonder whether you'd be better off simply buying a tub of Trumper's after all, since they're the same price and, well, you know, Trumper's money in the bank. You can always order it right at D. R. Harris's web site, but you'll pay a whopping $25 for shipping! Knox Cigar seems to have the best prices for Harris online, but it's still not cheap. You have to appreciate how good and different D. R. Harris is to make the extra effort to find it, and to lay out the extra shekels to buy it.

Lucky for me, I didn't have to shell out bupkis -- a friend of mine sent me a tube of Harris's Lavender shaving cream over the weekend, and I've been shaving with it ever since. I'd already become a convert to Harris's Aftershave Milk, my second-favorite post-shave poultice after Trumper's Skin Food, and a better choice for the dry skin winter months, so I was eager to try the company's signature product.

Harris's Lavender cream is a purple preparation -- darker and more deeply purple than Trumper's Violet cream -- and it has the finest smell of any lavender shaving product I've sniffed to date. This is the real deal -- lavender essential oil and plenty of it. The Art Of Shaving's Lavender cream also uses real essential oil, but I've got a tub of this and I don't find it lathers or shaves quite as well as the Harris does. The AOS is fine stuff and smells wonderfully pure, but the Harris smells like it's juiced with better quality lavender essential oil and more of it, and its lather is thicker, richer, and more densely protective.

I've been shaving with the Harris at home and at the Y, in both cases with a Vulfix badger brush and my trusty Featherjector razor, which is a Schick Injector loaded with a clipped-down Feather Pro Super disposable straight razor blade. I don't really know what else I can say about this stuff that would add anything substantive -- it's just a damned fine shaving cream, as good as any I've used, and it's now on my short list of the very finest creams available. While clueless 20-something metrosexuals shave with Zyrh, Kiehl's, Acca Kappa, and other brands that sound like noises robots make when they mate, I finally get why the wisened orangutans of the wetshaving monkey colony swear by D. R. Harris.

I'm hugely fond of Taylor's Lavender shaving cream (which, truth be told, costs around half what the Harris does), but it doesn't really smell like pure lavender essential oil -- like Taylor's other ostensibly one-note creams, there's some other stuff mixed in there. Not so the Harris. This is lavender, hear it roar. And it's got all the good skin-soothing qualities lavender brings to the table as well -- the Harris has all but chilled out my aggrieved skin after the Tabac debacle (Tabacle?) of last week, when this cologne-based shaving soap left my face feeling a bit raw.

Is D. R. Harris worth the price of Trumper, the shavegeeks' gold standard? Depends on what you're looking for. If you want Trumper quality but in a lavender scent, the Harris is what you should buy, because Trumper doesn't make a lavender cream. The Harris is easily the equal of Trumper in terms of quality, and the packaging is even a bit nicer and more vintagey to look at as well. As I said, Taylor's Lavender shaves just as well for a little more than half the price, but the Harris has the more purely and intensely lavender scent of the two, and its packaging is classier, for those who leave their goods out on the bathroom counter for guests to gawk at.

As cheap as I am, I'll buy some more of this stuff when the tube runs out. It's right up there with the best shaving creams I've tried, and as far as lavender creams go, it is the best. Like Babbo's short ribs, it's expensive, and worth it.

That's what my face feels like today. Raw. I shaved with the Tabac shave stick again for the second day in a row, and my skin hasn't felt this sensitive in quite a while.

I think it has to do with the cologne in this Tabac shaving soap. Clearly, Tabac is not shy about how much cologne they pour into this soap -- it's far and away the strongest smelling hard shaving soap I've come across. Problem is, my skin is really sensitive to cologne-based shaving products. So while the shave I got yesterday with Tabac went swimmingly, today my face felt raw.

Since I started shaving with the Featherjector razor -- a vintage Schick Injector loaded with a modified Feather Pro Super disposable straight razor blade instead of a regular Schick or Personna blade -- I've noticed that I need to be much more careful about what cream or soap I shave with than I ever had to be when I was shaving with a DE, or even the Gillette Sensor and Mach3 before that. The Featherjector cuts so close, and does it so effortlessly, that you really need to lay down a thick, cushiony layer between the blade and your puss if you want to get a super-close shave without issues.

What's weird is that while the Tabac is the only hard shaving soap that let me shave over the mole on my upper lip without nicking it, I can't use this soap two days in a row without feeling raw. The equally excellent Classic Shaving soap, on the other hand, did let me me nick my mole, but it was so gentle and comfortable on my skin that I could and did shave with this soap for days on end without a hint of irritation.

If Tabac would do an unscented version of its shaving soap, it would be a world-beater. But then it wouldn't be Tabac. It would just be an unscented lump of processed animal fat. Hey, sign me up. That I could use. The Tabac, unfortunately, I can't, at least not two days in a row. My skin won't stand for it. I'll pull it out and shave with it once in awhile, because it really is unique and excellent stuff, but my skin and the Featherjector demand I go back to the creams. Which is good timing, because I just scored some D R Harris Lavender cream, which I've been dying to try. Seeing as how some shavesperts won't shave with anything else, I'm eager to try this high-end English cream tomorrow.

Back when I was reviewing hifi for a living, I used to hate it when other writers would devote a whole column to some obscure piece of gear that was unobtainable for whatever reason -- the gear was heinously expensive, the designer hand-soldered only one per month, the "company" was really the designer's parents' basement, etc. I mean, what's the point of getting people ginned up about something if they can't go out and buy it, or at least check it out?

So please forgive me for talking about Tabac's incredible shaving soap from Germany. Because you can't get it. Well, you can, but you're going to have to get down on your hands and knees and truffle-pig this sucker if you want to score some -- I know of no stores in this country that sell it, and I've only found one US vendor online that sells this stuff, smallflower.com, but I've never ordered from them so I can't vouch.

Tabac comes in two versions -- a small glass jar with a cake of the Tabac soap in the bottom for lathering with a shaving brush, and the handy dandy push-up shaving stick you rub all over your wet face like a roll-on deodorant and then swirl your shaving brush around to create the lather. A friend from England sent me a Tabac shaving stick a few days ago, and I finally got around to shaving with it this morning.

Given its name and country of origin, I expected Tabac to smell like the streak of smoke a German cigarette makes as it falls to the ground before being snuffed out with the toe of a black leather jack boot. But it doesn't smell tobaccoey at all. Rather, it smells like a very strong, very bold, very soapy cologne, like something a guy who kisses his muscles in the mirror would wear. It's not really my thing, but it's certainly pleasant enough to sniff temporarily as a shaving soap that washes off after you're done at the sink.

But the scent isn't what Tabac's about. The shave's the thing, and the shave I got with this Tabac shave stick today was tremendous. I did as I was told, and rubbed the stick all over my face and neck after splashing myself with hot water, and then I lathered the soap into a nice, thick lather with my Vulfix #2234 shaving brush. Unlike the glycerin-based shaving soaps like QED's and Col. Conk's, a tallow-based soap like Tabac can lather up as thick and rich as a good traditional shaving cream like Trumper and Taylor. I was pleasantly surprised at how much more like a good cream's leather this Tabac was like than most other hard soaps I've tried.

Shaving with a Featherjector -- a 1940's Type E3 Injector loaded with a modified Feather Pro Super disposable straight razor blade -- the Tabac cut extremely close without any irritation. The only other hard shaving soap I've tried that could shave this close without razor burn was Classic Shaving's soap.

The kicker was the mole on my upper lip -- for the first time ever, I shaved with a hard soap and didn't nick my mole! Good creams like Taylor's Avocado and Trumper's Violet never let any razor nick my mole, but almost every hard shaving soap I've ever shaved with has. Not Tabac. I even shaved again in the evening with it, and still didn't nick my mole. This is great stuff!

But you can't buy it. Fine, go Google it. See what I mean? Amazon carries almost every product Tabac makes except the shaving soaps! Nobody sells this stuff outside of Germany, it seems. You can order it from the Shavemac site over there and pay a ton for shipping, or you can try your luck with smallflower, but I can't vouch for either site. I do know that a lot of shavegeeks who ordered brushes from Shavemac got stuck withy hefty FedEx surcharges on top of the already bloated S/H charges, so smallflower looks like the best way to go.

Someone really ought to bring this stuff to the US market. Along with the Classic Shaving soap, it's the best shaving soap I've tried yet.

Now that Gillette has announced the launch of its new 5-blade Fusion razor, the death march begins for the twin-blade Sensor. Starting early next year, five blades officially becomes "the best a man can get", the three-blade Mach3 gets bumped down to "so 1998", and the Sensor Excel, the best multi-blade razor anybody's ever produced, gets whacked.

Gillette has a history of killing off the low razor on its totem pole when the company comes out with something new. When the Mach3 was launched, Gillette bumped the then-flagship Sensor Excel down to triple-A and ended production of the single-blade DE razor, the very product that put the company on the map over a century ago and cemented Gillette's dominance of the worldwide wetshaving industry ever since.

Now that five is the new three, two becomes the new one. Which is a drag, really, because I love the Sensor Excel. Of all the multi-blade razors I've tried over the decades I've been shaving, I like the Sensor Excel best.

For starters, it shaves circles around the Mach3. I remember reading Malcolm Gladwell's glowing article on the Mach3 in the New Yorker before the official launch and nearly wetting my pants waiting for the damned thing to finally hit the shelves so I could get my sweaty meat-hooks on it.

Then I got one, and the shave was, well, anti-climactic. I mean, it felt different, sure, but the shave itself wasn't any better than what I'd been getting for years with the Sensor. And the Mach3's more aggressive blade array left the sensitive areas on my neck red and sore all day long. Plus the fact that the new blades cost so much more than the Sensor's, even though they only seemed to last about half as long.

This was awhile before I became aware of old-school wetshaving, so I was still trapped in the mentality most guys have, which is, "Whatever Gillette comes out with has got to be the best, because it's Gillette." But I kept going back to the Sensor Excel and getting closer and more comfortable shaves. Then I'd think nahhh, can't be -- I just have to adjust to three blades. So I'd go back to the Mach3, suffer for a few weeks, and then go right back to the Sensor. Finally, I gave up on the Mach3 completely and went back to the Sensor for all my shaves, because it was better cheaper, and the blades were available everywhere.

These days I shave with vintage single-blade razors -- Schick Injectors, along with the occasional DE shave with an old Gillette or a new Merkur -- and I get better shaves than I did with the Sensor Excel. But I'm still sad to see it die off. After the DE, the Sensor is the best razor Gillette ever came out with, and no matter how many blades they're able to cram into a shaving cartridge down the road, I don't see them ever besting it.

Most of all, I'll miss the Sensor because Beloved Wife still shaves her gams with one, and it does a fine, fine job. What are we going to do when Gillette sends its goons onto the factory floor with pick-axes to bash in the Sensor blade assembly machinery? Beloved Wife won't shave with the Mach3's femmelganger, the "Venus" -- it nicks her stems something fierce -- so I'm guessing the 5-blade Lady Fusion (the Fuscia?) won't fly either. Maybe she'll finally give that Lady Injector a serious go.

Can't wait for the 7-blade Gillette to kill off the Mach3. Will I still be sentient when that blessed event happens? 50-50.

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

A razor with five blades.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I shaved with the PAL Injecto-Matic today:



This oddly Sovietesque Injector-compatible razor from the American Safety Razor Company, parent company of Personna blades, Burma Shave brushes (though not the "real" Burma Shave of the stalwart billboards which still dot stretches of Midwest highways and byways) and too many drugstore house brand DE blades to count, came to me in a lot of razors I recently won on eBay just to get close to the mythical all-metal D-type Schick Injector, the very first Injector ever made.

This Injecto-Matic looks like a 1950's Russian version of a Schick Injector -- all the parts are there, but it's clunkier and more utilitarian looking. The gold-plated shave head's safety bar takes a steep nose-dive where the Schicks exhibit a more gradual curve, but overall the PAL looks like a pretty close Rich Little of the classic Schick blade geometry.

I fed the PAL a standard Schick Injector blade, like I do all new Injectors I shave with for the first time. These vintage razors vary all over the map, and some'll leave you a bloody pulp in the corner if you're foolhardy enough to give it a crazy-sharp blade like a cut-down Feather. Better to start off with a forgiving Schick blade, just to get the lay of the land.

I put off my morning shave till after my workout at the Y, so I lathered in the usual locker room manner -- Taylor's Avocado shaving cream and a Vulfix #2234 brush. Today I got a full-on gawk from a guy shaving a few sinks down with a blue plastic Good News disposable and just some water on his puss. He stared at my brush and Injecto-Matic like I was shaving my legs in the sink, as he proceeded to scrape that plastic piece o' crap across his wincing face.

I wish I could say that the PAL shaved as well as a "real" Injector, but it didn't. Oh, it shaved me okay, but I'm so spoiled by the Schicks, especially when loaded with the modified Feather blades, that a fair-to-middlin' shave just doesn't do it for me anymore. The Injecto-Matic shaves like an Injector that was de-rated for nursing home use, so you can look somewhat presentable when you line up for your little paper cup full of pills. This is not a razor for shavegeeks looking to peel back the epidermis.

Tomorrow I'm going back to the Featherjector. Enough with this experimentation. I need a shave that rocks my world. This PAL ain't it.

So I've been shaving with this D-type Injector I won on eBay for three days now, and it's really blowing my mind. Even with a stock Schick Injector blade, this mutha wins the Shavegeek Cup for closest shaving Injector in my harem.

By the way, can I just say something here? I see shavegeeks on the forums talking about shaving with old razor blades they won on eBay, or old blades that came along with some vintage razor they scored -- sometimes it's even the ancient, used blade that was left in the razor = involuntary shudder =

Are you guys INSANE?!

Boys, the sharpened edge of a razor blade oxidizes over time -- every day, in fact, no matter what "chromium" or "platinum" coating it may trumpet. Putting a year-old blade to your face is dicey, much less a vintage Gillette Blue Blade or Schick Krona Injector blade that's been oxidizing for half a century. This is beyond dumb. Collect 'em if you will, but please don't shave with them. Modern blades like the Merkurs, Feathers, and Personnas are excellent, cheap, and easy to score anywhere in the world.
Back to the D-type. This all-metal Injector, the first ever Injector razor, has been shaving me to within an inch of my life. Honestly, I think I'm getting just as good a shave with a standard Schick blade as I have been with clipped Feather disposable straight razor blades in my later Injectors. I'm getting that same ultra-close, totally glass-smooth shave that I do from a straight razor, and from blades I can buy cheap on Amazon.

Today I shaved with Taylor's Rose shaving cream, lathered up with my Vulfix #2235 silvertip badger brush. One thing I've been doing differently for the past few days is washing my face with a QED shave stick I pulled out of the push-up tube and just handle like any other bar of soap, albeit one that's uncircumcized. This one's an Anise & Lavender soap that smells like Good'n'Plenty candy, and it's an excellent facial soap for my oily skin. I like it even better as a face soap than as a shave soap -- I'm going to melt'n'pour all of my QED shave soaps out of their containers and into some kind of mold I can pop the hardened soaps out of, because they make great face soaps.

It's really weird about these old Injectors. With double-edge safety razors, you can usually predict just how aggressive or mild a given razor is by eyeballing its blade exposure -- the more blade edge is exposed and the farther away it juts out from the safety bar below it, the more aggressive it's going to be.

But with these old Injectors, all bets are off. Razors that look hellacious are safe as kittens, while ones that look mild will flay your skin off. That B-1 Repeating Magazine razor I got on eBay, the precursor to the Injector, looks for all the world like it'll skin you alive -- the blade juts out from the razor and hangs in midair, daring you to bring your trembling hand to your face. But I shaved with that thing every which way but loose and didn't so much as tag a whisker.

This all-metal D-type Injector, Schick's very first razor that carried the Injector name and fed its blades with the same kind of blade Injector you can buy today, looks like it has exactly the same blade exposure and head geometry of the later bakelite-handled Injectors from the 1940s. But it shaves like a bat out of hell, and makes a ho-hum Schick blade cut like a scary-sharp Feather disposable straight razor blade.

Dare I feed this thing a Feather, when the Schick blade's spent? I'm not sure I can take a closer shave than this without showing bone.

I love that eBayers sell lots of old razors. I don't mean "lot" as in they sell a large number of them, though they do that too. I mean that some of these guys (a lot of them, in fact..) sell lots of razors as in a whole lotta razors at once. A seller might have fifteen or so razors, all different kinds and in all kinds of shape, grouped together in one auction, with the unifying theme for all of these lot auctions being "nobody's ever going to bid on this old Gem razor that takes box cutter blades or this Schick band razor that's killed more guys than Gacy, so if you want the gold Gillette toggle and the adjustable Injector, you gotta take these godawful beaters too."

You don't see too many other categories where lots are common. I've never seen anyone selling guitars in lots where to get the 50s Strat you have to take the Hondo, the Kramer, and the pointy day-glo Ibanez. Porn, too, tends to be lean on lots -- to score that rare "Inside Seka" Beta tape, you don't have to also take "Ron Jeremy's Bar Mitzvah" and "Dorf On MILF".

I usually stay away from the shaving lots, because I got burned on a few of them when I first started scoring vintage razors on eBay. The group photos aren't always detailed enough, so you can't really tell what shape some of the razors are in till you get them, and it's always the ones you really wanted that are trashed and unusable.

But I happened to come across a lot last week which was, incredibly, over 50 percent desirable, so I yoinked it and today was the day it arrived. And a sweet haul it was -- despite the gaggle of Schick band razors and a pair of scary-looking Christys that take box cutter blades and look like Jeremy Irons's custom gynecological tools from "Dead Ringers", I managed to score a slew of Eversharp/Schick Injectors, a bunch of Gillette DEs including a '50s HD adjustable and a super clean Super Speed, a way-cool PAL Injecto-Matic Injector, and the biggest prize of all, an all-metal 1935 Type D, the very first Schick Injector ever made:



Unlike the earlier and also all-metal B-1 Schick Magazine Repeater I scored a few weeks ago, this original Injector seems to have the same head design and blade exposure as the later bakelite models, and looks like it can shave with the best of them. I'd already shaved by the time the postman dropped the lot off, but I loaded a fresh Schick blade into this D-Type and plan to take it for a spin tomorrow to see what it's got under the hood.

And after that I'm going to try the PAL Injecto-Matic, because I haven't tried any of the PAL Injectors yet and I hear mixed things about them. Then I'll drop a fresh Israeli Personna DE blade in that Super Speed because I love these no-frills Gillette butterflies and haven't shaved with one in ages, and after that I'll put a fresh blade in the Gem and scrape the paint off the bathroom window which I've been meaning to do for the last four years.

It beats looking at Tim Conway naked on his knees.

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

Today I switched back to cream, after yet another stab at shaving with a hard soap to make the lather. I've been getting very comfortable, super close shaves with Classic Shaving's hard soap, but the mole on my upper lip (you can't see it in my photo at the top of this page -- it's hidden beneath a white strip of lather, and beneath TV makeup under that) has always been the most sensitive part of my face, and I've been nicking it something fierce with this soap. So it was time to go back to cream.

Actually, my mole's loss is your gain, if you don't happen to have any protruding freakish mutations on your face that spray blood everywhere if you lather with anything less lubricating than the finest, most moisturizing shaving creams. When my mole gets nicked, you know that whatever made the lather allows for an extra close shave, and I can tell you that the rest of my face got a shave that was noticeably closer than usual.

But me, I can't shave like this every day. I nicked my mole three days in a row, and I needed to give the poor little bugger time to heal so I could shave over it again without incident. And that meant going back to cream.

Specifically, Taylor's Avocado. The smoothest, thickest, creamiest, most soothing and moisturizing cream I know of. The cream that always hugs me to its bosom, kisses my forehead, and magically restores my skin in just a shave or two. I swear, this stuff is magic.

This time, it only took one shave to make it all right again. After a workout at the Y and nice relaxing break in the sauna where I overheard a pleasant conversation between two septuagenarians about the HBO series "Rome" and why couldn't they have lived during a time of such rampant free love, I caught a shower and then lathered up at a sink with the Avocado and my Vulfix #2233 badger brush that gets knocked around in my gym bag's dop kit without a protective case but somehow doesn't collapse inward like a white dwarf star from the overwhelming pressure.

I shaved in the usual way with my Featherjector, first down and then up. With a thick blanket of Taylor cream protecting it, the Feather Super Pro disposable straight razor blade -- the sharpest shaving blade on the market -- skied over my mole like it wasn't even there. I got an ungodly close shave with the Featherjector, and my skin felt incredible afterward -- smooth, clean, and perfectly moisturized. It was the kind of shave where the Trumper Skin Food at the end seemed like gilding the lily instead of a welcome post-shave poultice.

I've said it before about Taylor's Avocado shaving cream and I'll say it again -- I don't know why I shave with anything else. This is what my face and skin love most. It's like the official shaving cream of Ponce De Leon. I'm convinced that If I shaved with this stuff every day I'd start looking like a kid again.

When I bought my first badger shaving brush years ago, the salesperson told me I needed -- needed -- a stand for the brush's well-being.

"You have to promise me you'll make sure to hang the brush upside down, so it will dry properly and you won't damage the brush," he gravely intoned, as if he were passing down sacred knowledge. So I forked over another six bucks for a dorky looking plastic stand, and hung my brush from it for a few weeks till I got over it and just set the brush upright on its handle every time I was finished shaving.

Then I bought a travel brush, and it, too, came with a protective accessory -- a little screw-cap tube which the little brush fit into, so its delicate bristles would be buffered from the dangers lurking inside my travel kit by a mighty sheath of thin plastic.

Every brushmaker, brushseller, and brushgeek I've ever met coddles their brushes like newborns. Is a badger really that big of a pussy? Look at the badger in the photo above -- he's rolling with a coyote, for cripes sakes! You ever hear a real coyote howl at night? It sends shivers down your spine. You think a coyote would be friends with a sissy animal? Of course not. Badgers are like the Charles Bronsons of the animal world.

Aside from that first few weeks of badger brush ownership, I've never hung any of my brushes upside down. When I'm done shaving, I rinse the brush clean, shake the water out of it, wipe it up and down on a towel, and rest it upright on its handle in my medicine cabinet. I've done this with cheap Art of Shaving brushes, expensive Simpson brushes, and moderately priced Vulfix brushes of all shapes and sizes, and not a single one of them has ever had a problem with drying properly between shaves, or losing hairs, or smelling musty, or anything else for that matter. I think badger brushes are a lot tougher than guys give them credit for.

I'm also over the whole travel-brush-inna-tube thing. I love that little Vulfix travel brush and use it whenever I travel, but I got rid of the little plastic canister. It's a Vulfix badger brush, after all -- it can take it. For shaving at the gym, I just threw a Vulfix #2233 in my dop kit. No case, no protective sheath, no nothing. Just threw it in the bag. It bounces around with my razor and assorted poultices, and when I'm through shaving, I rinse it off, swipe it on my towel, and throw it back into the bag.

I've been doing this for months and the brush looks and works exactly the same as it did when I first got it. I like that the brush is so tough. I love just grabbing it out of the bag and going to town, and then tossing it back in the bag when I'm done. This is how a man treats his shaving brush. Not rough, or callously. Just appropriately.

A quality shaving brush isn't a glass slipper. I'm glad I got over it. A badger brush is a hard plastic handle with some of the toughest bristles the animal kingdom has to offer sticking out of one end. The less I baby these things, the less I fetishize the routine, and the better I feel about this whole trip. Especially when I'm already hunched over my desk clipping Feather blades down to size and inching them into my Injector like some demented Keebler elf.

More than once I've found myself thinking, "Man, if only ______ made a ______ that smelled like ______, it'd be all I ever used!"

Never mind that there are already dozens of mind-numbingly great smelling shaving creams on the market. I want something nobody makes. Because I'm special.

Mainly, I want stuff that smells like violets. More specifically, like Trumper's Violet shaving cream. It doesn't smell like real violets -- it's its own smell, like grape popsickles don't taste like real grapes but nobody cares because they taste amazing. Same thing with the Trumper.

Why I want shaving items that smell like Trumper's Violet when I could just use Trumper's Violet, I don't know. I do use Trumper's Violet, all the time in fact, and it's one of my favorite shaving creams. But I want everything to smell like it, not just shaving cream, but cologne, aftershave, my wife, my kids, the cat, the clothes dryer static sheets, everything. And hard shaving soap, too.

What's that, you say? Trumper's already makes a Violet shaving soap to go with its Violet shaving cream? Yes, I know that. But the soap doesn't smell anything like the cream. Not even remotely similar. It's weird. I was so psyched when I got a cake of this stuff, and then I cracked the lid of the wooden bowl it comes in and inhaled deeply, only to smell something pleasant and floral, certainly, but it wasn't violets. I don't really know what the soap smells like, but it doesn't smell like the same stuff they scent the shaving cream with.

The idea of a hard shave soap that smelled like Trumper's Violet really took hold. I got kind of obsessed with the concept, actually. Fellow shavegeek Chris Fisher turned me on awhile back to some place that sells essential oils called Body Time, that happens to carry a perfume oil that smells exactly like Trumper's Violet shaving cream. I bought a 1/4-oz bottle of the stuff and Chris is right, it's a dead-on match. Dab it on your earlobes and Quentin Crisp kicks sand in your face at the beach.

So I was going through my shaving crap drawer recently and came upon a cake of unscented Classic Shaving hard shave soap I'd forgotten I had, probably because it's the only unscented shaving product I've ever gotten, and I'm all about the smell, so there it sat, unused.

But then I thought hey, why not microwave this cake of Ray's soap down into a shaving mug, and then stir in some of this Body Time violet perfume oil? Can we do it? Yes we can!

At first I carefully tapped a few drops from the tiny bottle into the molten soap at the bottom of the white shaving mug, and then I said what the hell and dumped half the bottle in. I figured I had one shot at this, so I might as well go for broke. When the perfume oil hit the hot melted soap, the scent of violets was so strong that Quentin Crisp appeared at the window, banging on it with his fists and snarling, "I WILL END YOU, MARY!"

I stuck the mug in the freezer while I took a shower, and by the time I was finished the soap had hardened into a cake again and was ready for lathering. I soaked my Vulfix #2235 in the hot water in my sink and jammed it hard into the mug, pumping hard and really workin' that gerkin. I find that manhandling the brush works better with these hard soaps than the more calibrated dip'n'swirl I employ with the creams. Also it's more fun.

The lather was surprisingly thick and rich, much moreso than I've gotten from other hard shave soaps from Taylor, QED, Creed, and Trumper. It was more like the lather I get from a good cream. And the smell! It was like Trumper's Violet squared. Maybe it was a little too strong, but what did Pia Zadora say in "Butterfly"? If it's good, it's right.

And right it is. This DIY Violet soap shaves like a good cream -- slick, moisturizing, smelled wonderful, and it doesn't dry out my skin like most other soaps I've shaved with did. And after three days of shaving with this stuff, I don't have a hint of irritation, which I routinely get with other hard soaps. That's half the reason I use Cetaphil cleanser to wash my face -- soap dries it out. But my face loves this Classic Shaving soap, even when it's got enough violet oil to choke a goat.

The only setback I experienced was with the mole ("beauty mark", my mother says) on my upper lip. No matter how lightly I shaved with my Featherjector, I nicked the top of the mole three days in a row. I've had this problem for years -- no matter what I shaved with, I'd nick the mole and then the claret would flow, droogies. It was only when I finally found the good stuff -- old-school safety razors from Gillette, Merkur and Schick, and English creams -- that I stopped nicking my mole once and for all. Besides the closer and more comfortable shave, not nicking my mole is the clearest sign that I'm doing this stuff right.

It's weird, because other than the nicked mole, I really love this soap. It smells exactly like I want all my stuff to smell, and the shave really is excellent -- close as can be, without a hint of irritation. Classic Shaving's unscented is the best hard shaving soap I've yet tried, and the only one that lathered more like a good cream than the other soaps I've shaved with. I guess the lather is fractionally less lubricating/buffering/whatever than my usual Taylor or Trumper creams, but I'll be damned if I can tell the difference. But the mole never lies.

I wish it would, if only this once. Is it proper for a man to say to a shave soap, "It's not you, it's me"?

I admit it. Though I've taken self-pampering to heretofore uncharted heights since I started this whole wetshaving trip, I've never been truly spoiled till I started using Feather blades in my Injector.

Even back when I was using a DE razor not too long ago, I never had that one combo of razor and blade that shaved me significantly better than all the rest. Sure, I love the Merkur HD, and with a Merkur Platinum blade it's my favorite DE of them all. But I can get just as good a shave from a Gillette adjustable DE, or hell, even the old brass non-adjustables, which Merkurs are near-copies of in the first place. I can get the same quality shave from Merkur's other DEs like the Progress, the Futur, the Vision. Since all of them give equally good shave, I never got so hung up on one of them that I couldn't bear shaving with the others.

Not so with the Featherjector. I'm at the point now where I'm addicted to the shaves I get from a Feather-loaded Injector. I'm serious. Yesterday I tried a new Injector I just got off eBay, so I gave it a stock Schick blade just to be safe. While the shave was better than what I used to get from the DEs, it wasn't anywhere near as close and straight-razorlike as the Featherjector. And today, when I went back to my ol' faithful E3 bakelite and gave her a fresh Feather Pro Super and some Taylor's Lavender lather from my Vulfix #2235 brush, I was so happy just from the popping sound of the very first stroke because I knew that this shave was going to be one of the greats, which of course it was. That outcome's never in doubt with the Featherjector.

Still, it's weird to have just one razor/blade combo that does it for you. Maybe this is how some of the straight razor He-Men feel about their sharpest cut throat. I never felt this way about a razor before. And I'm not alone -- I was talking to another shavegeek about the Featherjector, and he's so stoked by the shaves he gets from this rig that he's sold off all of his DEs! That's it -- he's through. He got to the Promised Land. Amen, brother, amen.

I'm scared by the thought that I might have reached it, too. I don't want to quit dicking with razors! But I already have. A few months ago, I had to force myself to shave with the same razor twice in a row. If I shaved with an HD yesterday, I itched to shave with a Progress, and then a Gillette, and then a Slant. I always found myself itching to try the other DEs in my stable.

But now with the Featherjector, the itch is gone. Is that a good thing? I'm not sure yet. But every morning I can't wait to shave with this amazing razor, because it gives me the kind of shave I've been after ever since I started down this path, except it does it faster and easier than anything else I've tried. So much so that I've got a drawerful of cool razors -- the entire Merkur food chain, scads of Gillette adjustables, fixed-heads, open-combs, straights, you name it -- and they might as well be chopped liver for all the face time they're getting.

As long as I've got some Feather blades, I'm shaving with the Featherjector. If I run out, I'll make do with Schick blades and call Ray several times a day, manically scratching my face and bleating into the receiver, "WHY YOU HOLDING OUT ON ME, MAAAAN?!"

The BBC comedy "Little Britain" features the team of Matt Lucas and David Walliams. I've already talked about Matt and his uncanny female impersonations, but David's best-known character is Emily Howard, England's least convincing transvestite. "I am a lady!" she maintains, convincing no one.

Emily would have no problem convincing anyone if she'd just shave with the razor I used this morning -- the fabulous (double snap) Lady Eversharp:




I originally bought this razor on eBay for beloved wife, who's complained about her various gam shavers for as long as I've known her. I've given her ladies' Gillette DE razors to try, but she didn't like them any better than the twin-blade Lady Sensor she uses. Since the Injector razors gave me better shaves than DEs, I figured she might like a Lady Eversharp for gam duty.

So she shaved one stem with the Injector and the other with her Lady Sensor and asked me to feel which one was smoother (I'd previously hipped her to the trick of using men's Sensor Excel blades with her Lady Sensor, which are considerably sharper and longer lasting than the versions sold to women for this razor) . Of course, I picked the Lady Sensor leg, so beloved wife gave me the pink Lady Eversharp back.

Hey, at least she likes Cremo Cream.

Aside from the pink handle and gold-tone accents, the Lady Eversharp appears to be a standard Injector, with the same blade exposure and head profile of the men's Injectors, as well as the Hydro-Magic lever that loosens the blade holder to allow for rinsing the blade thoroughly after a shave. From all outward appearances, the Lady Eversharp looks like it would shave no differently than any other 1960's-era Injector, except that it's pink and gold, and curvier than the men's models.

I decided to try the Lady Eversharp today to see if it could cut the mustard. Since I wasn't sure just how aggressive or not so this razor might be, I loaded it with a new Schick blade instead of my usual clipped Feather Pro Super disposable straight razor blade. The Schick isn't nearly as sharp, so it's a safer bet if you don't know how aggressive a razor is.

I lathered up with Taylor's Avocado cream and a Vulfix badger brush, and lay my hand upon Pinky. She felt very, very different in my hand than my usual 1940's bakelite Injector -- more top-heavy, and of course the longer handle meant a held her farther away from the shave head.

But Injectors being Injectors, it didn't really matter. As long as you lay the shave head flat against your face, that's all you need to do to get them shaving. And Pinky was no different. A long-handled razor feels different in the hand than a short-handled one, but it's not a profound difference, and by the third swipe it wasn't a factor.

As for the shave, the Lady Eversharp seemed less aggressive than the Type E Injectors I normally use. Part of that was due to the Schick blade versus the Feathers I normally feed my razors, but even so, Pinky had less bite than my bakelite Injector. I had to go over areas several times in order to get the same shave I normally get from a single swipe of a Feather-fed E3 razor.

The shave took longer, but I was able to get a very respectable shave from the Lady Eversharp. Not the closest I've ever had, but I can't get much closer with my other Injectors unless I load them with a Feather blade, so I don't blame Pinky. I bet if I gave her a Feather blade she'd shave like a dream.

But I won't be giving her a Feather. Thing is, I prefer a shorter handle on my razors. The bakelite handle on my main Injector is the perfect size for me. And while I like the color pink when it comes to dress shirts and iPod Minis, I'm just not down with using a pink Injector. Even the baby blue colored Lady Eversharp I also got on eBay in case beloved wife wanted a second razor for the other bathroom looks pretty girlie. I already shave with floral shaving creams and foppish brushes -- I need a manly razor to balance things out.

I'm rubbing my face as I two-finger this out and I feel stubble. With my usual rig, I don't feel any stubble for another few hours at least. So tomorrow, it's back to my manly-man's Injector and the Feather Pro Super blade.