.

This weekend the Financial Times in London wrote about Shaveblog and credited my original article and Today Show segment for starting the wetshaving boom. The article even credited me for coining the phrases "shavegeek" and "faceturbation", which my father, visiting for the weekend, was especially proud of.

It's really wild -- here we are in November, and my original article and TV segment from way back in February are still making news around the world. Clearly, the whole issue of men hating shaving and then flipping their lids when they discover how much nicer and more pleasurable it can be when you kick it old-school is still resonating around the world.

Thanks to this blog and the word-of-mouth that's brought tens of thousands of unique visitors like the Financial Times's reporter here every day, more men are throwing down their Mach3's and Quattros and discovering just how great shaving can be when you do it with a single-blade razor, a badger hair brush, and shaving cream that comes in an old fashioned tub, not a can. It makes me very glad indeed that I was able to help turn millions of guys on to a better shave.

I'm also glad that besides me and Shaveblog, the FT article also highlighted wetshaving retailers Charles Roberts of Enchante and Robert Johnston of The Gentleman's Shop. Along with Ray DuPont of Classic Shaving (who supplied all of the shaving products for the NBC segment and was an invaluable source of information and inspiration) and the other US wetshaving vendors like Lee's Razors, Em's Place, and QED, it's these stalwart retailers who are the true center of the shaving community. They've been beating the drum for traditional wetshaving for many years, and I'm happy they're getting an explosion of new customers in the wake of all of this media attention.

Okay, back to the business at hand. I keep getting emails from out-of-breath shavegeeks demanding to know the identity of the "miracle razor" that's turned my shaving upside down in recent weeks. I keep telling you guys I don't want to spill the beans and start another eBay feeding frenzy like I did when I opened my big, fat mouth about how great old Schick Injectors are, but you won't listen. So I'll give you a couple of clues, but then you're on your own.

I already gave you the first clue in the last Shaveblog entry. Look at that Boney M album cover. That's really all you need to know, to be honest with you. A real Gillette historian, or any imbecile armed with a can of Spicy Cajun Pringles and Google, could figure out what razor I'm using just by studying the Boney M cover.

Haven't had that eureka moment and scurried over to eBay yet? Okay, here's another clue:



Forgive me if this one's too easy. I blame the sugar high I'm riding tonight. Not enough sullen teens came by and I've got bags of candy that aren't going to eat themselves.

Oh man. If I thought my in-box was going to melt down yesterday, today was the Towering Inferno minus Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, that back-story about the nephew who cheaped out on the electrical wiring, and Fred Astaire (?!). What I mean to say is, it was extremely hot.

There's a fascinating dynamic that goes on whenever I go the (admittedly) easy route and make fun of the hapless subculture that is the shavegeeks who congregate on shaving forums.

Every time I make fun of these geeks, the next day my in-box is full of joyous, congratulatory emails from well-known wetshaving manufacturers and vendors who clearly spend much of their time biting their tongues and choking back stupefaction in their official dealings with the bottom-most 5% of the shaving goods customer base known more informally as "the guys from the forums".

So basically what I'm saying is, it's not just me.

On the other hand, I have to admit that every time I really go at the geeks with both guns, I hate myself for it later. I feel like Alex in "A Clockwork Orange" after the aversion therapy. I feel sorry for these guys. Hate to admit it but I do. I'm going soft, I think.

So anyway, here's the deal. I can't tell you what this mystery razor I've been using is. No matter what part of the abuse-remorse cycle I may be sashaying through, I will not willfully start another eBay feeding frenzy like I did with the Injector.

But what I can do is give you some clues. In fact, I've already given you one in this entry. Understand that you are not Sherlock (or even Katie) Holmes and I am not Professor (or even Cathy) Moriarty. I am not a criminal who wants to be caught, so I'm not going to keep feeding you ever-bolder clues till you finally grok it. To be honest, I'd love to be able to give you just enough clues to feel better about not telling you what this razor is, but not enough clues so that you actually figure it out. That would be perfect. A Win-Lose. Can I really pull it off?

So anyway, you got your clue. Let's see if you know how to harness the vast power of the Web and solve this Encyclopedia Brown caper. Judging from the perpetual "Where can I find Taylor shaving cream on the Web?" and "Who sells Merkur razors?" questions that serve as the lifeblood of the shavegeek forums, maybe I should give you a link: here you go.

Well.

I had to hose down my in-box with liquid nitrogen today, because it was about to melt down from all the frantic emails I received from shavegeeks desperate to learn the secret identity of the mystery razor I've been using.

Honestly, I had no idea you guys cared all that much about what goes on here. You make up perhaps 5% of the visitors to this blog, after all. And judging from the tedious and predictable methane you keep expelling, you're more than secure in A. your perpetual ineptitude when it comes to shaving and B. your avowed indifference to He Who Shall Not, or Shan't Not, or whatever.

But the in-box begs to differ.

"Hey dude! I'm a RILLY RILLY BIG fan of Shaveblog, and you are my Personal Jesus! God, it feels so good to say that, and to shed the pseudo-Brit affectations I put on at SMF! BTW, I'm naked whilst I type this. So anyway, what's the razor you've discovered?? I have to know!"

"C-Dog! What up, G? Yo yo yo, T-Man in da HOWSE! Shizzle my nizzle, ya'll just GOTS to spill da beanz! I know I've dissed you, but T-Man needs to get bizzay on eBizzle and cop whatever razor you giving mad props to! PS L'Shana Tova and I hope you and your family had a nice Yom Kippur."

"corey, i've bought like every razor known to man -- every merkur, every gillette, every feather, hell, i've even tried shaving with a craftsman belt sander, but i can't get my neck smooth unless i use all of the above at the same time along with a cheese grater for touch-up. logic would indicate that a "magic pill" for super close shaving doesn't actually exist, that my problem has been me all along and not my razors, and that i will never be a hairless eight year-old again, but anyhoo, can u please tell me what magic pill razor you've discovered so i can get one and try it and be dissapointed all over again by yet another razor/blade/etc. that doesn't instantly solve all my problems for me?"

Misty-eyed though I was at this outpouring of love (That Dare Not Speak...ah hell, I'm as ham-fisted at this stuff as you lummoxes), I'm not sure that identifying the ______ razor would be such a good idea. As much as I'd like to give the 95% of this blog's regular readers around the world a helpful tip on nabbing an excellent vintage razor that might help them get a better shave than even the most vaunted He-Man razors commonly touted all over the Web, it's clear that the Five Percenters -- even the ones who denounce He Who Shall Not and Thy Blog Which Shan't and the Little Engine That Could the loudest -- are chomping at the bit to rush over to eBay and start another feeding frenzy that would push the prices of these razors to silliness.

That said, I can help you 95%ers narrow it down. The ______ razor is an old DE double-edge model. It is not in current production. It is not adjustable. It is not terribly popular with the shavegeeks (no surprise there).

And it shaves like a dream with a 15-cent Personna blade. Put a Merkur in it, like I did this morning, and you won't want to shave with anything else.

Look, you 5%ers, does it really matter to you what model this razor is? You already can't manage to get a good shave with far more aggressive razors than the _______, so it's not like this thing's going to help you any. The reason you can't shave is because of you, not the razor. if you've tried Merkurs and old Gillettes and Injectors you're still not happy, the _______ ain't your savior.

The more I think about it, the more I think I should keep this thing to myself. Last thing I need is another Injector feeding frenzy on my conscience. If you want a great DE razor, go buy a Merkur HD. Hell, buy two of them so you can have one in your travel kit.

Forget I said anything about the ________. Pat yourself on the back for deducing that I'm actually using a ladies' razor, or that I'm putting up a smoke screen to throw you guys off the Injector trail so prices come down and I can buy another couple dozen of them, because I certainly can't get by with only the couple dozen of these things I've already got. Who could?

So you beat me. Yay for you. Now can you please go away so I can tell the 95%ers what razor they should pick up as fast as they can while they're still cheap on eBay?

Ever since I wrote my last entry, I've felt bad about keeping my latest razor find a secret. I've wrestled with just coming out with it, because let's face it -- who really gives a rat's ass about what razor I happen to be shaving with?

Well, guys like this. They're known as "shavegeeks". Likes include sweat pants, Dr. Who, and Dolly Madison fruit pies. Pet peeves: non-elastic waistbands, "fun-size" candy bars, and when the SciFiCon poster says Seven of Nines will be signing autographs and then it's just some tranny with an eyepatch made out of tin foil.

I'd love to share my latest razor discovery, but I'm conflicted. I made a big mistake yapping about Injectors before I'd scored enough good ones to last me till the Grid comes crashing down (thanks for making my week, Gramps -- I haven't laughed so hard since Rob Corrdry's expose of health clubs on the "Daily Show"). Now the shavegeeks have ruined it for everyone. $200 for a used Injector! It's insanity. No way I want to repeat that nonsense. But I also know that shavegeeks make up less than 5 percent of the visitors to this site, and there are a whole lot more normal, cool guys who could benefit from this tip. As I said, I'm conflicted.

This morning I shaved with the ______ DE again, with the very last schmear of Trumper's Violet shaving cream left in the tub, lathered up with my Vulfix #2235. I love getting to the very end of a tub of cream. With toothpaste, it's always a hassle as you get to the end of the tube -- you squeeze and squeeze and less and less comes out. But a tub of shaving cream's good to the last gumdrop-sized globule, which is a good thing if it's a $30 tub of Trumper's.

Compared to the Featherjector, or even a stock Injector, a DE shaves less close on the first pass, but you make up the difference on the upstroke. A Featherjector shaves so close on that first downward pass you could get by with just that if you had to, and nobody would do the "Miami Vice" theme when you walked by their cubicle.

But with the customary two or three passes, I'm getting the same close shave from the _______, and the whole thing is a much more benign, skin-friendly affair. With the Feather disposable straight razor blades loaded into an old Injector, the incredibly close (and dead easy) shave came with a price -- there's only so many skin-peeling shaves my skin can take before I start feeling and looking a bit raw. And now that winter's on its way and my skin's starting to get drier, I just can't do a Featherjector shave every day. Come spring, I'm all over that thing again. But for now, I need to step back a bit from the precipice and take it easier on my puss.

The ______ razor is perfect for what I need right now. It shaves like a dream, but it's so forgiving that I can do three, four, as many passes as I wish and I don't have to worry about shaving myself raw. Even with a 15-cent Personna blade, the ____ shaves like nobody's business. It's almost time to hit the hay and my face still feels clean shaven. I can't believe I let this razor sit in my drawer for over a year before I ever shaved with it!

Obviously I can't go on blogging about this razor without naming it. I don't like holding down the shift key and typing a bunch of _'s. It's hard work. Let me think about it some more.

Al Franken does a great bit on his "Air America" radio show called "The Oy Yoy Yoy Show". As his sidekick Katherine Lanpher recounts the week's news involving the Bush administration, Franken, in a heavy Yiddish accent, responds with, "Oy yoy yoy!"

I have my own "oy yoy yoy" moments. Like when I tried painting all the doors in our house. Oy yoy yoy! Looked like a drunken eight year-old did the work. As my people say, never again.

My most recent "oy yoy yoy" has been this whole Schick Injector bum's rush. I wish I'd never opened my big fat mouth about these wonder razors (oy yoy yoy, there I go again -- "wonder" my tuchus! LOUSY, this razor is! Pheh!)

When my pal Gordon used to bang the drum for these vintage Schicks on the late, lamented MSN Wetshavers forum way back when, I made a mental note to try them someday. But I was getting such amazing shaves with my newly-acquired Merkur HD double-edge safety razor that I never made the move.

Then our mutual friend Andy made a pivotal discovery -- that if you clipped down a Feather disposable straight razor blade to the right length, it would fit into any Injector perfectly, and deliver an ungodly close shave that rivalled anything you could get from the most expertly honed straight razor.

Andy was foolish enough to share his discovery on Wetshavers, I was foolish enough to try it, and the rest is history. After I raved about the Featherjector combo, all the shavegeeks who'd been dishing out the bile nevertheless snuck over to eBay and scarfed up every Injector in sight, driving prices to heretofore unthinkable heights. $200 for a mass-produced plastic razor from the 80s that you couldn't give away a few months ago? It's totally absurd, and I take full, self-loathing responsibility.

Fact is, I should've pulled a JFK -- Kennedy sent Pierre Salinger out to score a thousand Cuban Upmanns before the embargo began, and I should've yoinked every Injector on eBay for a solid month before flapping my gums about what an amazing razor this is. But I didn't, and now every shavegeek yutz is prowling eBay for anything that says Schick on it, and I'll never see another Injector again south of 50 clams. Oh well.

Anyway, who cares. I've given up on the Injector. Yeah, you heard me. If every mouth breather on the shavegeek forums is wild about Injectors now, how cool can these razors really be? If a 58 year-old guy in a Deep Space Nine t-shirt with jelly stains down the front and a forum handle of "VelveetaFan" uses the same razor I do, I need to make some changes in my life.

So this weekend I tried a vintage DE I'd acquired awhile back but never actually shaved with till now. And loaded with a no-name Isreali Personna DE blade and lathered with some Trumper Violet shaving cream and a Vulfix #2235 badger brush, this _____ razor just flat knocked me on my ass. What a shave!

What, you think I'm going to spill the beans? After what we've just been through with the Injector? Not a chance, shavegeek nation. You're on your own. I need yutzes with jelly-stained Deep Space Nine t-shirts to shave with something other than what I shave with. It is a need I have, and a need I will expend great effort to feed.

Suffice it to say, this particular DE's never been a fanboy fave, and it's so non-descript and undermasculinated that even if I told you what kind of razor it was, you'd probably just make fun of it (while simultaneously flailing away like a speed freak trying to outbid each other on eBay for one, and driving the prices into Injectorville). So no dice. That's the kind of guy I and you am.

Shavegeeks are funny about manufacturing tolerance when it comes to razors. To this day, there are guys who really believe that Merkur designs its adjustable saftey razors like the Progress, Futur, and Vision with one side sharper than the other -- i.e., one side exposes more blade, so it cuts closer. Even after Merkur explained that any differences between the two sides of any of their razors was solely due to typical manufacturing tolerances, guys still believed the two sides shaved differently on purpose, and developed whole regimens based on which side to shave with during which part of the shave.

it kind of blew me away, because you can hold one of these razors in your hand and push the head back and forth, even when there's a blade in it -- the moving parts just give a tiny bit, and there's nothing you can do about it. If it adjusts, it moves. Big deal, right?

Well, sometimes it is a big deal. I've been noticing lately that the more Injectors I score on eBay, the higher the percentage of them are DOA. At first I thought it was my imagination, but now I'm convinced that what's happening on eBay now is that guys are throwing back the crap Injectors they bought on eBay during the Injector Gold Rush started by this blog (which was spurred by Sir Andy's discovery that if you clipped a Feather disposable straight razor down to the right size, it would not only fit perfectly in any old Schick Injector razor but deliver a shave much more akin to that of a straight razor than any safety razor's ever dreamed of) (and before Andy there was Gordon, who for years has been patiently explaining to any shavegeek on the forums who would listen that the Injector, even with the standard blades, shaves closer and more comfortably than any DE). So many of the Injectors now being offered on eBay are sloppy seconds. Rejects. Unshaveworthy.

I mean, when I first got all hot and bothered about Injectors, I had my own mini feeding frenzy, buying up any Injector on eBay I could win for under ten bucks. I won loads of 'em, especially my favorites, the bakelite-handled ones from WWII. And they all shaved great, even with a stock blade. So I'm basically set for life.

But of course I needed more. So I kept bidding, and winning. But than I started noticing that some of the Injectors arriving in the mail didn't shave very well at all. One even had the safety bar mostly gone, rendering the razor useless except as a display addition to my Homer and Bart Simpson shaving figurine, one of my greatest eBay yoinks ever.

The problem with most of the unshaveworthy Injectors I've been getting lately is too much slop in the spring mechanism. That is, the razor doesn't clamp down very tightly on the blade. I've tried bending the spring with a needle-nose, but I can't get these old razors to tighten up enough to restore them to shaveworthiness. And I can't bring myself to throw them back into the eBay sea either, because I don't want someone else winding up with it and then not being able to shave with it.

It occurs to me that I'm not the only one who's been hitting eBay for Injectors lately and winding up with a lemon. It's easy to tell if your Injector is kosher or not -- without loading a blade into the razor, press down lightly on the safety bar (the bar that sits in front of the sharp edge of the blade when it's in the razor) with your finger. If it gives, and separates easily from the rest of the razor, your spring's not tight enough and you may have a bum Injector. Some of my Lemonjectors don't even need me to press down on the safety bar -- I can shake the razor and there's enough slop that it clacks like a noisemaker.

An Injector needs to maintain an iron grip on the blade if you're going to get the kind of shave us Injector fanatics have raved about. If it's got too much slop, you won't get a good shave. it's that simple. I learned this the hard way, and I've got a little pile of Lemonjectors to show for it.

I don't think I ever scored a DE off eBay that was unshaveworthy. Okay, so I got one crusty old Gillette adjustable with a stripped mechanism. Other than that, the two dozen Gillettes I've got all shave perfectly.

But when it comes to the Injectors I've won on eBay -- and I'm talking the bakelite models, not the later long-handled ones which I don't particularly care for -- I'd say half are killer, and half are in the No Shavey pile. So my ten dollar Injectors became $20 Injectors. Which is still a hell of a bargain for the closest shaving safety razors ever.

And please, if you wind up with a Lemonjector, don't toss it back into the eBay waters. That's not how your mother and I raised you.

I've been bouncing around lately between continents, razors, and assorted shaving poultices. I've been to Japan and back, been messing with DE razors again after a long period with the Injector, and I've also been trying a bunch of different shaving products, trying to find the best mate for each of the various razors I've been shaving with.

The Featherjector -- the mutant combo of an old bakelite-handled Schick/Eversharp Injector razor and a clipped-down Feather Pro Super disposable straight razor blade -- goes best with thick, protective shaving creams like Taylor's Avocado. The Featherjector shaves too close for me to get by with a thinner cream, or especially a hard shaving soap -- that's a guaranteed bloody nick on the tip of the mole on my upper lip. Lovely image, isn't it? The truth hurts, as does my mile if I go to close with a thin lather and a scary-sharp blade.

Still, the soaps beckon. I love the way the best of them smell, and the idea of a cake of hard soap you lather up with harkens back to the very earliest days of post-clamshell shaving. Also, creams are for sissies, or so the He-Man straight razor boys taunt. These guys barely want it known they use any pusslube whatsoever, much less a floral-scented English shaving soap. Creams are beyond the pale. Anything that smooth and luxurious belongs on a dame, not a guy who brings a naked blade to his face.


I haven't had such good luck with the hard soaps, to be honest. A few have stood out as being clearly ahead of the pack -- the Classic Shaving house brand soaps, and the German Tabac soap -- but the rest, while giving good shave, aren't protective enough to keep my mole from getting nicked.

The thing is, lately, even my go-to creams aren't doing the job either when I shave with the Featherjector. Sometimes the rig I know and love suddenly starts acting up, or maybe it's me acting up, I don't know. But I needed a change to settle things down.

So I took out the Feather blades and started using the standard Schick Injector blades again, and the nicks stopped immediately. The shaves weren't quite as close, but I'm okay with that so long as I don't bleed any.

Then my friend Gordon starts in on the hard soaps, talking about how D. R. Harris hard soaps are the best of the best, and how he flipped a Trumper cake over to lather the dome side rather than the flat side and the improvement in the lather was amazing, and how hard soaps shave just that much closer than creams do.

I hate when he does this. I really do. I get all comfy and secure in my routine, and then Gordon pipes up with something new he's tried, and how great it is. He's such an excitable young lad, and I'm just a tired old man trying to enjoy a simple, traditional shave. But his youthful enthusiasm is infectious, and before I knew it I'd hauled out some Classic Shaving hard soap for yesterday's shave.

Actually, it was a mutant concoction -- a cake of unscented Classic Shaving soap melted down into a ceramic mug and mixed with some drops of violet perfume oil, for a DIY version of Ray's new pre-scented Violet hard soap. So far, the Classic Shaving is my favorite hard soap of all that I've tried (I haven't tried the Harris soaps Gordon recommends yet, but I've tried Trumper, Taylor, Tabac, QED, Creed, Art of Shaving, and Williams). It lathers like a cream, thick and meaty, and seems to both slick up and protect my skin better than the other hard soaps.

Lathering this soap up with a Vulfix #2235 badger brush, I got an amazingly perfect shave with a standard Schick blade in my 1940's E3 Injector. The Classic Shaving soap and a Schick Injector blade seem to be a match made in heaven. The blade is just this shy of scary-sharp, so it doesn't nick me at all, and the closer cut of the soap lets the blade get in closer for a better shave than I usually get from this razor and blade. If it wasn't quite as skin-peeling as the Featherjector, it was pretty damn close. If every shave was like this, I could stop searching right now.

I shaved with the Classic soap and Injector again today and got the same excellent shave. Not a hint of irritation and my skin still feels smooth at bedtime. Were Beloved Wife to pounce from the rafters and demand some conjuggling, my chin would not feel itchy against hers.

I'm dragging ass. It was like this the last time I came back from Japan. The whole week I was there, I never adjusted to local time, and then tack on a 14 hour flight home and you just get messed up even further.

I'm really tired.

I find when I'm sleep deprived, what little patience I have for optimizing the various parameters in my life goes right out the window. Usually I'm a stickler. My whole day is one long series of optimized rituals. But when I'm this run down, I just don't have the energy for that crap. If I'm hungry, I eat jelly out of the jar with my fingers, standing at the open fridge. I did this daily when our little guy was born and we had two munchkins under the age of 2. For six months I stumbled around and ate Polaner's All-Fruit out of the jar with my fingers while leaning up against the fridge with my eyes closed.

My stupidest, most embarrassing ritual is shaving. I know I've said that the traditional wetshaving ritual is a pleasant and relaxing one, but I was wrong, and probably even lying. I really do see that now. 20 mins for a @%#$ shave? Some really gone shavegeeks take 45 mins or an hour in the bathroom, a'stroppin' their blade, a'workin' their cube, a'smackin' their puss with a big-ass shaving brush fulla lather. I know. I used to be one of them, roughly a week or so ago. No more. It's stupid, and meaningless. It's like when everything was DOS and if you wanted to show off on a computer you'd type 10 type Fill In The Blank, and then 20 goto 10, and then hit Enter, and the screen would fill up with Fill In The Blank forever. Wow, cool! And that plus a quarter buys you a Chinese lead toy out of a gumball machine where I live.

I just want a clean face. I don't wanna be Winston Churchill (by the way, shavegeeks -- that whirring sound you sometimes hear is the Great Man's coffin spinning at 300 RPM because the only thing you know about his life is that he liked cigars and booze). Shaving is less important than washing your junk. Why make it more than it is?

God, I am so tired.

Today I did the shaving equivalent of eating jelly to stay alive. Hand-slathered Taylor's Avocado shaving cream and a few simple swipes of the Injector. Not even the Feather-loaded Injector. Just the Injector, with a (gasp) bog-standard Personna blade, right out of that flimsy plastic magazine that drives everyone nuts. A quick swipe down, then up, then rinse off.

Best shave I've had in days. Looked perfect. No red. Felt great. Sure I could feel a bit of stubble in certain isolated zones on my neck if I rubbed my fingers against the grain. But it was invisible, even up close. I'm too tired to faceturbate today, so I didn't obsess over it. I just shaved and moved onto the next task at hand, trying to stay awake. Also I was fasting, which didn't help either my insomnia or my mood. No sleep and no food, and you think I care about silvertip badger hair and water mix ratio?

Someday Polaner will make a jelly that's all natural and also dissolves facial hair if you wipe it on and wash it off. No brush, no blade, no poultice afterward. Just jelly up your puss and you're clean. I don't care if I have to farm my own clones just to live off the organs -- I will live to see that day, and I will EXULT.

I really need some sleep.

I prefer small shaving brushes.

Not to be a contrarian. Not because all the shavegeek noise on the forums is about big, huge, monstrous brushes. Not because smaller brushes are cheaper than the big ones.

I prefer small shaving brushes because they do a much better job overall.

I've got a whole bunch of big-ass shaving brushes (meaning one with a knot size 26mm or larger), and while they all work well, I just don't buy the shavegeek line that the bigger the brush, the better it lathers. It's total nonsense.

I've got some really large shaving brushes -- Vulfix's #377, #40, #41, and #2236 -- and these monsters can make enough lather from a nickel-sized dollup of English shaving cream to fill a pie tin. Easily enough lather for seven or eight passes on your puss. Which would be great if you had to shave seven or eight times in one standing.

But you don't. No one does. You shave two, three passes max. Four if you're really a gone geek. And when you're through, you end up rinsing all that extra lather down the drain. It is literally a wash.

Worse, I find that these big-ass brushes make a big-ass mess, around the sink area as well as on my entire person. When I lather with a big-ass brush, even if I confine my lathering to a slow, steady paintbrush motion, I wind up flinging bits of lather all over the mirror, the sink, the floor, my chest, everywhere. I wind up looking like Herb Alpert's whipped cream girl.

I'm not a small man. I'm 5' 9-72/74th". True, my muscle tone isn't what it could be, and I was never a fan of "Grizzly Adams" (although don't get me started on "Sheriff Lobo"). But I'm all man, and I'll lick any fella says otherwise. By lick I mean fight, and by fella I mean someone I'm not licking like a big, round lolly. Not really bolstering my case, I'm guessing. What I'm saying is, I'm not small. Not big by any stretch of the word, but definitely not small. Medium. If I was a bluesman I'd be Medium Corey. I've always wondered why there weren't any Mediums in blues. Either you were Big Walter Horton or Little Walter Jacobs. Big Maybelle or Lil' Son Jackson. Never a Medium, though I'd wager most of the bluesmen were medium-sized. Muddy Waters was a perfect size 40R. Lightnin' Hopkins and I could've worn each other's clothes without any alteration needed. Many's the time I'd go see Otis Rush and swear he had raided my closet -- that's how similar we are in the stature dept.

Medium-sized shaving brushes are better than big-ass brushes, but they're still messy and wasteful. It's hard to lather your upper lip getting cream all over your nose and mouth. I use a Vulfix #2235 a lot, and while I like its size better than the big-ass brushes, it's still too big.

Last week while I was in Japan and living out of my dop kit, I finally figured out that small brushes are the way to go. I keep the tiniest Vulfix travel brush in my dop kit -- that itty bitty brush-inna-screw-top-cannister except I don't bring the cannister because it's just a shaving brush. It can take it.

Man, that little Vulfix lathers like nobody's business. I never get over what a killer little brush that travel thingie is. I hear about guys going all-out to make travel containers for their big-ass brushes because they hafta have a big-ass brush with them at all times, even on the open road, and I feel sorry for them. They bought into the claptrap that bigger is better when it comes to brushes. All that manly-man old-school stiff upper lip elephant-walk stuff you get hammered with when you pipe up as a newbie on the shavegeek boards and ask what's a good first brush.

"A BIG ONE!"

"XXL TO THE EXTREME!"

"I LIVE WITH MY PARENTS!"

So you buy a big-ass brush and you never look back. Shavegeeks even diss the smaller brushes like the Vulfix Mini, saying it doesn't hold enough water so it can't build decent lather. Bullshit. If you can't get a Vulfix travel brush soaked in hot water to make enough perfect shaving lather with any Taylor or Trumper shaving cream for three or four passes at the very least, it's your fault, not the brush's. I don't care if you want a bigger brush for whatever reason, but this littlest Vulfix is all the brush anybody really needs.

Every time I travel, I marvel at how much better things go with this brush than at home with my big-ass brushes. Lather stays on my face and doesn't go anywhere else. I can get in tight places like my upper lip without lathering my nose and mouth. I've got way more precision and control. And at the end of the shave, which is always fantastic, there's just a bit of leftover lather to wash off the brush, instead of a heaping pile of wasted cream.

So that's it for me. No more big-ass brushes. I'll leave that to the compensatory shavegeeks. Give me a 24mm knot, a 22mm knot, hell, even a 20mm knot like the Vulfix Mini's. I'd love to go even smaller. A 10mm knot? Can you shave with just one strand of badger hair? If not, what's the minimum? These are the questions shavegeeks should be hashing out on the forums, not whether Injectors are good razors or not (answer: of course they're not, so quit driving the prices up on eBay already -- they SUCK, okay? Are you happy now? They SUCK. I SUCK for ever recommending them or even admitting I shave with one. Okay, wanna know what I really get the awesomest shaves with? Those bitchin' Schick Techmatic "band razors" from the 60s and 70s, with the rusty strip of blade-wire that you scroll across the face of the razor like a cloth towel machine in a men's room. Oh man are those the bomb! Now that's a razor worth spending all night on eBay scoring!).

I just flew back from Tokyo and boy, is my shaving arm tired.

To be honest, I was kind of hoping I'd run into some Feather products while I was overseas, as the Osaka-based Feather company makes the most scary-sharp DE and disposable straight razor blades I've tried, as well as the super-cool Feather Artist Club disposable-blade straight razors. Ray DuPont at Classic Shaving is the only source in the US for these products, but I figured hey, I bet you can buy Feathers at every noodle shop on every corner in Japan.

That's the shavegeek story, anyway -- that Feather, this huge "Gillette of the Mysterious East" behemoth, is as popular/mundane/ubiquitious in Japan as Gillette is here. But like most shavegeek dogma that began as a a speculative comment on one of the forums by a guy whose sum total knowledge of Japan is the Transformer action figure he sleeps with at night, I learned that it's just not so.

Being so not a shavegeek myself, of course I ducked into every single drugstore and shopping center we passed in a week's worth of strolling Chiba, Tokyo, and the well-to-do Roppongi area. Of the dozens of shops I checked out, only one had any Feather products, and that was a drugstore in downtown Tokyo that just had one of the cheap, plastic DE silo razors and a few packs of the stainless (not platinum) DE blades -- not exactly the cream of Feather's crop.

The shaving culture in Japan seems no different than in the US, for the most part. Multi-blade cartridges and disposable razors dominate, as do foams and gels. The only time I ever saw the good stuff was in the hotel lobby shop at the Grand Hyatt in Roppongi, which sold -- ta daaaa -- Art of Shaving brushes and creams. Halfway around the world and the best I could find was AOS. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But I can pick that up a mile from my driveway.

One thing I did do on this trip was catch a shave from Merkur's little travel DE razor, which I haven't used in well over a year. I packed it and a pack of Merkur DE blades in my carry-on along with a tube of Taylor's lavender shaving cream and a little travel bottle of Trumper's Lime Skin Food. Took up next to no space in my bag, and a half-hour before we landed in Tokyo after a 14 hour flight, I snuck into the bathroom for a quickie.

Even without a brush, the Taylor lathered up in my hands pretty impressively, and I got a fine, lubricating lather. I have to say, that little Merkur travel razor really kicks ass for a DE. I forgot how nice this little guy is. It gave me an excellent shave in no time, and I felt and looked a lot more human after the 14 hour flight. Amazing, the psychological effect of a fresh shave.