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My face doesn't look like this today.

It looks a bit beat-up. Because it is a bit beat-up. I have red bumps on the base of my neck around my Adam's apple, and the surface of the skin under my chin is noticeably more rough and bruised than it's been since, oh, I first tried a Mach3 Power.

When will I ever learn?

Listen to me and listen good: I will never, ever buy Gillette's new mutli-blade shaving system unless two of the three Wee Scotsmen (more about this gang of shavegeek elites later) tells me it's the bomb first. Screw this Lewis and Clark shit. One shave with the new Fusion 5-blade razor on Friday and I'm still nursing my wounds on Monday.

Some say shaving with an old-school safety razor like a DE or an Injector treats your skin so nicely that it conditions it over time so it's less able to stand up to the kind of harsh, scraping shave a three, four, and (sigh, now a) five blade razor subjects your face to. Whether that's true or not, I can't say, but I do know I get beat up every time I try one of these @%#$ multi-blade razors now.

So today I took it easy on my face. Just a light shave, nothing too heavy, and certainly not the kind of tushy shave I usually aim for. Some Nancy Boy cream and a new Swedish blade in my 1940s Super Speed DE, and the lightest possible touch. Even half-trying, I got a better shave than I did with the Fusion.

I can already tell it's going to take a week for my face to heal from the Fusion tryout. I'd skip shaving till I heal but my beard isn't one of those cool beards that comes in looking chic and downtown. It looks like Emmitt Kelly Jr.

Meanwhile, I'm looking at this 1946 Gillette Super Speed DE I use every morning, next to the 2006 Gillette Fusion:



One was precision tooled of solid metal, still looks brand new, shaves like a dream SIXTY YEARS LATER. The other is made of plastic, and nobody will want one in a few years, when either of two scenarios plays out:

1. (less likely) The Fusion flops in the marketplace as men around the globe suddenly all get hit on the head with a Krazy Kat brick and come to their senses in time to figure out the Fusion's no better than the Mach3, and the less-fair sex has its own James Frey-style righteous indignation-a-thon, complete with the male Oprah (Jon Stewart?) leading the charge against Gillette's tearful execs, forcing them to admit on live TV that they made up all that stuff about spending tens of millions on R&D, and that they knew all along that it's been downhill ever since the Sensor Excel, but what the hell were they supposed to do, admit that they couldn't improve on a twin-blade system and simply continue to sell trillions of Sensor blades every year to satisfied users?

2. (more likely) The reason nobody wants a Fusion anymore is because the Fusion Nitro, Fusion Turbo, Fusion Aggro, Fusion Gummo, Fusion Eggo, and Powered Fusion Eggo, have superceded it.

Meanwhile, I have got to find out how the Asian Prince gets his hair to do that.