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Slick lather at last! Slick lather at last! Thank God Almighty, slick lather at last!

A great man once said that. Me, this morning, when I finally got the kind of lube-happy goods I'd been led to believe this Latherking hot lather machine could deliver.

Turns out you do need to add some sort of slick-me-up to the tap water and shaving cream after all, despite what I've been told by a few professional barbers who swear by the Latherking. They told me all I had to do was add a couple of fingers of old-school shaving cream from a tub to 8 ounces of water, stir it till it dissolved, and then the Latherking would reward me with gobs of shaveworthy lather, as hot as the day is long.

But the lather I got with that simple recipe wasn't slick at all. I got lousy shaves that way. On a lube scale of 1 to 10, the lather scored a 3.

Smashing an Etch-a-Sketch open and smearing the aluminum powder on my face scores a 4.

So I took Paul Sanka's advice (PS is the guy I got the Latherking from) and added a tablespoon of Lucky Tiger Shaving Lotion to the mix I already had in the tank -- two fingers of Taylor's Shaving Shop cream and 8 ounces of water (full tank).

Sanka sent along a bottle of the Lucky Tiger when he sent me the Latherking, nice guy that he is. I ignored it, of course -- shaving lotion? What the hell? But Lucky Tiger's been around since the '30s, even if this lotion is a new product in their "New School Organics" (!) line, so I figured it was worth a shot.

Well. It worked like a charm. I'm not going to take back everything I said about the Latherking -- the "hot" lather only stays hot for 2 seconds once you smear it on your puss, so it should more truthfully be called a "momentarily hot lather machine" -- but I will say this: feed it what it needs and the Latherking can burp up some excellent, extremely slick lather. That's a fact. Water and cream alone won't do it. You need to add something else to the mix like this Lucky Tiger lotion. But when you do, you will get (fleetingly) hot lather that shaves very nearly as well as what you can get with a top-shelf cream and a brush.

This morning I just stumbled out of the shower, pressed the Latherking's button, smeared the lather on my face and went to town. This time, my 1940's Gillette Super Speed razor didn't skip and stutter on my skin at all -- it glided just as smoothly as it does when I lather with my Simpson Wee Scot brush. And the shave itself was excellent. No irritation, no problems, just the usual great Super Speed shave -- except I didn't use a brush, it took half the time, and I got to press a button and hear a motor whine, which is always nice.

Okay, so I got this thing to work well. Will I keep using it? Nope. I satisfied my curiosity about the Latherking, and now I can empty it, strip it down, clean it like new, and pack it up for the next wide-eyed shavegeek who's always wanted to play with one of these professional barbershop hot lather machines.

See, I like using a brush to much to give it up and switch over to the Latherking. I like what a good shaving brush does in terms of making great lather, but even more than that, I like the way it feels -- the way it wakes up my face, scrubs and exfoliates my skin, lifts my whiskers, and okay fine, looks cool sitting on the counter with a head full of lather. Casey Jones wins this round.

I'll tell you what, though. Next time I get a haircut or a barbershop shave, I'm going to ask what they feed their Latherking. If it's just cream and water, that lather's not touching my skin before they shave me. They better go fetch an Etch-a-Sketch.