ON THE MANLY ART OF FACE-SCRAPING

Some of my earliest memories are of watching my Daddy shave with a double-edge safety razor. You remember the kind: a cylindrical handle attached to a head that held a double-edged razor blade. When the blade got dull - which it would after maybe two or three shaves - you would twist the little knob at the base of the handle and the head would open up so you could extract the old blade and drop in a new one.

Those were simpler times. Those old razors didn't give you too many good shaves before needing a new blade, and you had to be vigilant against nicks. Nevertheless, they beat the even older straight razors to hell and gone. Just ask anybody who has ever mastered the death-defying feat of shaving with a hollow-ground straight razor. Definitely not for sissies, that.

Razors were one of the first products to inculcate a sense of Brand-Name Loyalty in a typical Budding Adolescent. You were either a Gillette man or a Schick man...unless you were some kind of weirdo beatnik with the Personna or Wilkinson Sword blades.

Me, I’m a Gillette man like my Dad - have been for years. Schick, to me, is an Also-Ran, although I will admit that this mindset is probably due to the effect of relentless advertising more than anything else.

But I have to admit that those rat-bastards geniuses at the Big G do a great job of advancing Razor Technology.

I speak, of course, of the M³ Power razor, successor to the Mach 3 Turbo, the one that boasts the triple blade with lube strip, the one that vibrates when you push the Buzzy Button.

Expensive? Hell, yes. Gillette is the past master at the old “sell ’em a cheap razor and expensive blades” routine: low initial cost and high operating costs are their mantra. Kinda like your neighborhood Crack Dealer. With the M³, the low initial cost ain’t even that low...and the blades are downright dear, running close to two bucks a pop even at CostCo.

But damn, does that razor give a good shave. And I appreciate it: I, who develop two o’clock shadow.

And, according to the nefarious Bane, it has other uses. [His post made me laugh hard enough to piss blood. And had I written it, I can assure you that my own M³ Power would right now be residing somewhere in my Descending Colon, courtesy of the Flashing Fists o’ SWMBO.]

So what’s next in Razor Technology? If you look at Schick’s latest offering, the four-bladed Quattro, you’d think that the next step would be five blades. Hell, why not just have a fucking Big Flat Pad o’ Multiple Blades? How many blades can you cram in there before you make it impossible to shave without slicing off your nose?

So far, I’ve confined myself to a discussion of the razor itself: the hardware, if you will. The software (the Shaving Cream) is probably worthy of a separate post.

What are your Shaving Experiences?