DOWN WITH PANTS!

Part 1: I have been growing my beard since early November now. Three and a half full months of growth have gone by and I am very surprised at the success that I have had growing it. My family has never been known for their great beards despite the fact that my dad has almost always tried to wear one and my previous attempts at mountain man-dom never came together. So this big bush on my face was sort of unexpected and turned out to be pretty cool.

But every good thing must come to an end and I feel like it's finally time to go back to my old, goateed self. But since I have a full face of hair for the first time in my life, I should experiment a little, have some fun, maybe come up with a new look.

The first thing to go is the mustache. I hate mustaches, I grew one last year and after seeing pictures of myself with it, I swear I will never grow one again on it's own. Plus, I really like the area above my upper lip. It sounds silly, but I think it is one of my best facial features. The results of taking off the mustache are predictably very Amish. Feel free to call me Jebediah, I suddenly feel like building a barn.

The Amish look definitely wasn't going to work for me, my hair isn't nearly gray enough yet. But my next move I had to debate about, should I go for mutton chops or try something a little more stylish? I decided to split the difference and go with the greaser sideburns, and thanks to my really bad hat hair, I think that I am pulling it off pretty well. It looks almost too good, could this be a new look for me? If I trim up that chin, I might have something going.

But before I could do the other side and see if this might be a good look for me, disaster hit. Well, not so much disaster as just an irritating delay. My razor ran out of batteries and now I'm having to charge the darn thing up. So as I sit here typing, one half of my face is greaser and the other half is still fully Amish.

So I think I will make some dinner (I sure as hell ain't going anywhere to get some) and let my razor charge itself up and I will be back a little later with Part 2 of Brandon Shaves!

Part 2: Finally, after a couple of hours of charging, my crummy razor has enough juice to continue on this amazing journey of shaving and discovery. The more I thought about the greaser look, the more I liked it, so I got rid of the remaining Amish, got out the guard and trimmed the the chin down and thought that maybe, just maybe, I had something going here.

Then I turned my head and realized that yes, from the side it looked pretty darn good, but from the front, not so much. My head was severely lopsided from straight on. Somehow one side was much bushier than the other and the tips of the sideburns didn't even come close to ending on the same plane.

Now this is always where I go wrong when I'm experimentally shaving. I try to get one side to match the other side, but then I go too far with one side so I have to trim up the other side and invariably, I mess that side up and have to go back to the other side and trim it until I get sick of this back and forth and lose my patience and just say "fuck it" and end up with 90210 sideburns.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I've been sporting the 90210 since, well, since 90210 was big. But it does make me curious, what is the status of the sideburn? Is it still popular to wear them long? I've been wearing mine ear length for so many years now that I have lost touch with what's popular. Is the younger generation wearing theirs long anymore or have I become a dinosaur?

Wait. Don't answer that. I know that at age 29 I'm already a dinosaur, and it doesn't bother me. I'm looking forward to being a crotchety old man. But at least after a quick shave of three months worth of beard I no longer look like a dinosaur. In fact, clean cut, I look ten years younger. I look like the young, dorky, hairy chested, big foreheaded man that I am proud to be today.

That being said, my face sure is cold. Godammit anyway!