In the winter time, our off-season for shows, I grow a beard.
No one is happy about it at my house, but I get tired of shaving (which involves having to sculpt my psychobilly side chops, which I am constantly messing up and making uneven and the most inappropriate times), and it gets cold. I don't like being cold.
When I was younger and rode motorcycles all the time, I tended to grow a beard in the winter, then shave every summer. Again - cause it is cold. I used to get crap at this one place I worked because they felt the beard to be unprofessional. Like my hair braided down to my waist fit in with their office culture (NOT!).
I am lucky - I can grow a pretty impressive beard in a very short amount of time. So traditionally, I stop shaving in November, and by December I look pretty burly. Usually, then, I have to shave in January when shows start up again.
Not this year, though.
This year, I opted to keep the beard a while longer. After all, it was terribly cold this winter!! Sub-zero weather made the thought of shaving unbearable. So I didn't.
While my daughter does like me having a beard, her mother does not. The complaints began while my chin was scruffy & scratchy, continuing as my upper lip disappeared under a thick mustache, and continued as I took a straighter to my beard to make it "stretch" as long as possible.
When I was not combing it the wrong way.
Or making it do funny things.
Or taking pics of myself in the Cracker Barrel bathroom. Like a nutjob.
There are other NSFW photos of me and my beard... I'm saving them for TMZ.
So though I was having fun with it, and liked the way it looked, my girl was decidedly not enjoying it. And while she said that it was up to me what I wanted to do --
Well, that coupled with the fact that my beard was also a huge fire risk for me at every show (though I did get stellar advice from fellow performer Tyler Fyre how to treat it to keep it from burning, which totally worked for the shows I did with the beard) -- on the first day of spring, I decided it was time to shave.
So I invited my girl to help me out - and we shaved away! Here are some highlights:
