Now it may not seem like much to y’all beardless people – but it’s a wonderful feeling to have wind blow through my beard. I suppose I would describe it as how it feels when wind blows through your head hair, but instead with your face hair.

Simply put, it’s awesome and just another reason that having a beard is awesome. Also note how God’s beard is blowing in the wind in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Metronomy – She Wants lyrics

She sleeps so soft
So soft I tread
Arranging papers around the bed
And if she’s dreaming deep tonight
I lie with her by reading light
A glass of water by her side
And gone are hopes of getting tired

(Chorus)

I call the shots
Till you wake up
Count every second on every clock
It’s getting late, *yeah* that i know
The hours come, the hours go

Those twitching legs
And twitching arms
And there you’re lying, your make-up on
And Girl if you’re dreaming deep tonight
I’ll lie with you by reading light
A glass of water by your side
And gone are hopes are getting tired

(Chorus)

I call the shots
Till you wake up
Count every second, on every clock
It’s getting late, *yeah* that I know
The hours come, the hours go

I call the shots
Till you wake up
Count every second, on every clock
It’s getting late, and that I know
The hours come,

The hours come (x9)

Here are the links to view the portraits done by Travis Haight (must have a Facebook account).

Photo Gallery #1
Photo Gallery #2

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Holy fucking shit! This weekend of competitive bearding was absolutely incredible. Why I haven’t been going to these events all my life is an absolute mystery. I can only describe the 2012 West Coast Beard and Mustache Championship as epic. The people, the beards, the venue, the city were all incredible.

I don’t know what all competitions are like as I have only attended this one in Portland, but even if they are only a tenth as good as this event they are awesome. For those that haven’t been following this blog, I covered a bit about the Championship here and here.

My wife and I, along with our friends Justin and Jennie headed down to Portland Friday afternoon. We battled through rain, freezing rain, slick roads, snow, road closures, and overturned trucks to get down to Portland. We arrived at the Mark Spencer Hotel at 1am and with a second wind hit the streets for an introductory night out. The Mark Spencer Hotel is right in the heart of the area and it is within walking distance to the Crystal Ballroom, several bars and restaurants, and great shopping.

We started off at the gay bar Scandals not knowing it was a gay bar (my friend thought it was Sandals). After learning it was a gay bar we decided to stick around because the crowd was friendly, staff was nice, and it was pretty chill there. We stayed there until the bar closed which was 2am and then looked for some midnight munchies. We headed next door to The Roxy, but the staff was dickish so we just decided to go to bed.

The Day of the Competition

Saturday was when all the fun began. It started off by grabbing breakfast in the hotel and seeing Aarne Bielefeldt there with his wife Rita. Turns out a bunch of cast members from the show Whisker Wars were staying in the Mark Spencer and the crew was in our hotel filming Aarne get ready for the competition. After breakfast we did a bit of shopping and lunch, then we decided to head back to the room and get suited up.

I decided on wearing my Hugo Boss suit with my new pink tie that the wife got me for Christmas. I had a cool multicolored set of socks that matched the suit. Well, when you rush out to embark on a 7 hour trip you tend to forget things – and I left my suit packed up at home. Fuck. Oh well, I guess the casual strategy with an ironic tie is now the way to go.

After “getting ready” we head to the elevator to embark our short journey to the event. When the elevator opens Austinite Allen Demling is standing and heading over to the event as well. On our walk over to the Crystal Ballroom we chat a bit about Austin, politics, and beard strategy. Allen is a super nice guy – actually all the bearded competitors I ran into were super awesome.

Once arriving at the event, I was in a bearded heaven. Having facial hair was the new normal, and anyone who was child-faced stood out like a sore thumb. It was also confirmed when I arrived that I had absolutely no shot at winning anything. These beards are some of the best beards in America. Guys with 5 month beards were making my 8 month beard look like child’s play.

I headed up to the contestants room with my wife and was pleased that it included a bar with a fine beverage selection. After grabbing a beer I started chatting with many of the other contestants. Many were from Portland, but some came from as far away as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and of course Texas. They came from all walks of life, including engineers, acoustics, film makers, researchers, medical, creative and even a student studying to become and ordained minister. The costumes went from the mundane (like mine) to comical (like the gnome or retro body builder). Bearded photographer Travis Haight had a small little studio setup to take photos of the contestants and non-bearded photographer Sol Neelman was there doing a piece for Wired magazine for “weird sports.” Sol also took the above photo and is kind enough to let me use it for this article. Please check out his website.

The Runway

After a few delays, a few beers, my heat was up – actually I was part of the first heat. They herded us competitors and lined us up for our beard performance. My category was the largest category and had 43 of the 160+ competitors. Since my beard was weaker than most of the other guys I decided to focus on an over-the-top show and tried to draw the judges attention to my better than average mustache.

When my number was called I strutted onto stage did a bit of dancing to watch a crowd quickly grow quiet after not being awed by my beard. Lest we not fear, my pump-up-the-crowd arm waving strategy got them back to cheering! I then walked over to the judges table – pointed at my kick ass stache and moved back to the line.

After our group went all the way through we went back down to hang out with the other competitors. There were about 10 – 15 different categories and really some kick ass beards. I could try to describe them, but photos will do the best. My friend, Justin, took quite a few photos and after he processes those we will upload them to the website to share with the world.

My category was narrowed down to the top 10 beards out of the 44 and I wasn’t even top 25%! That’s how great these beards were, or maybe I just had a really bad strategy – damn me forgetting my suit. While being tall is an advantage in a lot of competitive sports, I think the short beardsman has a distinctive advantage. The same length beard will look a lot better on a shorter man than it will a 6’5″ guy. I suppose I will need to grow the beard to 3′. At my current rate that will probably be another 5 years. You other bearded guys better keep an eye out for me in 2017.

I can confidently say that bearded competitors are far superior human beings. Between the diversity of backgrounds, acceptance of others, and good nature personalities there is not much to dislike of bearded men. I encourage any bearded guy or girl out there to find the closest beard competition and enter it. For small amount of money you can have the time of your life.

Be sure to come back over the coming days and see our photos from the event. Cheers and happy bearding!

I met this week with my buddy and Realtor Shane O’Neill (shameless plug as I built his website) and we were talking about what should be the strategy. Our conversation was regarding my outfit more than any type of beard styling. We came up with some great ideas but with the short timeframe many of them weren’t possible. Some of the ideas were to be a vintage basketball player (my favorite), a civil war solider,  or an Irishman (I might be too tall for that). Ultimately, I think I’ll just pack away one of my suits and dress to impress.

On the beard front I’ve been doing a few things to make sure I present the best facial follicles possible. I’ve  continued my regime of biotin (5000mg/day) and fish oil (2000mg/day). In addition to that I’ve added weight lifting to help with testosterone production and general overall health. Finally, I’ve been conditioning it on a daily basis when I take a shower. The past couple of days I’ve also avoided blow drying or shampooing to keep it in top notch shape. I haven’t been putting leave in conditioner or applying jojoba oil which I have heard is quite helpful.

I entered into the full natural beard under a foot category so no wax is allowed. So looking at the photo above you may be asking why on earth am I styling the stache. Well the plan is to help the whisker hairs develop a type of hair memory and ultimately end with a nice curve when left to it’s own devices. I am not too experienced with wax so I have difficulty doing what I want it to do. I suppose the key with styling a mustache is the more product the better – however I’m not too crazy about having a stiff mustache.

I put a big gob of American Crew grooming cream on the edges to get it to stand straight up. It probably took me about 15 to 20 minutes of messing with it to get it to this shape. I would curl the stach with my finger then use a blow dryer to try to get it to hold in place. It was fairly awkward. That said, I think the stache would hold like that all day. However, we got a foot of snow yesterday in Spokane and when I went out to shovel the snowflakes quickly took the shape outta the stache.

I love competitive bearding and I’m excited about competing tomorrow. I’m hoping a lot of the big names will be there so I can finally meet them – Jack Passion, Kenny Burke, The Austin Beard Club, and of course Whisker Wars. If you are in or around Portland, please swing by the Crystal Ballroom at 2:30 and cheer for me when I get on stage.

Cheers, and happy bearding!

Even without SOPA the government has the power to seize and take down websites. See this site as an example. These situations lead to the website being taken offline before found guilty of any crime. The burden of proof has shifted from the prosecutor to the defendant and the defendant has to prove their innocence. Sadly, these websites are essentially doing the same thing as a bigger site (like Google) but don’t have the legal prowess to defend themselves. When their websites are taken down they lose cash flow and the ability to properly fight the battle.

Unfortunately, no one is fighting this current madness. These seizures happen every day to all types of people and all types of property. If you want to get angry, just read Reason.com for a couple of weeks to see how common this issue is. The government is seizing automobiles, property, cash, websites, and anything else they can get their hands on. But that’s another article all together.

The biggest success to the internet has been freedom from regulation and government involvement. That is why it has been able to grow by leaps and bounds and provide solutions to our lives that we would have never imagined 10 years ago. Something built in 2008 on the internet is already archaic. That’s only 4 years old!

What amazes me about the success of the internet, is that people want to regulate it and try to work around laws of supply and demand – that’s where Net Neutrality (should be called Internet Regulation) comes in.  Simply, the proponents behind Net Neutrality want to make internet access a right for all individuals and set the price to below market rates. They want unlimited supply at a fixed rate.

Like all goods and services, internet access is a scarce service. There is only so much bandwidth available and pricing is necessary to make sure demand meets supply. I go more into pricing structures as a regulator in this article: Why markets are better than policy. Another example of how the government cannot set prices without having unintended consequences is this video: Edgar the Exploiter.

So proponents of Net Neutrality think they can work around the laws of supply and demand by forcing companies to supply things below costs. This will only lead to a degradation of quality for internet access. Those with resources will be able to purchase quality services, while those with less resources will be stuck with shitty service.

In addition to that, you now have a government telling ISP’s what they must do, and how they are to do it. Any time you give the government an inch they will take a mile. Without doubt they will use this centralized power to declare a national emergency in which they will need to control the ISPs and subsequently the internet and flow of traffic. Anytime you get in bed with the government you are playing with fire.

So when you hear someone preaching on about how SOPA is bad for the internet, remind them that it’s bad because it’s government involvement and all government involvement with the internet should be thwarted – including Net Neutrality.

About a year ago a video called George Ought to Help came out and introduced viewers to the concept of a voluntary society. It showed us that force is currently all around us and money is taken from individuals by the threat of taking away their freedoms. Government can only operate by force – they cannot operate through voluntary actions. It’s a great video to watch if you have not seen it.

After the success of that first video, the community crowd-sourced a second flick called Edgar the Exploiter where they tackle the issue of minimum wage. The problem with debating most people about minimum wage is that they only see the first level of actions. IE, “Why can you be against minimum wage because people need more money.” Well, similar how printing money doesn’t create wealth, raising wages to some arbitrary number doesn’t improve situations without having unexpected side effects.

This video points out how owners of businesses will react toward legislation which effects their business. Deeper than this, companies will try to get the government to pass legislation that helps them and hurts their competitors.

For example, when they started going TSA crazy and banning all sorts of liquids how do you think they came to 3.2 ounces. I’m sure there was a producer of products that already made products at that size, whereas their competitors did 3.5 ounces. Things like this happen all the time along the beltway.

What I find is so funny is that the Amish are so well behaved that cutting a beard is probably their equivalent of a gang shooting. I’m sure the gossip of this event will travel on for generations within their community.

So an attack on a man’s beard is an attack on him and the perpetrator should be prosecuted. That being said, “hate crimes” are ridiculous. Whatever the motive for the crime doesn’t change the fact that a crime was committed. The government creating hate crimes only gives more grey laws for judges and police to take advantage of individuals.

But getting back to the Amish, did you know that they don’t have mustaches because they are pacifists and in their mind mustaches are worn by military leaders. They aren’t the first culture where beards are such an important status symbol  and throughout time the risk of losing your beard would keep you in line from doing bad things. Many religions still emphasize the importance of having a beard including Orthodox Jews, Sikh, and Christianity (although it seems it has fallen out of flavor).

Take a look at some of the photos of the accused and read the full article below.

Source: CBS News

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Gotta love this guys outlook on growing a beard. Clint Darden makes some very interesting points about dealing with a wife who is against growing a beard and he gets a nice gift from his neighbors in the middle of this quick video.

Clint has some good advice with beard maintenance – washing and conditioning. He’s obviously into lifting weights which is good for maximizing your growth potential. Finally, he strives to put a smile on and present a good image of bearded folk to kids and the public.

If your wife is a hater of your beard definitely watch this video and keep this strategy in your back pocket. Watch and enjoy.

When you include live animals, fire, and blatant disregard for high end computing machinery the only end result can be badass. This Rube Goldberg machine is one of the most fun I’ve watched in a while. Joseph Herscher put this together with music done by The Jew Brothers Band.