I have some shaving fails to report.
I've usually got some facial hair such as a goatee or a fuller beard. So that means there are some areas that need trimming, some that need edging and some that need shaving. A few years ago, I had settled on using a Conair plug-in electric trimmer with interchangeable guards for trimming to different lengths and edging, and an electric shaver for shaving.
That's a lot of gear, so when I went on a month-long oversees trip and had to live out of a very small backpack, I started looking for something very compact and able to function where the electrical system would be different. I got a Gillette Pro-Glide Styler. It's a small electric trimmer that uses AA batteries. It has different size guards for trimming. And it also has an attachment so that you can attach a 5-blade disposable cartridge to it, and the trimmer acts as the handle. I figured that would work great for the trip, plus maybe I would be able to shave my facial hair into an elaborately detailed sculpture of self expression like Snoop Dog and Adrian Brody were sporting in the commercials. Well, it did work well for the trip, but I was not able to achieve Adrian Brody-level results. The real problem with this styler is that it is made of cheap parts that cannot be replaced separately. So even though the trimmer still works, the cheap guards have all broken, which means if I want to get a replacement part that probably costs a penny to make, I would need to buy the whole package again for 30 bucks!
So I went back to the Conair for trimming. Well, one day I was trimming with the Conair, and the guard popped right off while was running it through my beard, and it gouged a huge chunk right out of the middle of my goatee! Aaaaaargh! Piece of junk! I had to go fully clean shaven, which I had not done since before being married. My wife was very wary of me for a few days, like I was a stranger living in the house! I kept it that way for awhile, but my face looks better with at least some amount of beard.
The Conair was shot, so I went and bought a Wahl trimmer that had interchangeable heads and guards. This thing has a small trimmer for beard trimming and edging. And it has a small foil shaver head for shaving the exposed skin. It even has a narrow trimmer head for getting the hairs that have migrated from my hairline and taken up residence inside my nose and ears. It is working OK for trimming, but the shaver is really not very good, and the whole thing seems cheap and like it is going to break before long.
Anyway, when I got Wahl, I started to let my beard grow out again, and my wife suggested I keep it to a much shorter length, not exactly stubble but very close. She told me that I should go for a style similar to one that Bradley Cooper had at one point. You know what Michelangelo said about sculpture? He said he did not create the sculpture --- the sculpture already exists inside the stone, and he just chiseled away everything that was NOT the sculpture. So I let my beard grow out with the idea that later I would shave away everything that was not Bradley Cooper. So far I have not been able to reveal my inner Bradley Cooper, but it's probably just because I haven't got the right shaving equipment yet.
