This problem is staring me straight in the face

       Yes, this issue is one of the first ones I deal with every morning: shaving. As I determined with failed beard experiments my senior year at Middlebury (shaving the night of the Ultimate Feast/Winter Carnival), during a mission trip to Mexico (that was hot) and about a year ago here in Las Vegas, my face was meant to be clean-shaven.

       The problem is, I'm self-taught. They don't allow surgeons to teach themselves, so why am I allowed to play with razor blades next to my face with no professional instruction. A mistake might happen!
        Okay, it did happen the other day. A nasty triple-slice right at the bottom of my face. The only good news here is that the chin-count was temporarily at one, because I don't think I could take three to the third power slices to my face-flesh.
       That picture was taken about 8pm, so about 12 hours after I shaved for the morning, perfectly summarizing the two things my father gave me in this area of life: a gene for scruff, and no training. My father, in fact, has a face that could strip paint off a car, or smooth a burr off a piece of broken metal. I also learned all of what I know about grooming from my father: just about nothing.

     Thanks to "Dad" (I put it in quotes because he often makes me feel like that title is more of an accusation than an honorific), the two most important names in my grooming regimen are "Speed Stick" and "Barbasol." Maybe Dad likes green? Of course, most of those articles you read in "Men's Magazines" (I only buy them at the airport) say you need a quality product. Once when I visited my brother in New York (actually, my connection from JFK to Rochester was canceled, and I was desperate, and he made me take a cab, and the driver ripped me off...), I forgot to bring shaving cream, so I used his mineral oil. My friend Rob in Fort Myers talked about how great it is to oil up and shave your head: I can't work that look either. And mineral oil just seems like something you use to clean up paint with. I suppose skull mineral oil must be different somehow.

     There's little point to using high-quality preparations with low quality gear. And my gear is the pedestrian "Mach3" by Gillette. Odd name, given that shaving is perhaps the one thing where you just don't want to push the sound barrier. Blades last me about two weeks, and the handle is something I've been with for a few years. Longer than I've been in Vegas. I think if you scrape through whatever that white crap is and reveal the silver/faux-chrome underneath and count the layers, you might be twisted. I mean, who does that? But it does bear the question: exactly what is that white stuff? I suppose you don't get that with fine oil.

So, lesson one: learn to shave like a better man.
A website called Health24 has what they call "Great Man Guides" (note to self: a better man comes up with original ideas), and one of them is about shaving. Here are their steps:

• Preparation. Wash your face. Exfoliate. (Note to self: google "exfoliate.") 
• Soften the beard - by holding a warm washcloth to the face. (Note to self: guess washcloths are not purely decorative. Add to shopping list. Bed Bath & Beyond, not Kroger.)
• Apply shaving cream. (Note to self: see, no mineral oil!)
• Shave from top of beard to top of jaw line in long even strokes.
• Shave below chin and neck from bottom upward, with the grain. (Note to self: maybe this is what they meant in Boy Scouts when they talked about "morning wood.")
• Pull your skin taught for a closer shave.
• Stop for a snack. (OK, I added this one, because there's way too many steps here.)
• Stretch your upper lip over your teeth and shave downward. (After trying this, I have to add "Avoid shaving your tongue at all costs. I'll spare you the photo.)
• Rinse your razor after each stroke to keep it clean. (Seriously, this one should have come much earlier in the list. At least before the snack break.)
• Wash off excess shaving cream. Look for areas you missed. Wet your razor before shaving.
• Use a toner rather than an alcohol-based aftershave. (Now seriously, I thought aftershave was just something that got passed from man to man at Christmas time, sort of like a fruitcake for dudes.) Apply moisturizer; do not tell a soul that you use moisturizer.
• Apply squares of toilet paper as needed. 

Trusted advice

 
      "Walk with wise men, and thou shalt be wise." Proverbs 13:20

       My friend sent me this email response to my blog. I'm sure he intended the comment to be between us, but this effort is partly about helping others to be better men too, I'm going to share his advice, if not his name.

IMHO when it comes to dating: quantity, not quality is important at the outset.

You have to get rejected like 10 times for each acceptance, and then out of those acceptances maybe 1 in 5 will be someone you can actually stand to be around for more than a few days.

Getting rejected daily paradoxically builds self-confidence. After a while, I stopped caring about whether they said no. Their loss, really.

And if you want a bad-ass workout, look up your local Crossfit. Those people are insane. My cousin lost 60 pounds doing crossfit.

I'm not sure about Crossfit. I'm thinking I should attempt free fitness before I start paying for something. As for the math of dating: I taught myself Calculus, I should have been able to figure this out.

Thank you to my supporters

Well, my friends voiced their support for my mission on my Facebook page.

 It appears I may add "find better friends" to my list of ways to be a better man.

How I'm going to work on "How to Be a Better Man."

I've been inspired. Or, I'm sick of being this way. Which one, I'm not sure.

       I just got out of the new movie The Social Network, and it kinda felt like a slap in the face: this little asshole dweeb is a billionaire; what have you done with your life, Wiener? (Wiener not being an insult here, but being my surname.) But the most impactfull moments were the blistering opening scene, and the ending: it was all about trying to connect with one woman.

       I've been to eleven weddings this month. One for a woman I briefly had an unrequited crush on, that made me consider re-enacting the final scenes from The Graduate. Thankfully, courtesy and common sense won out on that. The other ten were this morning at church, when we had a mass wedding on 10/10/10. Weddings make me depressed, and a bit lonely. Even the ones where I'm not thinking about going all Ben Braddock.

       After the wedding earlier this month, I decided I would do something about it. I decided I would ask out my current unrequited crush. (You see, that's how I am: while others move on from relationship to relationship, I move from unrequited crush to unrequited crush. Less emotional effort, less expense, less everything really. Mostly, less risk and less satisfaction.) I would talk to her at my first opportunity.
And that opportunity came and went, and I found out she already had weekend plans, and I accepted that as a sign that it wasn't the right time.
And then I saw The Social Network. And I saw me. Not me exactly, but a peer. A whip-smart kid just hoping to make a connection with one person. And it didn't happen. But along the way, he realized that everyone else is just trying to make that one connection. And that was the big idea. The whole movie is about whether or not it was his big idea, but that's almost irrelevant. He did the work, so it's his.

       And that's where we're different. I haven't put in the work. I'm lazy. I've always believed that it's better to work smarter rather than work harder. The problem is that the world is full of people who are working both harder and smarter, and I'm being left behind. When I look at myself and I don't like what I see, it's because I haven't put in the work. My out of shape physique, my clothing, my haircut, my grooming, my manners, my charm, my car, my living situation, my financial situation, my career, my social life, my lack of any romantic relationship, my family life, my relationship with God: I need to try harder. And smarter.

       I need to be a better man. And beyond "doing the work" and "being smart about it," I'm not really sure what steps to take. So I'm going to work on that. But I'll need help. I figure that I'm not the only one out there hoping to be better, and I know that people out there will have the knowledge I need. So I'm asking for help. Send it to me, and I'll share it with the little corner of the world that reads this blog.