Will Ferrell's world of facial hair

The utterly preposterous bleach-beard goatee, as worn in Zoolander

Bill Simmons list of the most underrated things about Anchorman includes:
"Burgundy's fake mustache. It's just a little off -- like maybe 1/10th tilted, like they spent an entire day in the makeup room tinkering with it before deciding, "All right, we got it, that's sufficiently ridiculous!""

The audacity! The cockiness! The unrestrained sex-appeal of the Ricky Bobby flavor-saver and sideburns.

A professorial beard, the better for making sweet love to Rachel Dratch, his lovah.

In the exalted history of impersonation facial hair, this beautiful offering comes the closest to revealing to all of humanity exactly what God must have seen on the seventh day of creation, when he looked down and saw that it was good. Will Ferrell you are a DELIGHT!! ... What is your favorite curse word?

I'm standing here, staring at Bruce Dickinson! (The cock of the walk, baby!) And if Bruce Dickinson wants more cowbell, we should probably give him more cowbell! And, Bobby, you are right - I am being selfish. But the last time I checked, we don't have a whole lot of songs that feature the cowbell. (I gotta have more cowbell, baby!) ...and I'll be doing myself a disservice and every member in this band, if I don't perform the hell out of this. (Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription.. is more cowbell!) Thanks, Bruce. But I think, maybe if I just leave.. and, maybe I'll come back later, and we can lay down the cowbell.

beard powerhouses

Man Beard Blog has traditionally emphasized the bearding achievements of individuals, but today we'd like to pay tribute to the top 3 groups of people whose bearded accomplishments are worthy of special admiration.

1. The top spot on any list of group beardery has got to be the Amish. These guys are the total package: devout* bearding for life, their own unique beard style (no mustache!), and they made fine breads and cheeses for sale in local markets. They keep their women pregnant and in the kitchens, and if you need to do something manly like raise a barn on short notice, you'd be wise to call your bearded Amish friend.



2. Al-Qaeda dramatically crashed into the bearding scene in 2001 and they've been making noise ever since. Their lifelong commitment to beardhood is every bit as strong as the Amish, and they even have charismatic bearded leadership, in Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri (pictured at right), who have popularized Islamic beardedness like no others. They live in caves, which is manly as fuck, and let us not overlook their talent for putting women in their place (behind dark cloth from head to toe!). Their only weakness is that their young Man Beard prospects tend to have so much irrational exuberance that they sacrifice themselves before achieving mature beard excellence, so they have a depleted farm system of future Man Beards.

3. Those goofy guys with the long twirlies on the sides of their heads are the proud owners of The Chosen Beards. Hasidim have been growing beards since Moses used his beard to part the Red Sea. They could be higher on this list, except that they're always being persecuted because of their beards, which could be interpreted as a sign of weakness within the Man Beard community. Nevertheless, they've used the magical powers of their beards to endure for hundreds of generations.




*The astute reader will not be at all surprised that all of these groups are religious fundamentalists. Divinity is a well-known Man Beard trait; Man Beards manifesting this trait include Jesus, Charles Darwin, and Zeus. Fundamentalists are the most irrationally exuberant lovers and followers of deities, and killers of kings, and thus we would expect to find some powerhouses of bearding within the fundamentalist communities. Praise be to beard!

The Mini-Beard

In response to the assignment from MBB creator adspar, the following is the first in a series intended to provide an introduction into the world of facial hair.

The smallest form of a beard consists of only the hairs directly below the lower lip. In beardom, like in real estate, location is everything. This mini-beard must be below and adjacent to the lips, and not include the upper chin. It must also not extend horizontally more than half way to the edge of the mouth. When this style is worn, the hair should not be larger than the size of a quarter. The shape can vary, but must be geometric. The most popular polygons are the triangle (must be isosceles, but not necessarily equilateral) and the rectangle.

There are many widely accepted names for this beard-ito, with the three most popular being:

Soul patch – named because of its popularity with jazz artists in the middle of the 20th century

Stinger – this applies to triangularly shaped beards pointed down (as seen on WSOP winner Joseph Hachem)

Flavor saver – usually intended as an insult, implying that it will trap unwanted debris, like food

The mini-beard is not regarded highly by MBB. It is dark and mysterious, often giving a shady connotation. The root of this swarthiness lies in the mini-beard itself. Not everyone with facial hair is able to grow enough hair in the mini-beard region. Some highly regarded facial hair experts loathe mini-beards, as they feel that exploiting this ability is evil.

Not surprisingly, the mini-beard is most commonly used by individuals who hold themselves in high regard. More specifically, people who think they are better looking than they really are. It is important to understand that for this reason a mini-beard is not a man beard.

Let's get a few things straight

If you're new to this site, there's something you should know right up front. Man Beard Blog doesn't fuck around with any kind of blogging that isn't about Men, Beards, Man Beards, Beard Blogs, Man Blogs, or Man Beard Blogs. What else would you expect Man Beard Blog to blog about?

Women blog about fucking kitchens and their periods and how they don't have testicles. Don't expect that bullshit here. Man Beards put those bitches in their place, and Man Beard Blog documents it.

Queers blog about homo stuff like their new mustache and how much they love men and man genitals. Don't be coming here thinking you'll get any of that. Man Beards stomp them and Man Beard Blog glorifies it.

Poor people blog about how they don't have any money and how hungry they are. Go back to sleeping in the fucking gutter if you want a hot spoonful of that porridge. Man Beards amass great personal wealth by using their artistic creativity to inspire the penniless fools to make more of their pathetic lives. Then Man Beards eat the impoverished hearts out of their emaciated chests while Man Beard Blog cackles in glee!

Man Beard Blog blogs about piracy, a trait common to the fearsome Man Beards of the sea. YARR!!

Man Beard Blog documents the regicidal achievements of Man Beards, and then cheers their subsequent ascent to a status of eternal divinity. Praise their glory forever!

Man Beard Blog offers testicles, the swollen gonads common to the virile scrotums of many mammalian species. Suck them!

Man Beard: Charles Darwin

Of all the great historical scientific Man Beards, Charles Darwin is by far the one this post is about. Darwin is a prime exhibit of 3 primary Man Beard characteristics, any one of which by itself would have likely earned him Man Beard status:

1. Beards: Darwin is famous for his bushy Old Man Beard. Take a few minutes to gaze at the picture of Darwin. Drink in his flowing white evolutionary goodness; such bearded magesty should be savored.
   
2. Regicide: Darwin killed God with the release of his 1859 masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, which proposed evolution by common descent as the natural explanation of the diversity of life on earth. Since deicide is the ultimate form of regicide, Darwin's accomplishment ranks high among the all time Man Beard accomplishments.
3. Divinity: Darwin was the earthly founder and is the central character of worship of followers of Darwinism, a faith-based scientific religion to which most modern biologists adhere. They proclaim Darwin as their own personal god, who answers their theories with evolutionary fact.

Darwin might also have a claim to other Man Beard traits. It seems highly likely that Darwin also possessed testicles of unusual size, given that he fathered at least 10 legitimate children, though Man Beard Blog has been unable to obtain access to his autopsy report to validate this claim. It could also be argued that his theory of evolution is a manifesto of queer-stomping because it proves that queers are an evolutionary dead end. But many modern experts of evolution point out that the very existence of modern homosexuals disproves Darwin, so let's just avoid that subject. We're not here to trample the man's grave, we're here to celebrate his beard and his Man Beard induction!

Next assignment for the intern

What we're all about here is summed up in our simple equation:

MAN + BEARD + BLOG = MAN BEARD BLOG.

That's all there is to it. We're a simple site, in that our profound greatness grows out of a simple concept, like whiskers from a chin.

Up to this point, I've operated the blog with a preference for proclaiming the glory and exploring the nuance of the Man Beard. My equation has looked more like "Man Beard + Blog = Man Beard Blog." Man Beards are the most interesting kind of man, and they wear the most interesting beards, but in fairness, there's a whole world of beards out there, and not all of them are growing forth from the face of a Man Beard.

This is where Brian comes in. Brian, an established facial hair enthusiast, has been brought on board to help restore balance to the MAN BEARD BLOG equation, by blogging about beards.

So go forth, young intern, Brian the Bard of Beard, and regale us with tales of bearded glory, bearded woe, bearded love, and bearded heartbreak. Massage us with a mustache; goad us with a goatee; scorch us with sideburns; choke us with a chinstrap. Shave, scratch, prune, polish, wax, brush, comb and shampoo us all in a barber-ous fury of beard blogging!

Farewell to a Mighty Man Beard

While it is always a sad time here at MAN BEARD BLOG when the world loses a prominent Man Beard, we take some solace knowing that Saddam Hussein died in a Man Beard frenzy that will not soon be forgotten.

While weak-minded, smooth-faced, heavily-hyphenated cry-babies complain that the affair was not a "dignified passage to his end" and worry about petty details like execution not being "legal" under Iraqi law, MAN BEARD BLOG knows that this was the only way out for a Man Beard of Saddam's stature.

Just try to imagine the scene: dozens of screaming blood-thirsty Arabs, most of them likely adorned with thick black and grey beards, united in irrationally exuberant regicidal fervor. What more could a Man Beard want for his own hanging?

Saddam Hussein
Brutal Iraqi Dictator, Man Beard
1937 - 2006

In his final moments, Saddam asked "Is this how real men behave?" But I think he knew full well that his executioners were no mere men.

They were Man Beards.