Moustache & Blade Podcast – Episode 16: Interview with Charles Roberts

I believe that this is the first ‘podcast’ I’ve ever listened to. Yeah I’m a bit of a dinosaur in some ways. ; ]

This was thoroughly enjoyable! I’ve never been much of a ‘joiner’, so the sweat lodge talk appealed to me primarily on its technical merits. Ha!

Lynn’s talk was interesting, but not particularly revelatory, because I’ve been intently roaming the Internet stacks for information as a newcomer to the culture of traditional shaving. Straight-edge will made its presence known at some point, I’m sure, but scrape-downs with vintage Gillettes is my focus for now.

Accordingly, Matt Pisarcik’s call-in Q&A was fun. I’ve enjoyed Matt’s friendly correspondence a couple of times through e-mails. Nice guy, and razor Emporium’s site is great. What a collection, too!

I now understand the ‘love him or hate him’ caveat which Douglas, I believe it was, presented before playing the interview with Charles Roberts. ; ] On a most positive note, it was very entertaining how this went into geek overdrive! I think it was around the 50-minute mark where the interview assumed the vibe of being a blend between a TEDx Talk at M.I.T. and a nerd herd Dungeons and Dragons ‘what if’ fantasy session. I was smiling.

I shouldn’t sow any bad seeds… but I can’t help myself with this. My only negative thought here goes back to Charles. Nice enough guy, but in true geek fashion, far too serious and self-important. At one point he even mentions his own thought from years ago, which I’m paraphrasing as “It’s about cutting hair, how difficult can it be?” That’s basically how I feel about the matter. Now, with THAT statement, anyone who was thinking of stoning me is surely at full arm extension.

Let me clarify: I went to http://www.hydrolast.com, read everything, or so I believe, and watched every video there. I can see where Charles probably had a successful sales-based career prior to his ‘invention’ of the ‘water-based’ maxillofacial epidermal depilatory technique. For the less verbose out there, I’m busting his balls for claiming to have invented ‘wetshaving’ — get more stones to hurl, because I detest that pretentious, obvious-sounding term, too: it’s f*ckin’ SHAVING! Plus, I think that Gillette’s own unfettered braggadocio for the 90 or so years prior to Charles’ appearance on — or invention of, depending on who you ask — the DE shaving scene rather effectively suggests that men were getting at least acceptable shaves, if not exceptional ‘gloss’ ‘reductions’ for decades. Gillette sold over 4 million razors in 1921.

Charles is a bit arrogant, but tolerably so. I could hang out with him. Still, listen to his dismissive tone when he addresses the thought of accommodating moustachioed fellows in a special category for the still hypothetical ‘Shave Off, 2014’.

I liked his videos. The product demonstrations were very compelling. I would like to give his PRODUCT system a go. I guess this is where I drop the bomb that’s been ticking in my hands. Watch the guy shave. I don’t doubt his claims in this podcast that he’s the fastest gun in the Wet ‘n Wild West. I honestly began to feel as if I were back in school, watching that one ‘look at me!’ kid that everyone had to suffer at some point. His actual SHAVE system I’ll TRY, but if his product is as good as he claims it is– and indeed the stuff looks worthy of even his own accolades — my mediocre technique is probably fine.

LISTEN to the video of him shaving. I hear him hitting bristle all the way through the shave, and he even unapologetically says that you can come back for touch-ups which an exalted ‘system’, in my opinion, should make unnecessary. I’m on the fence as to whether I like or detest something he inarguably did invent: unnecessary new terminology. Forms. Quadrants. There is no ‘North/South axis’. It’s ‘The Science Of Shaving’. He throws out a couple more for you to chew on, too, but I’ll let you discover them on your own if you haven’t yet seen the videos.

MY bottom line where shave-guru Charles Roberts and his ‘invention’ are concerned is that every face is different. Right in the podcast he says that every beard changes in its own growth hourly so that there isn’t a true ‘pattern’. I need a shave so I’m going to take a swipe at Charles’s ‘Forms’. I need a semi-scientific approach to see if I can truly train my manly muff to grow as commanded so that Method Shaving gives me the ‘gloss’ I so like to show off when cruising the supermarket for produce and p*ssy. Ha! Did my own edits, by the way, out of respect for Douglas and my privilege of access to his site. ; ]

I was ready to champion Charles after the podcast, but after watching his own videos the proof is going to be in the mix. Honestly, I’m smellin’ just a little somethin’at this point, and it ain’t Hydrolast® product. Watch his shaving demonstration. Granted, he’s performing for the camera, but after all that furious autistic clawing, there SHOULDN’T be as much as a single stub sticking even a micron above his skin, technique aside! I haven’t made that many passes at the girl I’ve been trying to get to go out with me for the last seven years. Ha! Shave time!

I inattentively made a few grammatical and typographical errors in my above comment, but unless someone sees fit to make mention of them, I’ll let sleeping dogs lie. ; ]