Slowly Going Bald

Sis: mmm, food
me: what kind?
Sis: burger and fries
that i didn't pay for
me: nice
that's the best kind
next to burger and fries served to you by rachel mcadams holding a check for a billion dollars
Sis: true
me: while she's sitting on a unicorn
that's hovering
and shooting lasers from its eyes that burn your enemies but make you smarter and give you more hair
Sis: wow
me: ...anyway

First of all, Seth Rogen and Ed Helms were there, as was Jonah Hill. And I'm pretty sure I got a laugh out of Seth Rogen.

I'd seen ads for The Room around town: a billboard on Highland a while ago, and always the posters outside the Laemmle on Sunset (my default and favorite art-house theater in town). I even, I swear, saw a brief commercial for it one night on TV, but I really knew nothing about it. The friends I accompanied to the movie said that's the best way to approach the film: knowing as little as possible. And they were right.

The Room, briefly, is a film so genuinely awful that it's hilarious, and the unintentional humor is blown out exponentially when watching it in a theater full of people who've seen it before and are all shouting at the screen. The plot concerns a love triangle of sorts, and the whole thing (or most of it) unfolds in a tiny apartment dressed for Glamour Shots or straight-up porn. In fact, the first 15 minutes feel distinctly like a skin flick: The first few lines of dialogue between the male and female lead are along the lines of hi, how was your day, we need some alone time, etc., then the action fades to the bedroom. The sex scenes are laughably bizarre, with lots of long-stemmed red roses and strenous pelvic thrusting between the lead, writer-director-producer-star Tommy Wiseau as Johnny, and Johnny's fiancee Lisa (Juliette Danielle), who was surely cast out of her willingness to do topless scenes. The sex is horribly blocked: Johnny appears to alternately be humping the mattress, Lisa's hip, and her upper chest. And this happens several times.

But the joy of seeing The Room in a theater full of fans is getting caught up in the constant yelling at the screen. The audience chatter is ceaseless and falls into one of two categories: traditional jokes they people yell at certain scenes in every viewing, and the kind of spontaneous free-form riffing that's born on the spot. (It's like watching Rocky Horror, if Rocky Horror weren't like 19 hours long and kinda boring and worshipped by some fairly unstable people.) One of the traditional jokes involves shouting "Because you're a woman!" at the screen when Lisa's mom tells Lisa that she's incapable of supporting herself; another involves throwing spoons at the screen whenever a framed picture of a spoon appears on the table near the couch. Observe both:

Here's another clip featuring Wiseau. You may think the audio is out of sync because it's a YouTube clip, but you'd be mistaken. The ADR really is that bad on almost all of Wiseau's dialogue, which just makes is indeterminately European accent that much more entertaining:

The film's dramatic thrust, such as it is, comes from the triangle formed between Johnny, Lisa, and the bearded man in the previous clip. But that probably makes it sound like the film has an actual cohesive narrative flow, which is definitely not the case. For instance:

• Characters appear out of nowhere, never to be named, only to disappear later;

• The basic rules of lighting, camera work, focus, etc., are willfully ignored;

• Cutaway footage of the city at night is interspersed with a party scene, unintentionally conveying the passage of time and making the party appear to take place over something like six nights;

• Again, much humping of chests and hips.

And through it all, the constant yelling and laughing, even though the theater I saw it in was, sadly, only about three-fourths full. There was some brief speculation among people near me as to whether the experience would be different because Rogen and Helms were in the audience, since what would have just been a collection of bored semi-hipsters was now like some weird performance in front of some legitimately funny writer-performers, the men whose lines we quote. (Lord, beer me strength, indeed.) But they were quiet the whole time, content to laugh along with the crowd, which of course meant you were always aware when Rogen was laughing, because it sounds just like it does in the movies. I was happy to mostly ride along on the crowd jokes and screw around with my friends, though I did say some things that went over fairly well, my nerves aside (I explained away a character's apparent suicide by saying, "It's okay, he just has breast cancer," which believe it or not was a pretty contextually appropriate callback). But like I said, the fun of the thing is being there to hear the dozens and dozens of jokes that are passed down from screening to screening, and to hear people stand up and unleash something less well-known or even new (I have no idea if it was new or not, but a guy in front of me howled at the screen during a coffeeshop scene, "You turn around, extra, you f**king day player!" Brilliant.).

The movie was terrible, just absolutely abysmal, but I've spent all day wanting to see it again. It still plays the last Saturday of the month at midnight, though the crowds are thinning and Wiseau hasn't shown up for a pre-show Q&A in a few months. But the film's site is still up and running, so feel free to explore it. The film is too bizarre, too terrible, to be a hoax; if it were fake, it would be so genius as to make Andy Kaufman look like Carlos Mencia. No, the great thing about The Room is that it's real. And, oddly enough, the unsourced review blurbs pasted on some of the ads are truer than I ever would have believed: I've entered The Room, and my life is forever changed. Hi, doggy:

"Bjork is music for people who think they're supposed to like hip, trendy stuff but don't know the first thing about quality music."

Grindhouse

Perfect Stranger

Hot Fuzz

The TV Set

Next

It's almost time, Nic. Not yet, but soon. If you keep behaving like this, you will be forced to give back your Oscar. Just so you know.

Anyway: Clickety-click.

Counting with the Boss:

Conan and the masturbating bear:

I can't help but feel I should bring up a few points about spoofs and satires in the wake of the release of Hot Fuzz and the renewed interest in its predecessor, Shaun of the Dead. It wasn't until I read an interview with Simon Pegg in which he said that "the word spoof must never be applicable to what we do" that it even occurred to me that some people might consider the films to be spoofs. I need to actually repeat that, emphatically: That some people might classify these films as spoofs never occurred to me at all. Not once.

Why? Because a spoof is an extended joke, and often a weak one, at the expense of the original film or genre that came before it. Films like Airplane, Hot Shots, and the execrable Scary Movie series exemplify the form in that they are nothing more than 90-minute riffs on the respective films/scenes that inspired them, and often do nothing more than re-create specific moments from the earlier movies to get a laugh instead of actually creating a new joke. But Shaun/Fuzz are different precisely because while certain — in fact, many — moments are inspired by earlier films, the scenes also stand on their own in the new film. For instance, toward the end of Hot Fuzz, when Danny (Nick Frost) refuses to shoot a criminal he loves and instead fires his gun into the air while yelling, the setup is a direct nod to the sweaty Keanu-Swayze relationship in Point Break. Except the scene isn't completely a nod to the earlier film. Danny and Nick (Pegg) had already bonded while watching Point Break, so Danny's firing into the air wasn't a spoof of Point Break; it was a callback to the fact that Danny and Nick had watched the movie, and Danny had expressed his desire to actually live that scene. When Danny acts it out, it's a completely organic moment in the film.

That's the other way Edgar Wright's films aren't spoofs: They have plots. No one watching Airplane thinks the plane is actually going to crash, or that anyone will actually "die" within the film's constructed universe. That's part of what makes Scary Movie so pointless, in addition to its stupefying masturbatory humor. It's ostensibly a film about a killer, but no one viewing the film is ever in danger of believing that the characters are actually progressing through a connected series of events; it's just 90 minutes of bad puns and clunky restagings of real films. Nobody labeled Scream as a spoof, because it was a legitimate thriller that happily played with the genre conventions that had made its existence possible. Similarly, Shaun of the Dead is a top-notch zombie movie because it never for a moment pretends that the zombies aren't real; despite the loving humor injected throughout, the plot takes itself seriously. The characters' lives are threatened by their circumstances, and several good guys get hurt along the way. That sense of legitimacy, of reality, is what makes the film so entertaining: There's a chance that Shaun and Liz might not actually wind up together, which makes us care about them the way we could never care about one of the gruff caricatures in some low-level spoof. Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz wouldn't exist without their forebears, but they also don't need them to survive. They're great films in their own right, and that's something a spoof can never be.

I love me some Old 97's, and that includes frontman Rhett Miller's solo projects. This is a tune originally available on the bonus disc to the Old 97's album Satellite Rides, but Miller's solo version is just as good (if anything, it's a little tighter, since it cuts the "You've got the teeth of the hydra upon you" from the chorus and lets it breathe a little). Anyone looking to get into the Old 97's could do a lot worse than to pick up Satellite Rides and Too Far to Care. Anyway, here it is:

"Singular Girl," by Rhett Miller.

Which is the better film:

Die Hard 2 or Die Hard With a Vengeance?

I say it's Vengeance, though a couple coworkers disagree and side with Die Hard 2. (The first film is, unimpeachably, the best.)

5. The Castaways dominate the Others, only to turn on themselves a la Lord of the Flies. Sawyer kills Jack and takes Kate as his bride, but their inability to conceive drives them to despair, especially since Sawyer also killed Juliet (he had issues). Everyone eventually kills each other. Hurley feeds people for two weeks. Cut to black. Roll credits. Series ends.

4. A ship comes to the island one day, and the Castaways excitedly gather on the beach and thank their respective deities for the rescue, only to realize that the ship's crew is comprised entirely of damn dirty apes. They blew it up! Those maniacs! Damn them all to hell! Cut to black. Roll credits. Series ends.

3. Never one to shy away from introducing new characters from the nameless mass of extras who were in the crash, the showrunners cave to pressure and introduce an adorable set of 8-year-old twins in the fourth season who get into life-threatening situations each week but always learn a valuable moral lesson. Everyone lives happily ever after, but at this point, no one cares.

2. I don't know, the island explodes. Black, credits, etc.

1. There's some kind of apocalyptic battle between the Castaways, the Others, and the remnants of Dharma, and it ends with either another giant purple explosion or something else not yet revealed (e.g., somebody dicks around with the magic box that makes Locke's dad and the Staypuft Marshmallow Man appear whenever you want). Anyway, there are a lot of rapid edits and things happening off screen, and then everyone just kind of disappears. They're not there anymore. It's not like they vanish right in front of us; it's more of an in-the-corners kind of thing. Fade to 50 years later, some exploratory rig charting new shipping lanes comes across the island and discovers the scattered remnants of the brief society that's since vanished. They all scratch their heads and wonder aloud, "What happened here?" Cut to black. Roll credits. Series ends.

A solid movie. Of course, watching it in L.A. was bound to be a little weird, and it was, since the crowd (myself included) laughed at a few things that probably weren't meant to be outright punchlines, as when Chloe (Lucy Davis) laments to her husband, Richard (Ioan Gruffudd), that L.A. is a "horrible, horrible place." Hey, it's funny.

Anyway: Clickety-click.

I've also got an afternoon comment diversion going on, so be sure to chime in. Gracias.

Now, enjoy these clips from The TV Set:

On "Taxi Driver":

On suicide:

On "Slut Wars":

I know I'm not the only one who, when watching the "Left Behind" episode of "Lost" a few weeks ago, was waiting for Juliet and Kate to kiss or something. Granted, it was probably the fact that the sight of two women covered in mud and handcuffed to each other stoked the hormonal fires of which even I am eventually a slave, but still, I knew there was something there.

And there is. Check out the Gia clip and see for yourself:

Not like I actually expected Juliet to flirt her way out of danger with Kate. But man, that would have been nuts, you know?

The review: Clickety-click.

And in honor of the film, some Shaun of the Dead love:

On an album full of crunchy garage-fueled rock-pop, this track is the one that's a little different, a willowy, foot-tapping pop number with fantastic harmonies and great instrumentation. All of Costello Music is wonderful, a kind of fist-pumping, pub-crawling, ideal summer soundtrack; this is the song for the end of the night, when the bar's closed and you're driving around, not quite ready or willing to go home.

"Whistle for the Choir," by the Fratellis.

I don't know if it's the new site or the cologne, but I seem to be attracting all-new readers. Of course, they could be long-time lurkers who are just now deciding to comment, driven by boredom (I guess) to chime in, which is fine, too. Anyway, I just wanted to assemble a few links/shout-outs to those who are making their voices heard of late. If I omitted you, I still love you very much, I'm just lazy. I'll get around to it next time, I swear.

• I Love You in the Face

She's funny, she likes "Buffy," she reads Pajiba and Toothpaste for Dinner, and her stories about her ex made me laugh out loud. Seriously, that's not some kind of online hyperbole. I laughed out loud. Of course, all laughing is out loud. Anyway, this is a good blog.

• Litelysalted

You know about Litelysalted, right? Because you should. She shares my disdain for Jared Padalecki, though I think she actually kind of likes him, or at least his "work" on "Supernatural." My buddy Collins knew Jared growing up, and Jared used to follow him around at debate tournaments in junior high because he was a total dork. So, there's that. Yeah. Back on topic: It's a good blog.

• Bianca Reagan

I realize this is turning into a list of random women who have for some unknown and likely unknowable reason have started reading my blog, and I swear it didn't start out like that. I mean, it'd be weird if it was all guys, too, right? I figured it would be a balance. Bianca knows what she's talking about, though. So, go there.

• Hispanic! at the Disco

Hey, a dude! Manny lives in Santa Ana, which you might know as the town where Lupe lived and where Buster briefly lived, thinking it was Mexico. Manny earns my sympathy since he seems to be a cubicle farmer, too; doing data entry in the O.C. is bound to make you want to kill yourself. Also, I have no idea if he's actually Hispanic, but he's probably not the screaming baby in his profile pic, either. So ask him yourself. And read his blog.

• I told you about Josh, right? And Rozie? I know I told you about Mark.

That's all for now. I will keep you all duly posted if more people turn up.

Now go get your drink on.

UPDATE: See, I knew this would happen. I should never try to make lists late at night.

• Laugh It Up, Fuzzball

Tracy's blog title comes from one of the greatest movies of all time, so right away you know something good is in store. Plus there's the fact that she is (or appears to be) Texas-based but is one of the sane members of the tribe. And her birthday is the same as my roommate's. Why does that mean you should read her? Because, again with the funny and the smart. Also she called me a blog crush, which means I should totally slip her a blog note before blog study hall to see if she wants to go to blog prom. Unless she's blog dating someone, in which case I'll stay home alone and get blog drunk and blog weep a little.

• The first scene had some pretty deep geek resonance for Tim Minear fans: Nathan Fillion being interrogated by Richard Brooks. The final episode of Fillion's previous show, Minear and Joss Whedon's "Firefly," ended the same way. And the fact that Fillion's wife is played by Amy Acker, whose career was made on Minear's "Angel"? Come on. Just ... come on. How am I not gonna smile at that?

• The original draft of the pilot was reported to open with a lengthy, complex race scene, instead of dipping into the brief backstories of three of the leads. That would have undoubtedly been a more interesting approach, since (a) the juggling plotlines felt a little too much like every other pulp serial that's been airing the past couple years, and (b) the highway chase scenes were legitimately exciting, and very well choreographed.

• J.D. Pardo, who plays Sean, looks like a burn victim in a bad wig. It's bad enough that his "bad boy" half-brother, the ex-con who talks and acts like every bad gang stereotype in Hollywood, hasn't been summarily executed or at least run over by a rival car. But Pardo scares me. Kind of a lot.

• Some of the dialogue — more than some, to be honest — was pretty awful. Not that forgettable dialogue is lethal to a show; "Battlestar Galactica" is one of the smartest, most poignant, most politically relevant dramas on the air, but I can't remember more than a handful of memorable lines from three seasons of episodes, and most of them are from Apollo's heartfelt defense of forgiveness/atonement in this season's finale. Good characters and plotting can do wonders to overcome shabby dialogue. But "Drive" seems almost willfully committed to the kind of cheeseball lines you'd expect from a Fox show (see below), which is a shame, considering that Minear has written some damn fine TV: Aside from "Firefly," he wrote for the criminally underviewed "Wonderfalls," as well as some amazing "Angel" episodes. I'm willing (for now) to give Minear the benefit of the doubt and say that some of the clunkier lines came from co-writer Ben Queen. Some advice for Minear: Don't let Queen do the dialogue. Story help, yes. Talking, not so much.

• The show's premise — a group of disparate strangers plucked from their lives to compete in an illegal, underground, cross-country road race — is the kind of gloriously ludicrous plot that can really only shine on Fox. ABC's "Lost" can never escape the weight of its own supposed importance, which is one of the reasons it inspires so much love and furor among its most ardent fans and spawned more conspiracy theories and water-cooler hypotheses than "Twin Peaks." But while each episode of "Lost" has to "mean" something, Fox dramas require you to check at least 80% of your brain at the door and go along for the ride. This is why "24" is a success, despite its astounding disrespect for the laws of reality. (It's also why Fox viewers remain fascinated with overhyped pap like "House," which is the same damn episode, week in, week out. It's "Law & Order" with pretty people in white coats.) "Drive" features the kind of you-have-to-be-screwing-with-me setup that is only barely plausible, even for network TV, but that's what makes it so alluring. It's aware of its own preposterousness, right down to the fact that one of the characters makes a slightly cheesy speech to her dad about "blasting off into the unknown," only to lament how lame it sounded. "Drive" is serious about having a good time, and that's what makes it work as well as it does. As far as B-level thrillers go, it really could have been a lot worse.

1.) I was so bored that I could only pass the time by wondering if Halle Berry would get naked. Not that she hasn't been naked before, and not like I needed her to be naked to enjoy the movie. No, it was just so dull and annoying that the only way to kill the hours was to wonder if there'd be any skin. You know how Harold and Kumar suffer through The Gift just to see Katie Holmes topless? Like that.

2.) I also kept hoping Balki would show up. That would've helped. Speaking of:

Anyway, here's the review: Clickety-click.

"erect a penumbra"

I'm kicking off an all-new column over at Pajiba:

Jesus, Etc.

Go forth and read.

After a week off, the Music Video of the Week makes a triumphant return here at Slowly Going Bald. This week's clip is a little different than the alt-country I usually choose: It's a comedy song straight out of my freshman year of college. This song will always remind me of being 18, and stupid, and having far too much free time (we all napped regularly), and a dozen other things from school. Sing it loud, everyone:

"Toast," by Heywood Banks.

He's suggesting poll questions, for the love of Mike. That's pretty impressive for the noncorporeal spirit of a genocidal maniac. I fully expect Saddam Hussein to write a review of Mean Girls in the next month.

Dig the brand-spanking-new feature here at Slowly Going Bald: A randomly generated selection of quotes from some of my favorite movies, TV shows, and songs. It's over there on the right. There. No, down a little. There. It's called "The Lines." Right now it's only got around a dozen quotes, but rest assured, it'll get bigger.

And I did it all for you.

Well, after soliciting opinions on the old blog and the new one on just what form my facial hair should take, it's time to publish the results.

Two of you think I should go with no beard, and one opted for either the beard or going clean-shaven. (That was Tracy, who was also very hungry when she commented. I hope she found food.)

Six of you said I should go with a goatee, as it would most advantageously show off my hot dimples. I appreciate the compliment, and would like to share it with my father, who pointed out that dimples are hereditary. Thanks for that, pop; baldness is also hereditary, so I say it's a wash. But still, thanks.

An overwhelming majority of you — 18, all told — said I should go with some form of the beard, whether it was trimmed to be thin or grown out like Jeremiah Johnson or modified to show off the dimples. I'm happy to hear that, since I always liked my beard, but I wasn't sure if my enjoyment of it was the kind of thrill toddlers get when they first figure out how to pee in a toilet, i.e., the joy is in the accomplishment alone. But I thought it looked pretty good on me. What's more, my buddy Collins' mom said it looked good, and she's never lied to me and always let me stay over when Collins and I were growing up, so I think her motives were pure.

I'm going fairly clean-shaven right now, down to just the chin-goat, which Michelle compared to a part of the female anatomy (thanks again for that image), but soon enough my beard shall return in all its lustrous splendor. And not just because I want it, but because you, the bored-enough-to-comment masses, have demanded it.

Thanks for your time.

• "Behind the Music." Was this show ever not entertaining? The narrator infused an insane melodrama into the ins and outs of rock-star hedonism that made you care every time, whether it was about Slash going through bottles of Jack like they were Dasani or the totally awesome edit they had to do after one half of Milli Vanilli died. Seriously, that episode was already depressing, but when they re-cut it after Vanilli (I think) died, it took on stunning new levels of pathetic brilliance. The one where Leif Garrett apologizes to the friend he paralyzed? The one where David Cassidy talked about laying all those fans? Come on. That show needs to come back in a big way.

• "Pop-Up Video." This show was right in line with VH1's programming strategy in the late '90s: completely inoffensive mainstream videos and specials aimed at people who just didn't feel like keeping up with MTV. (Though MTV was having a bit of a golden age back then, too; "Road Rules," we hardly knew ye.) VH1 as a network was some kind of emotional representation of what would happen if Matchbox 20 suddenly became their own music channel, and "Pop-Up Video" had the kind of hamrless clips like the songs you still hear on the radio at the cafe in your office building: "Stay" particularly sticks in my mind. The show was endlessly watchable, and you always learned a little something, even/especially if it was pointless.

The network now seems hell-bent on capturing a truly horrible demographic, namely, the kind of people who think "Flavor of Love" is good TV. But if VH1 would just stop producing snark-filled talking-head shows and godawful reality programming, they could get back to doing what they did best: Churning out innocuous fluff.

• RozieD has a new blog.

• Mark Wiebe also has a blog. I'm not sure if I knew about it before, but trust me, you should all check it out. It will make you smarter, plus there's the added benefit that Mark is trained in some kind of unholy style of physical combat that measures progress not by belts but by how many men you have killed in the heat of battle. It's true. I swear. (Not coincidentally, his wife has a blog, too, and she was nice enough to help me move into my dorm when I was a freshman, me sweatily barging through the door of what I thought would be an empty room only to find a pair of grinning women in there in what had to be the most jarring but impressive housewarming gift an 18-year-old could hope for. Thanks again for that. And also for carrying all the heavy stuff.)

• This is how I know I'm a tremendous geek: I really enjoyed this.

• You've been Bamboozled:

Just a couple quick notes:

I did, indeed, notice that McGraw was Dakota's father. But you can't mention everything.

Speaking of mentioning plot points, though: Every movie review has to discuss the plot in some detail, and a film like this, in which we as critics try to bring some knowledge to the table when examining such potent filmmakers, is going to require a kind of plot-analysis-repeat kind of formula. Or anyway, that's what we favored this go-round. So if you don't want to know any plot points, maybe you should, you know, not read the damn review instead of getting your panties in a twist. I'm mainly talking about the commenter over there who posted with the screen name of Spoiled Milk (one assumes he meant "spilt," but whatevs), but really, the same goes for anyone, anytime, who considers reading a film review. It's going to discuss the plot a little bit, okay? So shut the hell up if that's a problem.

Okay, now go play nice.

UPDATE: Grindhouse marked my 100th review for Pajiba. Send me your cards and cash, and I will accept them with gratitude.

ALSO: I know that no one will be able to understand this without considering me some kind of juvenile fanboy or sexist prick or pick your own analogy, but I think that it was kind of surprising that Grindhouse had so little nudity. The fake trailers showed some skin, but as for the actual features on the double-bill, there wasn't much going on. Wouldn't the whole thing have been much more '70s-trash-throwback if there had, in fact, been more gratuitous nudity? Anyway.

So, this is the new place.

It looks a lot like the old place, and that's on purpose, since I was partial to the old place's layout, look, feel, and all that. But this place is a whole lot better: For starters, there's the banner at the top, whipped up by those whose Photoshop skills far outstrip mine (which is pretty easy to do, but still, it's a damn nice banner). The banner might periodically change, too; any suggestions of skilled, balding actors you'd like to see make the rotation are welcome, assuming I remember to implement them. Also, you should know that some areas are still under construction and likely to undergo some tweaking in the next few days and weeks, so don't be alarmed. All part of the process.

Another also: If the photos in the banner appear cut off, or you can't read the entire title, try manually resizing your browser or upping the resolution on your monitor. (For my parents, whose computer is now the electronic equivalent of the large-print shelf at the library, the headline says "Slowly Going Bald," and is laid over a series of photos of balding actors, capped off by yours truly [though I'm obviously not an actor, just balding].)

For instance: I've broadened the categories on the left-hand side, mainly the TV stuff, so all of you who check back everyday with breathless anticipation to see what new wisdom I've shared about the PCHers or Cylon mythology can help yourself to the archives. You're very welcome.

What else, what else. ... Oh yeah: I expect there to be a learning period while this new blog and I get to know each other, learn each other's likes and dislikes, figure out how far I can go before she says the safe word, make up, etc. But I figured out the old blog after a while, and I'm sure I can make myself at home here without too much difficulty. In the meantime, though, there might be a couple lurches or shimmies along the way; take those in stride, and we should be just fine.

So come on in. And try not to break stuff.

So, in response to the surprising number of responses I got to my open question about whether women prefer men bearded or clean-shaven (and I have to believe most of the traffic were people who'd come here from Whedonesque the day before and wanted to stick around to see how dumb/weird I got, in which case, here you go), I've decided to post a series of photos to more accurately allow you all to vote on whether I should beard it up or keep it smooth. This is something of a historic day, since I don't often post photos of myself online; every photo of me on Facebook was placed there by someone else. Just thought you should know that.

Anyway, here are the photos. There are more shots of me with a beard because I coincidentally happened to be around digital cameras more often in recent months and years when I was sporting the beard; the number of photos per category isn't meant to sway you either way. The gallery:

The slightly thicker beard, and my sister's eye:

The solid, somehow studious beard:

The thinner, more trimmed, half-drunk beard:

The thinner, oddly happy beard:

No beard, making a stupid face and regretting my bulbous nose:

No beard, happy, being ominously touched on the shoulder:

No beard, wearing a pink shirt and okay with it:

I'm of two minds about the whole thing, since I've recently been told I "pull off the beard better than most men," but also that sporting just the goat makes me "more approachable" and also displays my dimples, which are my face's "best feature" (given the aforementioned bulbous nose and inability to see beyond 3 inches without the aid of corrective lenses, this seems pretty obvious). So, that's pretty much it. Any and all feedback is welcome. Keep in mind that your opinions could very well change my life and shape my future, unless I decide to completely ignore them. Also, "clean shaven" for me means going down to just the half-goatee seen in the last few photos; that's as hairless as I will allow my face to get, since otherwise I look 11 years old and stupid. And just so you know, I'm currently sporting the full goatee (mustache + chin), and it doesn't look half bad.

Now: Vote.