Oh, be shaved! Friday is ‘National No Beard Day’

Fellows of a certain fuzziness, Friday is your chance to take it off -- take it all off -- and prune the facial forest back to baby-butt smooth for National No Beard Day.

Given our fascination with all things bearded and mustachioed we’re not exactly sure how this tongue in (hairy) cheek holiday managed to escape our attention in the past, though it’s apparently been around for at least the last several years.

It certainly hasn’t escaped the men’s grooming industry, which, as of this writing, is using the faux holiday as a hook to highlight the various lotions, potions and notions available to help you unbuckle that chinstrap. (The most recent one, from the Art of Shaving, included a four-step, $115 “perfect shave” kit.)

But if you’re happily hirsute, there are still plenty of ways to get into the holiday spirit and boycott a beard on Oct. 18 without jettisoning your jowl jacket. Among them:

-- Avoid any restaurant that has won a James Beard award (easier in L.A. this year than you might think).

-- If ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard calls, DON’T ANSWER!

-- If you find yourself traveling through Ashdown, Ark., and pass Beard’s Bluff Recreation Area, by all means -- keep driving.

-- Ditto for those of you driving down US 301 in Georgia who find yourselves crossing Beards Creek.

-- Armchair ornithologists should take precautionary measure to avoid accidentally looking at photographs of -- or even uttering the names of -- the blue-bearded bee-eater (Nyctyornis athertoni) and the bearded reedling (Panurus biarmicus).

-- And it should really go without saying, but that album by the group Spock’s Beard? It’ll sound just as awesome on Saturday -- when all things beard-related are no longer banished.

ALSO:

Jack Passion leads with his beard

NPD Group: Grooming tool sales down 2% since last year

‘Mansome’: Morgan Spurlock examines the world of men’s grooming

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