happy five million!

At 9:55 PM PDT tonight, the counter on the beards.org photo gallery hit five million views!  Amazingly, it was on today’s date exactly one year ago that the gallery hit two million views.  Tonight’s achievement of the five million mark is a symbolic milestone because of the counter reading.  However, the actual count is already higher than that for a number of reasons.  A server failure prior to hitting the two-million mark caused a rollback of the counter.  Deleting photos from the gallery causes their view numbers to get subtracted from the count.  Also, Salvatore’s videos had high numbers of views that no longer show in the count because I took them offline.  I took them offline because they were consuming too much bandwidth.

So which photo was lucky number five million on the counter tonight?  It was this photo of Jason:

Jason at five million!

Click on the thumbnail image to view the larger image in the gallery.

Congratulations, Jason!  Happy five million!

Firefox 3 and beards.org

The Firefox 3 browser came out yesterday and it slightly breaks the beards.org page layout.  It moves the image that’s supposed to be in the upper right-hand corner over next to the image in the upper left-hand corner.  I’ve found a way to fix the problem.  But it will take me a while to get the change made to all of the affected pages.  I was already behind on stuff for the site, so this extra work isn’t exactly a welcome development.  Some of the pages have already been fixed.  I’ll fix the rest as soon as I can plow through them.  Meanwhile, if the upper-right corner image is not in its rightful place as you view the site in Firefox 3, you’ll know why.

North American Beard and Moustache Championship

Bearded competitors are sought for the 2008 North American Beard and Moustache Championship. The competition takes place July 5, 2008 in beautiful, scenic Bremerton, Washington USA. The registration fee for competitors is $25.00 until June 5, when it increases to $35.00. So don’t delay. Register today! Please encourage as many bearded men as possible to register and make this event a rousing success. Proceeds from the event will benefit local mens’ homeless shelters. For full details and to register, go to: http://www.nabmc.whiskerclub.org/ .

trimming The World’s Greatest Beard™

Some guys humorously think of their beards like a pet. A great friend of mine put a whole different twist on that. Oh, and he just happens to have what I consider to be The World’s Greatest Beard™. He told me that he has always trimmed his beard himself and that he makes quick work of it. The results are always flawless. My friend further stated that he has always been pretty nonchalant about trimming his beard — so much so that for years he routinely did his speedy beard-trimming work with same electric pet clippers that he used for trimming his dog.

Despite a product warning “for animal use only” and despite using the clippers even on the dog’s rear end, he just grabbed the pet clippers whenever he was ready to trim his beard. Why bother with getting a fancy, highfalutin beard trimmer when the plain old dog clippers could do such a spiffy job? He did clarify, however, that he cleaned the clippers between the dog’s behind and beard trims.

Will using pet clippers develop your beard into one of the world’s greatest? No. Do not try this at home!

fear the beard — in a good way!

The fine tradition of the hockey playoff beard has yet to be properly addressed here at beards.org. But it’s that time of year again and a good friend tipped me off to a cool site for San José Sharks fans to grow and show off their own playoff beards: (defunct link removed).

Go there, Sharks fans, and start growing and showing off those playoff beards. Whatever team you support, you’re always welcome to show off your playoff beard here, too! Just email me.

Brian

Brian kindly participated in an exclusive photo shoot for all about beards yesterday, the 8th of March. This is a continuation of the site’s original beard photography project. Look for Brian soon in the featured beards section of the site.

UPDATE: Brian is now in the documentary beard photography section.  His photo album is here.

Brian
Brian
Brian
Brian

great beard song!

Noah recently wrote to inform me that some other students at his school told him about beards.org. After checking out the site, he was inspired to write a song about beards! He performs his song in this video:

(Defunct video link removed.)

Lyrics:

I got the invitation
A month in advance.
They said it’s black tie optional
Just no athletic pants.

My head starts to accelerate
What should I wear?
I’m really more worried
About what do with my hair!

Who don’t like facial hair?
They’re insane, I must declare!
Having a beard is the best thing in the land
It is the manliest part of being a man!

I will be warm in the winter
I will be looking totally extreme
The only problem at the moment
Is that I am only fifteen!

So when can I grow it?
It will be here soon, I guess
While I’m growing my soul patch
I’ll be growing it with finesse!

Chin Curtain? FO CERTAIN!
Balbo? FO SHO!
Extended goatee? YES PLEASE!
Just grow a ‘stache, or maybe a soul patch

Who don’t like facial hair?
They’re insane, I must declare!
Having a beard is the best thing in the land
It is the manliest part of being a man!

….

Awesome song, Noah!!! Thanks!

adding more beards to the world

Dale

Could you imagine never allowing the world to see this beard? This is Dale. More than a year ago, a friend recommended to Dale that he visit beards.org. Dale checked out the site and was immediately inspired to start growing his beard. He has been growing his beard and experimenting with different styles ever since. That’s one more beard in the world, thanks to beards.org.

Of course, Dale’s industrial-strength beard is not the only beard whose growth was inspired by the site. Several are documented in the beard success stories section of the site. Those, however, represent only a tiny fraction of the beards added to the world in response to the influence of beards.org. I know of lots more. I am sure that there are even more out there that I haven’t heard about and likely never will. If you are among those who grew a beard because this site convinced you to try it, drop me a line to let me know. And if you’d like to appear on the site, be sure to mention that!

If you know someone who could grow a beard, be sure to tell him to get to beards.org and start growing. He could be the next Dale! Remember that Dale’s example shows that it works! Do your part to add more beards to the world.

Cell phone photo of Dale above is provided courtesy of Dale and used with permission.