Marksman Kevin S. send in this very funny video:

…Which reminds me of this:

…And no beard-madness theme would be complete without the inclusion of this classic Kids in the Hall sketch.

Following up from yesterday’s post about the World Beard & Moustache Championships in Norway, Official Wondermark Beard Correspondent Pat Race sends along this video of the 2011 overall champion, Elmar Weisser.

Update: More photos of the winners at CNN!

This weekend, Trondheim, Norway hosted the biannual World Beard & Moustache Championships! As reported by BBC News, the winner was German hairdresser Elmar Weisser, who sculpted his beard into a reindeer.

In 2005 he won with with a beard styled into the shape of Berlin’s Brandenberg Gate, and in 2007 with a representation of London’s Tower Bridge.

He said he had begun preparing his creation for the Trondheim event at 7am, with the help of his sister.

“When my beard isn’t styled, it goes down to my waist. It is sort of folded up,” he told the AFP news agency.

There are more pictures (from previous years) here at CNN, and I am also pleased to report that Official Wondermark Beard Correspondent Pat Race is on the scene in Norway as well!

Pat and his Beard Team Alaska Robotics entered the competition as part of the American contingent. On his blog he’s been keeping a travel journal, including a ton of great pics and audio interviews with competition participants.

Pat’s also been updating a Flickr stream with photographs from the trip and the competition. Note that Pat called the winner beforehand, in an email to me — this is a keen beard observer. Or perhaps the reindeer beard was just obviously unstoppable in every way.

Check out more on-the-scene photos from the 2011 (and the 2009) WBMC on Pat’s Flickr!

Smithsonian.com presents: “Who Had the Best Civil War Facial Hair?” — a gallery of twenty-four incredible face-coifs, with voting privileges. Click on each photo for a neat little bio of each person, as well as wonderful examples of Civil War-era photography, which still looks amazingly crisp even today.

Thanks to Christy, Scott, Frank, Clint, folks on Twitter and the million others who sent this my way! I am glad to have people instantly think, “I know who needs to see this.”

== BONUS BEARD LINK #1: ==

“A Beard’s Eye View of Nineteenth-Century U.S. Politics,” sent in by faithful Marksman Will H., is a description of a Penn State grad student project:

Why did millions of American men begin sprouting facial hair in the 1850s? And why did most of them cut it off by the early decades of the twentieth century? [...] To investigate that question, and with some indispensible technical support from my father, I’ve begun putting together a database of nineteenth century politicians and their facial hair.

More here.

== BONUS BEARD LINK #2: ==

Some answers to the questions posed above. Here is a new transcript of my interview with the world’s foremost beard expert, Dr. Christopher Oldstone-Moore. I’ve linked the audio from this interview before — but now I’ve also textified it for greater readability! Since you cannot read audio. Like, at all.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The birth of the Victorian beard — and how its emergence can be traced precisely to 1848
• Both beards and clean-shavenness as signifiers going back to the Greeks
• The reasons for the decline of beardedness around 1900
• What the current Renaissance of beards could mean

“…I do think that we’re in an exploratory era. I don’t really know where that exploration is going to go, but I do think you’re right. There is more freedom, more interest in looking for a new style of facial hair than there has been in a long time.”

The full transcript is here! Enjoy!

Here’s an article I came across in the London Times, 1939, regarding the inherent beauty of the beard as a subject for photography.

Coincidentally (or not?), 1939 is the same year of LIFE Magazine’s epic double-page photo-spread exalting every type of beard! What a year to be alive!

Full transcript of the article below. (more…)

Official Wondermark beard correspondent Pat Race writes in to share this stirring highlight video his team shot at the 2009 World Beard & Moustache Championships in Anchorage, Alaska. If you would like to see three minutes of amazing beard after amazing beard after amazing moustache after amazing moustache, are you ever in luck.

He’s also got a longer video account of his and his cohorts’ trip to the WBMC up at his blog. Thanks for sharing, Pat!

We’ve hit the ground running with the new Monocle Poppers shop! See, my in-laws are visiting, and they are the type who cannot sit still. They need projects. They brought tree-trimmers with them from Seattle to attack some branches outside my apartment while my wife and I were at work. These people are doers. So, they are here at the office helping me put cards into envelopes today! Hooray! We are having a grand time. Thank you for buying cards, and please keep doing so. These people need things to do.

The runaway hit so far has been the Multi-Purpose Card, and I can certainly see why — you can use that guy for everything for the rest of your life. You literally will never need to buy another greeting card, if you buy several dozen of those (like some people already have). Marvelous.

Here’s another card that’s new to the shop this season:

It is a TRUTH FROM HISTORY.

As reported in the New Hampshire Sentinel, June 20, 1855:

The Albany Argus has espoused the beard movement. This is its argument: – “We have come to the conclusion that the practice of shaving is alike ridiculous and absurd, and that it violates one of the laws of nature. Now, our beard was not given us for no purpose – that is evident. It was created for some wise purpose, and that was to keep the face and throat warm, and thus be conducive to health. Let us look at a few facts. It has been calculated that if one shaves three times a week, it grows twenty times as fast as if he did not shave. Allowing two inches as the annual growth of the beard, it will be seen that a man cuts off forty inches, or more than a yard of hair a year, and the nutriment which supports this, and is thus wasted, might have gone to nourish other parts of the body, and render him a healthy and handsome man! Again, allowing twenty minutes to each shaving operation, three times a week, amounts to one hour a week, – fifty-two hours a year. Supposing a man to shave forty years, we find he has consumed about three months in the simple act of shaving ; and calculating the expense of each operation at the small sum of six cents, we find it has cost him three hundred and sixty dollars. In view of these facts, we cannot but regard the practice of shaving as a decidedly barbarous one, and which ought to be discountenanced by the progressive civilization of the age.”

For more on the Beard Movement of the 1850s, see my interview with the world’s foremost beard expert.

p.s. do you think “shaving / barbarous” was pun-intended because I DO

LINK ROUNDUP for a lazy weekend:

Here is an interview with me at Comic Book Resources! Representative quote: “Wondermark is officially, canonically, an allegory about bears in America.”

Sesame Street Fighter is exactly what it sounds like.

From Timothy R., some crazy pictures of a “Victorian computer command center organ cockpit desk thingy.” If anyone ever asks you what “steampunk” means, there are worse places to start your explanation than with these pictures.

And from Kirk B., a video of a workplace beard contest prize-bestowment ceremony, with a very familiar prize presented to the champeen…

Kirk annotates the video thusly:

A while back I bought your Hierarchy of Beards poster because I thought it was awesome but I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it. I had it sitting on the mantel in my living room and it ended up being a great conversation-starter when I had people over. My father has had a beard since he was in college and I have only seen him clean-shaven twice in my life. Unfortunately for me, my facial-hair-growing prowess has been a disappointment to my family. I originally bought the poster in hopes that it would inspire my facial-hair follicles to work harder.

So, at the beginning of February, several of my coworkers embarked on a beard contest which lasted five weeks. I decided to donate the poster as the prize. Unfortunately I did not win the beard contest; I
didn’t even place. But it was fun and I feel like we did our part in raising beard awareness.

You hear that? Be more aware of beards. Kirk demands it.

I highly recommend the movie Away We Go, the newest from director Sam Mendes. I don’t think it’s for everybody, but for me, a dude really close to 30 who is in the first sort of nascent stages of starting a family yet who’s still waiting to discover what Adulthood is supposed to feel like, I think this movie was utterly, totally for me.

I won’t link you to the trailer or anything though, because with all due respect to my friends who worked on the marketing, this movie (like pretty much every movie) is better off seen totally cold, without anticipating the big moments that the trailer and commercials give away. So, don’t watch the marketing, but do see the movie. (Oh, and if you don’t like it — well, there’s no accounting for taste. I liked it. Let’s not argue about it, huh?)

Finally: take a look at John Krasinski up there. What do you notice?

He’s bearded.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe this is the only mainstream, non-period American movie in a great while in which the primary romantic protagonist wears a full beard. Leave me a comment if I’m wrong; I’d like to know if there are others!