CP: The for-no-good-reason egocentric celebrity Ashton Kutcher recently showed up with his scruffy beard gone. Much as I don't like him, I have to say that his new look constitutes a big improvement. I know you, as a full-on beard man, will likely disagree.
RN: Ugh, the patchy, barely post-pubescent Kutcher beard. A sorry excuse for the beauty that can be the fully realized manscape.
CP: You might have preferred life during the Civil War era, when every man over 15 had a beard starting just below his eye sockets.
RN: Sure, go to the other extreme. And for the record, I don't prefer the Russian Orthodox Priest look. I'm thinking more like Liev Schreiber, Hugh Jackman, Joe Manganiello, Alexander Skarsgard or Peter Dinklage. They can all rock a thick but carefully trimmed facial lawn.
CP: When you and I did our usual in-depth research recently -- interrupting a bearded man and his clean-shaven friend at lunch -- we unearthed some inside tidbits. Mr. Clean Shaven said his wife swore that if he grew a beard, she'd shave her head bald.
RN: And then he told us that their standoff was the marital equivalent of the nuclear arms race -- and that he had to back down. Bearded Guy -- a prime example of the baldie who can work a full face of whiskers like no tomorrow -- told us about the "one-year rule."
CP: Oh, yeah. Once you go bearded, he said, you've got to commit. At least a year, or the shock of the sudden shave is too great for your loved ones.
RN: Makes sense to me. When I first met you, back in the big, bad mid-1990s, you had been carefully cultivating a rather distinctive goatee for nearly a half-decade. What happened?
