Snippy Snaps

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Pimp my Beard: Round 6

Mad Dog

In this, the last of the current series of PMB, Browning suspects he bought the extra strong Fisherman's Friends instead of the normal strength ones he usually likes. This is a beard that requires pastel fresh breath: a cool, take five inhalation before I smash your suburb dwelling face in then lecture you on crop rotation. Grown in semi arid shrub land, this is doing a crossword puzzle in your own blood, this, is Mad Dog.

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Pimp My Beard: Round 5 (with special guest appearance)

 Lip Candy

Nissan jets in from London, England to give us a taste of his casual/trim Lip Candy. 

"Lip Candy" says Nissan, "is a look I wanted to bring to Pimp My Beard ever since I first read about it the Sunday Times Supplement. We`ve seen many original, one might even say, prodigous beards in the previous rounds and while I enjoyed their chameleonic lustre, a part of me was screaming out, 'Don`t forget your roots! Don`t forget your history!' So I was delighted when the organisers offered me this spot to show young beard and beardery enthusiasts that a bold, slap in the face with a gold brick wrapped in a slice of lemon moustache still carries a strong statement in the modern era." Indeed an intransient moustache, this is a look that says on the one hand, 'This is just something I threw on before I left the house' and on the other, 'Yes, I'll have the filet mignon.' 

 Benson & Hedges

Browning takes advantage of this reflective surface to deftly sport the Benson & Hedges. A look that caters for swimming pools, large water basins such as you might find in a restraunt or soya processing plant, the sea, salt flats and the hard of hearing. The Benson & Hedges whispers slithery introspections in the ear. A look for self re-discovery, remodeling, finding the inner bank robber, taxidermist or late 18th century rural pastor.

Looking for yourself? Look no further than the Benson & Hedges.

Staring at the Dead

Mummy shook me from my trance,
Many years of minimal feeling.
Mummy shook me from my trance,
Her half open eyeless gaze, for days it sent me reeling,
Reliving and peeling back layer from layer,
Stories unfelt in self protection,
Stored inside my onion vault mind.
Mummy shook me from my trance
And my head begins to bloom.
Delicate petals: hurt, triumph, sadness, love and anger,
All class of colours burst in motion capture reaching for light and air
And blur into one stupifying sense of existence.
Perfect, speechless. The narrowest point of vision that cones infinitely and all encompassingly.
And dries the mouth, coats the body, invades every movement and seems like death.

I think back to those eyeless eyes as I begin to stabilise,
From total sensation back to my plateau of expected association.
Of things that must be because of where they are and what they are not,
Of cigarette butts and forget-me-nots.
Of waste and beauty and oh I could go on,
To list it all in some collage to look like life.
But I saw with my whole body in those Inca eyes.
Absorbed five hundred years without compromise.
Lips that seemed to mouth at me.
A little girl hit by lightning,
Expression preserved - a sacrifical offering,
Buried as close to sky as she could be brought,
In the claustrophobia of my existence I could not be taught,
To let a thing be, there being no other possibility.
The bird's nest of continuous alternatives imagined for every teasing moment starts to relax and unravel.
A boy that wandered into dark woods is coming home,
Unafraid to feel, friends with the butterflies,
Seeking less to justify,
Proud to spill ink and testify,
Or be a bulb uncompromised.
Safe in the certainty of seasonal flowering,
In the cold and dark the buds are ripening.

Potosi Miners

Crouched and crooked, struggling for breath.
Going down fast, further out of my depth.
"Into the mouth of hell", one chronicler put,
Under the mountain at twelve thousand foot.
Fumbling through the catacombs,
Dust encrusted nostrils cave in,
Claustrophobia threatening.
Ghosts in the rock,
The forgotten of the flock.
Unseen, underground,
Turned to stone through centuries without sound.

Choking, scrambling on all fours,
Palms cut on jagged debris.
Pause to heave air in,
A tenth of my strength.
Up again, under helmet and overhanging crunch,
Potosi miners, hard hattest of the bunch.
Pulling minerals from the mountain,
Dragging them up and out on defiant spines, through impossile passages.
Pushing the wagon: two by two, a ton along rusting rails,
Plunging coca into their mouths, all day with blackened nails.
The leaf their only alimentation,
The green teethed symbol of this vocation.

Dense heat, stooping torchlight and broken beams,
Distant chisels pick at the seams.
Silver, Zinc, Copper, Tin.
The periodically able, where do I fit in?
Square shouldered great grandad in the ground for coal,
Saviour hero when the pit fell in.
Great man they say, but neither I nor my father's him,
Potosi miners doing themselve in.
Living forty, fifty years,
The lungs pack up and succumb to the tears,
Of wives, mothers, sons and daughters,
The numbers stack up, the sum of their fears.

Inheritance, conscious inevitability:
The miner's son joins the fraternity,
Wears its gowns but seldom frowns,
Earns more than they do in the towns.
Answers to noone, commitment to collectivity,
A creed of positivity, a law of reciprocity.
Empowered, the cooperative sets its own hours,
Selects its holidays and shares what it pays.
The living mine's memory,
It wasn't always like this:
Forced labour, six months without daylight,
Now death has a sweeter kiss.
Families round the table, dining on meat and rice,
Potosi miners, brothers in proud sacrifice.

Pimp My Beard, The January 28th Special: Rounds 3 & 4!

Round 3:

The Amish

Beautifully accessorized  with a mast sticking perpendicular from the head and multiple wives. Quinn will certainly need plenty of courtisans to tend this chin pasture. 

The Jolly Norton

Whether enjoying a joke with a passing photographer or simply writing an email in a bohemian café, The Jolly Norton just keeps on giving. Inspired by actor Ed Norton's turncoat nazi in TonyKaye's 'American History X', this is the ultimate in flexible beardry.

Round 4:

Castaway

Planning to get ship wrecked? This is the look for you. This is, the ONLY look. Scenario: You succed in flagging down a sojourning albatross and escape your malnutrified, undersaloned island paradise. You have shaved using a particularly sharp bit of shell that you found - you wanted to make yourself look nice for when you got back. But on returning, your friends and family reject you like a baby owl that has been handled by human hands and is eaten by its mother. They simply cannot accept you're outlandish excuse for not being around to compliment their beards for the last few years without some sort of proof on your own cheeks and chin. Survivors, don't chop it, Aesop it!

The Badger Baiter

Care for some of my pine cones little badger? BLOOF! Badger mittens for little Mary. Yes that right, it's The Badger Baiter. The epitome of suave and bastard, you could talk a rodent into a catery with that moustache.