Beardapalooza 2008 - 2009: Week 9...The Beardies

Beardapalooza is nothing if it's not a celebration of beards. And as we are in the midst of the film industry's annual glut of award shows, I thought it a good time to reward those men who have established themselves as the standard bearers for beard growth. I welcome you all to the First Annual Beardies.

Below you will find the nominees in five categories. The winners will be determined democratically by your votes. Please send your vote for each category by way of comment at the bottom of this blog. And if no one should bother to vote, the winners shall be determined dictatorially, by me, your humble presenter.

BEST BEARD IN THE NBA

And the nominees are...

Baron Davis


DeShawn Stevenson


Drew Gooden


Pau Gasol


Zydrunas Ilgauskus


BEST BEARD IN MODERN MUSIC

And the nominees are...

Sam Beam (a.k.a Iron & Wine)


Devandra Banhart (freak folk artist)


Jim James (of My Morning Jacket)


Kyp Malone (of TV on the Radio)


?uestlove (of The Roots)


BEST PRESIDENTIAL BEARD

and the nominees are...

Abraham Lincoln


Benjamin Harrison


James Garfield


Rutherford B. Hayes


Ulysses S. Grant


BEST BEARD IN A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

and the nominees are...

Brady Hawkes (as played by Kenny Rogers in The Gambler)


Dr. Richard Kimble (as played by Harrison Ford in The Fugitive)


Jeremiah Johnson (as played by Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson)


Matt Hooper (as played by Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws)


Ned Kelly (as played by Mick Jagger in Ned Kelly)


Just to be clear, I tried to pick actors that grew real beards, so don't give me any of that "Where's Gandalf" nonsense.

BEAST BEARD IN HISTORY

and the nominees are...

Charles Darwin


Jesus


Karl Marx


Rasputin


Young Fidel Castro


That concludes The Beardies. Your votes will be tallied and the winners will be announced in next week's blog.

And now for this week's beard pics:

Scott




Paul




James

Beardapalooza 2008-2009: Week 8

I'm feeling a bit lazy tonight, so you will have to make do with just pictures this week:

Scott - opting for the homeless vet look:





...oh, I get it. He's doing a Fidel Castro thing. Nice.

Paul - in his Red Period (that sounds more menstrual than I intended):





James - ready to write his manifesto:





Oh, and James has provided us with a vision of his ultimate goal in this competition:



I would say that James is roughly ten minutes away from achieving his goal.

Beardapalooza 2008-2009: Week 7

As we wrap up week 7 of Beardapalooza, I think it is high time that we delve into the origins of the beard. What better way to do so than by celebrating the inventor of the beard - Raymond Josiah Abernathy Jr. ("RJ" to his close friends).

An early rendering of Raymond Josiah Abernathy, Jr. at age 12.

By all accounts, RJ was a fairly common child. Born in 1823 in the hills of West Virginia near a small coal-mining town, he never had any great aptitude nor any great ambitions. RJ was content to do what most Appalachians did - he collected teeth as they fell out of his head and carved them into banjo picks. The only thing that separated young RJ from his many cousin/siblings was his unbelievable hair growth. By age 12, owing to his full beard and generally scrawny physique, he was routinely making some extra money for his family by posing as Jesus for local crucifix manufacturers.

His modeling career brought some notoriety to young RJ and his time in the spotlight seemed to awaken parts of his mind heretofore untapped. His mind, so filled with ideas, kept him from sleeping, and by the time he reached his mid-20s, he was a full-time inventor and an incurable insomniac. He was able to eek out an existence as an inventor with several useful, if not particularly noteworthy, inventions. For example, he was quite proud of a small contraption that would actually move from room to room sweeping the floor (an early precursor to the Roomba); however, as most of the homes in the community had dirt floors, each of these devices would ultimately burn themselves out within a few hours.

It wasn't until 1868, at the age of 45, that RJ finally tied his two careers together and in so doing carved his name in the history books for generations to come. Although, as should be painfully obvious, it is fairly impossible for anyone to invent the beard in a traditional sense, his 20 years as a professional inventor had taught RJ one very important lesson: He who has the patent is the inventor of record.

Accordingly, on July 22, 1868, Raymond Josiah Abernathy, Jr. marched into the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C. and filed what would be the most important document of his life - the patent for the beard.

And if you buy that story, I would like to sell you 1000 shares of stock in beards.

Now for the pictures:

Scott





Paul





James

Beardapalooza 2008-2009: Week 6

I am more than a little depressed as I write this post. The Vikings have just been done in by the lowly Philadelphia Eagles, a team that made it into the playoffs based on a series of events so unlikely that it relied heavily on the Oakland Raiders winning a football game...against an NFL team! Nevertheless, even if the Vikings do not march on, Beardapalooza surely does.

I thought that since Week 6 of Beardapalooza coincides with the opening weekend of the NFL playoffs, it would be more than fitting to discuss the playoff beard. The playoff beard is by most accounts an invention of the National Hockey League (NHL). The tradition is simple, as a team enters the playoffs for Lord Stanley's cup, players on the participating team forgo shaving. The deeper the teams get into the playoffs, the more ridiculous/awesome the beards get. Recently, this tradition has found its way into other professional sports leagues - the NBA and NFL most notably. Variations on the playoff beard have even surfaced in such semi-sports as Tennis and NASCAR.

There have even been rumors that Barack Obama was going to grow a Recession Beard - not shaving until the economy was healthy and capitalism once again rules the world. OK, that isn't true, but it would be awesome. I think it would put his approval rating somewhere in the high 90s...or it might bolster rumors that he is a secret Muslim. Either way, I think it is important that Obama come out as pro-beard early in his first term. It would really lock down the beard enthusiast demographic for 2012.

Scott:

















Paul:























James: