We're deep into the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs and I admit that I find myself with a playoff beard in support of our local Vancouver Canucks.

If you ask men about their fondness for growing facial hair, I would suspect most would respond atleast mildly unfavourably. Most of us have never been quite comfortable with our random tufts of fur. They refuse to form a legitimate shape even past our teens and God help us if we vainly believe we've found a fashionable style to groom them too. The whole beard growing process is a prolonged annoyance unless you fortunately inherited genes that render you either baby-faced or Scottish. The issue, to which anyone attempting to remain unshaven succumbs, is mediocrity. You will not look cool and it's painfully obvious to everyone how much you've invested on your foolhardy project. No matter what you try it will be a failure because a) you don't have the ability to grow what you want and b) you have no idea what you're doing. The moment it becomes obvious that you no longer consider it as merely stubble, you have begun to humilate yourself to anyone with eyesight for 24/7.

An aside about Jeff Kent for one sec: What the hell is a man making a free-agent baseball player's salary doing with his awful porn-stache? He's had it for several years, been in the All-Star limelight with his less whisker-impaired peers, yet still: A freakish Porn-stache!
This, is the cold hard truth about moustaches: a beard will render you goofy looking, but a moustache will make you a 70's porn reject. If this is really something you want to adorn your face with, then your fate is inescapable. You might as well buy that new wardrobe of bell-bottoms and hairy-chest-revealing hawaiian shirts now and put in a subscription to your local over-40's-swingers magazine.

Acceptable IFF

There are only two times when the social embarrassment of growing facial hair is not as offensive to public sensibilities:

i) A beard contest:
Usually in High School, males sometimes feel the need to humiliate themselves en masse. This is how they do it. They grow their pre-nascent fuzz to the point where everyone starts wondering why nobody in that peer group washes his face and only stop when all but one foolhardy soul has failed to endure the frustrations of his fur. There Can Be Only One... and he tends to win nothing but the respectful distance conferred upon psychopaths.

ii) The Playoff Beard
Traditionaly, the hockey post-season is filled with players who've let their beards goto seed. Why? Good luck of course, as you don't shave until you're either done and won the cup, or knocked out and forced to go home. I, however, have the suspicion that the practice may really harken back to the grooming biases of the Canadian praerie towns that players come from or have spent time at in the minors.
Strangely, even many fans decide "what the hell", and follow suit with mass enhairment under the pretence of superstition. In reality, what's occuring isn't much different than the beard contest with the exception that the competition isn't acknowledged. Of course, the macho/masochist tension is still there as men compare and criticize--unspoken--each other's ability to achieve ridiculous facial growths.
The other tension with a playoff beard is between the misguided individual's frustrated itching and his love for his team (i.e. how much time 'till it's over and I get to shave?). We're into the second week of the playoffs and I'm beginning to hate Minnesota mostly just because their boring style of hockey may prolong the series and the total time before I get to shave. While I've never coveted the idea, I have thought about how a disappoinitng, quick playoff exit by the Canucks would atleast let me feel normal again.