The Beards

Australian folk-rock band The Beards play only music based on the virtues of having a beard. 

The Beards started in 2005 and soon rose in popularity. They got a local cult following with the release of their first album The Beards in July 2007. The band followed this up by being selected to play the Adelaide Big Day Out in 2008 & 2009. In 2009 the band traveled to Alaska to perform at the opening ceremony of the World Beard & Moustache Championships.

The band has gone on to extensively tour Australia, they have produced a video clip for their song "If Your Dad Doesn’t Have a Beard, You’ve Got Two Mums" and released a live DVD.

In The Wind

Oh, that feeling of wind tucking at your beard! I feel lucky to be living in Windy Wellington. and feel sorry for all those clean-shaven faces that don't know about this exquisite pleasure. 

Not easy to explain to the short-bearded among us, or most women, but fellow longbeards know what I mean.

Really, I should get myself a motorbike again, for those occasional wind-still days...

Captain Jack Carey

These pictures are of Captain Jack Carey, an impressive man with an impressive beard.

Pilot and skier Jack lived life largely, pursuing his passions of hang gliding and skiing, realizing a unique quality of life of which most people only dream.

Jack died on July 17, 2009, leaving inspiration and good memories. 

Jack and his buddy, Dave's dog Tracy

Hobo Beard

From the Urban Dictionary: hobo beard A style-less style of beard. Comes as the result of not shaving, but is worn as a style after admired by the person. Most likely found on hobos also. Yo man, did you see Mr. Czekaj's hobo beard? That guy needs a shave or two!

Hobo Beard
	A bird nest like mess which invades the bottom third of the host's face. The hobo beard is an opportunistic entity often clutched to the cheeks, chin, ears, and upper lip of the host...however, it cannot be contained and therefore has no limits of growth. It closely resembles untamed pubic hair in texture and appearance. Can you actually SEE Chad's face behind that hobo beard?!

Mr Natural

Mr. Natural (Fred Natural) is a comic book character created and drawn by 1960s counterculture and underground comix artist Robert Crumb. The character first appeared in the premiere issue of Yarrowstalks (the May 5, 1967 issue).

At first appearance, Mr. Natural is a mystic guru who spouts aphorisms on the evils of the modern world and the salvation to be found in mysticism and natural living. He has renounced the material world and lives off anything he can get in exchange for his nuggets of wisdom. Usually depicted as slightly overweight (although his size varies), he is bald with a long white beard, and wears a gown which makes him resemble the Old Testament God or a prophet.

 Part wise man, part conman, Mr. Natural has strange, magical powers and possesses cosmic insight; but he is also moody, cynical, self-pitying, and suffers from various strange sexual obsessions. He is endlessly being accosted by would-be disciples seeking the truth (among them such long-running Crumb characters as Flakey Foont and Shuman the Human). He typically regards them with amused condescension and a certain grudging affection, although his patience often wears thin and he takes sadistic pleasure in making them feel like idiots. While he is typically very cool and in control, he sometimes ends up in humiliating predicaments like getting tossed in jail for child molestation or languishing for years in a mental institution.

Too old to care what people think..?

Pogonophobia 2

Jakov Brdar

Jakov Brdar (born 22 April 1949) is a Slovenian sculptor of Bosnian-Herzegovinan descent. He is the creator of many public statues and sculptures in Ljubljana. In 1998, he received the Prešeren Fund Award for the sculpturing group Lecturing birds (1997).

Brdar was born in Livno, People's Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He studied sculpturing at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. Brdar graduated in the class of professor Dušan Tršar in 1975, and completed his specialist studies in 1979.

He has also lived and worked in Paris and Berlin.

 Brdar's statues Adam and Eve, Satyr and Prometheus are on display at the Butchers' Bridge in Ljubljana city centre. His statue of the general Rudolf Maister is visible in the park next to the main bus station in Ljubljana. 

The gallery in Piran has his sculpture Pegasus (1990). In 1990 and 1991, he exhibited in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.

Bruno Detassis

Bruno Detassis (1910 - 2008) was an Italian mountaineer, "author" of over 200 new routes, guide, manager of the Brentei Refuge for decades with his name especially linked to the Brenta Dolomites .

 Bruno Detassis, with beret, as any mountaineer should wear!

Born to a working class family, he worked as an apprentice and attended night classes. At 16 years he was a team leader, climbing the normal route of Paganella and at 18 he scaled Campanile Basso for the first time. He then chose to devote himself completely to the mountains.

He became a mountaineering instructor at the Alpine Aosta Military School.

In 1943 Detassis was taken prisoner by the Germans and deported to the Oerbke concentration camp, from which he was liberated by the Americans in April 1945.

In 1949 he was entrusted to manage the Brentei Refuge: he would do so for decades, with his wife and children ïthe and Claudio.

Bruno Detassis died on May 8, 2008 in Madonna di Campiglio, at the age of 97 years.

Aotearoa Beards - 2; The Maori Jesus

I saw the Maori Jesus

Walking on Wellington Harbour.
He wore blue dungarees.
His beard and hair were long.
His breath smelt of mussels and paroa.
When he smiled it looked like the dawn…

J.K Baxter 1966

Aotearoa Beards - 1

This photograph of an unidentified Maori man with a moko (facial tattoo) was taken in 1880.

Some Christian missionaries disapproved of moko, arguing that they were a heathen practice, so some Maori men let their facial hair grow to cover their tattoos.

Ilhami Atalay

One of my favourite contemporary artists is the Turkish painter Ilhami Atalay.

A "discovery" of my brother, when visiting Istanbul. And ever since, I have to ask anyone I know who travels there, to get me more of his beautiful material.

Like these these two art works, now hanging on a wall at the other side of the world, here in Wellington, NZ. 

Bluebeard

"Bluebeard" (French: La Barbe bleue) is a French literary folktale written by Charles Perrault and published in Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697. 

The tale tells the story of a violent nobleman in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of one wife to avoid the fate of her predecessors. Gilles de Rais, a 15th-century aristocrat and prolific serial killer, has been suggested as the source for the character of Bluebeard as has Conomor the Accursed, an early Breton king. 

"The White Dove", "Mister Fox" and "Fitcher's Bird" are tales similar to "Bluebeard". "Heer Halewijn", a medieval Dutch folk ballad, and a story found in Night 16 of The Arabian Nights, also share notable plot details with the Bluebeard tale.

Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941), was an Indian Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. 

Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. In translation his poetry was viewed as spiritual and mercurial; his seemingly mesmeric personality, flowing hair and beard, and other-worldly dress earned him a prophet-like reputation in the West. His "elegant prose and magical poetry" remain largely unknown outside Bengal.

A Pirali Brahmin from Calcutta, Tagore wrote poetry as an eight-year-old. At age sixteen, he released his first substantial poems under the pseudonymBhānusiṃha ("Sun Lion"), which were seized upon by literary authorities as long-lost classics. He graduated to his first short stories and dramas—and the aegis of his birth name—by 1877. As a humanist, universalist internationalist, and strident anti-nationalist he denounced the Raj and advocated independence from Britain. 

As an exponent of the Bengal Renaissance, he advanced a vast canon that comprised paintings, sketches and doodles, hundreds of texts, and some two thousand songs; his legacy endures also in the institution he founded, Visva-Bharati University.

The Chosen: Rabbi Abraham Abraham

Rabbi Abraham Abraham, the Coney Island-based leader of a winter swim group who was also known for stunts like living in an ice house, died one year ago on May 18 of bone cancer in Manhattan. He was 77.

Abraham, born on June 17, 1933 as Abraham Navitsky, was a Herculean figure who channelled the honky-tonk spirit of Coney Island through his zany feats and religious stage name. Abraham wasn’t a practicing rabbi with a congregation, but most say that his persona was more than appropriate.

“He was a self-styled rabbi,” said his son, Mayer Navitsky. “He was charismatic, majestic and would call on everyone to swim with him. Coney Island was his congregation.”

Muslims and Beards

Keeping a beard is obligatory in Islam by consensus, and trimming the mustaches is one of the fitra.

Shaving the beard is haraam (forbidden) because of the saheeh ahaadeeth (authentic narrations from Prophet Muhammad) that clearly state this, and because of the general application of texts that forbid resembling the non-Muslims. One of these reports is the hadeeth of Ibn ‘Umar who said that the Messenger of God said: “Be different from the mushrikeen: let your beards grow and trim your moustaches.”

According to another report: Prophet Muhammad said, “Trim your moustaches and let your beards grow.”

In the Islamic tradition, God commanded Abraham to keep his beard, shorten his moustache, clip his nails, shave the hair around his genitals, and shave his armpit hair.

Bikers, Beards & Helmets

No better feeling than the wind tucking on your beard while cruising your bike, but personally, I prefer a helmet on my head over a bandana. 

This Dutch biker found another alternative; maybe a bandana is not so bad after all...

ZZ Top

ZZ Top is an American rock band from Houston, Texas. Formed in 1969, the group consists of Billy Gibbons (guitar and vocals), Dusty Hill (bass and vocals), and Frank Beard (drums and percussion). ZZ Top's early sound was rooted in blues but eventually grew to exhibit contemporary influences. Throughout their career they have maintained a sound based on Hill's and Beard's rhythm section support, accentuated by Gibbons' guitar and vocal style. 

Their lyrics often gave evidence of band's humor and thematically focus on personal experiences and sexual innuendos.

Gibbons and Hill sport chest-length beards and sunglasses.

Beavis and Butthead

Beavis and Butt-head attempt to acquire beards so chicks will find them more manly. They shave their heads, and super-glue the hair to their faces. 

Damn, you're smooth!

Chur

There are many beard&moustache competitions around the planet, but the one in Chur, Switzerland, is by far my favourite!

Many of the men also donned traditional Alpine hats and suspenders to fully get into the competitive spirit.

Sixty competitors let their whiskers run wild as they sat patiently awaiting the cleanshaven jury's decision.

The international competition is now in its 26th year and the wonders draw more than 100,000 spectators.