u/merikus's SOTDs for challenge 'Lather Games 2023'

• Lather: Golddachs Classic
• Brush: Proraso - Professional (Boar) #OLDWORLD
• Razor: Ever Ready Lather Catcher
• Blade: Gem PTFE (1)
• Post Shave: Stirling Soap Co. - Unscented (Glacial) - Splash
• Osma: Osma - Osma
• Scuttle: Georgetown Pottery - G20

I lucked out for today’s shave. I literally didn’t look at the calendar until this morning, which is embarrassing for someone who is judging this contest. Saw it was stuff you hadn’t used yet, which is a problem, because I didn’t think I had anything I hadn’t used.

Turns out that /u/djundjila sent me this soap like six months ago and I lost it in a black hole. It resurfaced just as I needed it which worked out perfectly so thanks for hooking me up for today DJ.

I plopped the entire puck of triple milled soap into my SGUTTLE and just started switching the perfectly floppy ProPro all around it. It started developing into a real nice lather. As it did so, I kept on being nagged by the fact that I had bad associations with this scent but couldn’t figure out what it is. Soon it dawned on me that it smells exactly like what Arko would smell like if Arko smelled good. I was surprised Arko could smell good, but there you go.

I wanted to be all simpatico with the entire theme of the day, but I’ve actually tried razors in every single one of those categories. I decided to roll with my Rolls since I never really use it.

So all lathered up I got ready to enjoy my Arko++ shave and the Rolls proceeds to make me feel like I’m dragging a dull cheese grater across my face. I quickly give up on it in less than one pass and go fumbling for another razor I rarely use. I found this gorgeous Lather Catcher sitting at the bottom of a drawer. It always seemed to be more of a show piece than anything else, but I figured, what the hell.

I was surprised with how good this razor is. It is massively aggressive, but not in a bad way. Quickly mowed down my several days of stubble. No real irritation. I might actually try this thing again this month.

EDIT: #PhotoContest

https://i.imgur.com/tV03oTx.jpg

The Lather Catcher is the most beautiful razor I own, and it was hard choosing between highlighting its beautiful script on the back or the artistic “stained glass” effect on the front. So I decided to use mirrors to try to show all the beauty of this razor.

• Lather: Pre de Provence - No. 63
• Brush: Stirling Soap Co. - Kong
• Razor: GEM - Featherweight
• Blade: GEM - PTFE
• Post Shave: Stirling Soap Co. - Unscented (Splash & Balm)
• Osma: Osma - Osma
• Scuttle: Georgetown Pottery - G20

Another day, another shave. As a judge of this contest I know depressingly little about what one actually needs to do here; I had no idea what I would be shaving with when I tucked in to shave.

The Daily Challenge was easy enough as I always shave with SEs. Well, almost always. Been using DEs a lot lately. Yesterday I used the razor that I sort of wish I could use today, if I had remembered what today was. The challenge, that is. Not the day. Point being, I wanted to use something different, and so the idea of using one of the least used razors in my den, the Featherweight, took hold.

The lather was where I thought I would end up over in the other thread. Did I have non animal byproduct soap? I started pulling apart the drawer that my soap lives in and stumbled on this nearly full pick of PdP that I’ve have for like five years. I don’t much like the scent, and my wife really doesn’t like it, and so it barely has gotten used. According to their website they don’t use animal byproducts so it seems I’m good there.

I decided to event go with my only synthetic brush, which was something of a mistake. I got this thing a long time ago, and it’s always just felt fake on my face. I always feel like I get a little brush burn from it.

The lather wasn’t great either, whether by virtue of being this lather or the problems with the brush. Nor was I pleased with the razor—somehow I felt like I had more stubble after the shave than before. I have always felt this razor was absurdly mild.

Oh well. The irritation was less than I thought. That’s good.

Ranking My Lather Games Shaves:

1. 7/1
2. 7/2

• Lather: Noble Otter Soap Co. - Bare Unscented Soap
• Brush: Proraso - Professional
• Razor: Gillette - Super Speed
• Blade: Feather (1)
• Osma: Osma - Osma
• Post Shave: Barrister and Mann - Paganini's Violin Balm
• Post Shave: Stirling Soap Co. - Unscented Splash

Trickhole day. There’s nothing easier, right? Who among us doesn’t own at least one trifecta? I got a whole boat load of them. I got really into buying fragrances back in the day when Will first started to do it, and, in my fridge, I got Roam, Night Music, Vespers, all the good stuff.

The problem is that over the years my wife has become more and more sensitive to scents. It used to be that aftershave was fine, but now a days I even dilute aftershave with Stirling’s Unscented. On top of that, my work this winter/spring was generally fragrance free, so I’ve been using a lot of unscented products lately.

I almost considered trickholing Roam, but I didn’t want to smell like soy sauce all day. I would be mad, my wife would be mad; there would be a lot of mad.

So I read the calendar more carefully. “All scented products must match!” And somewhere a flying dog whispered to me, if they weren’t scented, they didn’t have to match!

So I decided to use a variety of unscented products: Noble Otter Bare, Gillette Super Speed, Osma Alum, Barrister and Mann Paganini’s Violin, and Stirling Unscented

This is my last bit of Bare—I famously went through nearly an entire puck using the GUTL in January. It has a nice tallow-ey scent. Not as much as Stirling Sheep (which has this lovely nutty fatty smell), but real nice. I need to try HoM’s unscented to compare them to.

You may ask why I am counting this razor as an unscented product. Well it’s so mild it’s the unscented razor, if you know what I mean. This thing has no pizzaz. Someone (DJ?) told me to ride the cap and I’d agree that helps get hair cut, but it also left me with far more irritation from my (unscented) Osma Alum.

Osma Alum is the only luxury alum. It is also unscented and tastes like salt and made my face burn after using this awful razor.

I find BAM’s balms pretty…gloopy? They feel nice on my face but they are oddly gelatinously gloopy. Paganini’s Violin remains the nicest smelling nothing ever produced.

I ended it all with the gin smelling Stirling Unscented splash. It smells like gin. I don’t know what else to say about it. Fortunately I don’t think it makes me smell like gin. This all reminds me I need to buy more, I’m almost out.

Ranking My Lather Games Shaves

1. 7/4*
2. 7/1
3. 7/6
4. 7/2

*So, I shaved on Tuesday night and forgot to post. But I shaved with my Clog Pruf for the first time in a long time, using Shire, and DAMN it was one of the best shaves I’ve had in a long long time. So I’m counting it.

Epilogue: If I have time later, I will try stacking things.

EDIT: typo

Should discuss merikus's valiant attempt to beat the criteria

Day 7 - I Have Made A Grave Error

• Lather: Barrister and Mann - Smoking Bishop Soap
• Brush: Declaration Grooming - B14 “Nebula” Badger
• Razor: GEM MMOC - Gen 1
• Blade: GEM - PTFE (2)
• Osma: Osma - Osma
• Post Shave: Stirling Soap Co. - Gatlinburg Splash
• Post Shave: Stirling Soap Co. - Unscented Balm
• Scuttle: Georgetown Pottery - G20

“Can you control a crisis? No—but with adequate preparation you can control the reputational consequences.”

So begins the flap of a handy dandy little book I have sitting on my shelf: Crisis Communications Management by Adrian Wheeler (don’t ask). As the day turned into night, elation turned into dread yesterday as I realized I had made a grave error. By listening to that damned flying dog yesterday I—a judge! A judge of the Lather Games!—may have called into question some of the fundamental tenets of what we are doing here. There must be Order. Conformity. Submission To The Rules. That is why we are here, and I failed in that yesterday.

Fortunately, I have Crisis Communications Management to guide me. When in a crisis, the author tells us we need to answer the key Crisis Questions as soon as possible:

What happened?

Why did it happen?

What are you going to do about it now?

What will you do to ensure it doesn't happen again?

Are you sorry? The answer is always 'yes' even if the crisis wasn't directly your fault. As a minimum, you are sorry for others' misfortune.

Any delay in telling the truth, helping the victims and saying sorry turns a disaster into a 'PR disaster'. A PR disaster happens when an organisation's behaviour and communication cause people to lose respect, trust and liking for it. The damage from a PR disaster usually lasts far longer than the damage from the original crisis.

So let’s take these one by one.

What happened?

To be funny, I decided to help the Air Bud Rule thing live on. I decided to break the rules of the contest that I myself swore to uphold. This was very upsetting to some people. More the Air Bud thing than the oath breaking thing.

Why did it happen?

Look, I wanted to be funny. I wanted to write an amusing post. I’m not going to win this thing. Never will. I don’t have it in me. I don’t like shaving every day, and as mentioned yesterday, in a small attempt to get some pity from you, my readers, I haven’t really been able to use scented products anymore.

And now I’m out of Stirling Unscented because I thought I had another bottle and I don’t.

Look, I’m not trying to bore you with my problems, I’m just trying to explain.

What are you going to do about it now?

Conform. I will conform. There are no loopholes. No loopholes. That’s what /u/USS-SpongeBob tells me. He is the Chief Justice. He knows.

I will no longer flirt with such dangerous ideas like loopholes. I will no longer listen to flying dogs.

What will you do to ensure it doesn't happen again?

I don’t understand the different between this question and the last one. Maybe the last one was about me righting the wrong I had perpetrated? Shit. I can’t fix that. I can’t fix what I did. Can’t. It was even scrublisted or something, I still don’t understand that, but that even fucked it up because it claimed that I didn’t use all unscented products. Well I did. Paganini’s Violin is unscented, damnit. And even if it isn’t, it says all scented products must match, and if you want to call it scented, that means I have only one—

Goddamnit here I go again. See? I’m arguing with the rules. Trying to find the loophole they can help me. There ARE NO LOOPHOLES. NONE.

I was wrong. I apologize to those who I hurt. I will do better. I ask your forgiveness.

Welp, with that out of the way, what do we have here, a spice day? Shit, I didn’t think I had any spicy soaps. But I have Smoking Bishop and that has…clove and cinnamon in it? I think, it’s far away now and I don’t want to google it.

It’s a good scent. It smells good. It’s spicy. And like winey and another, sweeter scent. But it is spicy and paired well with Gatlinburg.

Yesterday was one of my mildest razors, today one of my most aggressive. The more aggressive one left my face feeling a lot better than the mild one.

Ranking My Lather Games Shaves

1. 7/4
2. 7/1
3. 7/7
4. 7/6
5. 7/2

Airbud/loopholes

• Lather: Declaration Grooming / Chatillon Lux - La Fôret de Liguest
• Brush: Omega - Proraso Professional
• Razor: Gillette - NEW Long Comb
• Blade: Feather (1)
• Osma: Osma - Osma
• Post Shave: House of Mammoth - Shire 2 Splash
• Post Shave: Thayer’s - Witch Hazel
• Scuttle: Georgetown Pottery - G20

My wife hates this soap, but my wife isn’t working from home today and it’s the only collab I have so here we go. I don’t see why she doesn’t like it, it’s quite pleasant. I always enjoy getting to use it.

The NEW LC is something I dragged out of the back of my shaving drawer, and damn it’s a good razor! I got a rather good shave. No irritation, but I know it would have been closer with an SE. I’m vaguely considering using this for Austere August.

Of course, it being Osma day I had to participate.

Osma is life.

Ranking My Lather Games Shaves

1. 7/4
2. 7/1
3. 7/17
4. 7/7
5. 7/6
6. 7/2

• Lather: Mäurer & Wirtz - Tabac
• Brush: Declaration Grooming - B14 “Nebula” Badger
• Razor: Gillette - NEW LC
• Blade: Feather (6)
• Osma: Osma - Osma
• Post Shave: Thayer's - Original

A final Lather Games shave. Looking forward to seeing how it all turns out.