Wavy Garms*

DAVE SHAVES MERCHANDISE HITS THE STREETS

DAVESHAVES was relatively inactive between December and the start of February for reasons explained elsewhere on this site. Reasons which I'm resisting temptation to have yet another rant about right now. Deep breaths, Dave. Deep breaths.

But now, I'm back. With a vengeance. Yes, of course, you'll still be able to take the usual thrill-a-minute ride at breakneck speed through The Shave Cave and Dave's Shave Of The Day, but now you'll be able to do that wearing a DAVESHAVES t-shirt, with a stack of DAVESHAVES business cards in your pocket. You'll be ready for anything.

THE DAVESHAVES T-SHIRT

Cor, look at this.

A finely-tailored, painstakingly-fashioned white camiseta or t-léine or podkoszulek or crys-t**. Who wouldn't want to wear one of these? Imagine the looks on the faces of, say, your elderly relations when they open the tissue paper in which you've so lovingly, so delicately wrapped the T skjorte and they look inside and see this displayed? They'll probably immediately rip off whatever they clad themselves in that morning, paying no heed to present company, desperate to encase their septuagenarian, octogenarian or even nonagenarian bodies in the crisp, white stuttermabolur with the logo on the top right.

Here's a close-up of said logo, just in case you couldn't see it properly in the photo above. Notice how it calls to you, almost? How, if you listen really carefully, you can hear a voice - deep, booming, masterful, not unlike my own, in fact - commanding you, in a nice way, to type that web address into your nearest browser? You probably didn't notice it and now that I've just pointed it out you're probably straining to hear anything at all. But it's definitely there. Definitely.

THE DAVESHAVES BUSINESS CARDS

I don't think it's in the higher realms of fantasy to suggest that one - if not all - of the many, many thousands*** of subscribers to this simple shaving blog has woken up recently with just one thought on their mind and one thought only: What I could really do with in my life, right now, is a Dave Shaves business card. I thought that too and here it is. In fact, here they are****. Logo on one side, web address and catchy tag line on the other. Now I just need to figure out exactly how I'm going to use them.

Here they are scattered around a book that I'm just about to start reading - Seishi Yokomizo's The Honjin Murders. Although they're handy for scattering, one of them, inserted into the pages of Yokomizo's classic detective tale, will make an excellent bookmark.

Here are some more, scattered over some other books, all of which I can recommend, especially Alan Bennett's Talking Heads and Hellanory: the scripts.

But it's not all about decorating books.

Here's a business card casually pushed between the strings of a Blue Moon Tenor ukulele. Or maybe it's not quite as casual a placing as you might think.

Remember the classic Johnny Cash sound from his Sun Records recordings? I'm referring, specifically, to the sound made by his acoustic guitar, which sounded more like a percussion instrument than anything else.Almost like someone playing a washboard in a skiffle group. You can hear the sort of sound I'm talking about on recordings such as Get Rhythm. Apparently, it was created in the studio by Johnny***** inserting a playing card between the strings of his guitar. Or maybe it was a dollar bill. I can't remember. But the point is, if ever I feel the need to recreate that sound on a ukulele I can do so by the simple yet highly-effective application of a DAVESHAVES business card. Blimey. Even I hadn't realised just how bloody versatile this simple piece of rectangular card is.

Finally - why risk coffee-mug rings on your expensive wooden table top? Reach for one of your DAVESHAVES business cards - and watch it transform, before your very eyes, into a handy white, black and grey coaster. Your table top will thank you.

Wavy garms!

* WAVY (adj): drippy, peng, cool; GARMS (n): clothing, garments.

'Wavy garms' is a phrase used by my nearly-fifteen-year-old son, Excalibur, to describe cool clothing. I almost wet myself with laughter when he used it in relation to the apparel featured in this post. I intend to use 'wavy garms' at every available opportunity, even in situations when it makes no sense to do so.

** Oh I do love online translation tools.

*** Thousands upon thousands.

**** All 250 of them. I mean, I haven't put all 250 of them in the photographs, of course. I think you get the idea from just a few. Less is more, after all.

***** 'Johnny.' Obviously I was on first-name terms with him.