The best beards ever.

Red Fish: I have a beard. Some would say it's a manly beard, if "some" is me in front of my mirror in the morning. Maybe it's no "World Champion" beard, but who's the judge of that?

Blue Fish: Turns out it's...

The guys from the World Beard and Moustache Championship

RF: I like any group that has a "full beard freestyle" competition. That produced this little gem:



RF: That's special.

BF: It's not that I don't appreciate the effort here. I do. That is a good amount of work right there.

RF: Probably a good amount of wax, too.

BF: The problem is that it's too much. It's too contrived.

RF: Obviously, if there's a World Beard and Moustache Championship, you're gonna get a lack of holding back. You've got heavy hitters like that guy. There's no time wasted there. Or here:



RF: You better believe that picture is hanging in my locker next to a placard that says, "If you can dream it, you can be it" -- in the same way that I might have a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger up if I was trying to get even with the boys who kick sand in my face at the beach:


Do you think that bicep's ever had a feeling of its own?

RF: And I applaud them. Not just because of the dedication. I applaud those results.

BF: But the vanity it takes to maintain these bad boys is off-putting. Kind of. I mean, I'm definitely not kissing these fellows.

BF: This guy? You betcha:

Ewan McGregor in Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith



RF: He looks like a cat! But a beautiful cat. A beautiful, well-groomed, evenly coated cat.

BF: Ewan McGregor is a first-ballot Husband.

RF: His name is Obi Wan Kenobi. And if you're going to introduce movies, you might want to first think about the fact that Star Wars is real. Not as real as The Lord of the Rings, but still pretty real.


It's more like a rockumentary than a film.

RF: But if you do want to go with a movie, try this:

Matthew McConaughey in Reign of Fire



RF: What a one-two punch that duo packed.

BF: Christian Bale will always have a place in my heart.

RF: I agree. But he does not destroy this movie the way Matthew McConaughey does. Do you see that head? Do you see that beard?


Do you see the beast? See its eyes? Magic hour...

RF: To round out the movie star category, let's have...

Daniel Day-Lewis


There is so much happening here.

BF: What's his wife doing? What are her eyes saying to you?

RF: I am distracted by him. The beard is award-winning, of course, but he is also wearing a loosely-tied pink tie.

BF: It's a woman's scarf, not a tie.

RF: If Daniel Day-Lewis wears it, it becomes a man's tie. That is also, by this logic, a man's beret.

BF: Is that a velvet blazer he's wearing? I can only hope.

RF: It's a man's blazer. And his wife is a man. Everything he touches becomes manly. He's like King Midas, only all of the gold is man-gold.

BF: Let's move on to historically awesome beards.

RF: I'm going to start with a two-parter, a before-and-after, from the halcyon days of our country.

Ulysses S. Grant



RF: That's the "before" picture, when he was a strapping young lad.

BF: I just like the cow-lick at the top of his head.

RF: His chin is made of America. That's the kind of chin that could stop a bullet. I mean that did stop a bullet. The bullet of slavery.

BF: Was the bullet scared to approach that "wide" chest of his? He's mousy-looking.

RF: It holds the heart of America in it, you red-bellied Communist.



RF: That is the "after" picture. It is after he had been drinking for mostly all the years in between the two pictures. He is, in fact, drunk in this picture. (I made up this fact.)

BF: That is a chest I can respect.

RF: It's full of alcohol. And sadness. A lot of it probably related to this sparkling gem of a man:

William F. Sherman



RF: I think we all know what that "F" stands for. He is impossibly hot in most ways.

BF: Those pockmarks make me nervous.

RF: You know who they made nervous? The South. As he burned it. With his gaze. Next up?

Abraham F. Lincoln



RF: Is this too obvious? Everyone knows that he rocked an all-time beard. What most people don't know is that he stood 7'5" tall.

BF: No, he didn't.

RF: I'm sorry that you hate America. Maybe you also hate freedom and those who fought for it. Next up:

Frederick Douglass



BF: I love freedom. Especially people who sing about it.

RF: Touche. In a fight, I think that Douglass would beat Lincoln. It's not the obvious choice, but if you stare deeply into that man's eyes? He is rock solid. With feelings.

BF: Those grim lips are the tell-tale signs.

RF: No, the heart in the floorboards was the tell-tale sign. But if we stick with freedom, we've got two more entries.

Karly Marx



BF: How's the juxtaposition of that mustache and that beard and the back of that head? Can you have a black mustache and a white beard?

RF: "Juxtaposition"? Really? Well, I can make up words, too. How's cabluxtabosition? And you can have dual-colored hair.

BF: But like that? Where it's just black and then just white?

RF: Look, you're missing the point, which is that Karly Marx let small animals -- like birds and cats -- nest in his beard, because he believed in the common man and the workers and rising up.

BF: Like an eagle?

RF: I'm not the Communist here. Now let's get to the heart of the matter:

Malcolm X



BF: Malcolm X, you are an all-time Husband. I would marry you any time, any place.

RF: I concur. Any random video of him is proof.

BF: He's so intelligent and awesome.

RF: The best thing to do is to realize that hotness peaked when he was preaching some feelings. After that, it was downhill.

BF: There was no downhill for Malcolm X.

RF: It was more like he was on an incline, like a roller coaster might provide, only at the top, instead of going down and really quickly, he went up and really quickly. And then exploded.

BF: And then punched everyone in the face.

RF: With an explosion. Focus, though! We have two more folks for this list. These are the top two. The upper tier of beards. Ready?

Santa Claus



RF: KABLAMMO. If you need to see that one close up to appreciate it, here's the link.

BF: There are no words.

RF: She is working a look I can't quite place. I almost have the words to articulate what she's doing, but half of my attention is rooted to Santa. To his random gesticulation.

BF: She's trying to see through the camera and somehow eat your brain.

RF: That's kablammy. Last but not least:

Jesus F. Christ



RF: Got you.