Jihad, Joaquin Phoenix and Bed Cheek

September 3rd, 2010: I woke up today with…”bed cheek”. I made up this new term that will eventually make it to Webster’s Dictionary’s 110th edition - it is a modified version of “bed head”. Bed Cheek is when the hair that forms a human beard sticks up and you need to wet it down to tame it. The past 1.5 months trying to grow myself my very own Jihad beard and I feel… I am on the verge of failure. Every day that I look in the mirror, I see this dust collector not to mention drool trap that is stuck to my face. Even worse is that every time I sneeze, my beard acts as a hairy environmentally friendly tissue that keeps any foreign projectile from going too far.

I started to grow out my facial hair because some of my friends said I looked good in facial hair – I forgot to ask, ”how much facial hair?” Anyhow, I was always wondering on how it would be to have a full on Jihad beard without needing to Photoshop it. Looking less like Jihad and on my way to looking more like Joaquin Phoenix (former actor now musician - photo courtesy of Getty Images) I am thinking it is time to stop and go back to shaving.

We will see if I am a quitter or not since I told myself I wasn’t going to shave until after Bolivia. I cross over the border into Bolivia in 3 days and as in most countries I visit, I don’t know how long I will be there. Anyone want to place a friendly bet on how long it will be before I go mentally insane with this facial toupee? (PLEASE NOTE: It is now September 7th and I destroyed my facial toupee – next…head hair?)