Eighth-annual GLB May Beards: Ready, set, grow!

May Beards are a Gaslamp Ball tradition dating back to 2007. It began with matthewverygood birthing the idea, and snowballed from there. There are no hard-and-fast rules since it's all in clean fun, but he compiled a short list of suggestions back in year four's launch post.

Here's the guidelines that I abide by, but you can do whatever. Just grow something. Maybe you'll like it.

• Light grooming is allowed, especially if you need to because your shaggy appearance might get you fired from your job or make your girlfriend or wife find you less sexy.
• Don't like beards? That's fine. Mustache it up then!
• Ladies, you can join too. Be creative. I won't judge you.
• Need some tips? This site has the goods.

I usually start the month with a clean canvas, but this year I have several months of a ridiculous Scott Ian-ish thing living on my chin, so I'm just going to leave it there and let my May Beard contribution be the neglect of my cheeks and stachezone. I haven't had a haircut for a few years because I've been growing it out for a children's charity, so I started the goatee late last year so the before-and-after would be even more striking when I do get sheared. I did have an appointment to lop it all of last week, but then I remembered that May was coming up, so I'm just going to hold on to it until the end of the month since it would be pointless to have a nice, clean-cut haircut over a bunch of patchy facepubes.

So, that's what's up with my May Beard. Who else is doing it? Do you have any special routine you follow? Anybody doing a Maystache?