My shaving gel is a Sorny

Yes that's right folks, my shaving gel is a Sorny.

Don't know what a Sorny is? Sure you do. A Sorny is a metaphor for cheap knock off brands of better quality products. It refers to the popular electronics company Sony of course. Let's say you want to buy a Sony tv. Let's also say you don't want to pay the premium price of a Sony tv.

That's where Sorny comes along.

Some third world company that manufactures inferior, cheaply made tv's want to borrow liberally from the Sony brand by naming their company/products "Sorny". They'll even use the same font in an attempt to fool people into thinking it's a Sony product. Legally they get away with it by including the "r".

So, when i was in the drug store the other day i realized i needed to buy shaving gel. Looking at the shelves, there was the top brands from Gillette or whoever else makes the stuff. But wow, this crap is expensive. Eight, nine, ten bucks in some cases. But then, on the bottom shelf i see a handsomely packaged container, which is like, three bucks. It's made by a company called "Direct" which probably should have tipped me off that this product was a Sorny. I don't know the brand, and although the price point suggests it's a cheaper no name product, i figure, what the hell, it's shaving gel. What could possibly go wrong with a Sorny shaving gel?

Plenty, i later found out.

Not in the I-Put-It-On-My-Face-And-My-Skin-Burned-Off sorta way, but when i first used it i realized it was shit. Not in the Fecal-Matter-That-Comes-Out-Of-Your-Ass sort of shit, but clearly it was not very good.

I shave in the shower, so the first problem came up when i pushed the little button that dispense the gel. The blue gel looked harmless enough, and in itself didn't look like a Sorny gel. But when i started to rub my hands together that activates it and magically turns it into foam, i realized that it didn't really magically turn into anything. It sort of kind of became foam-like, but not to the volume that would be required to coat one's face thoroughly and evenly. And i squeezed out a fair bit of this gel too. I wasn't being cheap with myself. After all, why would i want to save a couple of cents at the expense of walking around with a half shaved face?

Anyway, i'm stuck now and don't have a choice. I'm in the shower, i'm naked, and there's a midget standing next to me. Ok there was no midget. But the point is, i'm committed to using this Sorny gel because at that precise moment, there were no other options.

So i start rubbing this stuff on my face, and you want to spread it around evenly and thick so you have a nice smoothe shave. I want to be one of those guys in the tv commercials who actually smiles when he's looking into the mirror after shaving. (Come to think of it, I don't recall ever smiling after shaving, but perhaps that's another story.)

Speaking of mirrors, that's what i did next. I looked into the little shower mirror to see if the foam was nicely applied, and the last thing i wanted to do was smile. It barely looked like i had anything on my face at all. It looked as if someone lathered up a tiny bit of soap and rubbed in across my face. It was weak. Very very weak.

So then i decided that perhaps i need to use more, so i do just that. By now i've probably used a quarter of the container in this one shave. But, it does the trick and my face is now properly lathered. At least, for a second or two it was. After about 20 seconds, this foam started to completely slide off my face, which is the exact opposite of what this shit is supposed to do. When the scientists are in their shaving gel labs, i would think that in their recipe book it probably says something about shaving foams and gels having chemical properties that make it stick to your face...you know...so you can actually shave with the fucking thing?

So that, my friends, is why my shaving gel is a Sorny. Lesson learned. Don't cheap out on grooming products, because, as they say, optics is everything. And when i take my half shaved face into work, people may wonder why I've got random patches of facial hair in various locations around my upper lip or right ear. Perhaps it's the male equivalent of women you see who have apparently used a shotgun to apply their makeup.

And I don't want to be a woman like that.