So what would you do with seven years’ worth of Brandon Flowers facial hair? Let’s be honest, you probably weren’t expecting that question were you? It might seem slightly left-field. And yet it’s a question that has been puzzling rock fans ever since … well, ever since about three days ago when the Killers frontman revealed that he had collected his facial hair shavings in a bag since 2008.
“I have a Ziploc bag full of hair”, Flowers told the Independent casually. “I’ll grow five or six days growth, make sure that the sink is dry, use an electric razor, catch it in the sink, and then I’m able to just scoop it into the bag!”
He wasn’t done there with his follicle anecdote: “It’s a lot of hair!” he exclaimed, while pulling his t-shirt up over his head and spinning his arms around like a windmill (I’m imagining this bit, but I’m definitely right). “But it’s compacted! And it doesn’t smell. It’s all black but about half way up you start to see some greys. I don’t know what to do with it yet. It means something.”
Now I don’t know about you, but if there’s one thing weirder than a man carrying eight years worth of beard trimmings around with him in a Ziploc bag, then it’s a man carrying eight years of beard trimming around with him in a Ziploc bag and having NO IDEA why he’s doing it. There’s no art project here. No pressing medical need to retain the hair. He’s just doing it, driven forwards on his mission only by the fact that it “doesn’t smell” and that it “means something”.
What a ridiculous oddball. And so it turns to you, Guardian readers, to answer that fateful opening question. What should Brando do with almost a decade’s-worth of fragrance-free ex-beard? Rent it out at inflated prices to depressed late-developing hipsters in the Hackney area? Transform it into the world’s first violin bow made entirely from bits of a indie rock frontman’s moustache, then perform his entire new solo album on it (5 stars - The Wire)? Maybe throw them all over his bedroom floor while doing his trademark windmill arms and shouting “I am the Mr Killers man” in a peculiar accent?
Or should he just stop collecting all his facial hair shavings in a Ziploc bag? Answers below please.
