A not-very-close-up and heavily moiréd photo of the beard in question and its host.

After (moustache) waxing poetic about Dave Zabriskie’s facial hair, I feel I would be remiss in not granting equal time to the Bay Area’s most popular beard of late 2010, that of Brian Wilson.

For the record, I am talking here about Giants closer Brian Wilson, not Beach Boy Brian Wilson or any of the many other Brian Wilsons out there. This is a point I was hard-pressed to communicate to The Google, which as the top three results for images of Brian+Wilson+beard returned the following:

and the following:

and the following:

(The top text results, by the way, were:

1. Brian Wilson Says Smile Aka Beard Of Defiance lyrics
2. Morning Win: Brian Wilson’s beard
3. Brian Wilson’s Beard (BeardOfBrian) on Twitter
4. Brian Wilson’s beard has mystique all its own

but that is neither here nor there. Or maybe both. This discursive parenthetical dedicated to DFW, RIP.)

The point is, Brian Wilson’s beard doesn’t look like it belongs on his face, or anyone else’s that I know. (Except maybe The Spencuation.) Its defining characteristic is its blackness. It is as black as the cover of Smell the Glove.

Q: How much more black could it be?
A: None. None more black.

This despite the fact that BW himself, who is rarely seen without a baseball cap, appears to be at best sandy-haired and at worst formerly sandy-haired (i.e. bald).

It’s all very suspicious, and most suspicious of all, I had a hard time finding a good picture of the beard on the Internets despite the fact that it appears regularly on television and is something of a cult object among Giants fans. Am I suggesting that the beard is some kind of extraterrestrial that is able to manipulate our Earth media, and is even now holed up somewhere with Dave Zabriskie’s former moustache hatching an evil plan to conquer the world? I am not officially suggesting that, no; but still, the evidence is provocative.