Pastimes for enforced idleness

Via Light Reading and The New Yorker, I read in this article: Dept. of Labor: Strike Beards that growing beards has become a pastime, or even fashion, among those unable to ply their more usual trade of scripting films. One such, Conan O'Brien, is quoted as saying: “Literally, it’s something to do. You can check on the progress of your beard.”  I wonder if this means a surge in the number of bearded leading men once the wordsmiths return to work? Viggo, George and co should be first in line for these parts, of course.

From the New Yorker article: “I don’t want to overanalyze my own beard, but, I mean, Trotsky had a beard,” Rob Dubbin, a writer for “The Colbert Report” and an admirer, from his Harvard days, of the “thesis beard,” said. (A mutant cousin of the thesis beard, Jost pointed out, is the “neck beard,” grown sometimes during final exams.) “When you see someone else with a beard on the line, it resonates with the idea of lean times.”