Besties 4 Testies

When the early settlers came to America on the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria, they didn’t know what they would encounter in the strange new land. Fortunately, the Indian chief Squanto helped them survive by teaching them corn stuff: corn bread, corn pudding, corn hole, etc. Over time, the Indians and the English settlers became quite close. 

Now there was one settler, John Smith, who wanted to get particularly close to a special Indian lass. I’m speaking of course about the warrior princess Pocahontas, Squanto’s only daughter.  

Pocahantas had many suitors, all of whom would bring her fancy cornstuffs. She was adorned with beautiful popcorn necklaces, and she smoked of a variety of corn cob peace pipes. 

Try as he might, John could never seem to capture the attention of the warrior princess. His candy corn always turned out sour and his (some other corn thing, okay?). He was discouraged. 

But one day, all that changed. 

Sadly humming a sorrowful tune, he picked away at another cornstalk. Then, in a burst of inspiration, John imagined a way for him to win Pocahantas’ affection. He attached six strings and a piece of wood onto an ear of corn, and began to make a melody for his true love. Historians agree it probably looked very similar to this.

A few days later at the Thanksgiving Ball, John Smith became the first dude at a party to try to impress a girl with mediocre guitar playing. And to the disbelief of all in attendance, Pocahontas was actually into it. 

“I never knew he had such a dreamy, sensitive side,” she said. 

Since that first Thanksgiving, the guitar has become a symbol of man’s power and artistry. For Robert Johnson, the guitar was a voice of the blues. For Bob Dylan, an agent of social change. For Fred Durst, a vessel of his rich persona.

The guitar simply captivates men. It excites us so much, just hearing a rippin’ solo makes us feel childlike. In fact, since you started reading this article, 3 men have air guitared “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

Thank you, guitar, for filling man with utter delight. After all, there are only so many activities that can make a man’s face do this.

Man’s greatest discovery: fire

Man’s second greatest discovery: cows taste good when hovered over flames. 

Man’s greatest invention: the iPhone

Man’s second greatest invention: the thing that hovered our cows for us, the grill. 

Webster’s dictionary definition:

grill \ˈgril\

from French gril meaning “to testosteronize” or “grow hair on one’s chest” 

1. transitive verb: to make a meat or multiple meats 

2. noun: the highest form of masculine cookery 

3. noun: Chamillionaire’s teeth 

For more information on grilling, please present your local man with one or more of the following: 

cow

pig

sausage

bratwurst

kebab (preferably with cow chunks)

steak

turkey or chicken or pheasant or pigeon

elk

pork

sirloin

rack of lamb

a pool party, a summer’s day, and/or a female he wants to impress

filet mignon

burning charcoal

If no man is presently available, Besties 4 Testies recommends you click this internet hyperlink to the worldwide web: http://www.ronswansongrill.com/

Guess what, Hunktown? That mustache of yours that keeps catching the head of that really dark, manly beer you're drinking? It caught my eyes, too. Both of them. And pardon me for being forward, but could you unbutton your shirt just a little more? Because I need to know what's happening in there.

Ladies, the days of Jonathan Taylor Beiber are behind us. It's time to grow up and support the growth of hair. Chest hair. Facial hair. Back hair. Toe hair. It's a sign of masculinity, dude.

And fellas, can I take some weight off your wonderfully barbaric chests? You don’t have to get that barbed wire tattoo around your arm anymore. Just grow some damn hair and voila! Masculinity proven.    

At least, that's what lions do. They grow out manes. Manes that intimidate other tinier lions and captivate all the feline lions. Felions.

Don't you remember when Nala fell in love with Simba? He was all cute and cuddly and adorbs in the beginning, but they didn't spell out S-E-X in the stars until she saw that mane of his.

It's the same for women in the present day. You can be cute when you're sick and and you're talking all nasally while you're curled up in that blanket and I make you chicken noodle soup. But besides that singular moment of a single day, you're not cute. You're a man. And men need manes.

Or take another cinematic masterpiece for example – Beauty and the Beast. Belle couldn’t help but fall in love with that hairy, beastly god. Similarly, like any ovary-endowed human, I can’t help falling in love with flannel-wearing grizzly bears either. But then the beast turned into a clean-shaven prince and we were all like, Oh okay, this is how the fairy tale goes. I guess this is cool.

But once the sequel came out, BAM. She was done with him. Well, of course. She fell in love with a beast, not a hairless kitten.

In conclusion, sometimes we just want the world to know that, yep, we just made out with a MAN. How do they know? Because we have a rash on our face. From an allergic reaction? Nay, world. From a man’s facial hair. (You can also rub sandpaper around your mouth for the same effect, but who wants to win a trophy without enjoying the game first?)

It’s the only way my Dad got me to eat my broccoli.

“It’ll put hair on your chest.”

Notice he didn’t say, “It’ll put hair on your chest, and that’s a good thing you should want.” 

That would have been unnecessary. Because for Stratton men, the chest beard is an innate source of pride. It turns the boy into man. 

That’s the power of body hair.* It serves much more than the obvious purposes of warming the body and arousing the females. It’s a mythical symbol of wild freedom, inspiring us from age to age.

In Bible times, God told Samson to grow his chest hair out as much as he could. Then one day, when Goliath was on his way to kill some Israelites, Samson fulfilled his destiny. Along the road, Samson hid within the fullness of his body hair. Goliath passed by unwittingly, taking Samson to be a common shrubbery. But Samson am-bushed and killed him, thus saving princess Esther from the fiery furnace. 

Nowadays, a man’s body hair is a source of artistic inspiration. His own carpeted canvas, if you will. 

I’m talking of course about the fine art of manscaping.˚  What begins as a subtle cleaning up of the armpits, five minutes later turns into a full-body shavescapade. Trimming over here, around there, and even down there, manscaping is a slippery slope of blade-running. It’s so fun, some men even get addicted to it. We call them swimmers.

Later in life, when our scalps fail us and give way to male-pattern baldness, the rest of our body seems to pick up the slack. Our shoulders soon make us forget we once had thick locks on our head, too. 

A faithful friend, body hair. It’s got your back.

Written by Blake Stratton

ˆ Which is why I cherish all 12 sprouts around my nipples. 

*medical term: forestus ubiquitous

Over the course of history, the male gender has proven as diverse as it is hairy, which is to say that it is abundantly, mercilessly and almost incomprehensibly diverse.

And yet through all our diversity, we can rest assured that the Manthings that unite us will always conquer what could have divided us, like John McClane conquering a building full of terrorist thieves on Christmas Eve.

Furthermore, it’s only by celebrating these Manthings regularly and loudly that we remain one of the top two genders in the whole world. And in my mind, there’s no better way to celebrate those Manthings than with an activity that combines three of the most prominently beloved Man-activities – drinking, shouting and competing.

Here then, for your enjoyment, for the good of men everywhere, for all that is just and holy and flatulent in the world, are the instructions for the world’s manliest drinking game ever: The Man Game.

Assemble a group of hearty individuals.

Distribute alcohol plentifully.

Organize yourselves into Man’s favorite game formation – a kind-of-circle thing, yeah, that’s good enough, whatever.

Go around the circle naming the manliest Manthings you can think of.

When someone says something manly, don’t refrain from releasing the instinctive grunts, howls and barbaric yawps that naturally arise from deep within you. 

If there’s a moment of hesitation between the grunting and the next player’s Manthing, that player must drink.

If the group decides that a player named a less-than-manly Manthing, whether out of panic, low testosterone levels, buried trauma from the past, or any other reason, that player must drink.

Aaaand that’s it. The result is an extremely loud, ever-escalating, never-ending cycle of Manthings, guttural praise of said Manthings, and falling-over laughter from those who can’t keep up with listing Manthings. 

If you have any questions, make up your own damn answer. Like a man.

I have cancer. That statement looks pretty scary, but it's actually not that big of a deal. Cancer has decades of killing on its side, and it's built a brand that evokes fear and sadness wherever it goes. But I'm lucky. I have prostate cancer. That's 100% curable. People who have other types of cancer probably look at prostate cancer patients with a "Pfft. that's not real cancer. If all I had was prostate cancer, I could cut it out with a rusty pocket knife." I will be getting radiation treatment for the next several weeks. Not the heavy stuff that you might have seen friends go through, or that Walt on Breaking Bad encountered. I've got it easy. I won't be losing my hair, I won't be puking during client meetings, and I won't be cooking meth. They plan on zapping my groin area with a few seconds of daily radioactive magic. And this will kill the cancer. I'll also assume that it'll make my junk grow to envious proportions - but the doctor has made no guarantees in this department. Why am I sharing this?

1. Because that's what social media is for. I'd be willing to bet that at least three of the people that have read this have gone through exactly what I'm going through. We can be mancancer buddies. 2. If you're a dude, you should get your prostate checked. It's not glamorous - but it could save your life. 3. It's an opportunity to do some good. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in the best month ever - #Movember. The only month designated with a hashtag, that celebrates mancancer with mustaches. So I'm asking you to give. Coincidentally, my friends Greg Privett and Lana Waites have a team that's promising to kick cancer in the balls. I'm asking that you give a little green to help them do this.  Why would you give?

My cancer is not a big deal, because plenty of people like you have given in the past. Research and advancements have been made that have allowed me to suffer a few weeks of inconvenience in exchange for a healthy long life. And stuff like that takes money to keep moving. So give a little. Give a lot. Give till it hurts your prostate. (Girls, you can give until your girl parts hurt.) I'll keep everyone updated, and as always, share my experience via Instagram, FourSquare, Twitter, Snapchat or whatever feels right at the moment.  So tell cancer that we're not scared anymore. And then let the world prepare for a giant, radioactive manjunk invasion.

What makes something funny? Is it the tightly wound construction of a sentence or story in which the “punch line” defies your expectation of the ending? Is it about the expertly timed and intoned delivery of a joke? Or is it actually about the mindset of the listeners, who are primed and ready to laugh at just about anything?

You know what I think is hilarious? A weird sounding fart. Maybe one that sounds like a question deflating. Or one that changes in pitch like a roller coaster running out of speed. Or one that comes as a set of three, like my brother-in-law’s famous Triple Threat.

Here’s something that’s always funny: Dudes getting hit in the balls. And getting punched in the face. And falling off roofs. In academia, they call this “physical comedy.” Haha hahahaha ha, I just thought of a professor saying “physical comedy” right before a spring-loaded boxing glove came out of his podium and punched him in the balls. Hahahaha, that would be gold. Hahaha.

If you’re more into words, here are some comedic ones: “Poop,” “Butthole,” “Assclown,” “Weiner,” “Weenie,” “Lil’ Ween,” “Weenis” (Note: this last option refers to elbow skin, not a penis. Doubly funny.)

Maybe you want to pop in a movie and laugh all night. I would recommend anything that stars multiple men. Could be a pair, like in a buddy-cop movie. Could be a band of guys – a sports team, a group of ex-college friends, or maybe even an actual band. There can be girls in the movie, but only if they’re acting as girlfriend or wives, or prospective girlfriends or wives. (Don’t worry, they will be.)

What’s great about movies starring multiple men is, essentially, they just take all the hilarious things mentioned earlier and do them for 90 minutes without worrying themselves with plot. This is what’s called “cinematic purity” – just raw, uncensored life. Save your plot for date night, or for middle school movie day, or for watching during your reading time.

At the end of the day, sure, maybe we’re a simple gender. We don’t overthink things. We trust our instincts. We know what we like, and it sounds like air escaping from tight butthole. If that kind of self-knowledge makes us sound childish, then I hope we’re at least the children swinging bats near our fathers’ crotches.

This is not news. Dogs are man’s best friend, the original Bestie of Testies. 

The average man has several friends, often in different categories. Ben’s my golf guy, Steve hosts poker night, Bryan’s my sensitive conversation, and Tim has a boat...

But only the dog gets the title of “best” friend – and not just in the animal kingdom, but in ALL of the kingdoms.*

Because, for a man, the dog is the swiss army knife of friends. Or if you prefer, the wearer of many hats,ˆ including the following:

Remember those nice, smooth stones you’d find on the creek bank as a boy? The ones that were perfect for challenging your pops to a skipping match, seeing who could make theirs elegantly skim farther across the water’s surface?

That’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about the huge-ass cinder block that had been discarded on the river bank among those stones. It was trash. It was dangerous. 

It was perfect.

You’d try your hardest to pick it up by yourself, but eventually you’d enlist a buddy to help. Then the two of you would trudge awkwardly to the water, probably end up wading in a few feet, before you’d begin swaying back and forth as you counted down your launch.

As a man-loving woman, there is nothing more beautiful and spiritually restoring than watching a male holding a bundle of God’s most precious creation in his arms. Your cold, jaded heart becomes filled with all the warmth of hope and potential that accompanies new life, new opportunities, new hopes and dreams.

Oh God, are you thinking about babies? No, no. No. Those things are messy and terrible.

I believe it was Jesus who said, “Two paths diverged in the woods.” And then something about choosing the narrower path, because it’s obviously the more hardcore one.

I could tell you for sure who said that quote but I can’t look it up right now because I’m not on the internet. Because I’m a man.

You see, as much as men love our gadgets, we also know there’s something invigorating about putting them down every once in a while and totally unplugging.

It reminds us that it’s okay to not be constantly available for communication with every person about any topic at all times. 

It helps us re-gain perspective on what’s important and what’s urgent. 

There’s nothing like settling into a good song. Whether you’re coming off a hard day’s work, taking a drive to clear your head, or simply wanting a soundtrack for whatever woodworking project you’re tinkering with today, you’re keenly aware that music can make the mood just right.

So you put on a tune and let the first few measures wash over you like a golden ale over your parched gullet.  

Ahh, that’s the stuff.

And then the vocals hit. At least you think these are the vocals. There are definitely notes being sung. But something is wrong. Wasn’t this artist supposed to be a male human? Why is he singing falsetto? Why is there squealing? Did the engineer mix up this vocal track with one from a sound-effects compilation of ostriches being attacked?

What the motherwhat is happening? 

Just forced myself to stop playing Batman: Arham Origins so I could write this post. 

This game is addicting, and I'll tell you why: because Batman is the manliest superhero ever. 

In fact, I want to be* him. But that goes without saying, because every man wants to be him. 

Because the Dark Knight is the superhero of the Everyman.

Proof:

1. His "man cave" is an actual cave.

2. His sweet-ass car. Designed for intense combat and wooing women, it's the outcome every man tinkering in his garage is secretly hoping for.

It’s been a while since you got a cut. Your neckline is getting scruffy. Your sideburns are unkempt. You know that keeping these small things in check are what keep you feeling like a grown-ass man, so you decide to do something about it.

And really, you would have done it sooner but you’ve been busy, what, with your job and your hanging out and your other stuff. Listen, you don’t have to fake it with us. We’re also men. We know it’s actually because making phone calls to schedule things is awkward and horrible and shouldn’t exist in a 21st century society.

Confession: I’ve never raised money for anything in my life. Never even tried. And you know why? Because I find asking people for money uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable. The least manly excuse ever. You know what else is uncomfortable? Going to dinners that don’t involve whiskey. Sitting through stupid TV shows and not ruining it for others by making constant jokes. Wearing pants when you have company over.

What I mean is, men do uncomfortable stuff all the time because it’s right and good.

Think about it this way: Have you ever seen the documentary Space Jam? Do you think Michael Jordan was comfortable when he got sucked down a golf hole, only to find himself in an animated world with the fate of a whole cartoon village on his hands?