So there’s a new book out called Manthropology: The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male, by anthropologist Peter McAllister.  McAllister studies some of the athletic benchmarks set in today’s sporting world and scrutinizes them against fossil and anthropological evidence of man’s old-school feats of physical ability.  It makes us look bad.

Usain Bolt, for instance, hit a speed of 42 kph during his record-breaking 100m at Beijing last year, but fossil evidence shows that some guy in Australia 20,000 years ago was hitting 37 mph while chasing mammoths in the mud.  And that was just a guy, not the fastest guy in the world.  The average aboriginal hunter could probably have trucked at 45 kph with the right equipment.

Today’s man can’t even play ball with Neanderthal women:

McAllister said a Neanderthal woman had 10 percent more muscle bulk than modern European man. Trained to capacity she would have reached 90 percent of [Arnold] Schwarzenegger’s bulk at his peak in the 1970s.

Oh snap.  This all feels a little defamatory and insulting to me, personally (“inadequate??”), so I’ve gone ahead and made a short list of things we moderns can look to to restore our man-bravado, after the jump.   Continue »

This news is just blowing the roof off the internet.  Or parts of the internet.  The parts labeled “Sports” and “How To Freeze Your Body After It Is Dead,” specifically.  Larry Johnson, a former exec at the cryogenic freezing facility Alcor Life Extension Foundation, is publishing a tell-all expose about how – duh – cryogenics is a pseudoscience aimed at milking big money from the estates of dead egos who couldn’t deal with the fact that the world would spin on without them.  Alcor’s grimmest offense:

Technicians with no medical certification gleefully photographed and used crude equipment to decapitate [Ted Williams], the majors’ last .400 hitter.

Williams’ severed head was then frozen, and even used for batting practice by a technician trying to dislodge it from a tuna fish can.

Yeah.  It’s pretty bad, and gets worse, after the jump.   Continue »

Jude Law, an already well-regarded actor, is further burnishing the wellness of his regard by appearing on Broadway and the West End as Hamlet.  So he’s got the impassioned, lilting, I guess the word is “Shakespearean” delivery down pretty well, Serious Theater Actor that he is.  However, Jude Law isn’t so seriously devoted to the craft of drama that he can’t drop in for a bit of comedy once in awhile, in the way that someone might, say, devote oneself to a famous and beautiful blonde actress but still dabble in another woman on the side.  (Jude Law did that also, get it?)

So Law appeared on Jimmy Fallon (somebody get that guy suited up in the role of Yorick) and recited a few lines of verse at Fallon’s request, in his best soliloquy voice: “I won’t tell you that I love you/ Kiss or hug you/ ‘Cause I’m bluffing/ With my muffin…”  Video ATJ: Continue »

So a book was published a few weeks ago by two researchers who had surveyed more than a thousand women on the UT Austin campus.  It purports to answer the big question of – drumrolllll - why women have sex (that is also the book’s title).  84%, it was claimed, answered that they usually were just looking for a little peace and quiet and/or some help with household chores.  Some of the more depressing answers:

“I have sex to relieve the boredom because it’s easier than fighting. Plus it gives me something to do.”

“I slept with a couple of guys because I felt sorry for them.”

In one survey of students, nearly one in 10 women admitted to “having sex for presents”. Others said: “He bought me a nice dinner”, “he spent a lot of money on me early on”, “he showed me he had an extravagant lifestyle”.

Another “sexologist” recently weighed in on these answers with some of her own, after the jump.  Plus: a poll!   Continue »

John Edwards is basically the Jon Gosselin of politics.  He wears the figurative Ed Hardy shirts.  He figuratively plans the figurative reality television show with figurative Michael Lohan and figurative Kevin Federline.  We know all this.  But that doesn’t mean we want to stop reading about it!  It is now being alleged that the baby he claimed not to father with mistress Rielle Hunter is probably his.  Not a huge surprise there.

Any acknowledgment of paternity would have ramifications for Mr. Edwards, who could suffer a further blow to his credibility but could also be praised for belatedly accepting responsibility.

This from the New York Times. Seriously, New York Times?  It does not seem likely that John Edwards will be praised!  In any capacity, for anything he ever does, for the rest of his life.  Especially with some of the really, really dirty details coming out now, after the jump… Continue »

That Lady GaGa.  She so crazy!  Now she’s doing a Lady GaGa calendar.  What’s next, a book?  A video cassette?  A rotary telephone?  A steam-powered automobile?  A feudalistic society?  The joke is that nobody uses any of those things anymore, see.  We’re a civilized society here.  We don’t use wall-mounted calendars in the First World, unless, I don’t know, we’re marking off how many days we’ve been sober (0.3!) or how many days until Hanukkah Harry put presents under the Jewish candlestick (85!).

If I saw Lady GaGa driving a steam-powered automobile, though, that would seem perfectly normal to me.  What with her being so crazy.  The rest of the calendar preview, ATJ.   Continue »

Musician/poet/author Nick Cave has released a book called The Death of Bunny Munro, about a womanizing, alcoholic salesman whose actions drive his wife to suicide.  An all-around cad:

“Bunny has been banned for life from three McDonald’s, one Burger King, and thrown out of the Kentucky Fried on Western Road with such force that he fractured two of his ribs.” His libido is where “the sh*t and the fan had their fateful assignation.” Along the way, Bunny does drugs, gets his face smashed in, blows all his money, and encounters a homeless guy in a “Sh*t Happens When You Party Naked” T-shirt.

But Cave contends that when Spinning Around came out, “Kylie’s hot pants were all the tabloids could talk about. I think she has to take a certain responsibility for this novel, by wearing those hot pants.”  In the novel, you see, nothing gets Bunny Munro sparked up like the thought of Kylie Minogue and Avril Lavigne…   Continue »

50 Cent is like the Google of the rap world.  He may not be good at every venture he undertakes (like “making rap music”), but the man is completely indefatigable about having an iron in every fire possible.  Guy is addicted to the hustle.  His agents are like, “50, you have a million bajillion dollars, you don’t need to develop and market a line of perfumes.  Ladies don’t want to smell like you!”  It’s not about the money, agents.  50 Cent book?  In stores soon (check the “Self Help: Slangin’” section).  50 Cent couture?  Look out the window, we blew by that miles ago.  Now we’re on 50 Cent moisturizer for men, 50 Cent vitamin supplements, 50 Cent limited edition half-dollar coin with certificate of authenticity from the U.S. Mint.

And with today’s appearance on Rachael Ray, 50 Cent looks poised to move on the gourmet cooking/kitchenware market as well…   Continue »

It’s like a dictionary, but only for words derived from a certain F-word!  (You know which one.  You know which one.)  Now in its third edition, The F-Word is really the definitive look on how we all got so f’ed on this word over the centuries.  Written by Jesse Sheidlower, the Oxford English Dictionary’s BMOD (Big Man on Dictionary), it goes a little something like this:

After an entertaining forward written by F-word–loving comic Lewis Black, Mr. Sheidlower swiftly chronicles the F-word’s earliest appearances in various media, as well as its linguistic roots. From there, he offers an OED-style dictionary of the term and its myriad uses and adaptations.

Including such favorites as:   Continue »

Remember “A Day Without Megan Fox” last month?  Prob not, since if you were in or around FListed, you were way down in the VIP Internet Dungeon, where you couldn’t hear the silence up above in the Main Internet Room, because you were partying it up with Megan Fox and Lady GaGa and all your other internet friends on A Day of Only Megan Fox.

But now, in a most cheeky send-up of A Day Without Megan Fox, Urlesque has declared tomorrow A Day Without Cats, to be observed by the various websites that post videos and pics of cats a lot.  So I put the question to you, readers: would you like to make tomorrow A Day Without Cats at FListed… or A Day of Only Cats?   Continue »