Your Nightly Briefing

 Croota Underwear is launching a "High Ray" range of lo-rise hipster trunks with a patriotic color scheme just in time for Independence Day. They're just $19.90.

If you wanna buy some, use the code CRT777 for 20% off (through July 16) and then CRT15B7 for 15% off until the end of July.

Men in bell bottoms crossing the Delaware

1970s ad for men's fashions.

Sending you best wishes for a safe and happy Fourth of July.

It’s summer Time:

What About A Good Old Threesome

Men at Work...

Wednesday July 3, 2013: Hunk of the Day

From:  Daily Hunks

Bad postcard of the week:

Crime and punishment on Mackinac Island
From:  The Grand Rapids Press

The Mackinac Bridge as seen from Mackinaw City -- and its parking lots

Let this week’s postcard serve as a warning to all the people headed over the Mackinac Bridge this holiday weekend. The authorities there don’t take rule-breaking lightly.

Titled “Straits of Mackinac Bridge,” the postcard shows us the Mighty Mac somewhere way off in the distance and a bit of the straits. I think we get more parking lot than water, which is a problem, unless they are calling the card “Parking lot near the Straits of the Mackinac Bridge.”

But look more closely at the bottom. We see, completely unexplained, some hooligan or misbehaving tourist locked in stocks.

Not only is he being punished by being locked up and hunched over, but he’s forced to face away from the majestic bridge and stunning views.

What, possibly, could he have done to deserve such merciless treatment?
Let’s speculate.

Perhaps he was the school group chaperon who allowed the kids on the bus to sing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” all the way from Saginaw to Gaylord, then yelled “One more time!”

Maybe he kept pronouncing Mackinac “MACK-in-ACK” instead of “MACK-in-AW.”

Maybe he steadfastly refused to step foot in a single Mackinaw City t-shirt shop.

Maybe he became the one-millionth teasing father to jokingly compare the omnipresent fudge to the omnipresent “pony surprises” filling the Mackinac Island streets. (People don’t like this, trust me.)

Maybe he approached the bridge toll booth and asked the attendant if he could break a $50, then backed up traffic as he asked for directions to The Mystery Spot.

Maybe he was one of those guys who thinks he can take up two parking spaces, hence being forced to stare at the parking lot and at the faces of all of those whom he has wronged.

Let’s see if the postcard back reveals any clues.

“Straits of Mackinac Bridge. Joining Michigan’s Peninsulas. Viewed from Fort Michilimackinac at Mackinaw City looking toward St. Ignace, the northern terminal of the bridge.”

OK, so it might be some kind of display connected to the Fort. Would be nice if they told us, but I’m not taking any chances next time I’m heading north. I’ll hit every t-shirt shop – that’s usually where they sell the postcards – but make no promises on the fudge jokes.

The folks here in the Bad Postcard Department wish you safe travels this holiday weekend, and pause to remember the brave men and women who protect our country and our freedoms. They are heroes.

Four for the Fourth!

 To celebrate the nations 237th birthday, you will find four sexy photos featuring "The Stars and Stripes" and "Red, White, and Blue"  in full glory of  pride and joy.  Happy Fourth of July!

Wet Wednesdays

Morning Wood

Today In History....

July 3, 1844 – 

The last pair of Great Auks is killed.

The Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis) was a large, flightless bird of the alcid family that became extinct in the mid-19th century. It was the only modern species in the genus Pinguinus, a group of birds that formerly included one other species of flightless giant auk from the Atlantic Ocean region. It bred on rocky, isolated islands with easy access to the ocean and a plentiful food supply, a rarity in nature that provided only a few breeding sites for the auks. When not breeding, the auks spent their time foraging in the waters of the North Atlantic, ranging as far south as northern Spain through Canada, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway, Ireland, and Great Britain.

THE TOP 5 BEARDS IN SURF

Sometimes, a surfer is only as good as the beard that wears him.
From:  Surfer

 Keith Malloy
No-nonsense. This is the beard of the carpenter. Or the Civil War re-enactor. A big, heavy handlebar ‘stache up top. Solid two-tone color scheme below: brown foundation with a blonde, wavy, often wind-lashed and salt-encrusted chin-beard section. Hipster-chic, but still grizzled as all hell. There may be a bird in there somewhere. Nearly flawless.
Photo: Burkard

 *Bud Freitas
A beard like this will get you set waves in NorCal all by itself. Grow this beard, paddle out to the peak anywhere you want, and at least once, you will get whistled into a screamer. Freitas already surfed better than almost everybody on the planet, but after he grew this beard, his tuberides got deeper, his trimlines grew purer, and his carves took on Richard Cram-like proportions. Just because of that beautiful beard. (*Bud's beard is no longer, due to an ultimatum from a lady friend. It will be missed.)
Photo: Ellis

 Chris Del Moro
Inquisitive. This is the thinking man’s beard. An artist’s beard. You will find flecks of paint, book jacket dust particles, and little bits of artisanal tea in Del Moro’s beard. This baby is perfectly at home whether sheathed in ice crystals from a frigid Scandinavian pointbreak, gently swaying to a Caribbean breeze, or cascading marvelously down the front of a wool cardigan worn to a poetry reading. Photo: Rugai

 Dion Agius
This beard looks like it should be attached to the face of man who is trying to sell you a rug in a smoke-filled Turkish bazaar. And that’s a good thing. It’s grown out into that upside-down triangular shape that just exudes exoticism. Agius has done cooler things with cooler people in cooler places than you ever have, and he’s somehow manifested all that in his beard.
Photo: Burkard

John Peck
Magnificent. Dark luminescent roots framed by a silver halo that’s been bleached pure by sun and experience and LSD. The middle-aged beard that all beards aspire to. This is a beard that has seen some shit. Some real life shit. Fear. Joy. Transcendence (maybe literally). First ballot Hall of Fame.
Photo: Ellis

The 30 Sexiest Tennis Players

From:  OUT

 From Agassi to Tsonga, a shortlist of the hottest male tennis players of all times.

ANDRE AGASSI
American
Andre Kirk Agassi (/ˈɑːndreɪ ˈæɡəsi/; born 29 April 1970, in Las Vegas, Nevada) is an American retired professional tennis player and former World No. 1, who was one of the game's most dominant players from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s. Generally considered by critics and fellow players to be one of the greatest tennis players of all time, Agassi has been called the best service returner in the history of the game. Described by the BBC upon his retirement as "perhaps the biggest worldwide star in the sport's history", Agassi compiled performances that, along with his unorthodox apparel and attitude, saw him cited as one of the most charismatic players in the history of the game. As a result, he is credited for helping to revive the popularity of tennis during the 1990s.
In singles tennis, Agassi is an eight-time Grand Slam champion and a 1996 Olympic gold medalist, as well as finishing runner-up in seven other Grand Slam tournaments. His four Australian Open titles are an Open Era record (shared with Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer). He is one of four male singles players to achieve the Career Grand Slam (all four Grand Slam championships) in the Open Era and one of seven in history, the first of two to achieve the Career Golden Slam (Career Grand Slam and Olympic gold medal), and the only man to win the Career Golden Slam and the ATP Tour World Championships (won in 1990): a distinction dubbed as a "Career Super Slam" by Sports Illustrated. Agassi was the first male player to win all four Grand Slams on three different surfaces (hard, clay and grass), and the last American male to win the French Open (1999)[ and the Australian Open (2003). He also won 17 ATP Masters Series titles and was part of a winning Davis Cup team in 1990 and 1992. Agassi was troubled by personal issues during the mid-to-late 1990s and sank to world no. 141 in 1997, prompting many to believe that his career was over.[ Agassi, however, returned to world no. 1 in 1999 and enjoyed the most successful run of his career over the next four years. During his 20-plus year tour career, Agassi was known by the nickname "The Punisher".
After suffering from sciatica caused by two bulging discs in his back, a spondylolisthesis (vertebral displacement) and a bone spur that interfered with the nerve, Agassi retired from professional tennis on 3 September 2006, after losing in the third round of the US Open. He is the founder of the Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation, which has raised over $60 million for at-risk children in Southern Nevada. In 2001, the Foundation opened the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy in Las Vegas, a K-12 public charter school for at-risk children. He has been married to fellow tennis star Steffi Graf since 2001.

Exposed:

Danny Cipriani

 The handsome English Rugby Union Footballer who recently had a close shave with a bus accident has apparently recovered enough to start sexting some naughty pictures to a blonde Hollyoaks babe after an exchange on Twitter.

 Daniel Jerome Cipriani (born 2 November 1987) is an English rugby union footballer. He plays fly-half, centre and fullback. He has played for London Wasps, Melbourne Rebels and England. He currently plays for Premiership team Sale Sharks.

Danny Cipriani is mixed-race, his father is from Trinidad & Tobago while his mother is English. Cipriani's father, Jay, and his mother, Anne, separated soon after his birth. Although Jay returned to Trinidad and Tobago, Cipriani was able to remain in contact with him. He lived with his mother in Putney. In order to send him to a private school, his mother learnt The Knowledge so that she could drive a London Taxi. She was able to afford to send him to the Wimbledon College prep school, Donhead.

Spotted as a rugby talent at Donhead, he was offered a scholarship and advised to move to the Junior House of The Oratory School near Reading to continue his development. He later moved to Whitgift School in Croydon after Common Entrance. A keen all-round sportsman, Cipriani played junior football for Queens Park Rangers and was offered youth terms by Reading. He also played schoolboy cricket for Berkshire and Oxfordshire. He was invited to join Surrey County Cricket Club

as a batsman. He also played squash at county level. He first played club rugby at Rosslyn Park in Roehampton, where he developed his passion for the game.

Danny appears briefly in an episode in the first season of My Super Sweet 16 UK.

On 24 April 2013 Cipriani was struck by a bus after a 16-venue pub crawl in Leeds, known locally as the Otley Run.

Raúl Esparza

 Raúl Eduardo Esparza (born October 24, 1970) is an American stage actor, singer, and voice artist noted for his award-winning performances in Broadway shows. He has received Tony nominations for his role as a vibrant and flamboyant Philip Salon in the Boy George musical Taboo in 2004; Robert, an empty man devoid of connection in the musical comedy Company in 2006; a lazy and snarky man in Harold Pinter's The Homecoming; and an aggressive volatile movie producer in David Mamet's Speed the Plow. He played the role of Riff Raff on Broadway in the revival of The Rocky Horror Show and the role of Caractacus Potts in the Broadway musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

He has been nominated in all Tony categories for which an actor is eligible but has yet to win. He has performed musicals by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stephen Sondheim, Kander and Ebb, Boy George, and the Sherman Brothers and has performed in plays by David Mamet, Harold Pinter, William Shakespeare, Tom Stoppard, and more. He is widely regarded for his versatility on stage. His work on film includes Sidney Lumet's Find Me Guilty and Wes Craven's My Soul To Take. His television credits include roles on Medium, Pushing Daisies, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He narrates the audio book for Stephen King's Under the Dome, and sings in concerts all over the country.

Esparza was the subject of a New York Times profile in which he revealed that he was bisexual and that he had same-sex relationships. Married to Michele Esparza, his high school girlfriend, since 1993, they had been separated "off and on", the actor has said.