The sexiest man living
Seen at chris_baby's. From Salon.com:
The sexiest man living
Forget that other list. We pick the men who really set our hearts aflame -- and there's nary a pretty-boy actor among them.
That big bland celebrity flip book's annual celebration of the Sexiest Man Alive isn't valuable because of its dazzling spreads of razor-sharp abs. It offers tangible proof that women (and gay men, and anyone else who casts a vote in that process) can be just as drably one-dimensional as any straight man who ogles Pam Anderson. In its 20-plus years documenting hot, they've been about as imaginative as a Whitman's Sampler, about as adventuresome as a 10-minute roll with the lights off, about as mentally stimulating as Matthew McConaughey.
Full article here, but you have to get a one day site pass to read it unless you're subscribed.
Here are my guys who got picked:
No. 1 Sexpot!
Who: Stephen Colbert
Age: 42
Know him as: Star of the "The Colbert Report" (Comedy Central)
It sneaks up on you, the idea that this geeky guy in glasses and overgelled hair mocking Bill O'Reilly and other TV blowhards every night is, well, hot. When it hits you, you're sure you're the only one who feels it. In fact, you start to believe you're the only one he's talking to, night after night. So many of his crazy jokes are just for you. Who else laughed till they cried when he took the E Street Band off his "On Notice" list, and then had Steve Van Zandt explain how the band members phone-treed one another to make sure everyone got the good news, Clarence phoning Patti, and Patti phoning Bruce, and so on, while the geeky guy in glasses kept insisting the big tough "Sopranos" star, known as "Little Steven," call him "Big Stephen" (and he did).
Then you tell a couple of people about your crush, and you're crushed by the reaction: Lots of women think Stephen Colbert is sexy, and more than a few men do too.
So I don't have him to myself. So what. As a matter of fact, he's married, and as a good Catholic girl who recognizes the good Catholic boy in Colbert (he's a composite of several of my grade-school crushes, in fact), I'm going to keep this appreciation chaste, the way he'd like it. No lurid loofah fantasies here. But even that nod to the real Stephen Colbert triggers another frisson of confusion and dizzy doubt: Exactly who do I think is sexy? The crazy guy who calls me a "hero" every night? (I love that!) The sweet, old-fashioned family-man comic who plays him? The slender, willowy alpha male who stood up to the bullies of the Bush administration and their Stockholm syndrome victims in the press corps last May? Or all three? Ah, romance unravels if you think about it too much ... whatever the magic is, bring it on.
Colbert's allure comes from the physical comedy that's always threatening to take over his body. From the prankish, mismatched ears to the cowlick that stands up no matter how much he gels his hair, he looks like he just can't contain himself. That slightly feminine face in perpetual motion -- eyebrows up, lips curled, eyes alight with a crazy joy that every once in a while seems to break character, for a split-second of intimacy, to say (only to me?): Yes, I know how hilarious this is! Plus, those large but graceful ever-moving hands! Also: He can dance! And tumble!
Only a few guests over the last year have made me jealous: Sure, people made fun of Connie Chung when she asked him to take off his glasses, but ... thanks, Connie! Now I live for the moments when he takes off those rimless specs and shows us his eyes. And Eleanor Holmes Norton can claim she wasn't attracted to a "plain, vanilla man," but c'mon, she was undressing him with her eyes. Maybe hardest to watch was the recent show in which Ron Reagan got to do Colbert's hair, mussing it up and re-gelling it and combing it into a Ronald Reagan-style pompadour. The sexiest part of all? It wouldn't stay that way. But if I could have gotten my hands in all that hair, I know it would have done my bidding, or I'd have worn myself out trying...
In the end, what makes Colbert sexy and not merely altar boy-adorable (OK, he is that, too) is the ever-present sense of comic danger he conveys, the threat that, really, he just might do anything to make you laugh. Who wouldn't want to come home to that? The great thing is, I do, Mondays through Thursdays anyway. And Nation, I'm willing to share him, because deep down I still feel like it's just him and me late at night, and if you understand anything about his liberating doctrine of truthiness, that means I'm right!
-- Joan Walsh
Who: Alan Rickman
Age: 60
Know him as: Actor
Maybe it's the voice, that low British hum so intimate you find yourself leaning forward when you hear it -- which might be the point. Maybe it's the profile -- unmistakably distinctive and defiantly not hewn from the pretty-boy block. Maybe it's the way he can play good guys and bad guys, and guys whose allegiances you can't quite determine, with equal gusto. Or maybe there's just something about the man that's smart and complicated and tender and a little dangerous that makes your mind start wandering into filthy corners while you're sitting there, innocently trying to watch a "Harry Potter" movie with your kids or something. Whatever it is, Alan Rickman's got it. And at age 60, he seems to have no intention of letting it go anytime soon.
While the classically trained London stage actor gained his first big breakthroughs playing heavies in "Die Hard" and "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," it's his performance in 1991's "Truly, Madly, Deeply" that guaranteed Rickman's seemingly bottomless supply of slavish admirers. As Jamie, his ghostly cello player is so appealing, so utterly romantic and so inconveniently dead, you can understand why his girlfriend is reluctant to let him fully shuffle off the mortal coil. Frankly, a spectral Alan Rickman still beats out a vast percentage of mere mortals most days of the week.
In ensuing years, he's buttoned up in Jane Austen and been a reluctant space hero in a Tim Allen comedy. But whether he's playing a businessman in the throes of marital temptation in "Love, Actually" or a fiery Éamon de Valera in "Michael Collins," Rickman may be the only actor to make a certain world-weary sadness ridiculously hot. It's a soulfulness that hints of deep fires below, a reserve that smolders like crazy, and damn if it doesn't keep getting sexier with every passing year.
-- Mary Elizabeth Williams
Who: Jon Stewart
Age: 43
Know him as: Host of "The Daily Show" (Comedy Central)
Don't tell my husband, but Jon Stewart is the sort of man I always imagined myself marrying. Smart, funny, Jewish, wavy-haired attractive, successful. A hot mensch. In fact, he's probably many a Jewish (and non-Jewish) woman's fantasy match, though not, possibly, what our grandmothers might consider the perfect catch. "A comedian?" my own grandmother would surely have said dismissively. "What do you need it for?"
Oh, but Grandma. We do need Jon Stewart. We need him bad.
It's not just because he's reliably there for us every night (or at least four nights a week -- oh, how I miss him on Friday and long for him by Sunday). It's not just because he always -- and I mean always -- makes us laugh, nourishing our brains and tickling our fancy at the same time. It's not even because he's so damn cute and well read and light on his feet when guests drop by, the way he's able to listen and to joke, to disarm as he challenges, to get even the most stone-faced book-peddling tool to snicker like a schoolkid. No, what really makes Jon Stewart so particularly dreamy is his humility, and his confidence: His confident humility -- dissing his own ability to do impressions; playing straight man to all those sagely nodding, seriously silly "correspondents"; poking fun at an over-the-top pun as it pops up on screen; having an intimate heart-to-heart with an errant world leader -- well, it's just so … yum.
Look, I don't care if he's a little short. I don't care if he's a little soft. And I don't care if my husband reads this: Jon Stewart can put me on his seat of heat anytime.
-- Amy Reiter
The sexiest man living
Forget that other list. We pick the men who really set our hearts aflame -- and there's nary a pretty-boy actor among them.
That big bland celebrity flip book's annual celebration of the Sexiest Man Alive isn't valuable because of its dazzling spreads of razor-sharp abs. It offers tangible proof that women (and gay men, and anyone else who casts a vote in that process) can be just as drably one-dimensional as any straight man who ogles Pam Anderson. In its 20-plus years documenting hot, they've been about as imaginative as a Whitman's Sampler, about as adventuresome as a 10-minute roll with the lights off, about as mentally stimulating as Matthew McConaughey.
Full article here, but you have to get a one day site pass to read it unless you're subscribed.
Here are my guys who got picked:
No. 1 Sexpot!
Who: Stephen Colbert
Age: 42
Know him as: Star of the "The Colbert Report" (Comedy Central)
It sneaks up on you, the idea that this geeky guy in glasses and overgelled hair mocking Bill O'Reilly and other TV blowhards every night is, well, hot. When it hits you, you're sure you're the only one who feels it. In fact, you start to believe you're the only one he's talking to, night after night. So many of his crazy jokes are just for you. Who else laughed till they cried when he took the E Street Band off his "On Notice" list, and then had Steve Van Zandt explain how the band members phone-treed one another to make sure everyone got the good news, Clarence phoning Patti, and Patti phoning Bruce, and so on, while the geeky guy in glasses kept insisting the big tough "Sopranos" star, known as "Little Steven," call him "Big Stephen" (and he did).
Then you tell a couple of people about your crush, and you're crushed by the reaction: Lots of women think Stephen Colbert is sexy, and more than a few men do too.
So I don't have him to myself. So what. As a matter of fact, he's married, and as a good Catholic girl who recognizes the good Catholic boy in Colbert (he's a composite of several of my grade-school crushes, in fact), I'm going to keep this appreciation chaste, the way he'd like it. No lurid loofah fantasies here. But even that nod to the real Stephen Colbert triggers another frisson of confusion and dizzy doubt: Exactly who do I think is sexy? The crazy guy who calls me a "hero" every night? (I love that!) The sweet, old-fashioned family-man comic who plays him? The slender, willowy alpha male who stood up to the bullies of the Bush administration and their Stockholm syndrome victims in the press corps last May? Or all three? Ah, romance unravels if you think about it too much ... whatever the magic is, bring it on.
Colbert's allure comes from the physical comedy that's always threatening to take over his body. From the prankish, mismatched ears to the cowlick that stands up no matter how much he gels his hair, he looks like he just can't contain himself. That slightly feminine face in perpetual motion -- eyebrows up, lips curled, eyes alight with a crazy joy that every once in a while seems to break character, for a split-second of intimacy, to say (only to me?): Yes, I know how hilarious this is! Plus, those large but graceful ever-moving hands! Also: He can dance! And tumble!
Only a few guests over the last year have made me jealous: Sure, people made fun of Connie Chung when she asked him to take off his glasses, but ... thanks, Connie! Now I live for the moments when he takes off those rimless specs and shows us his eyes. And Eleanor Holmes Norton can claim she wasn't attracted to a "plain, vanilla man," but c'mon, she was undressing him with her eyes. Maybe hardest to watch was the recent show in which Ron Reagan got to do Colbert's hair, mussing it up and re-gelling it and combing it into a Ronald Reagan-style pompadour. The sexiest part of all? It wouldn't stay that way. But if I could have gotten my hands in all that hair, I know it would have done my bidding, or I'd have worn myself out trying...
In the end, what makes Colbert sexy and not merely altar boy-adorable (OK, he is that, too) is the ever-present sense of comic danger he conveys, the threat that, really, he just might do anything to make you laugh. Who wouldn't want to come home to that? The great thing is, I do, Mondays through Thursdays anyway. And Nation, I'm willing to share him, because deep down I still feel like it's just him and me late at night, and if you understand anything about his liberating doctrine of truthiness, that means I'm right!
-- Joan Walsh
Who: Alan Rickman
Age: 60
Know him as: Actor
Maybe it's the voice, that low British hum so intimate you find yourself leaning forward when you hear it -- which might be the point. Maybe it's the profile -- unmistakably distinctive and defiantly not hewn from the pretty-boy block. Maybe it's the way he can play good guys and bad guys, and guys whose allegiances you can't quite determine, with equal gusto. Or maybe there's just something about the man that's smart and complicated and tender and a little dangerous that makes your mind start wandering into filthy corners while you're sitting there, innocently trying to watch a "Harry Potter" movie with your kids or something. Whatever it is, Alan Rickman's got it. And at age 60, he seems to have no intention of letting it go anytime soon.
While the classically trained London stage actor gained his first big breakthroughs playing heavies in "Die Hard" and "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," it's his performance in 1991's "Truly, Madly, Deeply" that guaranteed Rickman's seemingly bottomless supply of slavish admirers. As Jamie, his ghostly cello player is so appealing, so utterly romantic and so inconveniently dead, you can understand why his girlfriend is reluctant to let him fully shuffle off the mortal coil. Frankly, a spectral Alan Rickman still beats out a vast percentage of mere mortals most days of the week.
In ensuing years, he's buttoned up in Jane Austen and been a reluctant space hero in a Tim Allen comedy. But whether he's playing a businessman in the throes of marital temptation in "Love, Actually" or a fiery Éamon de Valera in "Michael Collins," Rickman may be the only actor to make a certain world-weary sadness ridiculously hot. It's a soulfulness that hints of deep fires below, a reserve that smolders like crazy, and damn if it doesn't keep getting sexier with every passing year.
-- Mary Elizabeth Williams
Who: Jon Stewart
Age: 43
Know him as: Host of "The Daily Show" (Comedy Central)
Don't tell my husband, but Jon Stewart is the sort of man I always imagined myself marrying. Smart, funny, Jewish, wavy-haired attractive, successful. A hot mensch. In fact, he's probably many a Jewish (and non-Jewish) woman's fantasy match, though not, possibly, what our grandmothers might consider the perfect catch. "A comedian?" my own grandmother would surely have said dismissively. "What do you need it for?"
Oh, but Grandma. We do need Jon Stewart. We need him bad.
It's not just because he's reliably there for us every night (or at least four nights a week -- oh, how I miss him on Friday and long for him by Sunday). It's not just because he always -- and I mean always -- makes us laugh, nourishing our brains and tickling our fancy at the same time. It's not even because he's so damn cute and well read and light on his feet when guests drop by, the way he's able to listen and to joke, to disarm as he challenges, to get even the most stone-faced book-peddling tool to snicker like a schoolkid. No, what really makes Jon Stewart so particularly dreamy is his humility, and his confidence: His confident humility -- dissing his own ability to do impressions; playing straight man to all those sagely nodding, seriously silly "correspondents"; poking fun at an over-the-top pun as it pops up on screen; having an intimate heart-to-heart with an errant world leader -- well, it's just so … yum.
Look, I don't care if he's a little short. I don't care if he's a little soft. And I don't care if my husband reads this: Jon Stewart can put me on his seat of heat anytime.
-- Amy Reiter