Well, it used to be a jockstrap.

But, of course, the jock couldn’t work miracles all by its lonely. It needed a nice heavy sack to make the ribbing expand — one’s own “meat and potatoes” as our dear, departed Anna Nicole once said in a rare lapse of taste.

Second best friend would be one of those Styrofoam cheaters that “shape and lift,” the Wonderbra of jockstraps.

Third in line — and the real subject of this entry — is a new invention, the Nuttybuddy.

The Nutty what?

It’s the stronger, tougher jock cup to protect — ah yes — “your boys.” Invented by ex-pitcher Mark Littell, the Nuttybuddy is twice the price ($20) of the usual athletic cup.

But Littell, 54, claims that nine seasons with the Kansas City Royals and St. Louis Cardinals gave him an inside track on both fast balls and ball fastenings.

To make his point, he gamely puts his own jewel box in danger in a — surely unintentionally hot — but hilarious, dick-centric clip that is burning up the bandwidth on YouTube today.

Let’s go the videotape, shall we sports fans? (read the full article)

Half-naked men!

It’s hard to top full-frontal nudity. But some half-dressed men — like the one at left — manage to do it with the sheer menace of their stare… the size of their arms! … the rip of their abs!

Why is it that certain stages of undress appear more naked than outright nudity?

The answer, I think, lies in the eye of the beholder.

Certainly we gay men look at half-naked men more aggressively than women do. The difference has little to do with homosexuality, a lot to do with the male sexual gaze.

“Men look at women,” gender scholar John Berger famously observed. “Women watch themselves being looked at.”

It’s a crucial difference. I think it is this eye-hunger, the frank aggressiveness of the male gaze, that explains why the half-nude seems more maddening to us than the Full Monty.

There is also the fetish power of clothing. Fetishes, for the most part, are about clothes — particularly those sexually charged costumes in which the body appears to be both naked and not naked at the same time: (read the full article)