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🚨 Welcome to this week’s issue of Generation Xcellent. I’m Stephen Perrine, New York Times bestselling author and former top editor at Men’s Health and Maxim. And like you, I’m doing all I can to survive the moshpit of midlife. Thanks for joining me on the journey! If you like what you see, send me an email—and share this newsletter with another guy who could use our help.

📩 Thanks for joining the conversation!

- FITNESS -

Get Brad Pitt’s Body—and Look Like This at Midlife and Beyond!

More muscle and a lower body fat percentage could be yours—with these secrets.

By Jeff Stevenson

Day 4. Back

• 3 sets of 15 reps each: lat pulldown, seated pulley row; pullover; biceps curl into a shoulder press; concentration curls

• 3 sets of 10 reps each: biceps curl into a twist; hammer curl; triceps skull crusher

Day 5. Repeat Day 1

Day 6. Repeat Day 2

Day 7. Rest, have sex with Jennifer Aniston and/or Angelina Jolie

Motivation: Consider recruiting a buddy to compete against. To motivate Pitt, director Wolfgang Petersen regularly praised the gains of costar Eric Bana. "He kept saying 'Bana is looking really big' And I was like 'Stop, stop, I'm in there every day, I'm suffering, it's miserable, I'm doing it,’” Pitt told The Sydney Morning Herald.  

—Jeff Stevenson has written for Men’s Health, Maxim, and other classic men’s magazines.

- GEN X CULTURE -

The 7 Guy Friends Every Mid-Life Man Needs

How to assemble your 50-something crew

By Emily Flake

>Turning 50 isn’t the end—it’s the halftime show. And like any good team heading into the third quarter, you’re going to need the right squad. Here are the seven friends every man in his 50s should have in his corner.

The Aging Mentor: Once you hit your mid-forties, 50 looms like the droopy old balls of Damocles. And now here it is, sagging and grizzled. But 70 is waiting in the wings, and it’s going to make 50 look like a cakewalk. What you need is an elder—a friend who can help you navigate the melancholic tides as you drift ever closer to the shores of senescence. Bonus: this friend will always be older (or deader!), so the bond will continue to pay dividends until one or both of you loses their hearing.

The TikTok Whisperer: Instagram’s easy (just post your dog). Facebook is full of old farts like you. But TikTok? TikTok is a hurricane made of knives, a gauntlet of shifting moral codes and mean teens waiting to eat you alive for misusing a meme. You need a guide—a Gen Z friend who can vet your toks and stop you from getting canceled by accident.

A Competent Proctologist: Yes, this is a transactional friendship between you, your doctor, and your insurance company—but it counts. Your doctor doesn’t have to care about your feelings, just your prostate. Still, a little rapport goes a long way.

A Guy Who’s Got a Guy: You need a guy who knows a plumbing guy, an electrician guy, and a drywall guy. Eventually, maybe you’ll become that guy—the one with all the guys. And if you already are? In this economy? You’re a god.

A Drinkin’ Buddy: Doesn’t have to involve booze. Just someone with whom you can share a cozy space and a long, confessional conversation—maybe over model trains, car parts, or 18 holes of golf. Someone who helps you unburden without judgment (and ideally without recording the conversation for content).

That Weird Spot in Your Living Room Where You Swear You Can Feel a Presence Even Though You Don’t Believe in That Kind of Thing: I know, I know, but if you stand there and whisper secrets long enough it’ll start whispering some secrets back.

I Dunno, a Lady? One you know well enough that banging her isn’t your first thought. She has insights! She has jokes! She will tell you honestly if that shirt makes you look like a sailboat!

—Emily Flake is a cartoonist and illustrator. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Time, and many other publications.

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Battle of the ‘90s Crushes: The Final Round!
Phoebe Cates vs Susanna Hoffs

>Gentlemen, get ready for the most exciting cat fight since The Bride vs Gogo Yobari.

In this corner, wearing a red bikini, but only briefly, it’s Phoebe Cates, who emerged from the swimming pool behind Brad Hamilton’s house to conquer such legendary Gen X beauties as Vanessa Williams, Lisa Bonet and Alyssa Milano. And in this corner, wearing a side-eye glance and enormous hair, it’s Bangles vocalist Susanna Hoffs, who handily crushed other ‘90s crushes, including Shania Twain, Salma Hayek, and Courteney Cox.

Now, they face off in the final round of our March Madness–style tournament. Which of these Gen X heartthrobs will triumph in the end? Only YOU can decide! 

We’ll have a new showdown every week, with more Gen X goddesses competing for your vote. And check out our social pages (we’re on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads) for updates and a full rundown of the winners.

- SPORTS -

The 15 Most Intimidating Pro Athletes of the Generation X Era

Some guys win by talent alone. Others win by shrinking their opponents down into quivering little balls of acquiescence.

By Robert Tuchman

>When you think of “tough and intimidating” athletes, you might think of guys you’ve only seen in grainy sepia-tone films: Ty Cobb sharpening his spikes on the dugout steps, Jim Brown plowing through lesser men in the Cleveland mud.

Yeah, it took a lot for guys to play pro football in little leather helmets or to block the goal before the invention of mouth guards. But that hardly means that the heroes of OUR day were any less tough. As an entrepreneur in the pro sports arena, I’ve had the privilege of seeing just about every legend in just about every sport. Here are the toughest, most intimidating guys I’ve ever seen, in any game.

15. Rob Dibble, Cincinnatti Reds. One angry dude. Threw a 100 mph fastball, often at people’s heads, and dropped dozens of batters to the dirt in agony. Once fired a ball into the stands and nailed a first-grade teacher.

14. Rick Mahorn, Detroit Pistons. Any team with Dennis Rodman and Bill Laimbeer is going to be known for hard fouls, but Mahorn was the most brutal of them all. “Mahorn had a crazy look in his eyes, all the time,” Reggie Miller said.

13. Aleksandr Karelin, USSR/Russian Olympic Wrestler. The real-life Ivan Drago, Karelin competed in the superheavyweight division at 287 pounds. Karelin lost his first match, and his last match, and in between racked up 887 consecutive victories.

12. Ronnie Lott, San Francisco 49ers.The 10x Pro Bowler had his left pinky finger crushed in a game against Dallas in 1985. Told he’d miss the start of the next season, Lott instead had the finger chopped off so he could be back on the field for opening day.

11. Roy Keane, Manchester United. “I f**king hit him hard…. Take that you c*nt.” That’s what Keane wrote in his autobiography, about an opponent who never played a full game again after Keane took him out.

10. Lawrence Taylor, New York Giants. “What makes L.T. so great…is his total disregard for his body,” Bill Belichick said. A Giants’ trainer once had to hide Taylor’s helmet to keep him from re-entering a game after a concussion.

Related:  Bill Belichick’s Rules for Winning

9. Bob Probert, Detroit Redwings. He earned 3,300 penalty minutes during his NFL career, along with a few stints in jail for DUIs and cocaine smuggling. A documentary about his life is simply titled Tough Guy.

8. Roger Clemens, New York Yankees. Although the majority of his career was spent with the Red Sox, peak Scary Clemens may have been the 2000 World Series, when he shattered Mets catcher Mike Piazza’s bat with an inside fastball, then picked up the broken bat head and hurled it at Piazza, who was too intimidated to charge the mound.

7. Xavier McDaniel, Seattle Supersonics. Established dominance on the court with fists and elbows, often away from the ball. Allegedly established dominance in the locker room by walking around naked with a hard-on, draping towels over his woodie.

6. Nolan Ryan, Texas Rangers. The first pitcher to regularly throw 100 MPH+, Ryan’s fists were just as hard as his fastball. That’s what whippersnapper Robin Ventura learned the day he charged the mound against the then-46-year-old Ryan.

5. Scott Stevens, New Jersey Devils. Eric Lindross was never the same player after Stevens clocked him. Paul Kariya doesn’t remember the last two games of the 2003 Stanley Cup finals, thanks to a hit Stevens put on him in game 6. Stevens once intimidated the hell out of me at a fan event—and I was the one paying him to be there!

4. Albert Belle, Cleveland Indians. Known to chase reporters out of the locker room, he once chased a group of Trick-or-Treaters and tried to run them down with his car. Would almost certainly be in the Hall of Fame except for the anger issues—and a corked bat.

3. Jack Lambert, Pittsburg Steelers. Having no front teeth made him look just as scary as he really was. When asked if there were any uniform changes that could better protect quarterbacks, Lambert suggested they should all wear dresses.

2. Michael Jordan, Chicago Bulls. That nice guy? With the smile, and the shoes? Players of his era say Jordan was the rare creature who played better when he was angry, which made everyone afraid of making him angry. That’s intimidation.

1. Mike Tyson, Heavyweight champion. Pretty much any pro boxer is intimidating by nature. But Iron Mike was the rare animal who intimidated the hell out of other boxers. Twenty-two first-round knockouts will do that for you.

—Robert Tuchman, a media and sports entrepreneur, is a cofounder of Generation Xcellent and author of The 100 Sporting Events You Must See Live.

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