🚨 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! (And as always, our content is 100% Organic Intelligence—written by guys like us, for guys like us.)

📩 Thanks for joining the conversation!

- GEN X CULTURE -

The Most-Paused VCR Moments in Gen X History

Because sometimes, learning about the birds and the bees was a matter of hitting “rewind”

By Bob Larkin

Bob Larkin writes for Men’s Health, the New York Post, and other publications.

- HEALTH -

A 2-Minute Warning for Your Blood Pressure

Football is supposed to spike your heart rate. Just don’t force your arteries into overtime

By Jeff Stevenson

>Football raises your blood pressure. Of course it does. That’s the whole point. Fourth and long, down by five with 20 seconds on the clock? Cue the chest thumps. Nearly 60% of NFL games are one-score nail-biters, which is great TV and terrible for the tiny hoses that feed your brain. [Here are the 10 craziest finishes in NFL history.]

Blood pressure spikes under stress, increasing blood flow and racing oxygen to your muscles. That’s useful if you’re the one lowering a shoulder into a 250-pound linebacker. If you’re just lowering yourself into a couch groove, the tension has nowhere to go; depending on your age, weight and fitness level, that elevated BP can hang around for close to an hour. Your heart, brain, and every other organ that enjoys nice & easy blood flow would prefer a shorter visit. 

We’re not telling you to turn off the game. Frankly, the sanity benefits of fandom probably outweigh the downsides. But a few modern habits—and a few classic Gen-X ones—aren’t helping. If blood pressure’s on your radar, rethink these:

Monday Night Mega-Slates: Four weeks of MNF doubleheaders sounds like a dream: six hours of football from 7 p.m. till 1 a.m. Then Tuesday happens. Sleep debt bumps up BP the next day, and it stacks like Blockbuster late fees. Watch the early game live; catch the other in the morning like a responsible adult with a coffee IV.

Tailgate Maximization: Alcohol chills you out short-term (vessels relax), then causes a BP rebound (vessels tighten). But just taking it a little easier can have a huge impact: Cut intake from four drinks to two and you can shave five points off systolic and four off diastolic, per Mayo Clinic–level guidance. That means fewer IPAs and more actual H2O. And no, “hydrating” with a hard seltzer doesn’t count. 

Hangover Pharmaceuticals: Advil, Aleve, even acetaminophen can nudge blood pressure up. Occasional use? Fine. But if your Monday morning looks like a CVS receipt, talk to your doc about other pain strategies. Also consider the radical notion of… fewer Sunday cocktails. 

Mancave Monopoly: We get it, football is a sacred space where you temporarily forget Slack, algebra homework, and the dog who only vomits on rugs. Still, isolation packs a BP penalty. In adults 50–68, the loneliest folks clocked systolic numbers 10–30 points higher than the social butterflies. So text a buddy, invite a neighbor, and make it a small huddle. (Yes, even that Bears fan.) 

Halftime Bladder Chicken: Don’t hold it. A full tank triggers your nervous system and spikes BP. The American Heart Association literally says empty before you test your blood pressure at home, otherwise you can read up to 15 points higher. Pee now and thank me during the two-minute warning.

Wings Without the Works: Buffalo wings are the original Gen-X bar food. They were invented in 1964, just before the first of us were born. They’re delicious, salty, and absolutely not “heart-smart.” The sodium cranks up your pressure, and butter isn’t doing you any favors either. But the counter to sodium is the mineral potassium—which lowers blood pressure and, incredibly enough, is found in blue cheese, celery, and especially carrot sticks. So if you’re annihilating a basket of drums and flats, make it a rule: two wings, one carrot; two wings, one celery. Or try ordering an extra veg tray and actually eating it.

—Jeff Stevenson has written for a variety of classic men’s magazines, including Maxim and Men’s Health.

Ask Jen: The X-Rated Files
“Am I Ready to Play the Field Again?”

>Got a question about sex, marriage, dating, or whatever’s happening in your DMs? Ask Jen X. She’ll sort it out, no judgement. (Well, maybe a little.)

Q: How long after a divorce should a man wait before playing the field again? I’ve been single for three months and my friends are already trying to set me up. It feels too soon. Am I just being a baby? — Darrell P. Bridgeport, CT

A: Darrell, three months after a divorce you’re not a baby, you’re a casserole. Still warm, but you need to cool before anyone starts digging in.

There’s no cosmic rule that says you have to start swiping the second the ink dries on your divorce papers. Some people start dating before the movers have even taken their ex’s IKEA bookshelf out of the house (which is a choice). Others take a year or more to rebuild, recalibrate, and remember what kind of music they actually like without someone sighing in the passenger seat.

If it feels too soon, it is too soon… for you. Let your friends know you’ll happily accept introductions, just not yet. In the meantime, focus on rediscovering whatever makes you feel like the lead in your own story again. When you’re ready to date, you’ll know. Not because your friends say so, but because you’ll be more excited about meeting someone new than about rehashing your divorce over nachos. Until then? Cool that casserole, man.

- MASCULINITY -

The Patron Saint of Dumb Sh*t

Steve-O’s new book on busted bones, botched stunts, and the brutal math of aging

By Bob Larkin

>I still remember the first Jackass broadcast in 2000. I was 27, drinking flat Busch Light, and instantly hooked. Steve-O was the lunatic messiah of self-destruction: beer-butt chugs, fireworks from anatomical locations that should never see flame, a one-man demolition derby who looked like he was having the time of his life. 

Now it’s 2025. I’m older, he’s older, and when I see him attempting the same stunts, he doesn’t look invincible anymore. He looks like a vulnerable, middle-aged idiot. Like me.

Which is exactly why I read A Hard Kick in the Nuts: What I’ve Learned from a Lifetime of Terrible Decisions: to see whether the guy who stapled his nuts to his leg might secretly have the formula for keeping the human body from collapsing into creaky despair.

Spoiler: he doesn’t. Instead, he sells brutal honesty laced with puke and blood. “Getting older has always scared the shit out of me, and I had long figured that I'd avoid having to deal with it by doing the sensible thing and dying young,” he writes. Instead, he’s staring at the second half of life with a body that reads like a crash-test dummy.

“It’s not just that as you age your body grows more brittle,” he writes. “It’s that a part of your brain … starts calculating the physical and emotional costs of getting hurt.” That’s from the same guy who used his own body as shark bait. It’s like seeing Evel Knievel complain about sciatica. Surreal, but also deeply comforting.

By the end, you realize the miracle isn’t that Steve-O can still set himself on fire. The miracle is that he’s alive, sober, and painfully self-aware. He even admits the obvious: “Part of Jackass’s initial appeal was the gleeful stupidity of youth … So what does all that mean now that we’re all in our late forties and fifties and still making Jackass movies?”

It means the dumbest stunt of all is surviving. And somehow, against all odds, Steve-O is pulling it off. Which makes him not just the patron saint of self-abuse, but the unlikely patron saint of middle age. If he can keep moving forward after beer butt chugs, shark hooks, and a lifetime of “terrible decisions,” then maybe, just maybe, the rest of us can survive our bad backs, our shrinking hairlines, and the creeping dread of mortality. That’s the secret. Not invincibility. Endurance.

And if that’s not inspirational enough for you, well, you can always staple your nuts to your thigh and see how it feels.

—Bob Larkin writes for Men’s Health, the New York Post, and other publications.

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