Manly Skills

You’re at a party. Maybe someone made you go, cornered you at work or school and you couldn’t think of an excuse fast enough to dodge the invitation. Or perhaps you showed up to a social event that held the promise of being a fun shindig, but after listening for 20 minutes to a lady explain the pros and cons of buying an Accord over a Camry and being forced into a conga line against your will, all you want to do is make like a baby and head out.

A lot of men today are clueless when it comes to tools. The increased affluence of the past 50 years led many men to outsource handyman work instead of doing repairs and home improvement themselves. And let’s face it. Men today can be pretty darn lazy. They’d rather play their Xboxes than work on building something with [...]

You can tell a lot about a camper’s experience by the type of fires they build. Inexperienced campers usually build the same, heaped together bonfire for all their campfire needs. Sure, building huge ass fires is fun, but it’s extremely inefficient. The typical bonfire campfire burns a lot of wood, wastes heat, and isn’t very [...]

It’s every man’s worst fear. You’re at someone’s house, you  finish doing your business and flush the toilet, but instead of going down, the water comes up along with whatever you just deposited in the bowl. Would you be paralyzed with panic in that moment? Or do you know what to do?
For some reason, the [...]

When it comes to father/son bonding experiences, few can match the satisfaction of working on a pinewood derby car together. Most Cub Scout packs have an annual pinewood derby race. Little Scouts turn blocks of wood into super fast racing machines. In the process, they get a basic lesson in physics, tool handling, and competition. [...]

Every man should know how to brew a decent cup of coffee.  It’s an everyday skill that should be passed down from father to son, like shaving or mowing the lawn. It’s a manly ritual providing both utility and comfort.  Unfortunately, if you asked most men today for a cup of coffee they would either [...]

The other articles in this series will be instructions, guides, tips and cautions. That is not how this article will read. This will be the literary equivalent of one of the more tasteless traffic safety films. Why? Simple. Around the world, even among the wealthy elite of players in the most exclusive European casinos, people [...]