Fucking Day: Finding Peak Hunk with the Fabulous Ones (Patreon)

From the Greeks to the Romans to probably others but mostly those two, a culture is measured by their hunks. Here in the US, we live in a declining empire and I can prove it. We reached maximum hunk saturation in 1983, and every day since then we’ve only watched the slow unraveling of society. It’s too late for us, but in the interest of saving future civilizations, we need to pinpoint the apex of American hunkiness. I propose it is a 1983 promo video featuring Stan Lane and Steve Keirn, The Fabulous Ones. Apparently they were a wrestling tag team, that couldn’t be less important. We’ll never talk about it. This is about history, hunks, and the hubris of mankind. The Triple H.

I’m told that’s also a wrestler. Please focus.

I’m not here to prove the 1983 Fabulous Ones promo was the high-water mark of the western world, when hunkiness broke and the cheeks rolled back. That’s self-evident. But the video is 135 seconds long, and only one of those seconds can save the world. We’re going to find it. Music should be swelling in your heart. Somebody should be saluting you. If you’re alone, look outside – you’ll find a squirrel with one paw over its heart in quiet tribute. This is the work of heroes, somber and dignified.

Send in the subjects, please.

Toot toot, all aboard the hunk train. It’s all caboose.

With the obligations done, let’s talk science. The promo is so effective because of two things: the rapid fire montage of alternate hunk looks, and the buns. Let’s discuss the looks first, and the buns second, third, fourth, and actually first. This video features more man mounds than Arlington National Cemetery. It is a black diamond run of sexy moguls. In France it’s punishable by six years in prison to smuggle buns like this. If these cheeks were ever to clap in unison, it would shatter all the windows in town.

Now, on to the analysis of hunk archetypes. Let’s begin with the Dandy Cowpoke, as first presented by Stan Lane.

The denim tells you he’s blue collar, the blue collar tells you it’s not all work. Shirtless, leather, cowboy boots, these are the pornhub tags of every repressed pastor. Blink and you’ll miss the saucy straw-bite, don’t blink and you’ll be lost in his hazel eyes forever. It’s a strong introduction, but not peak hunk.

Not to be outdone, Steve Keirn both combines and subverts two diametrically opposed hunk archetypes to create the Fancy Bathtime Hunk.

Countless hunks have died of shampoo poisoning trying to drink wine and bathe at the same time. Notice how he stops just shy of sipping, frozen in time. Steve’s not going out like that. That’s called experience. This isn’t Keirn’s first rodeo, Stan would laugh and show you his SK brand if you said that.

But this isn’t a competition. Stan and Steve are a team, and woe to any panties that fall under their combined gaze.

Tell your panties I’m sorry I wished them woe. I didn’t know they were about to explode.

The Barn Hunk demands a subtle but important distinction from the Dandy Cowpoke Hunk. The Barn Hunk works for a living, he earned his buns squatting haybales. The Dandy Cowpoke Hunk has buns built for gripping onto prancing horses. They’re not just different classes, they use entirely different muscle fibers and that results in wildly disparate cheek ripples.

This is not to say one hunk archetype is inferior to another. Remember, that’s not the purpose of this study. It’s about the cumulative effect. Watch this – I’m going to warn you not to get lost in Steve’s smile, but it’s not going to help.

The Barn Hunk could never pull off that pose. The jaunty lean, the casual splay, the devil’s own smirk. A Barn Hunk is a direct hunk. He’s a tool hunk, a trade hunk. A Monday Hunk. A Dandy Cowpoke Hunk is for Saturday night regrets at the mechanical bull bar. And yet even now you can see Stan and Steve playing these expectations against one another. Lured into this sort of hunk class war, we’re thrown right back out and into the tawdry opulence of the Fancy Bathtime Hunk.

The effect doesn’t fully land. Stan simply does not have Steve’s experience, he is unwilling or perhaps unable to mime a sip from his elegant bathtime wine. It might be for insurance reasons, hunk drowning coverage is wildly expensive since the Hunk Boat disaster. But still, we sense something missing from the scene. It feels like a step backward after Steve’s daredevil pose. Stan tries to make up for it with a bathtime derby and a double foamy thumbs up, but this gives less an impression of a rapacious hunk demanding your eyeline and a more of a gentleman trying to save face after falling naked through a ceiling.

That’s all down to Steve’s vast experience and classical hunk education. But youth does have advantages over years. Watch this – I’m going to warn you not to get overstimulated by the buns, but it’s not going to help.

Devastating. I should have tried to save your panties but I already failed them once earlier. I know it’s too late to walk back my mistakes.

Tear your eyes away - down here. DOWN HERE. It’s actually the transition that’s important in this scene. There they are, shirtlessly lounging in the hay to ease you into a false sense of security. This feels, if anything, postcoital. The action has already happened, just relax into the damp straw and bask in the afterglow.

Only then do they smash, for the very first time, into a full booty presentation. I know I promised we weren’t talking about wrestling, but this is like dropping to one knee to propose and then, when she’s off guard, executing a perfect suplex.

Steve is no slouch here, but look at Stan. The outline of his buns are sharper, his jeans tighter, his elbow flared more dramatically, his smirk a little more defiant. The more experienced Steve set up a textbook-perfect descending bun flash, but in breaking with classic form it’s Stan’s buns that draw us in, precisely for the rules they break.

Speaking of breaks, let’s take an Existential Hunk Break and ponder, for just one second, the bottomless hunger of time.

That’s enough, hunks cannot gaze into the void for too long. It falls in love.

Back to the study.

Stan and Steve are marvels of mankind individually, but it was always the way they set up and played off each other that escalated mere pretty boys into beautiful men. Watch this – I’m going to warn you not to get distracted by Stan’s crotch, but it’s not going to help.

You see how they did that? Stan’s face is barely in frame, yet he’s executing an Open Dangled Hay Splay. That’s so risky it’s banned in eight countries. It’s a centerpiece move. As we begin the zoom we think we know, of course, where the point of focus is going to be. We’re here to catch ourselves a greased hog. But no, a flirty last minute camera shift to Steve waylays our lust. “Oh?” He seems to say, “did you mean to look at something else?” He then gives us just a hint of Straw Suckle, not even a full-mouthed pull. He’s telling us in no uncertain terms that the Fabulous Ones know what you want, and it will be given to you only on their time.

I think it’s in here. The one perfect second to save a future’s hunks. I think this Open Dangled Hay Splay Hog Zoom Fakeout to Partial Straw Suckle is the peak of the form. This is two hunks at the top of their game, at the height of the art, working in perfect sync to both define and shatter the conventional rules of hunking. If there is but a single moment to point to as the ultimate-

Oh. Oh my god.

Once again, when it comes to hunks, I’ve been premature.

Somewhere in this clip is our one perfect second of apex hunk. But where?

Is it Steve reading a hotel pamphlet in a slutty kimono? Maybe. That’s such a perfect example of the dignity and grace a hunk can bring to a scene that, were it given to a woman, might come across trashy and obscene. Picture a small Asian babe up there in her micro-robe. It’s sexy, but it’s vulgar. It’s exploitative. When Steve strolls across the room in a child’s kimono, there’s an intentionality to it. It’s controlled, it’s subversive, there’s only the hint of a package that is never delivered.

Or is it Stan, just giving us the pure and simple American buns we deserve? That moment could be seen as pandering, but watch Stan set it up. The split-second look he gives us before the reveal. Looking straight at the camera through his own reflection, telling us we’re not leering at him. He’s leering at us. Then the sudden snap zoom to full bun presentation as he casually does his hair - the opposite of buns both in location and symbolism. “Oh these?” He seems to say. “These old buns? I just threw these on. The hair, on the other hand, now that takes effort.”

It’s neither of these moments, and it is both. Black-pantied buns and slutty kimonos do not make the hunk. A hunk plays in the spaces between ham presentations. Great music happens between notes, powerful books live in the subtext, master chefs will tell you – it’s all about the food you don’t eat.

I believe I’ve found the Peak Hunk Instant. Now, at first it seems tame, stuffy, maybe even prude – but I think the summit of western hunking happens exactly here. I’ve slowed it down for you to study:

Nothing is an accident. Steve begins his maneuver in partial profile, dropping his knees apart as he settles into a low chair in his slutty kimono. Whether we’re aware of it or not, we understand this is the moment before the moment. The expectation before climax. The silent triangle twisting gently in a musician’s grip, just before the ding. The finger hovering over a doorbell, just before the dong.

If he sinks one more inch into that chair, that’s the end of the circus. We’ll meet the elephant. And in that exact fraction of a second we throw to a closeup of Stan doing his hair. Before our frustration can even register, a bakery van flips. It’s an unexpected bun delivery.

That’s it. That’s where the western hunk stood astride the summit and realized there were no more mountains to climb. Future civilizations, I don’t know if you’re reading this. I don’t know if our dialect survived long enough to speak to you. I don’t know if these words are capable of conveying my sorrow for what we lost, my hope for what you’ve gained, and my gratitude at being part of it all. Luckily I do speak one universal language.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: OrneryWeevil, who died of a urethral straw infection attempting the Open Dangled Hay Splay. We hope you're heaving meat in heaven now.

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