My 5-Piece Desert Island Survival Kit

I did not watch Lost.
I did not watch Fantasy Island.
I've been told that I look like Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island, but I've never seen more than half an episode of that show either.
Thus, my familiarity with desert island life is not exactly up to snuff.

When Man Crates--a new company that ships awesome gifts for men in custom wooden crates--reached out to me asking what I would pack in my own personal survival kit, I was admittedly at a loss. "Um a cell phone and alcohol to keep me entertained until help arrives, duh," didn't exactly seem like the best response, and I actually believe that my friends would let me stew for a few days just to get some piece and quiet and to avoid being forced to watch pimple popping videos on YouTube (The Zit That Won't Quit. You won't be sorry).

Therefore, I needed to consider what my essentials would be, and you know what? Leave me on that island; with the necessities I've come up with, I don't want to come home.

Justin Timberlake, shirtless: He must look exactly like the picture below. I cannot stress this enough. We're stranded? We're running out of food? The animals are coming to gnaw on our thighs? It's okay, Justin, it's fine, let's just hug it out and never let go. Maybe an "I Thought She Knew" or "(Another Song) All Over Again" serenade while you rub my back will help us think of a survival strategy.

Drum Kit: I have always wanted to learn how to play the drums, and I would finally have the time to do so. As a perfectionist, I do not like trying things if I don't know I'll be the absolute best at them, so with this opportunity to learn (as well as JT's guidance) I could channel my inner Neil Peart and go nuts. 

Ketchup: I effing love ketchup. Like, more than I love my family (minus the dog). If I'm expected to cook mystery animals over an open flame, I will be needing an excessive amount of the red stuff. I recently sent a Snapchat to my friends about a culinary experiment pairing carrots and ketchup that they all found disgusting, but I'm willing to bet, given the circumstances, they'd respect my ingenuity in the interest of life-saving preparation. If things start to go south and Justin hasn't paid me a compliment in the last five minutes, he's getting whacked and I'll savor his biceps with a heap of Heinz.

A bat: I love being outdoors, I just don't appreciate the bugs that come with the territory. One bat can eat between 600 and 1,000 mosquitoes and other insects in just one hour. I like those odds. Bug bites on the tops of your feet are like, the worst, and I really just don't feel like dealing with that.

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, the 4-book boxed set: Every literature professor I had in college would groan in agony to hear how much I love these books. They have been my favorite since high school, and I can read Bukowski, Plath, and King all day long, but Brashares is my girl. Have I read all four upwards of ten times? Yes. But you can't be alone and scared on an island when you have the story of long-lasting friendship and a pair of magical Levi's on your side, can you?!

Speaking of, there is one thing I definitely would not be needing on this adventure: Pants. I barely like wearing them when lounging around my house alone on a Saturday, there's absolutely no way I could be convinced to keep those babies on if I'm fending for my life. Shirts, you're next.

I'm clearly a smidgen on the complicated end, but Man Crates makes it easy to find the perfect survival essentials and/or gift for the guys in your lives. Their mission is to end the difficulties that have long been associated with buying gifts for men, and whether he's an athlete, a beer lover, a carnivore or more, Man Crates has something awesome that he's going to love.

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Ugly Boybanders of Yesteryear

I went to the Backstreet Boys concert this past weekend. Needless to say, it was one of the best nights of my year, if not my entire life, and my best friend and I couldn’t say anything but, “Oh my God! That was amazing!” for the majority of the ride home.

At the beginning of the concert, the boys’ faces flashed up on the big screen one by one, causing pandemonium that, in hindsight, was probably a little embarrassing for a crowd of 23-30 year old women. Nick pops up? Vocal cords exploded. AJ? Everyone realized that the bad-boy phase they went through when they were 18 wasn’t totally over. Kevin? The girls who go for bar dads and/or appreciate thick eyebrows had a field day. My best friend and I personally lost our shit when Brian appeared, because we were wise beyond our years back in elementary school and inherently knew that he would forever and always be the hottest person in the band alive.

And then came Howie’s face, and we were all reminded of something that just seemed to be a fact of life when we were young: no one likes Howie. Like, there was barely a woo. It’s nothing against him personally, and it’s not like he’s a completely unfortunate-looking guy, but every boy band of the 90’s needed their token boring ugly dude, and for BSB, Howie was/is it. I think he accepts it now and uses the lack of attention to do whatever he wants on stage aka drinking a random fan’s Bud Light and throwing in inexplicable cha-cha moves. I chopped off my cholo ponytail and still no one loves me?! Fuck it, my only solo is a verse in “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely;” give me a beer.

Not helping your case, bro

I felt bad for the crowd’s lack of enthusiasm for Howie, but I realized that he simply got the short end of the boy band stick, and was a part of an elite crowd of once-famous male performers from the late 90s/early 00s that everyone knew existed but that no one cared to remember the names of. Quite frankly, Howie should feel pretty great about himself, because I think he might be one of the most popular ones on the list of Ugly Boy Banders of Yesteryear. It’s the little things in life, everybody.

Chris Kirkpatrick (*NSYNC) was also ugly. Historically, regardless of if you’re a guy or a girl, you have to be pretty mind-blowingly hot to be white and rock dreads; instead, Chris looked like the creepy human version of a Muppet. Think about it: Lance was obviously not totally “into” all the girl attention from the get-go (but was a terrible dancer? One of life’s many mysteries…) yet I knew plenty of ladies that preferred his likeness to Ellen Degeneres over Chris’s goatee’d doublechin and obtrusive oversize ball chain necklaces. Not even his sweet falsetto could save him then. I drive myself crazy thinking of you, too, Chris, but only because your terrifying face is haunting my dreams and I haven’t slept in weeks.

Justin Jeffre of 98 Degrees really just didn’t even stand a chance. The Lachey brothers were buff and gorgeous, and Jeff Timmons was destined to become a Chippendale, so what role did that leave Justin to lead? You guessed it: the role of the chubby Danny McBride look-a-like with a white trash, bleach blonde Caesar haircut and a convincing air of pedophilia. Singing all of those songs about Jessica Simpson was probably the closest he got to a woman in the band’s entire five-year run. 98 Degrees was supposed to be the band that could beat up all the other bands, which I guess meant that Justin was the lazy friend/hype man in the back who just yelled, “YOU DON’T WANT THIS! YOU DON’T WANT THIS!” while nudging Nick forward and hoping everyone would just call a truce so he could go back home and finish playing PS2 all by himself.

In theory, I suppose Dan Miller from O-Town isn't a complete dud. However, when you compare him to the beauty that was Ashley Parker Angel or Erik-Michael Estrada, you realize that his misfortune lay in two key factors: his boring, white-bread, three-syllable name, and the fact that his chin strap made him look like a rapist. In fact his whole oral region really bothers me. He's got thick lips that appear to perpetually have lipstick on them, and it's almost like he's got lock-jaw and can only open his mouth wide enough to creep me out as he explains his liquid dreams.

Devin Lima from LFO looks like a fucking vampire, straight up. I have a moral opposition against any male who obviously gets his eyebrows waxed, and between his perfectly-sculpted arches and presumably collagen-filled lips, he's completely crossed the line from metrosexual to potential drag queen. You know in "Heavyweights" where Tony Perkis goes crazy at the end of the movie and somersaults off the chandelier? Devin looks like that on an everyday basis. Apparently he has a new band now called The Cadbury Diesel, which just sounds like a really unfortunate thing to find in your Easter basket.

There is a reason you probably haven't heard of the majority of the guys on this list, and that is because they were outshined by their sexy frontmen, therefore garnering themselves very little (if any) real estate on your locker door. These guys were the DUFFs of their bands--it's unfortunate that they had to suffer the trauma of being no one's favorite, but it had to be done, and for that, the guys who went on to have successful solo careers thank them.

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