It’s a new year (Happy 2014 all!!!) and we here at TN decided that you, our loyal and lovely readers deserved a new treat! So we present to you, our newest edition to the site, our pride and joy, our new beautiful baby boy… Man Candy Mondays! Every Monday the staffers at TN are going to highlight their “Man of the Week” so to speak. (Hehehe, that rhymed). Just to be clear, there are absolutely no criteria for our selections. We literally pick whoever we want to talk about and then tell you why we want to talk about them.
It all started with a little notion I had in my head… I thought for some reason there was something wrong with me because while everyone else I know can settle on a fictional boyfriend and love him forever (hence my friends who still have crushes on Josh Hartnett from 2000… Does anyone even know what he’s doing now?*), but I always thought I wasn’t normal because my celeb crush would change every week. Then I found TN and realized I wasn’t alone. I can love each of these guys for entirely different reasons and it doesn’t matter if he is nerdy hipster hot, British into Shakespeare hot, or covered in tattoos sex God hot. So, I created Man Candy Mondays (MCM) as a way to embrace our crushes, interests and just plain favorite guys of the week where we can honor them for whatever reason we love them! Our selections won’t always be just because they’re hot (though that is usually an added bonus). Sometimes it’s because they’ve done something awesome that deserves to be noted. Sometimes it’s because they have an amazing project coming up that we want you to know about. Sometimes they may have just won an award, or raised a lot of money for charity or started a new company. OR…sometimes it might just be because they were in a really hot photo shoot. I mean, c’mon, this is TN after all. 😉
With that said, and knowing that MCM was a long time in the making, I’ve thought about this for awhile and gone back and forth a million times about who my first ever pick would be. I’ve changed my mind more times than Outlanders changed their panties after Sam Heughan was cast. But I’ve finally made my decision!
Claire’s First Ever Man Candy Mondays Pick:
ZACHARY LEVI
Now, stick with me because this might be a long explanation as to why he’s my first ever MCM pick, but I promise, he’s worth it.
2013 was a big year for Zac-
1.He joined the Marvel universe, taking over the role of Fandral in Thor: The Dark World and managed to charm our capes off even though he had very little screen time, which was usually shared with the likes of uber hotties Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston. Not to mention, he still looked hot with that ridiculous bleached hair and goatee. He clearly knows the pains us women go through to pluck, dye, shave, and otherwise primp!
2. He made his Broadway debut in “First Date” and proved to everyone who’s too cool to watch Disney movies and had no idea about “Tangled” that not only can he act, but he can sing. Let’s take a moment to enjoy this thought. THE MAN CAN SING! Oh, not to mention the amount of dedication, hard work and commitment it takes to do 8 shows a week in front of a live audience. That’s sexy. I mean, sometimes I don’t even get out of bed on the weekend until long after the matinee show has already started (who am I kidding, long after it’s ended). “First Date” ended its run last night to standing ovations and cheers, but if you missed it you can still hear Zac sing via iTunes or a million YouTube links- Don’t miss it!
3. He expanded his online company The Nerd Machine‘s presence at San Diego Comic Con for the third year in a row, taking over PETCO Park (where the Padres play) and hosted celebrity panels all weekend, raising LOTS of money for charity. And not just any charity, but for **Operation Smile**! The man cares not only about giving back, but about helping bring more joy to the world through the power of smiling. He even traveled to South America and participated with the children and families, witnessing the surgeries first hand. Oh, yea, and he was great with the kids! Now if that’s not a good man then I don’t know what you’re looking for!
For the record, if you haven’t watched any of the Nerd HQ conversations go to YouTube right now and check them out. It’s a great concept for a great cause and they’re a whole lot of fun! (There’s one with Tom Hiddleston that’s particularly awesome.)
What the future has in store for Zac-
4. Many of us super awesome nerdy girls fell in love with Zac back when he was just a Buy More Nerd Herder long before the intersect made him a super hot super spy, so the idea of a “Chuck” movie has teased us more than Christian Grey in torn jeans holding a riding crop. Zac is 100% behind the idea of a movie and has said he will support it when the time is right. Aces, Charles. I mean, Zac. Aces!
5. What’s even cooler than all he’s accomplished, how hot he looks in a pocket protector, or the fact that he can sing me to sleep in my dreams… He’s really smart! Zac has publicly talked about his idea for a new format of media consumption that would allow for content to be produced directly by audiences for audiences using incentivized pre-ordering and mass digital marketing. He firmly believes that we don’t only need studios and networks to determine the content we want and make it for us. We have the power in this new age to create product the audiences want and get it directly to them, allowing the artists who make the content a larger share of the profit and the audiences to consume the more niche content they desire (that would otherwise be overlooked because it wouldn’t necessarily make enough money for the big companies). I, for one, am 100% behind this idea. I also happen to think it’s really sexy that a guy who could easily just keep his mouth shut, go with the status quo and make his million$ doing mainstream projects is strong-willed, intelligent and determined enough to stand up for a change he wants to see in an industry that doesn’t usually like change.
But…The main reason we love Zac-
6. He’s not ashamed to be a NERD!!! He embraces the fact that he’s a nerd and encourages others to do the same. Hell, he even runs his own company all about being a nerd. His ideals are a lot like us here at TN. To him being a nerd is about embracing your passion and realizing that it’s ok to love whatever you love and to do it with such enthusiasm that it emanates from you. Well, Zac, we at TN couldn’t agree more!!! We’re proud to be nerds right along with you, because that’s totally normal!
Lorena’s First Ever [official] Man Candy Mondays Pick:
DAVID BENIOFF
To start things off right, I want to explain that my MCMs will rarely feature cast members (like Tom Hiddleston, for instance), but rather crew members. It’s not that I don’t find the cast sexy (I mean, really), but rather I find the crew members often overlooked, but still friggin sexy! Blame it on my TV Producer husband, but the crew many times has sexier than sexy members who are also creative artists, skilled technicians, fun-loving people, and sometimes total geniuses. They work hard, hump gear and/or deal with finance and marketing n00bs all day, put in loooooooong hours (when was your last no-OT-paid 16 hour workday?), and don’t have a bloody trailer to retreat to because they never are “on a break” during filming. So, yeah, I kind of respect them a little bit more than a pretty face who can also act with just a green screen and stick to indicate the CGI creature they’re interacting with. And because of this, I’m going to go ahead and feature these lovely people on MCM throughout the year. So, don’t look to me for cast members (or talent, as they’re called in live TV). RARE occasion for those people!!! Do 52 beautiful crew members exist? Yeah, probably in a single film, actually… a lot of people are paid to make movies, you know 🙂
With that said, onto today’s pick…
David Benioff is not just a man with the perfect combination of salt ‘n peppa scruff and that grabbable mess of curly hair, he’s the executive producer for that show we all love, Game of Thrones. In some interview I never read, but has been quoted several times, he stated that he and D.B. Weiss (the other EP for GoT) were inspired to do the entire series just so that they could put the Red Wedding scene on screen (I’m paraphrasing here). They were so shocked and enthralled by that scene when they read the books, they needed to showcase it visually in their interpretation. And showcase they did (sobs again), with that excellent decision to run the credits without music afterward (god, I’m a dork). So, you can thank this beautiful man and his good-facial-structure friend & colleague for that series you obsess over.
Benioff is so sexy. I can’t even. But he’s also many other things… like a novelist. Did you realize he wrote The 25th Hour? You know that sort-of-indie film about drugs with Anna Paquin and Philip Seymour Hoffman (and Edward Norton as the main character), yeah… that one. But he wrote the novel that the film was adapted from. What I mean here is that he wrote the novel and then adapted it to screenplay and Spike Lee produced it. Benioff was teaching high school English when he wrote the book…because among other things, he is awesome.
Basically, Benioff is my personal hero (okay, actually Sue Vertue and Verity Lambert are). One day I will be the female version of him. Random blogs will post about me saying how I’m this forty-something novelist-turned-EP who is smoking hot and they want to bed (laughs at the absurdity of gender double standards and the fact that blogs likely won’t exist in a decade). Anyway, Benioff is hot, talented, and seemingly subdued. I like him for these reasons, plus he’s damn talented! Clearly another photo of his hotness is in store to close out this brief description of his worthiness.
Bekah’s First Ever Man Candy Mondays Pick:
MILO VENTIMIGLIA
I confess that my first pick is pretty superficial compared to today’s other picks because the only thing I know about this guy is that he looks like:
This:
This
this
and this
Okay, I also know he was on the 6 episode Mob City on TNT that I devoured over Christmas (and was SO good- watch it now!) and my crush was in full-force. I also learned that he was on Heroes but has done very little since except look like
This:
this:
and this:
But I bet he loves kids & animals and has a “cause” and stuff…
*Lorena’s Sidenote Pick (unallowed(?), but bear with me):
JOSH HARTNETT
On a sidenote, I looked into Josh Hartnett for Claire (cuz who can forget that orgasm scene from 40 Days and 40 Nights?!) and found that he’s taken somewhat of an acting break, but will be in the movie Parts Per Billion coming out this year as well as the TV Show Penny Dreadful (about Victorian horror like Frankenstein and Dracula. The show apparently stars Timothy Dalton and Eva Green — It’s like an era-warped 007 reunion!) Anyway, from 2007 to present he’s been super involved in activism for green living and human rights. So, put him in your Somerhalder box of hot guys who do good things for others as an active choice.
Taken from Wikipedia:
Thirty-five year old from St. Paul is just like, “Meh, I’m good in the real world, thanks.” I like it! He’s become my kind of dude 🙂 If you really care, you can join the official social network for the guy (who knew these things existed!). Also here is another photo, because, why not? Here he is rockin’ it five months ago at a Yeasayer concert in his hometown’s twin city Minneapolis with a [pretty hot] fan:
Okay- tell us in the comments, who are you crushing on this first Man Candy Monday?
Written by Claire
Claire likes kilts, whips, chains & ripped jeans. Or at least that’s what she wants you to believe….!
