The Five Deadly Venoms
Don’t let America’s most poisonous beasts ruin your summer
Maxim
Timber rattlesnake: Located in any wooded or grassy area in the eastern half of the country, its cousin the diamondback prowls the west. The cocktail of poisons in the venom stops blood coagulation and can cause cardiac arrest. Did we mention the pain lasts for days? Their fangs can pierce canvas, so skip the tennis shoes and lace up the leather shit kickers. And make noise – a spooked snake bites. Sucking the bite only spreads the poison. Head to a hospital for antivenom. And bring your credit card: A dose is $1,000.
Brown recluse spider: These guys appear across the entire south central portion of the country – often in homes, where they like to set up shop in shoes and even bedding. A bite won’t kill you, but the necrotic wound it leaves behind will rot your flesh down to the bone. If you feel one crawling down your neck, gently brush it off. Smacking it will guarantee a poisonous bite. Doctors will give you steroids or Dapsone. If necrosis sets in, they’ll carve out the dead tissue like a melon ball.
Bark scorpion: Found in rock piles, forests and – like the boogeyman – under your bed if you live in the southwestern United States. Its neurotoxins can give you muscle contractions and fill your lungs with fluid, which could literally drown you. Fun! Seal wall foundations and doorjambs; if two credit cards fit into a crevice, so can the deadly scorpion. Elevate the bite area to reduce swelling, and if you can’t handle the pain, head to the hospital for some antivenom.
Portuguese man-of-war: Their home is the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic as far north as New Jersey. Yes, they’re attracted to IROC-Zs and gay governors. If you don’t drown while falling prey to an allergy-induced shock, you’ll survive with some permanent chemical burns. Heavy winds can blow them toward the shore. Watch for tentacles washed up on the beach, which can still sting you. It peppers your skin with poison darts called nematocysts. Stay in the salt water and scrape clean with a shell.
Killer Bees: Abandoned structures like doghouses (or meth trailers) throughout Texas and nearby southern states make great bee habitat. Its venom is weaker than a honeybee’s, but when 1,000 or more attack, it more than makes up the difference. If you’re within 100 feet of a nest, they’ll mark you as an intruder. So, if you spy a cloud of buzzing death nearby, run! Use the edge of a credit card to scrape stingers off. But the bee’s toxins can strain the heart, so head to the ER.
Killer Cocktail [Take a swig of the manliest vino ever made: cobra wine]
Get ready for a real snakebite: Cobra wine packs a whole cobra into a jar of rice wine for this bio-lab-looking libation reputed to enhance the performance of the trouser snake. The alcohol nullifies its venom, so it’s safe for swilling (unless you have open sores in your esophagus). It’s legal in Vietnam – for now. Support is growing to ban the popular reptilian hooch. Turns out with so many cobras bottled up, the rat population is spiking.
Ear to the Streets
‘The Wire’ music supervisor Blake Leyh lays down an urban soundtrack
When fans describe ‘The Wire,’ no adjective seems to surface as often as “gritty.” After five seasons, creator David Simon’s painstaking arrangement of granular bits of research and authenticity, whether the detectives’ banter or Snoop’s drawl, have added up to a tone as low key and abrasive as the real Baltimore.
For writers, costume designers and prop masters, mimicking reality falls into the standard job description, but music supervisor Blake Leyh – who, on another show, might compose sweeping themes and clever montages – has to fight the instinct to draw sentimental connections through song choice. “I want to make the scene less emotional, less melodramatic,” he says. “We put music in there as a device to push you away from the people a little bit. It’s something you would so rarely do in a Hollywood movie; you would want to pump up the emotion. But on ‘The Wire,’ so often we’re trying to go against that.”
[More online at HBO.com]
How to Purchase …
… A RACEHORSE!
Maxim
Hitting the track is that much sweeter when you’re watching your own pony kick ass. Here’s how to make it happen.
Name Your Price: Thoroughbreds aren’t cheap, so unless you spend your summers at the Kennedy compound in Cape Cod, you’ll probably need track-savvy buddies to split your horse’s cost and upkeep. “About 10 guys throwing in $5,000 each can get you a decent $25,000 horse and cover a year’s worth of training, stabling and feed,” says Daniel Metzger, president of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association.
Shop Around: You can buy an untrained animal straight from the farm, pick up a hot prospect at a “purchasing event” (a race in which a horse can be bought for a pre-determined amount), or hit a public auction and let the market dictate a fair price. In any case, hire a trainer beforehand at your local racetrack – that or risk a premature trip to the dog food factory.
Cover Your Assets: To guarantee you’re not the one who ends up sleeping in a barn, Metzger advises setting up an LLC (limited liability company) to separate your racing business from your personal assets. And be sure to elect your most responsible buddy “managing partner” so unpaid oats bills don’t get in the way of swilling bourbon in the winner’s circle, you cheap bastard.
Ride It to the Bank: The possibility of losing your shirt is real, but chances are you’ll recoup your investment through track winnings over the first year or two. And if you discover the next Secretariat, an early retirement could lead to millions in stud fees. “With a good racehorse, the real payoff is in the breeding shed,” says Metzger. “That’s where the real money’s at.”
… A MUSCLE CAR!
A windowless van has utility, but a ’74 Camaro makes you even cooler than the kids who smoked in high school.
Stay Simple: Picking up a classic for less than 15 grand requires a few concessions – you’re not going to land a souped-up V8 or a custom trim. But a standard-issue second-generation muscle car is well within reach. Floyd Garrett, owner of the Muscle Car Museum in Sevierville, Tennessee, says the sweet spot for Camaro deals falls between 1970 and 1974.
Snoop Into the Past: Like that stripper at your brother’s bachelor party, you need to figure out where she’s been – but as long as her body holds up, anything else can be fixed. “If I found a ’69 Camaro with a good, solid body and the engine had a rod thrown out the side of it,” Garrett says, “that wouldn’t bother me a bit.” Beware of heavy undercoats hiding 30 years of Detroit winters, and check the trim tag on the firewall to see if the paint color changed – a clue to long hours spent at the body shop.
Keep it Real: The more original parts, the more valuable the car, so hunt under the hood for as many GM stamps as you can find. When it comes to making your own repairs, almost anything is fair game: radiators, alternators, starters, even entire engines can be swapped with moderate ease and expense.
Pimp Your Ride: While the ‘70s offered marvels like outrageous horsepower, sofalike backseats and Freddie Mercury, a few inventions from the golden age of chest hair fell short, namely brakes. Garrett advises replacing the front set of drum brakes with discs for the added convenience of being able to stop on command.
Quake!
Seismologists have replaced the Richter Scale with the more accurate Magnitude scale. Here’s how it sizes up Mama Earth’s seizures.
BBQ Guru
Master the activity that combines the two greatest things in life: meat and fire.
‘Die Jaws!’
In the U.S. sharks attack an average of 32 people per year. So to help save lives, FHM is 60 miles off the coast of Point Pleasant, NJ, aboard a fishing boat that recently appeared on the Versus network show Shark Hunters: East vs. West. We’re here to hunt shark. Here’s how.
The Polygamist
Marvin Wyler on having 110 grandkids, 34 children and three wives. ‘The No. 1 problem is wives getting jealous about the sex.’
I Survived That!
What’s it like to be inside a crashing plane? Shot by an intruder? Impaled by an arrow? Real people share their tales.
Score!
‘Big Love’ finds harmony with rock-star composer David Byrne
When ‘Big Love’ creators Mark Olsen and Will Scheffer decided to play ‘Blue Hawaii’ as the out song on their season-two premiere, Olsen saw the perfect opportunity to spotlight the show’s new composer, Talking Heads front man David Byrne. Predictably, the test drive blew their hair back. Byrne’s stripped-down cover of the song, intended as a placeholder until he could refine it in the studio, struck every chord they could think of. “It had irony, it had heart, it had nostalgia,” Olsen says. “It had everything we wanted baked into that moment.”
After Byrne worked up a more complex iteration of the piece, Olsen and Scheffer fell into the unenviable position of telling a pop-culture luminary that they preferred his earlier work. Luckily, Scheffer says, Byrne’s ear saved them the discomfort. “It was kind of funny because we didn’t really know what to say. Then David wrote us back and said, ‘You know, I like the first version the best.’”
[More online at HBO.com]
Home-Cooked Cuisine
A Wall Street bachelor’s lonesome beers are about to get some company in the fridge, thanks to a personal chef.
He’s putting in hours at the office, but his galley kitchen uptown has become the set of an intricate ballet performed by personal chef Mark Tafoya.
Braised beef bubbles into a plume of Moroccan spices, and steam sizzles from a deglazed pork pan.
Tafoya has been at work for about an hour and a half, and he’s entering what he refers to as “prime time,” which means all real estate has evaporated from the oven, stovetop, counter and cutting boards.
Once the smoke clears, a $100 trip to Whole Foods has been transformed into a week of fresh food, all available at the touch of a microwave button.
[More online at TheStreet.com]
