MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM UNO MAGAZINE AND ANGELICOPTER!

Yeah, It’s Over Now

As I write the closing year’s editor’s note, my right arm is wrapped in a fiberglass cast because I inadvertently injured my right wrist. In a skateboarding accident.

Yes, skateboarding.

Oh, don’t be so ageist. Just because I have come into an age group that can be generally rounded to forty. Just because the hair on my scalp does not regenerate as fast as I would like it too and just because I can watch pornographic material without seeking my parents’ approval, it doesn’t mean I’m old. It just means I’m regressing.

And for your information, I was skateboarding as part of a segment on my show (warning: shameless plug ahead), GMA News TV’s Best Men.  I have done more shameless things on the show–like witnessing a manunuli take his instrument to a grown man’s foreskin and ballroom dancing in a body hugging sequined shirt that exposed my cleavage all the way down to my bellybutton–but this was the only segment to have caused me long-term physical harm.

Due to my condition, I will not be able to generate brand new drivel for you this month. So I hope you don’t mind if I peddle some regurgitated drivel by talking about a certain body part–damaged, fractured, abused, or otherwise–from my new book It Only Hurts When I Pee: RJ Ledesma’s Imaginary Guide to Bodily Gases, Hair Loss and Pink Parts.

Warning: A lot of pink parts will be flashed in this issue.

Jingle Balls

According to fertility specialist Dr. Robert Winston, the size of a primate’s testicles can tell us a lot about a species’ sexual practices.

In the seventies, British biologist Roger Short noticed something peculiar about ape anatomy. He found that chimpanzees had extremely large four-ounce testicles that produced prodigious amounts of sperm (although I am trying not to imagine how he found out that chimps produce prodigious amounts of sperm). Mating among chimps is a fairly unregulated and casual affair especially since they are not being monitored by the MTRCB. In fact, there seems to be no awareness as to the paternity of any of their offspring.

On the other hand, silverback gorillas–the largest of the living primates that sport large canine teeth and have a growl fierce enough to make human testicles retract to the pit of their stomachs–have miniscule testicles. More miniscule than even those of some congressmen.

Unlike chimpanzees, silverback alpha males take possession of a harem of female gorillas. And silverbacks are secure in the knowledge the female gorillas will rarely sneak off for an illicit romp in the wilds (unless they encounter a very brave and randy male chimpanzee). Gorillas rarely have intercourse, because for males with a harem, sexual access is guaranteed. Therefore, Mr. “I Am King of the Apes” only needed a small amount of sperm and, consequently, a small payload. So, gorillas evolved testicles that were small but terrible.

Now, let us put things into perspective: gorillas weigh four times as much as chimps, but a chimp’s testicles weigh four times as much as a gorilla’s. What can we infer from this? Well, the biologist Roger Short appears to have stumbled, not on testicles, bur rather on anatomical clues about a species’ mating system: the bigger the balls, the more polygamous the females.

Human testicles tread the middle ground when it comes to primate testicles. Measured as a proportion of body weight, our human teabags are four times the size of a gorilla’s but less than a third of the size of a chimpanzee’s.

According to The Red Queen: Sex And The Evolution of Human Nature, ancestral man probably lived in a pseudo-harem system, but he was also prepared for occasional female promiscuity. Ancestral females copulated with more than one male in a month fairly often.  Given this, human males evolved testicles potent enough to combat a moderate amount of sperm competition from other males, but they certainly didn’t need to stockpile enough artillery as required by chimpanzee gonads. If Goldilocks were a scientist, she would say that our testicles were just right.

And now that that’s out of the way, allow me to give you a lowdown on what to check out in this special year-end issue of UNO.

Radio DJ Angelika Schmeing-Cruz, more popularly known as Angelicopter to her avid listeners, graces our cover for the very first time and we couldn’t be happier. If you’ve been living under a rock, you might not have known that she’s also a castaway and now a dropout in this year’s Survivor Philippines (along with teammate Jackie Forster), proving to everybody that just because you’ve lost the battle, doesn’t mean you’ve lost dibs on a magazine cover. Who are we to complain anyway?

We have also listed down the highlights of our year in our exclusive BARRAGE section, while respected male personalities Paolo Bediones, Basti Artadi, Luke Landrigan, and Dylan Ababou rule our BLASTER pages as they reveal their own lists of favorites in 2011 pop culture. Other men we idolize–rockstar Bamboo Manalac, actor Baron Geisler, and world-renowned animator Ronnie del Carmen–share their thoughts about life and career in our POINTBLANK, INTERVIEW, and SHOCKWAVE sections, respectively. And finally, music legend Jose Mari Chan teaches us how to write the perfect Christmas song in this month’s AFTERBURNER.

RJ Ledesma,

Editor-in-Chief