by
Mark Sadler
In 2004, Justin Timberlake, formerly of the boy band NSYNC, blew $5million on a sheet of skin taken from the back of history's sexiest man. In 2006, he recouped some of his investment with the chart-topping song, SexyBack, which was inspired by his extravagant purchase. But what of the sexy back itself? Even a cursory dive into the origins of this peculiar relic, reveals a story several magnitudes more enthralling than Joseph Logan's documentary on the making of Justin Timberlake's multi-platinum second album 'FutureSex/LoveSounds'; a story that shall be told in piecemeal fashion below.
In the interests of accuracy, the following facts have been peer-reviewed by the 2009 North-Missouri Local Historian of the Year, Lisa Paget.
Lisa first rose to prominence as a folk singer after she rhymed 'academia' with 'macadamia.' Her recent book, titled 'V is for Winston Churchill' teaches the alphabet to children via pivotal events in human history, and has been described by the Kansas City Gazette as “likely to baffle readers of all ages”.
1. The original owner of the sexy back was a 1st century holy man
Anton of Crotone was a man of hideous physical appearance, yet paradoxically he was blessed with a back so sexy that the mere sight of it would render barren women fertile. In the annals of Tacitus, he is described as a man of few joys, whose grotesque visage caused all who gazed upon him to retch involuntarily, and who was excluded from indulging in the pleasures of the flesh.
He was executed by the emperor Caligula, who ordered that he be crucified facing onto the cross, so that Roman citizens would not be troubled by his ghastly countenance. Over 10,000 weak-kneed onlookers are estimated to have been driven into throes of ecstasy by the sight of the soon to be martyred holy man's sexy back.
Anton of Crotone was canonised in 1888. In 1910, he was promoted to Patron Saint of the Involuntarily Chaste by Pope Pius X.
2. The back-skin of Anton of Crotone was briefly used as a saddle for an “unbearably sexy” lion
Again we have Tacitus to thank for the early history of the sexy back.
Following the death of Anton of Crotone, his back skin was removed and preserved using a secret blend of eleven herbs and spices. Initially it was used by Caligula as a saddle for his favourite lion. The emperor later begged that the saddle be “torn from the flanks of the unbearably sexy” big cat and destroyed. Fortunately cooler heads prevailed and the sexy back was placed inside a clay amphora and concealed within a cave.
The image of Caligula's sexy lion has recurred throughout history, acting as a catalyst for renaissance art and as a muse for Da Vinci. It is made manifest in the sculptures of the British Navy lion prostitutes, which guard Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, London. In literature, the sexy lion assumes a dominant Christ-like role in C.S.Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. In film, it is presented as a source of spiritual enlightenment in The Lion King, and is subverted as a craven symbol of impotence in The Wizard of Oz. In the Fast and the Furious franchise, Dominic Toretto (played by Vin Diesel) is plagued by visions of a sexy lion, which repesents the homoerotic undertones of illegal, espionage-tinged, high-stakes street racing.
3. Since 1912, the 'Anton' has been used as the standard unit of measurement for sexiness
The difficulty of accurately measuring sexiness has perplexed civilised society ever since the times of Socrates.
From the late 1600s, up until the early 1900s, the commonly relied upon procedure was to make use of a thought experiment devised by a Scottish philosopher named George Poplar.
The experiment required that a participant imagine the combined state of sexual arousal, and crisis of religious faith, that would be experienced by Pope Gregory XIV, when confronted with irrefutable evidence confirming the existence of the Ancient Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite. Having conceived this mental image, the participant would exchange Aphrodite for the subject or object whose sexiness they wished to measure and then recalibrate Pope Gregory's response accordingly. While many of Poplar's peers and admirers regarded this as a step in the right direction, they noted that the experiment introduced a high degree of subjectivity into the calculations and often yielded vexing results.
In 1912, professor Neil Manser of Winslow College, Oxford, rediscovered St Anton's sexy back while exploring caves in Italy. Having identified this peculiar object, he conducted a series of experiments in which his wife, Mary, was exposed to the sexy back for periods of a few seconds, during which time an electrical reading was taken from a sensor applied to the skin of her wrist. This figure was to become the standard universal unit of sexiness, and was christened the 'Anton' by Manser.
For the first time, scientists were able to calculate the sexiness of previously inscrutable objects, such as covered bridges and scones. Astonishingly, it was discovered that marmalade jars produced at glassworks in the north of England were sexier than those produced in the south of the country, and that the planets in our solar system become progressively sexier the further they are from the sun. Had the Roman emperor, Caligula, succeeded in his demented plan to destroy the sexy back, this information would have been lost to us forever.
[Lisa's Note: The previous fact is, by far, the hardest that I have ever been called upon to peer-review during my career as a local historian. I literally filled three whiteboards with advanced peering-reviewing algorithms, one of which was so new that it had only been peer-reviewed itself a week before. My thanks to professor Robin Webster at Sladden College]
4. A Nazi plot to steal the sexy back was the inspiration for the first Indiana Jones film
As anyone who has ever got drunk and then opened the Ark of the Covenant knows, trifling with holy relics invariably leads to the unleashing of supernatural forces beyond the comprehension of mortal man, followed by costly facial reconstructive surgery.
In the 1930s, the evil Nazi regime embarked upon a dark crusade in search of artefacts that would further their insatiable quest for power. Their attempt at seizing the sexy back ended with their agents reduced to smouldering piles of ash by bolts of energy, unleashed from moles on the back skin.
Sadly, this is not the last time that the sexy back has been used to realise the nefarious ambitions of its owner, to great personal cost: In 2012, Justin Timberlake, attempted to create a Turin Shroud of his own face, by lying in a steam room with the sexy back draped over his head. The following year, his album, The 20/20 Experience, sold significantly less than its predecessor and only went double platinum in the US.
Timberlake claims that he has since learned his lesson. In 2018, the sexy back was autographed by four members of NSYNC, before being sealed in an unmarked wooden crate. It is currently stored inside a cavernous warehouse that is home to thousands of identical crates, each one containing a device or artefact that, if activated, would surely result in the demise of our species.
In the interests of accuracy, the following facts have been peer-reviewed by the 2009 North-Missouri Local Historian of the Year, Lisa Paget.
Lisa first rose to prominence as a folk singer after she rhymed 'academia' with 'macadamia.' Her recent book, titled 'V is for Winston Churchill' teaches the alphabet to children via pivotal events in human history, and has been described by the Kansas City Gazette as “likely to baffle readers of all ages”.
1. The original owner of the sexy back was a 1st century holy man
Anton of Crotone was a man of hideous physical appearance, yet paradoxically he was blessed with a back so sexy that the mere sight of it would render barren women fertile. In the annals of Tacitus, he is described as a man of few joys, whose grotesque visage caused all who gazed upon him to retch involuntarily, and who was excluded from indulging in the pleasures of the flesh.
He was executed by the emperor Caligula, who ordered that he be crucified facing onto the cross, so that Roman citizens would not be troubled by his ghastly countenance. Over 10,000 weak-kneed onlookers are estimated to have been driven into throes of ecstasy by the sight of the soon to be martyred holy man's sexy back.
Anton of Crotone was canonised in 1888. In 1910, he was promoted to Patron Saint of the Involuntarily Chaste by Pope Pius X.
2. The back-skin of Anton of Crotone was briefly used as a saddle for an “unbearably sexy” lion
Again we have Tacitus to thank for the early history of the sexy back.
Following the death of Anton of Crotone, his back skin was removed and preserved using a secret blend of eleven herbs and spices. Initially it was used by Caligula as a saddle for his favourite lion. The emperor later begged that the saddle be “torn from the flanks of the unbearably sexy” big cat and destroyed. Fortunately cooler heads prevailed and the sexy back was placed inside a clay amphora and concealed within a cave.
The image of Caligula's sexy lion has recurred throughout history, acting as a catalyst for renaissance art and as a muse for Da Vinci. It is made manifest in the sculptures of the British Navy lion prostitutes, which guard Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, London. In literature, the sexy lion assumes a dominant Christ-like role in C.S.Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. In film, it is presented as a source of spiritual enlightenment in The Lion King, and is subverted as a craven symbol of impotence in The Wizard of Oz. In the Fast and the Furious franchise, Dominic Toretto (played by Vin Diesel) is plagued by visions of a sexy lion, which repesents the homoerotic undertones of illegal, espionage-tinged, high-stakes street racing.
3. Since 1912, the 'Anton' has been used as the standard unit of measurement for sexiness
The difficulty of accurately measuring sexiness has perplexed civilised society ever since the times of Socrates.
From the late 1600s, up until the early 1900s, the commonly relied upon procedure was to make use of a thought experiment devised by a Scottish philosopher named George Poplar.
The experiment required that a participant imagine the combined state of sexual arousal, and crisis of religious faith, that would be experienced by Pope Gregory XIV, when confronted with irrefutable evidence confirming the existence of the Ancient Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite. Having conceived this mental image, the participant would exchange Aphrodite for the subject or object whose sexiness they wished to measure and then recalibrate Pope Gregory's response accordingly. While many of Poplar's peers and admirers regarded this as a step in the right direction, they noted that the experiment introduced a high degree of subjectivity into the calculations and often yielded vexing results.
In 1912, professor Neil Manser of Winslow College, Oxford, rediscovered St Anton's sexy back while exploring caves in Italy. Having identified this peculiar object, he conducted a series of experiments in which his wife, Mary, was exposed to the sexy back for periods of a few seconds, during which time an electrical reading was taken from a sensor applied to the skin of her wrist. This figure was to become the standard universal unit of sexiness, and was christened the 'Anton' by Manser.
For the first time, scientists were able to calculate the sexiness of previously inscrutable objects, such as covered bridges and scones. Astonishingly, it was discovered that marmalade jars produced at glassworks in the north of England were sexier than those produced in the south of the country, and that the planets in our solar system become progressively sexier the further they are from the sun. Had the Roman emperor, Caligula, succeeded in his demented plan to destroy the sexy back, this information would have been lost to us forever.
[Lisa's Note: The previous fact is, by far, the hardest that I have ever been called upon to peer-review during my career as a local historian. I literally filled three whiteboards with advanced peering-reviewing algorithms, one of which was so new that it had only been peer-reviewed itself a week before. My thanks to professor Robin Webster at Sladden College]
4. A Nazi plot to steal the sexy back was the inspiration for the first Indiana Jones film
As anyone who has ever got drunk and then opened the Ark of the Covenant knows, trifling with holy relics invariably leads to the unleashing of supernatural forces beyond the comprehension of mortal man, followed by costly facial reconstructive surgery.
In the 1930s, the evil Nazi regime embarked upon a dark crusade in search of artefacts that would further their insatiable quest for power. Their attempt at seizing the sexy back ended with their agents reduced to smouldering piles of ash by bolts of energy, unleashed from moles on the back skin.
Sadly, this is not the last time that the sexy back has been used to realise the nefarious ambitions of its owner, to great personal cost: In 2012, Justin Timberlake, attempted to create a Turin Shroud of his own face, by lying in a steam room with the sexy back draped over his head. The following year, his album, The 20/20 Experience, sold significantly less than its predecessor and only went double platinum in the US.
Timberlake claims that he has since learned his lesson. In 2018, the sexy back was autographed by four members of NSYNC, before being sealed in an unmarked wooden crate. It is currently stored inside a cavernous warehouse that is home to thousands of identical crates, each one containing a device or artefact that, if activated, would surely result in the demise of our species.
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