This article may contain wording that merely promotes the subject without imparting verifiable information. Please remove or replace such wording, unless you can cite independent sources that support the characterization. (July 2011)

AskMen

URL	AskMen
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Online men's publication
Registration	Optional
Owner	IGN Fox Interactive Media News Corporation
Created by	Ricardo Poupada Chris Bellerose Rovny Luís Rodrigues
Launched	January 2000
Alexa rank	1,288 (June 2012[update])[1]

AskMen is a free online men’s web portal, with international versions in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.

History[link]

AskMen was founded in August 1999 by Ricardo Poupada, Christopher Bellerose Rovny, and Luís Rodrigues, all three graduates of Concordia University's John Molson School of Business in Montreal. The company secured $500,000 in venture capital in 2000 while its main competitor, TheMan.com, obtained $17 million in financing from Highland Capital. In November 2000, TheMan.com shut down operations, providing an opportunity for AskMen to become the largest men's lifestyle website online.^[2] By 2001, AskMen surpassed the other websites in its category to become the largest men's lifestyle website.^[3]

Through a combination of partnerships with AOL and MSN, AskMen.com became the leader in the men's lifestyle space, though it still trailed ESPN.com and other websites in terms of total reach within the male segment on the Web.

In 2010 the site ranked #819 for world-wide traffic on Alexa.^[4] In December 2009, the site had an estimated 12 million unique visitors.^[5]

According to Hitwise, AskMen is ranked No. 1 (as of 06/11/2005) in the "Lifestyle – Men’s Sites" category, as it has over 40,000 articles available for free online.^[6]

Print[link]

AskMen launched a three-book series published by HarperCollins in May 2007, starting with their first book titled From the Bar to the Bedroom.^[7]

References[link]

Adam Lyons is a British relationship coach and pickup artist^[1]

Biography[link]

Lyons claims he had limited success with women until his mid-twenties, and was voted 'least likely to ever get a girlfriend' in school by his classmates at age 15.^[2] As a teenager, he was obsessed with Star Wars, Magic The Gathering, Star Trek and especially the role-playing and strategy game Dungeons and Dragons.^[3] He was introduced to the seduction community by Neil Strauss' book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists.^[3]

In 2006, FHM covered Lyons and his involvement in Seduction School, a new company whose instructors would later play a central part in Richard La Ruina's PUA Training. In 2007, Lyons was featured in a Channel 4 documentary entitled The Rules Of Seduction.^[4] This film examined the activity of the seduction community in Britain, and explored Lyons and his ability to handle intimacy. In 2008, Lyons was featured in The Independent which covered his background, and featured a critique of the seduction community by psychologist Oliver James. Lyons has also been featured in NBC, CBS,^[5] thelondonpaper,^[6] Arena, The Mirror,^[7] Fox News,^[8] Maxim, Kerrang and some other publications and television programs.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website

This British biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Bear Grylls
Born	Edward Michael Grylls (1974-06-07) 7 June 1974 (age 38) United Kingdom
Residence	A barge moored by Battersea Bridge on the River Thames, England[1] An island on Llŷn Peninsula, Abersoch, North Wales[2]
Occupation	Chief Scout Adventurer Explorer Author Motivational speaker[3] Television presenter
Spouse	Shara Cannings Knight[4]
Children	Jesse, Marmaduke,[5] and Huckleberry[6]
Parents	Sir Michael Grylls Lady Grylls (née Sarah Ford)
Website
BearGrylls.com

Edward Michael "Bear" Grylls (born 7 June 1974) is an English adventurer, writer and television presenter. He is best known for his television series Man vs. Wild, known as Born Survivor^[7] in the United Kingdom. In July 2009, Grylls was appointed the youngest ever Chief Scout at the age of 35.

Personal life[link]

Grylls grew up in Donaghadee, Northern Ireland until the age of 4 when his family moved to Bembridge on the Isle of Wight.^[8][9] He is the son of the late Conservative party politician Sir Michael Grylls and Lady Sarah Grylls.^[10] Lady Grylls was the daughter of Patricia Ford,^[11] briefly an Ulster Unionist Party MP, and cricketer and businessman Neville Ford. Grylls has one sibling, an elder sister, Lara Fawcett, a cardio-tennis coach, who gave him the nickname 'Bear' when he was a week old.^[12]

Grylls was educated at Eaton House, Ludgrove School, Eton College, where he helped start its first mountaineering club,^[13] and Birkbeck, University of London,^[14] where he graduated with a degree, obtained part-time, in Hispanic studies in 2002. From an early age, he learned to climb and sail from his father, who was a member of the prestigious Royal Yacht Squadron. As a teenager, he learned to skydive and earned a second dan black belt in Shotokan karate. He practices yoga and ninjutsu. At age eight he became a Cub Scout.^[15] He speaks English, Spanish, and French.^[16] Grylls is a Christian, describing his faith as the "backbone" in his life.^[17]

Although Grylls was christened 'Edward' he has legally changed his forename to 'Bear'.^[18] Grylls married Shara Grylls (née Cannings Knight) in 2000.^[4][11] They have three sons: Jesse, Marmaduke,^[19] and Huckleberry.^[6]

Military service[link]

After leaving school, Grylls considered joining the Indian Army and hiked in the Himalayan mountains of Sikkim.^[20] Grylls joined the British Army and served in the part-time United Kingdom Special Forces Reserve, with 21 Regiment Special Air Service, 21 SAS(R) for 3 years until 1996.

In 1996, he suffered a freefall parachuting accident in Zambia. His canopy ripped at 4,900 metres (16,000 ft), partially opening, causing him to fall and land on his parachute pack on his back, which partially crushed three vertebrae. Grylls later said: "I should have cut the main parachute and gone to the reserve but thought there was time to resolve the problem".^[21] According to his surgeon, Grylls came "within a whisker" of being paralysed for life and at first it was questionable whether he would ever walk again. Grylls spent the next 12 months in and out of military rehabilitation at Headley Court^[21] before being discharged and directing his efforts into trying to get well enough to fulfil his childhood dream of climbing Mount Everest.

In 2004, Grylls was awarded the honorary rank of Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Naval Reserve for services to charity and human endeavour.^[22]

Everest[link]

On 16 May 1998, Grylls achieved his childhood dream (an ambition since his father gave him a picture of Everest when he was eight) and entered the Guinness Book of Records, as the youngest Briton, at 23, to summit Mount Everest^[23], just eighteen months after injuring his back. (James Allen, an Australian-British climber who ascended Everest in 1995 with an Australian team, but who has dual citizenship, reached the summit at age 22.^[24][25] The feat has since been surpassed by Jake Meyer and, at age 19, by Rob Gauntlett.)

Other expeditions[link]

Circumnavigation of the UK[link]

In 2000, Grylls, led the first team to circumnavigate the UK on a personal watercraft or jet ski, taking about 30 days, to raise money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). He also rowed naked for 22 miles in a homemade bathtub along the Thames to raise funds for a friend who lost his legs in a climbing accident.^[26]

Crossing the North Atlantic[link]

Three years later, he led a team of five, including his childhood friend, SAS colleague, and Mount Everest climbing partner Mick Crosthwaite, on the first unassisted crossing of the north Atlantic Arctic Ocean, in an open rigid inflatable boat^[27]. Suffering weeks of frozen spray and icebergs, battling force 8 gale winds, hypothermia, and storms in an eleven-metre-long boat through some of the most treacherous stretches of water in the world including the Labrador Sea, the Denmark Strait, and the stretch made famous by The Perfect Storm, Grylls and his team were just barely able to finish the journey from Halifax, Nova Scotia to John o' Groats, Scotland.

Paramotoring over Angel Falls[link]

In 2005, Grylls led the first team ever to attempt to paramotor over the remote jungle plateau of the Angel Falls in Venezuela, the world's highest waterfall. The team was attempting to reach the highest, most remote tepuis.

Dinner party at altitude[link]

In 2005, alongside the balloonist and mountaineer David Hempleman-Adams and Lieutenant Commander Alan Veal, leader of the Royal Navy Freefall Parachute Display Team, Grylls created a world record for the highest open-air formal dinner party, which they did under a hot-air balloon at 7,600 metres (25,000 ft), dressed in full mess dress and oxygen masks. To train for the event, he made over 200 parachute jumps. This was in aid of The Duke of Edinburgh's Award and The Prince's Trust.

Paramotoring over the Himalayas[link]

In 2007, Grylls claimed to have broken a new world record by flying a Parajet paramotor over the Himalayas, higher than Mount Everest.^[28] Grylls took off from 4,400 metres (14,500 ft), 8 miles south of the mountain. Grylls reported looking down on the summit during his ascent and coping with temperatures of −60 °C (−76 °F). He endured dangerously low oxygen levels and eventually reached 9,000 metres (29,500 ft), almost 3,000 metres (10,000 ft) higher than the previous record of 6,102 metres (20,019 ft). The feat was filmed for Discovery Channel worldwide as well as Channel 4 in the UK.^[29]

While Grylls initially planned to cross over Everest itself, the permit was only to fly to the south of Everest, and he did not traverse Everest out of risk of violating Chinese airspace.^[30]

Journey Antarctica 2008[link]

In 2008, Bear lead a team of four to climb one of the most remote unclimbed peaks in the world in Antarctica. This was raising funds for Global Angels kids charity and awareness for the potential of alternative energies. During this mission the team also aimed to explore the coast of Antarctica by inflatable boat and jetski, part powered by bioethanol, and then to travel across some of the vast ice desert by wind-powered kite-ski and electric powered paramotor. However, the expedition was cut short after Grylls suffered a broken shoulder while kite skiing across a stretch of ice. Travelling at speeds up to 50 km/h (30 mph), a ski caught on the ice, launching him in the air and breaking his shoulder when he came down. He had to be medically evacuated.^[31]

Longest indoor freefall[link]

Grylls, along with the double amputee Al Hodgson and the Scotsman Freddy MacDonald, set a Guinness world record in 2008 for the longest continuous indoor freefall.^[32] The previous record was 1 hr 36 mins by a US team. Grylls, Hodgson, and MacDonald, using a vertical wind tunnel in Milton Keynes, broke the record by a few seconds. The attempt was in support of the charity Global Angels.

Northwest Passage expedition[link]

In August 2010 Grylls lead a team of five to take an ice-breaking rigid-inflatable boat (RIB) through 2,500 miles (4,000 km) of the ice strewn Northwest Passage. The expedition intended to raise awareness of the effects of global warming and to raise money for children's charity Global Angels.^[33]

Media[link]

Grylls entered television work with an appearance in an advertisement for Sure deodorant, featuring his ascent of Mount Everest. Bear was also used by the UK Ministry of Defence to head the Army's anti-drugs TV campaign, and featured in the first ever major advertising campaign for the world-renowned department store Harrods. Grylls has been a guest on television programs, including Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Attack of the Show, The Late Show with David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Harry Hill's TV Burp. Grylls recorded two advertisements for Post's Trail Mix Crunch Cereal, which aired in the US from January 2009. He also appeared as a distinguished instructor in Dos Equis' Most Interesting Academy in a webisode named "Survival in the Modern Era". He appeared in a five-part web series that demonstrates urban survival techniques and features Grylls going from bush to bash. He also has marketed the Alpha Course, a course on the basics of the Christian faith. Warner Bros. had asked Grylls to appear in its remake of the film Clash of the Titans^[34]

Grylls is a best-selling author. Grylls' first book, titled Facing Up, went into the UK top 10 best-seller list, and was launched in the USA entitled The Kid Who Climbed Everest. About his expedition and achievements climbing to the summit of Mount Everest. Grylls' second book Facing the Frozen Ocean was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2004. His third book was written to accompany the series Born Survivor: Bear Grylls. (Released in America in April 2008 to the Man vs. Wild Discovery television show) It features survival skills learned from some of the world's most hostile places. This book reached the Sunday Times Top 10 best-seller list. He also wrote an extreme guide to outdoor pursuits, titled Bear Grylls Outdoor Adventures. In 2011 Bear released his autobiography Mud, Sweat and Tears. and it is still currently the best-selling book in Australia and the United Kingdom.^{[citation needed]}

He has a series of children's adventure survival books titled: Mission Survival: Gold of the Gods, Mission Survival: Way of the Wolf, Mission Survival: Sands of the Scorpion and Mission Survival: Tracks of the Tiger.

[edit] Escape to the Legion

Grylls filmed a four-part TV show in 2005, called Escape to the Legion, which followed Grylls and eleven other "recruits" as they took part in a shortened re-creation of the French Foreign Legion's basic desert training in the Sahara. The show was broadcast in the UK on Channel 4,^[35] and in the USA on the Military Channel.^[36] In 2008, it was repeated in the UK on the History Channel.^[37]

[edit] Born Survivor / Man vs. Wild

Grylls hosts a series titled Born Survivor: Bear Grylls for the British Channel 4 and broadcast as Man vs. Wild in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S.A., and as Ultimate Survival on the Discovery Channel in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The series features Grylls dropped into inhospitable places, showing viewers how to survive. Man vs. Wild debuted in 2006 and went on to become the number one cable show in all of America and now reaches a global audience of over 1.2 billion viewers.^[19] The second season premièred in the US on 15 June 2007, the third in November 2007, and the fourth in May 2008.

The show has featured stunts including Grylls climbing cliffs, parachuting from helicopters, balloons, and planes, paragliding, ice climbing, running through a forest fire, wading rapids, eating snakes, wrapping his urine-soaked t-shirt around his head to help stave off the desert heat, drinking urine saved in a rattlesnake skin, drinking fecal liquid from elephant dung, eating deer droppings, wrestling alligators, field dressing a camel carcass and drinking water from it, eating various "creepy crawlies" [insects], utilising the corpse of a sheep as a sleeping bag and flotation device, free climbing waterfalls and using a bird guano/water enema for hydration.^[38][39] Grylls also regales the viewer with tales of adventurers stranded or killed in the wilderness.

In some early episodes, Man vs. Wild / Born Survivor was criticised by some sources for misleading viewers about some of the situations in which Grylls finds himself. Discovery and Channel 4 television subsequently pledged production and editing transparency and clarification related to the criticism.

In March 2012, Discovery Channel terminated its productions with Grylls due to contract disputes.^[40]

[edit] Worst Case Scenario

Grylls' latest project is titled Worst Case Scenario and airs on Discovery in the USA. It is based on the popular books of the same name.^[41]

Chief Scout[link]

On 17 May 2009, The Scout Association announced Grylls would be appointed Chief Scout following the end of Peter Duncan's five year term in July 2009.^[42] He was officially made Chief Scout at Gilwell 24 on 11 July 2009 in a handover event featuring Peter Duncan in front of a crowd of over 3,000 Explorer Scouts. He is the tenth person to hold the position and the youngest Chief Scout since the role was created for Robert Baden-Powell in 1920.^[43][44]

Charities[link]

Many of Grylls' expeditions and stunts have raised money for charitable organisations.^{[citation needed]} Grylls is an ambassador for The Prince's Trust, an organisation which provides training, financial, and practical support to young people in the United Kingdom.^[19] He is also vice president for The JoLt Trust, a small charity that takes disabled, disadvantaged, abused or neglected young people on challenging month-long expeditions.

Global Angels, a UK charity which seeks to aid children around the world, were the beneficiaries of his 2007 accomplishment of taking a powered para-glider higher than Mount Everest. Grylls's held the highest ever dinner party at 7,600 metres (25,000 ft) in aid of The Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme, and launched the 50th anniversary of the Awards. His successfully circumnavigating Britain on jet skis raised money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Grylls' Everest climb was in aid of SSAFA Forces Help, a British-based charitable organisation set up to help former, and serving members of the British Armed Forces, and their families and dependents. His 2003 Arctic expedition detailed in the book Facing the Frozen Ocean was in aid of The Prince's Trust. His 2005 attempt to para-motor over the Angel Falls was in aid of the charity Hope and Homes for Children.^[45] In August 2010, Grylls continued his fund-raising work for Global Angels by undertaking an expedition through the Northwest Passage in a rigid inflatable boat. Many of his expeditions also support environmental causes such as his Antarctica expedition and his circumnavigation of Britain which tested a pioneering new fuel made from rubbish.

In 2011, Grylls was in New Zealand during the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake. Following the incident, he appeared on New Zealand advertisements encouraging people to donate money to help rebuild the city.

Other work[link]

Outside of TV, Grylls works as a motivational speaker, giving speeches worldwide to corporations, churches, schools, and other organisations.^[46] He is also a spokesperson for and owner of a Juice Plus franchise. Grylls has his own outdoor survival clothing range produced by British manufacturer Craghoppers as well as a knife manufactured by Gerber.

See also[link]

• Ranulph Fiennes, British adventurer and a hero of Grylls' growing up^[47]
• Bruce Parry, British adventurer and TV presenter
• Les Hiddins, Australian survival expert and TV presenter
• Les Stroud, Canadian survival expert and TV presenter
• Ray Mears, English survival expert and TV presenter

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bear Grylls

• BearGrylls.com official website
• Bear Grylls on Twitter
• ScoutBase.org (UK) "Meet the Chiefs"

Minka Kelly
Kelly wearing a Diane von Fürstenberg dress at the The Heart Truth's Red Dress Collection Fashion Show 2012.
Born	Minka Dumont Dufay (1980-06-24) June 24, 1980 (age 32) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	2004–present

Minka Dumont Kelly (born Minka Dumont Dufay;^[1] June 24, 1980) is an American actress. She starred in the NBC series Friday Night Lights as Lyla Garrity, the 2011 film The Roommate, and the ill-fated reboot of the 1970s television series Charlie's Angels. She made several appearances in the first two seasons of Parenthood.

Early life[link]

Kelly was born in Los Angeles.^[2] She is the only child of former Aerosmith guitarist Rick Dufay^[3] and Maureen Dumont Kelly, an exotic dancer and single mother, and the granddaughter of actor and investment advisor Richard Ney.^[4] Kelly and her mother often moved to different communities, before settling in Albuquerque, New Mexico by the time Kelly was in junior high school.^[5] During a Craig Ferguson interview, she stated that she is of French descent on her father's side and Irish descent on her mother's side.^[6]

Career[link]

When Kelly was 19, after graduating from Valley High School in Albuquerque,^[7] Kelly returned to Los Angeles.^[5] While on a test shoot for a modeling agency, she was approached by a former Playboy Playmate interested in managing her, and who placed Kelly as a receptionist at a surgeon's office who would provide Kelly breast augmentation in exchange for hours worked. She ultimately decided against the procedure, leading to her being fired.^[5] However, the exposure to the medical field prompted her to attend school for a year to become a surgeon's assistant; afterward, she worked as a scrub tech.^[5] She spent four years in that vocation while also auditioning as an actress before landing the new NBC television drama Friday Night Lights, based on the high school football movie of that name.^[5] In the interim, she had small roles in movies and shows, including the film State's Evidence, and a recurring guest role on the TV sitcom What I Like About You.^[3]

Kelly at the Paris Hilton: Marquee The Star Sydney 2012

In preparation for her role as cheerleader Lyla Garrity on Friday Night Lights, she trained with the Pflugerville High School cheerleading squad.^[2] Kelly received praise for her acting on the series, with The New York Times calling her performance "heartbreaking."^[8]

She shot a cameo for The Kingdom, alongside Jamie Foxx. Peter Berg, the creator and pilot director of Friday Night Lights, directed the film.^[9] Kelly was the lead actor on The CW's 2009 pilot Body Politic, which did not go to series. She was a member of the ensemble quartet that starred in the CBS comedy pilot Mad Love, playing Kate, a Midwestern girl who falls in love with Henry at the top of the Empire State Building, but was replaced by Sarah Chalke.^[10]

Kelly appeared with Alyson Hannigan, Jaime King, Emily Deschanel, and Katharine McPhee in a video slumber party featured on FunnyorDie.com to promote regular breast cancer screenings for the organization Stand Up 2 Cancer.^[11]

In 2010, Kelly was named "Sexiest Woman Alive" in the annual Esquire magazine feature.^[5] She accepted a role in the Off Broadway play Love, Loss, and What I Wore for an April 27 through May 29, 2011 run with Conchata Ferrell, AnnaLynne McCord, Anne Meara, and B. Smith.^[12]

She played a lead role in the remake of the television series Charlie's Angels during the 2011-12 United States network television season.^[13]

She joined an eight-day, four-country United Service Organizations tour in December 2011 with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, Robert Horry, Jordin Sparks, Thomas Miles and Sergeant Major Bryan Battaglia.^[14][15]

In February 2012, she was one of a group of celebrities that walked down a catwalk in red dresses for the 'Heart Truth Red Dress Collection show, part of New York Fashion Week. She wore a Diane von Fürstenberg dress.^[16]

Personal life[link]

Kelly dated musician John Mayer from September 2007 to January 2008. From May 2008 to August 2011, she dated baseball player Derek Jeter.^[17][18][19] Kelly is currently dating actor Wilmer Valderrama.^[20]

Filmography[link]

References[link]