by Mark Leyner Three Rivers Press on July 26, 2005224 Amazon/Audible (this post includes affiliate links)

This past Thanksgiving I decided to make the trip to my parents house overnight. My plan was to avoid the horrendous traffic that was sure to clog the highways the day before the holiday and I was fortunate enough to sail through the full 8 hours without any delays. To keep myself occupied, I downloaded a few audiobooks from Audible, including Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You’d Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini. I knew going into it that it would provide me with a few good laughs, but I was not prepared to laugh from start to finish.

The authors, Billy Goldberg and Mark Leyner, have a very odd sense of humor that is even more evident, I would imagine, in the audiobook because Leyner actually narrates it. Their at-times inappropriate remarks and dry sense of humor (for example, “Goosebumps occur from fear, cold or after looking at yourself in the mirror after a night of vodka-induced debauchery”) combine to create a hilarious book that will answer a lot of weird body questions that only come up after a few cocktails.

Here are a few of the interesting tidbits that I picked up:

Peeing on a jellyfish sting does not help, but instead makes it worse (who can forget the Friends episode with Monica and the jellyfish?)

Sucking out snake venom is ineffective.

You really can test positive for opiates by eating only 3 poppyseed bagels.

Medical marijuana doesn’t help with glaucoma unless you are smoking 10-12 joints a day, and you can’t get a prescription for that amount.

Chocolate does not cause acne (whew!).

You can actually die from holding in a sneeze.

You can actually eat so much that your stomach explodes.

Asparagus pee is genetic. 46% of British tested have the gene. 100% of French tested do.

There is no definitive reason for ice cream headaches.

Cracking your knuckles does not cause arthritis (thank goodness).

Tomato juice doesn’t get rid of skunk smells, it just tricks your nose into thinking that it is gone.

The whole liquor before beer thing is farce. The carbonation means nothing.

Although I already knew the answers to many of the questions (such as why we are still hungry after eating chinese and why onions make us cry), I learned that a lot of things I assumed to be true true were, in fact, false (jellyfish stings, liquor before beer and knuckle-cracking all come to mind). I am one of those people who likes to hoard strange facts and pull them out at random times, so this book gave me some great ammo for my arsenal. If you are one of those people, or just need a good laugh, I highly recommend this book.

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