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Midway through "I Love You, Man," L.A. real estate agent Peter, played by Paul Rudd, wonders how quickly he can phone someone he just met. No, it's not a girl -- Peter's engaged. It's just that Peter, feeling like a "weirdo," needs a best man for his wedding party. And this buddy-less man -- who's always been a "girlfriend guy" -- is having a tough time navigating his way around the emotional land mines of the dude universe.

Manny Hamelburg, 68, a retired businessman, had fought prostate cancer for years. First, he tried radiation, then a drug with side effects that nearly killed him, and finally Lupron, a drug that blocks production of testosterone, the hormone that can fuel prostate cancer. The cancer disappeared. But life was miserable. Without normal levels of testosterone, Hamelburg says, he had no energy, and "zero libido for seven years. I was like a eunuch. I was chemically castrated. Sex was just hugs."

California's unemployment rate in May hit 11.5% -- its highest level in more than three decades -- but the pain of losing work isn't being shared equally between the sexes. The state lost 68,900 jobs in May as unemployment rose from a revised 11.1% in April and 6.8% in May 2008. This is the highest rate since the national record-keeping system began in 1976. Out of every four jobs lost nationwide since the recession began in December 2007, three have been lost by men.

"Nip/Tuck" FX, season premiere: Jan. 6 and 13, 10 p.m. The premise Plastic surgeon Dr. Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) takes his associate Dr. Liz Cruz (Roma Maffia) for a mammogram because he thinks he felt a lump in her breast. The test is negative but, while at the radiologist's office, Troy admits that he himself has felt a lump in his own chest.

Robert julian's little neighborhood is on the southwest side of Palm Springs, where the San Jacinto Mountains begin to rise from the desert floor like the spires of a great cathedral. Warm Sands is an older neighborhood, a mix of vintage ranches and glassy contemporaries. There are cactuses and fruit trees, a health food shop, the oldest hardware store in town and -- displayed prominently on one corner lot -- a 5-foot-tall sculpture of a phallus.

Robert Ramos bumps when he should grind. If he's supposed to walk like an Egyptian, he gets down in a low swagger. With Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" blaring, Ramos isn't sure which way that is. Even when telling a joke about his lack of dancing prowess, his timing is off. "My girlfriend says that if it wasn't for no rhythm, I wouldn't have any rhythm at all," he says, furrowing his brow when that doesn't sound right.

Whether or not parents choose to circumcise their infant sons, there will always be a small group of men who want what they don't have. Dr. Christopher Saigal, an associate professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, often sees uncircumcised men in his practice seeking circumcisions for medical reasons, including phimosis, recurring urinary tract infections and genital warts. Occasionally he also hears from men who regret having been circumcised.

For nearly all of Nada Mouallem's pregnancy, she and her husband, Tony, had a running argument. She wanted to have their son circumcised. He didn't. "Many days, I'd go off and research all the pros. He'd go and research all the cons. Then we'd get together at night and fight," she says. Arguments about circumcision often polarize today's parents. The procedure, dating to ancient Egypt, is -- in simple terms -- the removal of the foreskin, the piece of skin that surrounds the tip of the penis.

The new Mr. California USA's girlfriend had a suitably fond comment after the gold crown was placed on his head. "It's really neat," Yahira Rojo, 20, said when Jeremy Buraglia became the first recipient of the title. "It's something new, but he's been there before; we were the prom king and queen" in 2005.

In the wake of the recent study linking soy to reduced sperm concentration in men, newspaper and Internet headlines proclaimed the health food a cause of male infertility. It's true that the study was the largest so far to examine soy's effects on sperm, but the findings don't mean male fans of tofu burgers and soy milk need to abandon the foods just yet. The research on soy and sperm is in its preliminary stages -- and so far, highly conflicting.