That statistic might seem depressing until you get to another statistic on the same page: 31 percent of SI readers agreed with the statement "I've had sex while watching a sporting event."
Which proves that you don't have to choose between sex and the playoffs. You can have both. At the same time. Ain't life grand?
Cash's Unlikely Fellowship
By the time country singer Johnny Cash met rap producer Rick Rubin in 1993, Cash thought his recording career was over. But -- as David Kamp shows in a moving story in the October issue of Vanity Fair -- the men's collaboration led to some of greatest recordings in Cash's career and perhaps in the history of country music. It also led to a deep friendship with an unexpected religious component.
It was an unlikely pairing. Cash, who died last September, was an aging country star from Arkansas, a recovering addict and a devout Christian. Rubin was a young rap and rock producer from New York, a bearded, long-haired Jewish vegan who'd never touched drugs. But the men shared two common interests -- music and religion -- and that was enough to jump-start Cash's moribund creativity.
"You could see that their connection went back into the mists of time somewhere," Cash's daughter, Rosanne, told Kamp. "Like these guys didn't just meet 11 years ago."
Rubin had a simple idea: Instead of making an elaborate studio recording, he sat Cash down in his living room and encouraged him to sing his favorite songs with no accompaniment except his own guitar. It worked, and the result was the Grammy-winning 1994 album "American Recordings."
After that, Rubin introduced Cash to an eclectic collection of modern rock songs -- Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down," Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus" and Trent Reznor's "Hurt," among others. Rubin thought that Cash, with his deep, resonant, seen-it-all voice, could make the songs his own. He was right. Their collaboration yielded four more astonishing albums, including "American V," which comes out this fall.
The story of this musical collaboration has been told before. What's new about Kamp's piece is that it reveals the religious nature of their friendship. Rubin is a spiritual seeker who reads widely in religious texts from around the world. Cash also had a deep interest in comparative religion, and the two men engaged in long, intense spiritual discussions. These talks led to an odd but moving ritual: Every day for the last few months of his life, Cash -- wheelchair-bound and nearly blind -- would call his Jewish friend and lead him through the liturgy of the Christian ritual of Communion.
"Even after he passed away, I continued doing this with him," Rubin told Kamp. "As time has gone on, it's a little harder to do. But I still do it."
