Calendar Boys A Wide Array Of ‘96 Calendars Feature Hunks, Including Docs, Jocks And Garbagemen

You’ve hung in there for 10 months with Georgia O’Keeffe.

You’ve patiently flipped through most of Monet’s water lilies.

And, be honest now, sometime in late July you lost empathy for those endangered species romping through their disappearing habitats.

That 1995 calendar hanging on your wall just doesn’t have the same impact it did back in January, when you decided this was the year you’d seriously heed each of the 365 daily inspirational messages from your personal angel guide.

It’s time to update.

The 1996 calendars are hitting the bookstore shelves, offering 12 months of the new you for somewhere close to $14.95.

Of course there are those swimsuit pinups with a collection of damp damsels in various stages of undress. But it appears that for 1996, the beefcake has almost caught up with the cheesecake. And, most of the hunks have something even more appealing than thick thighs and undulating biceps to offer.

These guys have jobs!

Take the Studmuffins of Science calendar. These are men with doctoral degrees and dandy derrieres. Talk about a chemical reaction.

The studly science project was Karen Hopkin’s idea. She’s an unmarried 32-year-old biochemist and a producer of National Public Radio’s “Science Friday.”

“At first I just considered it a joke - you know, witty cocktail conversation,” Hopkin said of her brain-of-the-month project. “But people started asking me if I was really going to do it.”

She floated her hypothesis over the Internet, looking for possible pinups.

“I said basically if you have a ‘Y’ chromosome and a Ph.D., you could be Doctor December.”

She got plenty of response and the result is a slick presentation of the scientific method.

For example, Doctor January, Brian Scottoline, is pictured rising out of a clear-blue swimming pool wearing nothing but his sharp mind and a little red Speedo.

The calendar text lets us know that he’s an M.D.-Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University and that his favorite subatomic particle is the Higgs boson.

Sports Illustrated is offering an alternative to its famous swimsuit calendar, serving up Men in Sports. Fifty-two weeks of million-dollar darlings. Basketball babe David Robinson is on the cover - muscled, mannered and, sorry, very married.

But unquestionably the trashiest men-at-work calendar out this season is the Garbage Men of Connecticut.

It’s a 12-month pinup of real G-men, and there’s not a stinker in the bunch.

Debra Fippinger, a graphic artist from Bristol, Conn., thought of this calendar after noticing that her own garbage man was quite a looker. (He’s not pictured in the calendar, however, because he was too shy to pose.)

“I work at home and as a result have the responsibility of taking out the garbage,” she said. “That’s when I noticed him.”

She decided to send out fliers to garbage men statewide with hopes of bagging 12 awesome Dumpster dudes.

So what’s next?

“We’ve sat around wondering whether we’ll do another one,” said Diane Lewis, the G-men’s publicist. “We thought maybe we’ll do accountants at work next time. How’s that sound?”

Sounds profitable, as long as the focus is clearly on the bottom line.

MEMO: To order the Studmuffins of Science catalog ($14.95), write to Studmuffins of Science, Box 3382, Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10163. To order the Garbage Men of Connecticut call: 800-414-6923