Bromance of the Week

Paolo and Justin

Word is Bro

No one in the office was surprised when they saw the 2 guys go to lunch for the first time. Not when Justin started dropping by Paolo’s cube on the way to the bathroom just to say hey man, what’s up. And not when it happened more often than not to see both of them huddled close over Justin’s monitor watching YouTube videos of childhood cartoon intros (Transformers, Captain Planet).

Their story couldn’t be more classic than if it was scripted for a feel-good sitcom made for times of economic crisis. Paolo: your married 20-something, a long way from his hometown LA, looking to escape his commitments and prolong happy hours into express train off hours. Justin: a single NYer with boyish charm and few commitments except to figure out which of his boys is going to wingman him at the next party. They both work in an ad agency overrun by females and older, married white guys so it was only a question of time before these two were left to find companionship in one another. Hearing them relate their daily pressures and pleasures during a smoke break is no less of a bro moment than a closing dialogue between Charlie Sheen and John Cryer in Two and a Half Men.

Having taken their friendship past 9-5, bro'ing on the weekends ranges from drinking and hanging with other bros to group trips to wherever Mrs. Paolo has planned (The picture [above] was taken by Mrs. Paolo at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens during the Cherry Blossom Festival).

Despite their disagreements on karaoke song picks and the choice of girls who they’d like to fuck vs chuck in the office, their bond remains as firm as a handshake.


-Submitted by Corrie Re

Bromance of the Week

Matt and Andy

As officemates, their desks face away from each other. But as bros, this positioning runs deeper. They take on the world together, back to back as it were. Last week they cooperated in an online game where they create their own epidemic and have it take over the world, a la Pinky and the Brain. They have weekly discussions of their gym routines, helping each other to custom craft one according to their bodies' needs. They also have an acute collective knowledge of their company's higher-ups, as they sit in the cafeteria spying on them, trading information from their latest business deals down to how they hold their heads as they pee - some say they even have knowledge of the rate of flow of the pee.

Matt and Andy ignore women as they pose. The Blonde is shocked at Matt's indifference, and Andy is visibly perturbed at the touch of the Brunette.

Early on, they created a blog where they adopted monikers of old Englishmen; sources say that this was "presumably to prepare for their later life together." It can be a complicated dynamic, as Andy created a Twitter account soon after Matt signed on as AssLobster, but as undershirts go, Matt sports the Wife-Beater while Andy prefers the Deep-V. For lunch, Matt gets a burger and fries and Andy gets a sandwich and yogurt (except on Buffalo Chicken Thursdays), and they invariably sit together (except on the day they learned of this entry). At the office, if one leaves the room, the other sets up Pandora so that upon return he'll hear, "Turn around, every now and then I get a little bit lonely..." Inside sources say they are constantly found chuckling at each other's text messages; on the weekends when they have nothing to say, they "ping" on their blackberrys to communicate hey, it's me and I'm here. Sources say this spurred on Matt's long time girlfriend to refer to Andy as Matt's "boyfriend". Consequently, it has recently become public that Andy broke up with his girlfriend.

Bromance of the Week

(This week's bromance was submitted by the bro's themselves. The following is their prose, unedited, with some hyperlinks to further illustrate what they were going for.)

Alex and Jeff

This bromance is one based on mutual interests, namely fast cars, fast times and faster women. This relationship was originally one of convenience, as they have sat a mere four feet from each other for nearly two years now. However, it was at happy hours were the bromance truly flourished. Jeff and Alex discovered they both enjoyed imbibing more than one should in a professional setting and then generally making all those unfortunate enough to be near them uncomfortable and upset. Their bromance blossomed on Friday mornings when attempting to mutually piece together the previous night's activity and craft apology emails to co-workers. If you look closely enough through their bloodshot eyes on such mornings, you'll see a twinkle as they ask each other things like "What's a more professional way of saying 'I was fucked up beyond comprehension last night and don't remember what I said but I'm sorry, boo. What are you and the ho train doing later tonight?'"

This bromance is not all kitty cats and rainbows though. Alex is a self professed “selfish asshole” which makes for a tenuous bromance at many levels. Things hit rock bottom when Jeff was trying to quit smoking cigarettes, and while in the depths of a nicotine withdrawal, Alex forced Jeff to watch a youtube video of a man simply enjoying a cigarette. In the end their bond is stronger than some trivial bickering, and is reinforced every time one of them says “Barkeep, 2 Jamesons on the rocks.”

Imeem.com recently posted a playlist of Hip-Hop bromances including Method Man and Redman, Eminem and Dr. Dre, and Birdman and Lil Wayne - the last being a father-son bromance. In fact the two have been spotted kissing, to which Lil Wayne replies in a lyric, "Damn right I kiss my Daddy." Not to be outdone however, by stuntin' like his Daddy.

Bromance of the Week

Le Bromance Local:

Ed and Craig

They met at the breakfast spread on the first day of training, of the first day of work, on the 23rd day in June. Few have compatible accounts. Some say they reached for the same bagel (poppy), some say it was because their work ID#'s are consecutive, some say love is a river that drowns the tender reed.

Even after having discussed it beforehand, they end up wearing the same clothes out. When they drink, they each get a 40 of Old English. When they smoke, one gets an orange and one gets a butterfinger. They play basketball with their friends once a week. Ed teaches Craig how to do the six-step and Craig teaches Ed how to forehand a frisbee. More recent activities include winning their office superlatives for Best Bromance, purchasing one of their homances an 18inch black phallus, starting a rap group called The Fresh Kennedy's (their single "Frosty Flakes" is slated to drop this summer), and screaming at the front row of the latest Roots Concert.

Here, Ed can be seen doing the eggroll and Craig can be seen doing god-knows-what. Regardless of what Craig is doing, one thing is for sure - these two are hopelessly bromantic.

Le Bromance Celebre

A friend of mine (bro) recently referred me to a couple lists compiled by Bill Simmons of famous bromances, part one which is here, and part two here.

I think these are brilliant. However, one thing I'd like to note is that Siegfried and Roy were listed as "Best Romance Bromance," which kind of goes outside the scope. Unless I'm missing one, he didn't list a single famous gay-gay bromance! In other news, Urban Dictionary posts the bromance as an essentially heterosexual male friendship. My buddy Geoff says guess what chicken-butt: Truman Capote and Gore Vidal for Most Scornful Bromance. Boom, roasted (breast).



Vidal on Capote, "Capote I truly loathed. The way you might loathe an animal. A filthy animal that has found its way into the house."


From left to right:
Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Tennessee Williams

Le Bromance Vit

Bromances, non-sexual bonds between men, have become a novelty in the 21st century. Men who would be kings, who would be islands, who can change an atom to change the land and split genes to save it, who fill kegs and prisons, who are beasts that desire only the fuck and the fisticuff, who sailed the world with cloth and wood and divided it with gunpowder and steel, who sailed to the moon with gunpowder and steel and pulled down their pants, who say fagot and homo… today have replaced the visceral smack of a high-five with a handgrip and a half-embrace. Male or female, gender roles continue to oscillate, but it seems recently the Bro’s are tugging feverishly.