No Sense in Getting Too Relaxed

"perhaps bromantic, definitely weird"

This was taken in Downtown Houston. I guess these two are showing some kind of mustache solidarity, even though the one on the left doesn't have a mustache. Still, it's bromantic in its sentiment.

Further Evidence of What I Said Earlier

Bronanism

This photo was taken at a bowling alley in Gainesville, FL.

Twinsies

I am not a political analyst, nor is the aim of this blog to investigate politics in any informed way. Though I won't deny George Bush and Tony Blair's bromance may have something to do with U.S. hegemony, such speculation is, for my purposes, Beside the Point.

What really grabs me is the absolute quintessence of these men's bromantic dyad, their utter synchronicity, their rich private language. They are both complements and equivalents of each other. It's the stuff of Gus van Sant films. I mean, look at them. If you folded this photo hamburger-style, the two halves would probably coalesce and transmute into a jet ski. I doubt the NATO summit even supplied those water bottles.

This is not a value judgment. This is not at all a matter of subjectivity. It is the Truth. They are the Platonic Idea of Bromance, the kind of Idea that Makes it OK to Capitalize Things that would not Usually be Capitalized. Separately, I find these two kind of lumpish and ugly. I cannot divorce them from their reputations. Together, though, they are Something Else. They give me the cuddles.

Bromancest

This outwardly typical display of bromantic mock-eroticism is more complex than it appears: the bros pictured here are actually brothers. The standing and seated brothers are at yet another brother's wedding, and the shared caress is presumably some sort of coping mechanism for the shift in the family dynamic.

How does an actual fraternal relationship distort the already complex, ill-defined boundaries of bromance? Are certain bromantic displays less acceptable within the family? or, for that matter, more acceptable? This photograph, like any compelling image, provides more questions than answers.

Some Games Have Only Winners

My friend in Austin sent this pictures of her friend's husband and his bros, whom my friend describes as "churchy." I'm not sure what's up with the weird white-shirt side of this picture, nor what that has to do with bromance. It's nonetheless quite a bromantic tableau: the flexing, the booze, the side-hugs, the pastels, &c, &c.

Sadly it's the only photograph available from this evening; I'm sure there was much more BDA once the beer pong got started. (I'm assuming this is a before shot, unless the empty cup in the bottom-right is left over from an otherwise very efficient cleanup.)

Olympic Bromance -- Inaugural

For the first entry to the Blog, I thought I'd post an instance of bromance in the public sphere. This arm-dense photo shows the 2008 US Olympic men's swimming team celebrating a recent victory with a common bromantic gesture: the group hug. The group hug is essentially one big circular side-hug, perhaps the atomic building-block of all things bromantic.

Also remarkable here is Michael Phelps' vaguely embarrassed glance toward the camera lens, which evinces another dominant bromantic theme: self-consciousness.