"Doc, I've not had a burger in years."
"Is that what you really want to talk about Bobby?"
"Yes."
"Well then, have at it hoss."
"I think that's rather unproffessional..."
"I'm just trying to make you comfortable."
"Thanks... so I haven't had a burger in years..."
"It started way back in history... that is to say, my personal history. I'll skip the first five chapters and tell you that I ended up in Rio at Carnival. It was hot and muggy and clothes were frowned upon. I danced like the dickens and Charles was there."
"I'm not surprised that Charles was there."
"He usually is... So Charles was there and we were dancing like the dickens. And he turns to me and says, 'this trip is going to be a tale of two titties.' And I say, 'that sounds like something I would say.' And he says, 'I learned it by watching you.' When all of a sudden two gigantic women with breasts that can only be described as inspiring camel envy, bounded toward us. We looked at eachother, knowing and not knowing our next moves. We introduced ourselves, in not-so-fine portuguese, as the Didley Brothers, owners and operators of Didley Design... or as we told them, the ones who make the lights blink blink, the music go blah blah, and the asses go shake shake. They were amused."
"They usually are."
"They usually are."
"So... the burgers...?"
"Let me tell it how I want to tell it... so first, we bumped, then we grinded, then as I was flossing my teeth with her g-string, she turns to me and says something about her friend and about how she didn't trust the guy she was with. I explain that I'm the more harmful of the two... she chuckles and sucks on my neck. She's got nothing to worry about - let's all meet up after a shower 'AND SOME E!' she squeels... fine - I'm in Rio. I meet up with Charles and he asks why I have so many hickies... I respond, as I recall, 'because each one felt better than the one before.' I hand jived to the music and moonwalked to a hot dog stand. Rio was great, but as it turns out, E, while it's an awesome form of entertainment is not an awesome form of sexual protection... it's actually the opposite. I spanked more ass than a little bit that trip and my heavy chested lady friend left me with a parting gift... one that rhymes with shmepeltitus and ends with a liver's inability to process greasy foods... I haven't had a burger since the one I got at JFK on the way home."
"And how does that make you feel?"
"It reminds me of a joke."
"Really?"
"Yes. Really. A Priest and a Rabbi are talking - they've been friends for years and years. While confiding in eachother one night the Priest asks the Rabbi if he's ever 'cheated, you know, gone off the wagon and had unkosher meat?' The Priest explains that he has the utmost respect for him and wouldn't question his faith. 'Well then, yes, actually, I've strayed from my kosher life... what about you Father? Have you ever, you know, strayed and compromised your vow of celebacy?' The Priest ponders this and finally says, 'Yes Rabbi, I have, I was with a woman once.' The Rabbi laughs, 'what's so funny?' the Priest says... 'nothing,' the Rabbi says, 'it's just, that's a lot better than a piece of ham, isn't it!?'"
"I'm not sure I understand how that makes you feel Bobby."
"Think about it... maybe this'll help. Two roads diverged in the wood, I took the one with bigger tits... no?... [sigh]... Charles and I are heading down to Brazil in three weeks - we still have those chicks' numbers, you want in?"
Monday, July 21, 2008
The Hamburgler
Friday, July 18, 2008
The Dark Night
Bobby saw "The Dark Knight" at midnight.
He entered the theater and smelt the essence of the bearded comic book junky and the cooped up overzealous fan. Boys in make-up, young santa clause in training scribling characters of his own, non-descript chicks wearing black pants... all was as expected... almost...
Now, the Bronse is not a forum for movie reviews, but I will allow this post to dip into philosophical, and possibly dick suckingly trite, praise of the film.
I was worried about the jokester in the full theater who likes to make loud jokes at tense moments, eliciting chuckles from the lamer audience members. This happened only during the previews as most people there were focused fans... it was either that or the gripping and mind-fucking story line kept the less-thans too confused to hurl out some lame aside.
As good as the film was on it's own merrit, one cannot possibly watch the movie without feeling loss and awe at what might have been. Heath Ledger's cinematic eulogy to himself turned the movie up to eleven. The audience clapped after his first scene, partly in homage and partly because, from moment one, everyone knew we were witnessing greatness.
Some thought that Jack played Joker best and, like Willy Wonka, nobody should have the audacity to try a do-over. Like painting water lillies over Monet's water lillies or re-recording the vocals of Freddy Mercury, the idea of Heath's performance was suspect. But rising from the flames of that argument was a performance so transendent, that we are all reminded that movies are stories and that to assume any story has already been told perfectly is to undermine the concept of art itself.
Heath Ledger will win an Academy Award. And when watching and rewatching "The Dark Knight," we will all be filled with awe and sadness, because the greatness that has been preseved will only heighten the feeling of loss for what other stories he might have told...
Why so serious indeed?
Friday, June 13, 2008
Charles Is On A Bender
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Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Bus Fare
Your drunken heroes Charles and Amerigo board a bus in San Francisco. They stumble into two seats facing the back of the bus, directly across from a man and his young son.
C: This is an awkward way to sit.
A: Yeah, you can't see where we're going, only where we've been.
C: Such is life.
The man notices them and chuckles out, "That's right." He looks down at his boy, over to our heroes, and back toward the front, jittery, waiting for our heroes to respond to him. But Charles is already looking out the window, and Amerigo is thinking about the route and the time, and both are waiting for the bus to just go.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Drunk Saturday
Gentlemen,
To completely shit on this cheap ass office party, I plan on showing up really, really drunk. By the way, I have a mustache. And so should you. If not real, then fake. Groucho Marx. I heard Asylum gives beer out for free on Saturday and Dan's pours it down your throat. So I figure we get the whole gang together and work our way from Asylum to Dan's to cheap ass work party.
My phone number is 917-343-4343. Invite everyone.
Sincerely,
Charles Bronson
Monday, May 26, 2008
Amerigo's Lament
As we have not heard from Amerigo in like ever, it was sweet johnson that he finally resurfaced. And in doing so, he has simmered and sauced the aphoristic Bronse. Svenjoy:
"Here is the deal. When I was a yjoung bronse, I had a tap installed upon the top of my brain. A tap similar to the fancy polished black mahogany and brass guinness tap you might find in a sod hut cobblestone pub, behind a solid wooden plank in the dusky backstreets of Cork - similar to the tap in the pirate bar made from the worn wormwort wood of longshanks' peg-leg that when pulled, gently releases the Absinthe chaser - a similar tap to these was attached to the apex of my cranium. For the past four years I have been a walking open bar. I haven't demanded tips or charged a nickel for the swill elixir that has been lubricating the masses. In fact, I have enjoyed watching people drinking up what I have been putting out there. (Like I were the Baltic see they were a cup ah-hah) I have enjoyed it, but the kranal-keg is about to reach the 30 point. (also referred to as the dirty point) I still enjoy it, but I need to start bottling some for later. I guess thats just what happens. First, however, I think I need to do a Keg-Stand, and I was wondering if you would be so kind as to pump."
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Big Brown Bronson
The infield at the Preakness, as Bobby pointed out after the fact, with which Your Charles concurred, is a mixture of Bar Harbor, the Jersey Shore, and Sodom and Gomorrah, only with less rules... It is a drunken, seething morass of depravity, complete with pushing, fighting, passing out, making out, pissing, puking, trampling, titties, crying, yelling, appeasing, chugging, ducking, staring, flashing, betting, eating, dodging, sunburning, horseplaying... Imagine, if you will, a skyfull of somersaulting, spilling beer cans, rising and then arcing from all directions smacking heads of the unawares and wares. Imagine girls punching guys because they can, and the swirling, yelling, pushing throng that follows. Imagine the endless funnelling of Busch Light and the boxed-in beer pong games on stolen ABC garbage boxes. And because the boxes are stolen, imagine the hundreds of thousands of beer cans, with no obvious place to put them, littered on the ground, glittering after being crushed underfoot by the tens of thousands of seething drunks.
Then imagine: You, Charles Bronson, try to avoid all the madness and just shotgun your beer in relative peace, but instead someone yells, "Incoming" and a mortar beer smacks the girl you are talking to, completely taking her out, and then you turn to see some guy next to you going after someone in the neighboring group and you have no idea why, and you see a female with sunglasses and a tank top emerge from the scrum to defend her rockhead man and you put your arm out to stop it but she slips trying to avoid you and everyone thinks you pushed her down, so an army of ten fat guys now wants to fight you but another army of fifteen shirtless guys wants to stop them, so you give a wry smile and slip out and are grabbed by some other girl with sunglasses and a tank top who says, "You're so good looking," and kisses you and you pull back and are handed a beer, which you chug because it's sunny out and you are thirsty.
Then the horses blur by and people raise their hand and cheer and then five people ask you what just happened, and you say it was number 7 that won but have no clue, and you turn and grab a water because it's really hot out now, but the Poland Spring Bottle is really warm vodka and you gag so instead you reach for a two liter of Diet Pepsi which you chug even harder because the warm vodka was so nasty but the Diet Pepsi turns out to be Diet Pepsi and Rum and Rebel Yell and warm which you spit out all foamy on some dude passed out in a lawn chair getting all lobster.
You realize you have to piss because you drank fifteen Busch Lights in the last twenty minutes, but the portas are a dense swim through 60,000 people away, so you go down to the fence nearby which is lined with National Guardsman and BPD, separating this rowdy, blighted morass from the horse track and all of humanity and you piss towards the law and they don't blink perhaps because, you reason, they are happy that you don't storm through the fence and start attacking them like you are attacking that bottle of Rebel Yell still in your hand and upended into your mouth
Sometimes largess depravity can be a cultural concern, one that overwhelms in its reckless, fratty entitlement. Certainly, any one Bronson's quest for salvation through such depravity can be championed, but when it is in the context of such empty collusion, your Bronson must cringe. The cheap booze and cheap thrills were meant to amuse, and, though the passionate and aggressive manner of the multitudes was at times amusing, it was also a sick look at our collective bankrupcy - encircled like an eye, with horses running all around it. Your Charles was a contributor and also an observer and felt good about neither. In fact, later that night, he threw up.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Bronson To Teach New Orleans Sixth Graders
Let there be such a flood of knowledge when Charles Bronson arrives in August.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Work
Imagine if your job was to pretend you were doing work.
The bosses are out. They've been out for weeks and haven't even called. With each day, the general authority is increaingly moot and equal amongst yourself and your coworkers.
Every day begins with obsequious hellos. Everyone is polite but guarded. Even you grumble hello as you sit at your computer. Then, there is a roomwide pause.
You notice the furtive glances over monitor screens. There is a sudden tension and it is palpable. A coworker blurts out a question about some deadline and lets it linger for someone/anyone to respond. No one does, at first. Instead, one coworker gets up and surrepticiously wanders toward the refrigerador. Another coworker picks up a physics textbook and starts half-reading it. The three of them all secretly look toward each other, then at you. You smirk at the ceiling.
You know these indirect questions and obvious-but-not-too-obvious glances/postures are the bait for which the coworkers are testing the waters of status quo. They first pretend to do work and wait, suspiciously, for everyone else to pretend to do work. It is only once they have confirmed for themselves that everyone is pretending to do work that everyone actually starts doing work. Except you. Your job is to not do work at all.
It is always the same. First a coworker responds cheerily to that token deadline request. It is awkwardly late after the pregnant pause. But that is the icebreaker: once one chimes in, then the others quickly follow. Actual conversations about dates and inquiries and lessons start up. The tension subsides; the veil of uncertainty lifts. The coworkers, now certain of communal complicity, speedily resume (almost with a physical sigh) to normative office culture. They pick up phones and start typing out emails. Their posture suddenly improves.
Each coworker is now sincere in their purpose. They are actually doing work. But since they only assumed that role (as someone who actually does work) through the collective influence of each other, you realize they may be wary of someone who is non-compliant. Especially since a moment ago, they were so wary of each other. So your position as someone who only pretends to do work is vulnerable. The coworkers (who are working) have the majority and can use the majority against you.
So you have to pretend to do work. Which is your job. So you open up a google document, which looks official/professional, and begin typing "Imagine if your job was to pretend you were doing work. The bosses are out.."
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Sartre
Charles Bronson poured his bucket of coins into the CoinStar machine at the local supermarket. He took his receipt to the Customer Service desk, and the clerk put 36 dollars and 58 cents into his hand. Charles pocketed the dollars and headed back to the Coinstar Machine. Charles threw in his 58 cents, and then took his new receipt back to the Customer Service clerk. The clerk accepted his receipt with skepticism and looked at it. Charles saw the clerk's eyes widen and then look up at him with a disapproving look of sheer disbelief.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Where in the World Is Bronson Sandiego?
Well, not in San Diego, but close. The Bronsonius inner circle extends from LA to MN to DC and beyond, only now it extends to PR or NOLA or to the bakery or something. Basically this inexplicable pause in gloryposting should be attributed to spreading the Bronson spirit to warmer climes - the South, the Islands, the oven, wherever...
So, if you are constantly plying this site for new feral indictments of the hypocrisy of lame chicks and stupid jobs and you tragically find this post day after day after day, Your Charles sincerely apologizes for the lack of renewal.
Just confide in the fact that the meanings of life, buried superficially on these pages, are being spread via boots on the ground. This webwire writing is effective, yes, but sometimes a handsome man in a chalkcovered suit shooting Wild Turkey must suddenly appear and challenge the proletariat to solve riddles of reason and faith. Sometimes, that handsome man is the messenger, upon his leaving, that causes everyone to sigh and to wonder if that really was the messiah, or at least Bronson Sandiego...
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Bruce and Bronson Play Copenhagen Streets 1988
In a moment's pause from the Danish leg of the Tunnel of Love tour, Bruce and Bronson play "The River" hobostyle streetwise.
I know what you're thinking: That's not Your Charles. I know, that is Bruce. But beside the Boss the other strummer is an androgenous Lebowski-like analogue of Your Charles Bronson. It may not be Charles in body, but it is him in Copenhagen.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
An Open Letter To This Homeless Dude
This Homeless Dude,
Not long ago, maybe a fortnight, Your Charles was whistling through a rough neighborhood when he witnessed the furious flickering of a ninja gang dismantling a Northeast DC tenement house. Apparently, a resident had dropped a spoon or had falsely prayed to a false Shinto spirit and thus caused the ninja band to converge like a soft breeze before erupting in piercing shrieks and exacting precise kicks and chops to all residents, furniture, and structure beams. In minutes, the building lay in rubble; there were no survivors. Then, in a screen of smoke, the ninjas vanished.
This incident is indicative of the rampant lawlessness of ninjas today. Many ninjas have formed rogue gangs that have eschewed the ninja's protectorate mantra and have instead pledged fatwa vengeance upon the common folk. Why ninjas have broken away from the order is still uncertain, but speculation exists that Shredder has launched a resurgent footclan and/or East is finally meeting West.
So, as we have all heard and as you have been so tragically privy, this homeless dude, homocidal ninjas are responsible for killing families and thrusting poor survivors into poverty. At least five incidences have been recorded on cnn.com, attributed, of course, to low force tornadoes, erosion, and gentrification. You are not alone in your plight.
Though never fear, this homeless dude, because Your Charles has been teaming with the likes of Pei Mei, Splinter, and Charles Bronson and seeks to team with you, too. Your Charles has been training: timbering forests with his roundhouse kicks, alighting the night stars with throwing stars, and whisking furtively into your gf's mind while you snore beside her, oblivious.
Let me tell you this: Your Charles will fight the Kumate this August in Hong Kong, and you, this homeless dude, are invited to watch and learn. If, when you see Charles keeyaa monkey-like fighters, Sumo wrestlers, and ruthlessly pectoralled kung fu masters, you still believe you have what it takes, then Your Charles will train you himself in the jungles of Siberia and the tundras of Thailand.
Or you could just go through the Charles Bronson movie catalog and watch vengeance alive. Or Your Charles could give you his last five bucks (it was a wild weekend, sorry it can't be more).
So you see, this homeless dude, even though you are homeless and you have a clever sign, your options are still endless.
Sincerely,
Charles Bronson
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
The Death of Bronson?
Over the past few months, Your Charles has pondered his mortality. We all know the epic artist on roaring display in these pages is surebet eternal, but the man himself, now a ripened 28, has surpassed the corporal limits of incumbent immortals James D, Kurt, Jim, Jimi, and Janis, so he now wonders if he will join them by combusting in some freakshow CNN.com worthy accident, thereby leaving the embers of his work to conflagrate with his newsworthy death, and all these words will become fashionable, revolutionary, vital in memoriam.
Why, you may ponder, does Charles think his litany of genius will soon end? Very simple, his life lacks supreme purpose. The compounding nature of successive days teaching rich apathetic kids, answering to the phony expectations of a perpetually absent boss, all while living below even his meager means, has corrupted his sense of original place in the world. Instead, Your Charles feels a patsi in an unjust grind, reaping no real rewards.
Granted, he views his present jobstyle as common amongst the ordinary man that willfully succumbs to it. That man with safe marriage, and new mortgage must swallow whatever cruel job situation befits his monetary responsibilities and builds upon his new domestic predilection for sheds of tools, retirement funds, and newborn babies. Once fully settled into that boring job, the wild spirit gives way to the responsible family man and rationalized values replace rocking impulses, which drives the man's life firmly into frustration and predictability. Yes, there are benefits to ordinary man's life (stability and companionship for two), but if it comes at the cost of enduring a soulsuck job and surrendering freewill to fate, Your Charles decided long ago to not go that gentle.
And now that Your Charles has felt himself slip into the ordinary man realm via this shit job and accompanying stunted lifestyle, without the requisite components (wife, rock fatigue, hometown) to convince himself that a stupid job is a means to an end (or a means to a mortgage. i.e.), he finds himself in a stupid vertigo, where his new netherworld is neither rocking nor stable, but rather wan and meaningless. So therefore he thinks he is expendable. His life isn't tending towards any absolute - static nor electric - and that realization makes him more wary on the roads for buses skipping red lights.
However, such depressing inevitability will not be found here anymore. Your Charles's latest foray into teaching the gov't abandoned kids of NOLA has restored his sense of purpose as a fulltime rocker. This return to form has given him back invincibility. So while Janis and Kurt and everyone had their life moment flicker and extinguesh before rebursting into history, your Charles will see his transcendance while he is still here on earth.
So, Your Charles's myth will not be truncated, full of bittersweetness and caution, but instead Your Charles will be a lifeblood embodiment of his self-made celestial lore - a living legend, if you will. So, my Bronson faithful, do not fret about compiling posthumous tomes of pale letters and prescient kumbayaas a la John Kennedy Toole or Bradley Nowell, for Your Charles is Your Charles and the rest is beautifully undiscovered.
