By Henry Thompson
With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many a guy and gal have been left without a partner. And while it seems that the girls may mostly have their single Valentine’s days planned out, with many proclaiming they’ll be hanging out with friends (according to our very scientific survey, at least), there has been little to no word on what the single guys are up to.
So, what do dudes do when they’re single on Valentine’s Day? Is there a male equivalent to the ever-popular “Galentine’s Day”? If I was going to find out, it was clear that I was going to need to do some research on the one lead I had: Bromances.
Upon the recommendation of Mr. Newman, my Bromantic journey began with the 2009 movie “I Love You Man” starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segel. The movie is a play on the classic romcom template of “guy with guy best friend searches for love and various antics ensue,” instead opting for “Guy with strong and stable romantic relationship searches for a guy to be friends with because he has none and various antics ensue.” Genius.
The movie opens on Paul Rudd’s character Peter Klaven running an open house, and it quickly becomes clear that he has exactly zero close guy friends. Later, when he proposes to his girlfriend Zooey, this lack of male companions suddenly becomes a relevant issue for Peter, as he realizes he won’t have a best man for his wedding, setting up the main plot/goal of the film. However, after some mishaps in his early attempts to score a friend, he gives up on his hunt, feeling disappointed.
Luckily for Peter (and the audience), through the power of movie plot magic, while at his open house, Peter, a real estate agent, runs into protagonist number two and soon-to-be bromantic interest, the laid-back manchild Sydney Fife (who is at the open house for the snacks and to meet recently-divorced single women). Despite Sydney’s eccentricities, the two bond over shared interests. Peter’s hope is reignited as he then goes on to invite Sydney to his engagement party where he plans to introduce him to Zooey.
Their relationship grows as they spend more time together, inadvertently nudging out Zooey in the process. This, of course, culminates in a classic rom-com (Brom-com?) third-act conflict after Peter loans Sydney 8,000 dollars and, ignorant of her feelings, asks Zooey why they were getting married. As you would expect, they fight, and Peter ends up cutting ties with Peter in hopes of regaining Zooey’s trust.
As it turns out, Sydney only wanted the money to pay for billboard advertisements for Peter’s real estate business, bringing some much-needed traffic to his work, which only worsens his mood. As the wedding approaches, both men are desperate for company, and miss each other constantly. (How tragic.) Peter tries to make up for Sydney’s absence with random friend options from throughout the movie, but Zooey is able to recognise his distress and re-invites Sydney, who had already decided to come to crash the wedding on his own.
Sydney arrives at the last second as vows are being taken, and as you can imagine, Peter is quite excited by it. Sydney even goes on to redeem himself further by paying back the eight thousand dollars, and after some joint celebratory singing from the pair of dudes, the movie ends.
Inspired by my experience watching this film, I set out to discover something of a bromance here at Lovett. Luckily for me, I was quickly directed by Izzy Taylor in the direction of seniors Patrick Smyth and Jackson Van Os and their shared Instagram account, to which they post daily photos together. They became good friends in tenth grade when they had a class together.
Apparently, the account was created after Patrick reached out to Jackson with the idea, which evolved over time. “Originally, that’s what I wanted to do,” Patrick said, “just take a picture every day and then at the end go through a little video of all of them. But Jackson wanted to post it every single day.” And so the idea was born.
A lot goes into creating each post, each one meticulously crafted with an array of creative decisions. For both Patrick and Jackson, these creative aspects are the highlight of the account. As Jackson explained, “I like doing the feature Fridays the best.” (These posts include their other friends.) “I like doing the cool poses, I like the creativity part of those Fridays and stuff,” he said.
Patrick enjoys editing each post and giving each one its own special flair. Specifically, he said he enjoyed choosing the music for each post. “I get to pick a good song that I think is great and I can show off my music taste to some people,” he said.
According to both seniors, the effort started off with a bang as they set out to take a picture in every room of the high school, but they have been losing steam since completing that project, despite the rapidly approaching one-hundred-day milestone.
However, not all hope is lost as they plan to begin taking pictures in every room in the community center, an idea that holds some significance, “especially since it’s about to be torn down, it could be a nice way to commemorate it,” Jackson said.
Hopefully, these wholesome stories of some close friendships inspire you this coming Valentine’s Day. Just because you don’t have a romantic interest doesn’t mean you can’t just have a good time with your bros.
At the very least, hopefully you’ve been inspired to go take a look at Patrick and Jackson’s Account. “I think he’s been a really great friend,” Patrick said.
