“I find your lack of faith disturbing” – Darth Vader

I’d like to talk to you about a friend of mine.
 
 

Nope… not him. 

THAT’S him. That’s my boy.

Some of you know already that this face belongs to Ronholdo, the Belligerent Man. I figured it might be fun to share the story of how my oblivious pal came into existence. Here is the timeline:

1993 –  The Phant-Pom Menace

My friend Jason and I were out together one day and we happened upon a sign that read “No Standing”. To be honest, I don’t understand why this sign exists. No standing? Why not? Anyhoo, since I thought this was so ridiculous, I asked Jason to stand under it and I took a picture. I’m pissed that I couldn’t find it to show you. It must be under ONE of those piles of comic books. This was the beginning.

1994 –  Attack of the Clowns

I didn’t go to college. My thinking was, if I refuse to do homework in high school, why would I EVER want to go to any kind of school again? Especially college, where the homework only ramps up! You might say I’d second-guessed that mode of thinking after working in retail for 15 years. “I’m sorry…they don’t make that in 50 watts, sir. And no, I don’t know why.” FUCK you, by the way.

Well lucky for me, my friend Ron went to college. I would go out with him and meet his friends and they became my friends as well. Sometimes I refer to these friends today as “college friends”. I always enjoy when I refer to them that way and someone asks: “Oh… where did you go to college?” And I say “Huh? I didn’t go to college”.

One night there was an open house in the girls’ dorm. Far be it from me to not join Ron that evening. In those days (other than work) the only females that I’d ever see were people that I was related to. So I made sure I was available that night. We would do a tour and stop by certain friends’ rooms. So we go into this girl’s room and there’s this guy staring at us with this look of disgust. It looked something like this:

It was obvious to us that this guy was trying to score, and we walked in on his party. After we left, we both started doing that face to eachother. And we started calling it the ‘belligerent face’. We would do this annoying habit to eachother for the next 2-3 years. Randomly here & there, we’d just give the face to the other. Hmmm. I WONDER why none of those girls ever went out with me?

1996 -  A New Hope

Ron and I were on a trip through Canada. This story could be a blog on it’s own, by the way.

While walking down a street in Toronto, I see another one of those damn ‘No Standing’ signs again. Jesus! The Canucks too? What the fuck is up with these no standing signs?!

Then just like 3 years previous, I decided to take another picture of a guy under the foolish sign. Now it had become an OCD thing for me I guess. What I didn’t expect is that he would grace me with the gift of the face, and this would be the first shot we kept for the Belligerent Man collection:

And lo, here was born to us the Belligerent Man.

Before we knew it, we started looking for signs to have BM ignore. As time went on, we only wanted to find weirder signs, like “Don’t remove beach stones” and “Keep hands off bullrail”. And sometimes we find a picture that just works well with the face. The funny thing is, the poor prick that we’re mocking has no idea that we’ve been doing this in his honor for 12 years strong now.

We haven’t gone out in a while because of conflicting schedules. But we are planning a Belligerent Man Redux hopefully soon.

I have made a special album for my WordPress pals to be able to view my belligerent friend.  Enjoy! (Or, not). You’ll find the link below!

May the Force be with you.

The Belligerent Man – A Study, by Ron & Jeff