I am often stopped by total strangers in the street and asked, “Good sir, however could I achieve the level of manliness that you exude?”  And of course, I can’t possibly tell them all of my tips in a small amount of time.  The first step is to watch manly men do what they do best–kill stuff.  So, for your edification, I have developed this checklist of the 20 movies you must watch before you can call yourself a manly man.

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Evil David may be the best friend a man could have.  Not only did he drive me to Wendy’s today, but he also bought me a double stack, the food of the gods.

Michael J. Nelson, Gimorozo salutes you. You truly are a manly man.  For the entire month of February, Mr. Nelson has vowed to eat nothing but bacon, the food of the gods.

I once ate nothing but bacon for a month, then I died.  Luckily, aliens were able to reconstruct my body from spare robot parts and sorbothane, making me the most efficient assassin to walk the earth.  Too bad for them I’m lazy and pathologically terrified of dung beetles or I surely would have helped them take over the world by now.  Oh well, at least I make lawnmowers.  That’s pretty cool, too…right?

What can you really say about Monty Python?  They are the absolute funniest act in geekdom.  Or maybe they are the absolute geekiest act in comedy?  I don’t really know, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a geek who doesn’t love Monty Python.  I’d say it’s a fair bet that we can all quote at least 75% of Holy Grail. 

 So, here we present every geek’s favorite comedians doing a skit about Bruces.

P.S.  Tomorrow we’ll post a real post or two and end our first ever Week of Bruce in style.  I hope you can wait.

Yes, I realize that this barely counts as a post since I am not pouring out my vast knowledge on you.  All I am doing is embedding a YouTube video.  But this is not just any YouTube video.  This is the trailer for the new documentary about Bruce Campbell entitled My Name is Bruce. 

These are tears of joy.

Welcome to Day 2 of the first annual Week of Bruce.  Today we will focus on the butts that Bruce Lee has kicked.  Now, we’re not talking about average joe butts, cuz everyone knows he could kick those.  No, we’re talking about hard core butts.

First butt on the list to be kicked?  How about Kareem Abdul-Jabar.  Yeah, the Kareem Abdul-Jabar.  7′2″.  38,387 points scored during his 20 years in the NBA.  This is one serious manly man.  But guess what?  No match for Bruce Lee.

What we have here is a scene from Game of Death.  This movie came out about a year after Bruce had died.  Yeah, you read that right, Bruce Lee kicked Kareem Abdul-Jabar’s butt after he was already dead…now that’s freakin’ hard-core.

Next on the celebrity butt-kickin’ list?  How about Jackie Chan?  Here we have Chinese Connection/Fist of Fury (yeah, it had two English names, take your pick).  So Jackie Chan is the world’s best stunt man at this time, but he’s no celebrity yet.  In fact, in this 1972 flick, you don’t even get to see Jackie’s face.  But, check out 7:32 through 7:36, you get to see Jackie do what he does best.  That samurai dude who Bruce is beating with his nunchucks ain’t man enough to get kicked out of a window, so ol’ Jackie steps in and goes flying out the window and lands on the concrete in his stead.  Ouch.

Ok, so who’s next on the list, you ask.  Well, how about Jackie Chan again!  Yeah, last fight wasn’t totally fair.  After all, Jackie only got called in after the samurai’s butt was already kicked anyway.  He didn’t have a fighting chance.  I’ll bet if he snuck up behind Bruce and had the upper hand he’d win.  Right?  How about wrong, buck-o!  Just check out the 1:20 mark, that’s Jackie giving Bruce a bear hug.  That snap at 1:29?  Jackie’s neck.  Yeah, he lasted 9 seconds against Bruce.

No fair, you say, Kareem is a basketball player, not a martial artist; Jackie was just a kid, he wasn’t on top of his game yet.  You want a challenge?

How about the Professional Middleweight Karate Champion for six years running?  How’s that for a challenge?  Not enough?

Then how about the winner of the Karate Triple Crown?  Huh?  Want more?

Well, how about Black Belt Magazine’s fighter of the year?

Yeah, how about all of the above in a crazy little package we all know as CHUCK FREAKIN’ NORRIS!  Yeah, that’s right, Bruce Lee kicked a clean-shaven Chuck Norris’ butt in 1972’s Way of the Dragon/Return of the Dragon (yeah, it’s another double-named movie…whatever).  Apparently, back in the day, Chuck’s beard liked to hang out on his shoulders!  Behold the manly ballet that is Bruce vs. Chuck:

When talking about manly names, a few obvious choices pop up in any conversation: Arnold, Dolph, Keanu.  But rarely mentioned is the name Bruce.  Why is that?  As we shall reveal throughout this week, Bruce may well be the manliest of names.  Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the kick off of the first annual Week of Bruce!

But, first, we must prove to you that Bruce is indeed the manliest of names.  A quick round of trivia.

Who is the manliest singer?  Bruce Springsteen.
Manliest martial artist?  Bruce Lee.
Manliest person to ever marry Demi Moore?  Bruce Willis.
Manliest zombie fighter?  Bruce Campbell.
Manliest shark?  Bruce.
Manliest superhero?  Bruce Wayne.
Manliest monster?  Bruce Banner.

Bruce is such a manly name, that Monty Python made an entire sketch based on men named Bruce.  Australian men at that!  Australians are some of the manliest men on the planet.  When God granted his powers to someone in the 2003 documentary Bruce Almighty, who did he give them to?  Bruce.

So, what makes Bruces so manly?  Vitamins for starters, but it’s more than just that.  Throughout the course of our scientific research, we noticed a trend in the births of Bruces.  As you can see from the below timeline, the Bruces we love were all born (or created) during times of turmoil.  Turmoil breeds manliness and manliness was surely permeating the atmosphere during these times (click to enlarge).

From this timeline, you can see that there were great amounts of Bruceliness in the second and third quarters of the 20th century.  Scientists are still trying to determine why this was such a fertile period for the birthing of such manliness.  The prevailing theory is that the start of World War II forced humanity to man up whether they wanted to or not and start popping out more manly men.  And this manliness came in the form of Bruces. 

This manliness continued throughout the 50’s, most likely due to the manliness necessary to fight the Commies during the onslaught of the Cold War.  The sixties were turbulent times and required many a manly man.  The trend of Brucely manliness seems to taper out in the seventies and there are absolutely no instances of Bruceliness after that decade.  Most leading experts agree that the fall of Bruceliness can be directly correlated to the rise of disco.

Regardless as to why it started or why it ended, we are all thankful for the rise of Bruce and we now officially declare the first full week of December to be the Week of Bruce.