The Jabrone Preamble
As it turns out, there are Gibronis, Jibronis and Jabrones and they collectively attest to the power of urban lexicon. The differences between the words is pretty insignificant, even though some seem to want to parse that some are meant to declare rather than denigrate; designate, but not condemn. I find that all pretty funny and more indicative of our Uber-concerns about political correctness, or more accurately our fervent wish to not get tagged as inappropriate on racist/prejudicial terms in our language. Tarzan found the Jabrone Tribe in deepest darkest Africa and they were portrayed as insignificant bumblers who could neither compete against the colonial white man nor the coal-black gorillas that ran on their knuckles and raised Tarzan. Note that Jabrones only appear in the old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies and they are long gone in the Greystoke movie versions of the tale. And then came professional wrestling.
Apparently, somewhere along the way, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson decided that males of lesser stature and standing deserved to be called Jibrones. These were the stumble-bums that got nailed by folding chairs and body slams, both in and out of the ring. These were the wrestlers that tripped over their own shoelaces. They were the cannon fodder of the sport that were too incompetent, unathletic or just too dumb to do anything more meaningful. It’s an expressive word that avoids obvious ethnic (unless you get the distinctly Italian sound to it) or racial (assuming you ignore that Tarzan’s antagonists were black-skinned) pitfalls. This is a hide-in-plain-sight derogatory and insulting word that has a certain cute kindness to it. I myself have come to think of it in endearing terms. It connotes a likable guy who is, sadly, a ne’er do well who means no harm, but is almost always a bit of a bumblefuck. This all makes it a word I like to describe certain younger buck nephews and other relations.
As an alpha male of the species that pretends to hold sway over parts if not all of my family, it falls to me to trim or improve the herd where necessary. The main function in nature of the alpha is to keep the non-alpha males from breeding to lessen or dilute the strength of the herd. This is an important function in nature and it is seen on the African Veldt, in the Amazon Basin and in the family dining rooms of the world. The alpha male may look like he is being unkind to the young bucks, but in actuality he is playing that in-loco-parentis role of toughening them up for the realities of life and helping to position them for success by forcing them to rethink some of their sophomoric activities. And sophomoric activities are the root cause of much of the whole Jabrone program and therefore of the Jabrone Saga as I will endeavor to explain it.
I have been asked by one of the aging Jabrones to keep proper names out of the Saga. For family members and a few select friends of the family, they will recognize the incidents and stories even without names. I am able to avoid names with no literary impingement, but the other request was that I not cut into people too much. This later request I cannot promise. It is not based in any evil intent, but I have learned that what I find funny and lighthearted, others can find offensive or too derogatory. That gives me a choice. I can either take no risk and not write or I can take my chances (as carefully as I know how) and fire away for humorous effect. I probably don’t need to tell readers which way I went with that issue.
What brings Jabrones to mind is our holiday gathering where one son and three nephews have been in attendance. By all rights, I must admit that one nephew was already the subject of a prior story which I proudly shared with his parents. That was about twenty-five years ago and I think I can safely say that his parents are mostly over that by now. Hence my comments about cutting into people with my stories. Anyway, I will stay away from him in these journals of Jabroneism. My son does not qualify as a Jabrone since he’s my son (makes sense to me). That’s all pretty easy since the primary Jabrones are actually the other two nephews (technically nephews-in-law), who are very reminiscent of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly in Step-Brothers.
The tale starts back on the island of Catalina, which I visited with Kim and her family back in 2006. At that time one of the nephews was a ranger on the eastern end of this island that sits twenty-six miles off the coast of California. Catalina is an island we can actually see from our new hilltop home on a clear day. But back then Jebrone #1 was being visited by Jebrone #2. The Jebrone brothers were at the far end of the “we like to party” spectrum given that their sport of choice was Rugby and apparently partying is an integral part of the training. Catalina is a surprisingly wild place with Bison, deer and foxes and all sorts of wildlife roaming the island. Somewhere over the years, felines have been imported to Catalina and they roam free and wild now. Jebrone #2 likes cats a lot. Jebrone #1 likes cats, but is not overcome by their cuteness to the same extent. It turned out that two such feral cats wandered into the ranger dorms and Jebrone #2 decided (presumably in an inebriated state) that he needed the two back on the mainland as his own personal cats. He immediately named them Rod & Todd and managed to illegally import them to the mainland in his gym bag. Rod & Todd took up residence on the beach in Ventura while Jebrone #1 went about his rangering business back on Catalina.
One of the traits of Jabrones is that they don’t just find humor in everyday things like cats, they tend to squeeze humor out of them. Extreme Jebrones go even further, and force humor into situations that would otherwise happily pass unnoticed. Apparently, Jebrones #1 and #2 find cat wrangling to be such an everyday occurrence. In fairness, I may have prompted this by virtue of my general dislike of felines. You see, the Jebrone code requires Jebrones find ways to annoy the alpha male and they are always looking for something like cats to help in that process. So, they began field-testing the concept of producing a show based on the CCC or (Catalina Cat Company). There were things like a catch-phrase such as “They’re Purr-fect”. As soon as they found a high annoyance coefficient in the alpha male, they began developing the theme further.
The alpha male responded with what seemed like a rational view that keeping cats was both too much trouble for young Jebrones and might cut into their mating activities. The Jebrones did what instinct instructed and said quite boldly, “Uh-uh!” This is where the Jabrone interface puts rubber to the road for the alpha male. Thus was prompted an offer of $500 if Jabrones brought the infamous Rod & Todd (now conveniently housed at the maternal home of said Jabrones) to New York City (where the Jabrones had then moved to advance their Jabrone careers) so as to wreck havoc with their social lives. The offer infuriated the Jabrones, for whom $500 was a consequential sum. As the initial cries of “Why I oughta…” were heard, Kim interceded to pull on the alpha males choke-collar. Alpha males and Jabrones recede to their respective corners duly cowed. But thus began the Jabrone Chronicles, which will appear as regular installments in this blog.