The “Chronicles of Bruce” are presented to you in a conversation narrative, told by Jason Riley and James Brown. Tonight’s tale is brought to you by: “Deadly Games”. Two sworn enemies are joined together to fight side by side to avenge the murder of a character to be named later. No fear. No conscience. No Plot. Deadly Games – Now playing in a theatre near you. (And by theatre, we mean a DVD player in our living room)

(Disclaimer: As far fetched as these stories may sound, they are in fact painfully and comically true. Please don’t try these at home.) Let’s begin.

Episode 2
Gas and Go

James: “Ughhh! Ughhhh! Listen, a foul’s a foul! When will you understand? You can’t stop me. You can only hope to contain me,” proclaims Bruce as he taunts his extremely frustrated friends after another basketball war at the Grandview Sport court. Despite going 4-37 from the field that night, Bruce still considered himself the Caucasian Jordan. Even with thighs that made 3XL shorts fit like spandex, he always let everyone know about his un-fadeable skills. Sure, he may have missed a lot, but a graze of the pinky or a brush of the shorts still warranted a foul call providing him with another chance at a baseline turnaround jumper. How can you stop that? You can’t! Laughing to himself, our buddy Brucestopher jumped in a more rusted than red ’83 Cavalier and screeched out of the parking lot.

Jason: “Saddle up your horses!” belted a sweat covered Bruce as Steven Curtis Chapman ran on repeat for a 683rd consecutive day. Noticing an unusually large glare of light on his forehead, Bruce looked down and observed a small light on his dash, indicating that something may be wrong with his vehicle. After further review and some help from friends & family, that mysterious light turned out to be his gas light. While he still wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, he decided he should probably take his dad’s advice and get some gas. After all, he was thirsty, so it wasn’t a complete inconvenience. After recklessly endangering the residents of Grandview brave enough to share the road with him, he pulled into a gas station with every intention of making that annoyingly bright light on his dash disappear.

James: “Into the glor-i-ous unknown” …slam! Bruce jumps out of the car and stares blankly at the seemingly foreign puzzle before him. The gas pump always seemed to be a new challenge to him every time he encountered it, and the 66 was no exception. After mashing random buttons in his frustration from all the errant beeping, still no gas would pump from the gun no matter how many times he pulled the trigger. Finally, a Hindu voice of instruction broke through the chaos. “Please Sir, stop kicking the pump. You must prepay after dark.” Being that this took place before the days of pay at the pump and well after sunset, the G&G (i.e. Gas and Go) wasn’t an option tonight, so he had to make his way inside. For those of you who may not know, pre-pay after dark was coincidently instituted the same year our friend got his license. Rumor has it that there was an abrupt, massive fuel profit loss across the states of Missouri and Kansas. Back to the story. After an emphatic “Goooossssh”, Bruce left things as they were and headed inside to pay and grab some snacks…

Jason: Bruce waddled inside a cramped Phillips 66, entirely focused on replenishing the fluids he depleted after eleven games of cherry picking, fade-aways and incoherent trash talk. He quickly raced by the Gatorade to another device that seemed to cause him great bewilderment: The coffee maker. “Can do this you man” he told himself, as he grabbed a cup and placed it under the faucet. Using his extensive PACE education, he reasoned that red stop-lights sometimes can mean “go”, so he decided to press the red button on the mysterious machine. And, to his delight, hot chocolate began to pour into his cup. After a short day-dream, he yelled: “What the damn!” as the cup overflowed onto his hand. To avoid embarrassment, he removed the cup and hurried to the counter. Out of great reverence, he paid the man with the dot $20 for his cup of hot chocolate and gas, waddled back to his car, and jumped in. “This is the great adventure”… If he only knew how right on SC2 really was…

James: Like countless times before, he turned the key only to hear a piercing grind. He quickly noticed that he had once again left the engine running the entire time he was inside. “Oops. Don’t worry about that” he laughed, then dropped it into drive and took off. By now, Brucie was completely immune to any large jolts while driving due to the ridiculous number of bashed curbs and jumped medians he had experienced. So, it was no surprise that he never noticed the slight, well, “tug” as he raced out of the gas station. After a common lifting of the shirt and revealing of his nipple to passing horrified motorists at the intersection, the light finally turned ‘red’ and a delighted Bruce continued home. On his way home, he noticed that the passing motorists seemed to be much more amused than usual. He wasn’t seeing the typical disturbed reactions and the covering of children’s eyes that he was used to. “Heh? Oh well” he thought as he continued singing his lungs out with one protruding nipple…

Jason: Quickly becoming bored, Bruce swung by Commerce Bank to make a “deposit”. He clanged into the drive-thru, loaded the deposit box with the random trash from his car, and drove off laughing hysterically. “I’m a professional” he exclaimed to himself, as he pelted a passing car with a BBQ sauce packet. However, his generally amused mood turned to frustration, as he found an unusual number of passing cars flashing their lights and beeping their horns. Totally confused, Bruce took this opportunity to flip the bird to every motorist that dared to drive on the same road as he occupied. This type of stupidity continued for about twenty minutes, as Bruce go-carted through live traffic, angrily heaving random objects at swerving away vehicles. Finally, the angels driving his car gently placed it in his driveway. Bruce grabbed his SC2 CD, his pager and his gigantic retainer and headed inside to go to bed. After all, it had been a long day, and he had school to skip tomorrow.

James: After eating one of Linda’s amazing dinners, which could feed a herd of wild hippo, or in this case, a single William Bruce Lynch, the beasts eyes started to weigh heavy and he stomped up the stairs. Passing the always inspiring “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth” print out and on into Kansas City’s largest Jordan shrine, Bruce wandered into his room and stripped down to his immense tighty whities. Who knew a side of ribs could do what multiple elephant tranquilizers couldn’t begin to? He crashed onto his bed and had sweet dreams of starring in “Scorned 2″ opposite the brilliant actress Shannon Tweed. 12 hours later……

Jason: Bruce was awakened to the always-lustful sounds of Ms. Tweed on repeat. His primal instincts led him to the kitchen, where he found his mom sitting quietly at the table with a very peculiar smile on her face. You see, this was much different than the typically shameful and let down look that she usually displayed when she saw Bruce. That led to the following exchange: (Available in Spanish in certain regions)

Our Hero: Why does your face look weird?

Shamed Mother: Bruce, did you happen to get some gas last night?

Our Hero: Yes, and some hot chocolate. I pressed the red button.

Shamed Mother: That’s not all you got Brucey (Leading him out to the driveway)

James: And there it hung! The four foot rubber hose and pump of comedic genius hanging from his gas tank. Who would have known that it would be talked about for decades? It all began to come together as Bruce thought back through the previous night. The sudden tug at the station, the amused motorists passing by, the constant flashing and honking on the way home, the unusual sparks and flashes he ignored for over 20 miles. Then it hit him. “Damnit! I paid $20 dollars for a cup of hot chocolate!!! Gooooosch!!! I’m going back!” But, after much persuasion from his mortified parents, Bruce accepted that his gas and his $20 were gone. As our story comes to an end, Mr. Lynch hastily stops at the Phillips 66 and heaves another one of his sons legacies out the window and back to its rightful owners.

Jason: James and I would quickly like to thank our sponsors: Phillips 66, Chevy Cavalier, Big Baller Pictures and Nestle for bringing you today’s narrative. In closing, I believe there’s a very strong lesson here. Many times in each of our lives, we find ourselves so distracted by where we’re headed, that we forget where we’re at right now in our journey. Consequently, we try and rush into the next place we want to go in life, but in doing so, we fail to take care of the small things that lie before us right now. As time goes by, those seemingly small things suddenly become damaging baggage, not just to ourselves, but also to the people around us. And it’s usually in those times that all of our friends and loved one’s try and beep their horns and flash their lights at us, but we usually become offended and lash back at the people that are trying to reach out and help us. We can learn from our hero that sometimes we need to simply slow down, listen to and appreciate the other people traveling on the road of life with us. After all, isn’t that what they’re in our lives for?

We love you buddy! Come home soon!