‘Shirtless bro’ gives IE a black eye

bro

By now you’ve no doubt heard about the bare-chested, puppy-holding man in Rancho Cucamonga who, asked by a KTLA reporter at the Etiwanda Fire if he lived in the neighborhood, replied, “Wow, you’re super pretty. You want to go on a date sometime?” Reporter Courtney Friel reminded him he was live on the air.

The encounter went viral. As of Friday, the search phrase “shirtless bro KTLA” had more than 26,000 results. Here’s a good one from the NY Daily News, complete with the video, a must-watch. The video has 2.6 million views on YouTube and was featured on Yahoo’s home page (fitting since he’s the ultimate yahoo).

“Another proud moment for the Inland Empire,” I remarked on Facebook and Twitter.

“The guy has plenty of confidence,” Joe Pattison wrote on my Facebook page. “The puppy trick is a proven icebreaker.”

We journalists generally hate person-on-the-street interviews, as random people have little of interest to say, especially off the top of their head, but this one was clearly a worst-nightmare scenario. Friel was flustered, probably not by the man’s physique, but she recovered and later tweeted about the encounter, joking that the man must not have noticed her wedding ring.

She asked Twitter followers for guesses where the man might have offered to take her on a romantic outing. I suggested Fuddruckers; Jeff Trobaugh brought up Shakey’s bunch of lunch deal and others said Olive Garden.

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