Jack Bauer. Jack Bauer can strangle you with a cordless telephone.  Jack Bauer once got a taped confession from a mute. If everyone listened to Jack Bauer, it would be “24. It’d be “12”

Despite his obvious skills, both Jack Bauer and the dude who plays him are conflicted souls.  The difference, I suspect, is that Jack Bauer wants to atone for the shit in his life.  It’s too bad that duty calls and he never gets the chance. His actions in the name of “doing WHATEVER is necessary to do the right thing” are repugnant to most people, but you have to admit, he gets shit done.   The one/two combo of wanting to do good and doing bad when it counts makes him the most noble douchebag of all time.

“The Dude”. There’s something I find so comforting about Jeff Bridges.  He just seems so affable, and he’s  a joy to watch on screen.  He just won a Golden Globe for his role as a washed-up country singer in “Crazy Heart” but in my mind, the role he should be remembered for the most is Jeffrey Lebwoski, aka “The Dude” (or Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing) in “The Big Lebowski.”

The Big Lebowski is by far my favourite film of all time.  The story is ludicrous, but it’s masterfully funny; imagine a Raymond Chandler film noir, except the private dick is a stoner who wears jelly shoes.  To me, it’s like a kaleidoscope, in that I find something new to love about it every time I watch.   And the heart of it all is man in the running for laziest person worldwide…the Dude.

Now, a whole school of thought has sprouted recently that suggests the Dude may be the ultimate Zen Master. There’s even a book, “The Tao of Dude” that explores whether or not the Dude is a modern Buddha (or Duddha). As Jeff Bridges himself put it:

I like to call (The Dude’s approach to life) the Wisdom of Fingernails: the wisdom that gives you the ability to make your hair and fingernails grow, your heart beat, your bowels move.  These are things that we know to do, but we don’t necessarily know how we know how to do them, yet we still do them very well.  And that to me is very Dude. It’s not like he’s a know-it-all, the Dude.  He’s not a guy who figured out the way to be or anything like that, but he’s comfortable with what he’s got, and things turn out pretty well for him.  I guess we can all take comfort in that because….who knows?….things may turn out pretty well for us too.  Recently someone asked me “How would you feel at the end of your career if the role you were most famous for was the Dude” “I’d be fucking delighted,” I told him.

This dude can abide.