Eight-year-olds, Dude
Sweet Juniper | April 12I went to the University of Michigan, and every year in the spring there was a Saturday known as “hash bash.” A couple of weeks ago in Ann Arbor, in fact, the 35th Annual Hash Bash was held on the University of Michigan Campus. I lived in the law quadrangle one year, and I remember how the atmosphere in Ann Arbor changed during hash bash; hoopties and pickups rolled up Main and State and Washtenaw from all corners of Michigan’s marijuana-smoking empire, taking the parking spots vacated by BMWs owned by rich Long Island sorority girls who had fled Ann Arbor that weekend on the advice of their house mothers. Ann Arbor, the liberal enclave of east coast elites exiled to the provinces for four years was transformed into a diverse populist mass of humanity and pot smoke. And I loved it.
There were rumors that year-round getting caught smoking a joint in public in Ann Arbor was like a parking ticket, but I never saw that written in the city ordinances. Rumors followed that enforcement was particularly lax during hash bash. What I enjoyed about hash bash wasn’t the opportunity to light one up in public, but to see all different people who would have no reason to hang out brought together in peaceful harmony by the ultimate human common denominator. Weed.
Rednecks from Michigan’s north and thumb would kick it with serious-looking black dudes from Detroit. Hippies and white trash and graduate students in theoretical physics sat around on the quad discussing how the universe could really exist as an atom in the hand of a giant being or how entire universes might exist in the atoms of our own hands. Frat boys walked around wearing pot-leaf leiswith saggy-trousered Mexican teenagers, ogling coeds heading into the graduate library .
Ever since those halcyon days of walking around Ann Arbor’s hash bash, there are few things I’m come across that seem to bring different people together like celebrating the sweet joys of cannabis.
Perhaps not unrelated to THC, another unifying cultural phenomenon that I have noticed is the Coen Brothers’ 1998 masterpiece The Big Lebowski. A couple of years ago in the New York Times, David Edelstein wrote about the growing cult of The Big Lebowski, but I think he may have underestimated the degree to which this movie has penetrated our national psyche. Dropping lines around new people has become something of a litmus test for cool. If they understand the reference you are making when you say “this aggression will not stand,” you know you can bond by discussing the brilliance of the film. Edelstein describes, “a Wall Street guy I met who’d drop a `Lebowski’ line into job interviews and if the person didn’t pick up on it he wouldn’t be hired. . .”
The other day I took the DVD down off my shelf and watched it for the first time since becoming a father. I began to think about the implication, at the end of the film, that Maude Lebowski is pregnant with the dude’s child. I wondered what the dude would be like as a father. I thought about Hollywood’s horrible tendency to create sequels where none were intended, and I started to think about what a travesty it would be if the Coen brothers ever disturbed the movie’s universe under the pressure of hollywood to create a sequel. Trying to imagine what The Little Lebowski would be like, I wrote this, which may answer where the Dude (and Walter) would fall on the circumcision debate. I probably should have posted it here, but it’s really long.
My dad was a very much like the dude in some ways: No job, never got over the 60’s, big commie, etc. In other ways, he was just plain-old mentally unbalanced: paranoid-schizophrenic, conspiracy theorist; refused to believe that when people told him he was wearing women’s pants, they weren’t just working for the government, etc. In any case, The Dude is way cooler than my dad, but I think the similarities between the two men qualify me to say that in reality, The Dude would not be a cool dad.
I agree, freezio. He’d be a terrible father. But I wonder if they could make it into decent cinema without falling for the “three men and a baby” style slapstick-parenthood comedy.
I gotta party with freezio’s dad.
Jesus!
Who cares about the kids? Think of my brothers left back in Vietnam!
THIS AGGRESSION WILL NOT STAND!!!
(Ha.)
Hash Bash sucked. I’m not sure when you were at U of M but when I was there it was the same old white trustfund Deadheads talking about how weed could save the world while trying to pickpocket you and not being able to get into my office to work on my stuff that needed doing because classes were ending and I had two seminar papers to write and a stack of grading to do and the entire campus is in lockdown.
And with 80 percent in state, how is U of M a bastion of elite East Coast types? Maybe the grad students (guilty as charged) but the undergrads? I spent my first month in Ann Arbor trying to figure out how all these people knew me when it was just that people in the Midwest say “hi” to anybody the happen to pass on the street. It’s a nice habit and one I brought back East, plus now I say pop instead of soda.
When I lived in Ann Arbor our house was broken into and we called the cops. After getting all the pertinent info the officer asked:”Were there any other drugs in the house?” And pointed to the bag of weed sitting innocently on the end table. We were all like. . .huh? Whoever could have left that there? The cop saw our startled reaction and reassured us. “That’s no problem–it’s clearly for personal use. We’re just glad you reported the break-in.” Then he left. And we self-medicated to calm down:)