In the hallway leading to my basement, I’ve built a Dude Wall. The Dude Wall is a shrine to all the people and things in my life that represent righteous Dudeness. Lately, there have been a lot of men who have been acting very un-dude. Agents of the government have tortured people in secret prisons. Athletes are roided up. And don’t get me started on Bernie Madoff. So that is why I’ve framed posters and photographs of musicians, athletes, and various Dudes-at large to celebrate all the folks out there that aren’t bogarting the fun. Here is a list of the items on my new Dude Wall:

Team Portrait of my U.S. Pond Hockey Championships Team – We were a group of pranksters, assembled together to take a stand against all the unchecked aggression that was occurring all over the largest outdoor hockey tournament in the nation. We named our team “DudeFace” and used a photograph of our star forwards hideous black eye as the logo on the front of our sweaters. One player wore a leather bomber helmet. How Dude is that?  

An illustration of Jemaine and Brent from the HBO show “Flight of the Concords” – It’s all about business socks.

A Black Keys concert poster – From a bombastic First Avenue show that left me deaf and hung over from awesomeness for two whole days.

A photograph of Omar Little – The openly gay criminal on the show “The Wire” is the one of coolest dudes in the history of television. He walks to the corner store in silk pajamas, carries a hand cannon, and all the neighborhood kids call out his presence, “Omar Coming! Omar Coming!”

A concert poster of Louis CK - The legendary standup comedian has a joke on his HBO special “Shameless” that features the words, “Duck Vagina”.

A concert poster from a Jeff Tweedy solo show - A few years prior to the Guthrie Theater show, I met Tweedy outside of a bar in Los Angeles. I was hammered drunk and obnoxiously told him that I listened to Uncle Tupelo, his former band, every day on my way to work. “That’s awesome,” he said coolly. “Thanks for listening.” Word. Up.

A photograph of a Wyoming man – The Wyoming rancher won the DNR lottery to hunt a bear, then shot a bear, and according to tradition in his tiny Wyoming town, brought the dead bear into a bar, sat the dead bear on a bar stool, and bought the dead bear a beer. “He figured the honorable thing to do was buy the damn thing a beer, since, you know, he shot it dead,” said Morris Weintraub, the dude who took the photograph.     

A picture of Laird Hamilton - The big wave surfing legend rides tsunami waves for fun. No roids. All heart. 

Eddie Vedder’s Pearl Jam tour pass – It is signed and reads, “Dear Smitty, Keep it together. I’ll try to. Best, Ed Ved.” It is a reminder that at one point in my life, I was dude enough to have Vedder’s home address and phone number in my rolodex. That may be very un-dude to admit, but in my life there has been a lot of ins, a lot of outs, and a lot of what-have-yous. 

A black and white print of Jeff Lebowski – The Dude Abides.