I’d like to think I do extremely cool things in extremely cool places, but oh, am I so uncool about it. Every time I think I’m hip or “with it,” just thinking this freezes me into a form of stasis while coolness recalibrates itself and runs away from me. Cripes, I’ve worn Chuck Taylors for the past decade. I’m not a trendsetter; I look like an extra from “Hoosiers.”
My squareness was confirmed when I drove nine hours to Louisville, Ky., for the eighth annual Lebowski Fest—an event that celebrates the 1998 cult classic movie (and my favorite comedy of all-time) “The Big Lebowski.” For two days, Lebowski fans bowled, flung marmots and tossed ringers at nihilists. I am aware that if you don’t worship the movie this sounds insane.
For the uninitiated, the movie is about an aging, bearded hippie living in 1991, Jeffrey Lebowski, better known as “the Dude,” who wears robes, smokes pot, drinks White Russians and bowls, with random attacks by German nihilists, a kidnapping plot and stolen money tossed in to create some semblance of a plot. Really, the plot is irrelevant. The acting and dialogue are hysterically funny. Some people say the movie is about everything, others say it’s about nothing. Whatever, man—it’s a classic.
Lebowski Fest is a sort of Star Trek convention for hippies, and though I knew beforehand there would be a lot of eccentric people wearing whacko costumes, I abstained from dressing up, because pretending to be somebody other than myself would be totally uncool.
Sure, I wore a pea-green Hawaiian shirt and shorts that looked like a couch from 1972 to give off an aging dope-smoker vibe, but I failed in so many other ways. About half of the couple hundred gathered there were gussied up like characters from the movie. Bearded men with bathrobes drank White Russians like Jeff Bridges’ Dude character; men wore purple jumpsuits like John Turturro’s Jesus Quintana (a convicted pedophile and lights-out bowler); and women sported Viking helmets and bowling-ball breastplates like Julianne Moore’s Maude Lebowski.
And these were the conservative people. As I walked around the bowling alley with my brother, we met people dressed like Moses, Sandy Koufax, German nihilists, drunken nihilists, balding landlords, satchels filled with dirty underwear and testicles.
Those are just the costumes I can explain. Many were based on abstract concepts or lines of dialogue, and required expansive knowledge of the movie. I thought I was up to the task. For example, one couple wore large fan blades on their chests, based on the line from the movie about John Goodman’s character Walter Sobchak being “a big fan” of a retired television writer, which I got only after they explained it to me.
After waiting tables for a couple years, I’d like to think I have a high tolerance for abnormal behavior, but these costumed people didn’t just let their freak flag fly, they rolled it up and smoked it.
It was a geekgasm nerdfest of the highest drunken order. Not only were there hilarious scenarios, such as the time a nihilist threatened three dozen bystanders with a plastic sword, but everyone was drinking Miller High Life and White Russians. There was even some karaoke, which was sublime. At one point a guy dressed exactly like the Dude belted out the “Love Stinks” song from “The Wedding Singer,” but impersonating Adam Sandler. For those four minutes, a hole rippled in reality.
The White Russian, the Dude’s favorite drink, made with vodka, Kahlua, and cream, became everyone’s favorite drink. Female dudes with robes and fake beards walked around with creamer cartons glued to their hands. Others carried cartons of milk on the dance floor to top off people’s drinks. I even spotted Moses with a jug of milk, just before he tripped on his robe and fell on the dance floor.
Kodak was made for these moments. I took a picture of everyone I could manage, from Moses to nihilist, often ending our random encounter with a line from the movie. This always pleased the costumed Lebowski-lovers.
So why did I feel so out of place? At first I thought it was because I was superior to them somehow, that my decision to walk around like a civilian as opposed to being the guy in the red jumpsuit with gigantic scissors (don’t ask) made me the more rational human. That I was cooler because I stayed in control.
But at an event like Lebowski Fest, you’re really only cool if you spend an entire weekend pretending to be Jackie Treehorn, noted Malibu pornographer. Or Bunny Lebowski. Or Brandt, the butler. And so on. If you’re willing to wear a robe and grow a beard, you can have your Beatles moment. People will mob to talk to you, act out lines, and take pictures. If you’re dressed like a normal person, they get suspicious.
I wish I’d had the courage to dress up. On the drive back, I thought of no less than 19 costume ideas if I ever return to Lebowski Fest (none of which I’ll ever wear). Honestly, the weekend would have been a bust if all the festivalgoers were “normal” like me, with everyone drinking moderately and engaging in passive-aggressive cool posturing. It would have sucked on arrival.
Thankfully, I got what I hoped for: hundreds of inebriated people walking around, flinging marmots and dancing badly.
I’ve read that they went through 80 gallons of creamer and milk that weekend. I remember seeing a trash bin overflowing with empty creamer cartons. I also remember drinking a lot of High Life and feeling very uncool. In that bowling alley in Louisville, I was the freak and the costume-wearers were the normal people, and they wouldn’t have had it any other way.
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