My wife recommended the new Jeff Bridges album to me because I’m a fan (average, not passionate) of “The Big Lebowski,” and also a fan (passionate, not average) of “Crazy Heart.” But while I was contemplating all this, I ran across the following video that seems to encapsulate the clipped yet rugged spirit of many of my own male friendships and of much male companionship in U.S. culture more broadly. I speak, of course, of the well-traveled and never unselfconscious four-letter epithet mediating male affection: “Dude.” (Predictably, it began to infect my own vocabulary during my four years in northern California.)

What’s it all about, spiritually? I am not sure, but to get clearer on it, I found these extracts from “The Big Lebowski” entertaining:

Tommy Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York