Feeling bad about yourself is the worst thing ever, you totally shouldn’t either, you’re fine. You might not be a model or a millionaire banker, but you’ve got your friends and your hobbies and you know what you like and that’s all that matters really.
Well…it’s easy to say stuff like that, but in practice you probably stress about how you look, whether or not you’re interesting enough or if you’re going to make a bunch of money doing what you do and blah blah. That shit will get you down and eat at your soul and replace it with a neurotic guy who is never himself for fear that “himself” just isn’t good enough. There are a lot of those guys around, and they are no fucking fun at all.
The fun guys, the really rad dudes, are the one that just follow their own path – the guys who are just being themselves. They’re the ones who’ll talk to you for hours about their hobby in an engaging way, the ones that make you smile when you see them just enjoying their own company and metaphorically dancing like no one is watching. No matter what they look like or what they’re into, they’re the guys you should want to be like.
There aren’t a lot of those guys around these days, it’s pretty sad but it’s true. I guess we’re all just too caught up in what everyone else thinks. Thankfully though, there’s a blog that exists to document the phenomenon of guys just doing their thing and being proud of it. It’s called Rad Dudes and it’s run by two girls called Christine Boepple and Kerry Mclaughlin (but that’s ok, cos being a dude is not gender specific), and it’s more or less an image library of people doing what they feel, unrestrained by social conventions. I spoke to Christine and Kerry about being a rad dudes, this is what they said:
What constitutes a rad dude?
We’ve known each other since we were 17 and have been sort of honing the rad dude aesthetic since then. It’s a fearless element that someone’s expressing that makes us look at each other and go “rad.”
Are you yourselves rad dudes?
Yup … and we’re both up on the blog. Try to find us.
Why did you decide to collect all the rad dudes on the web?
KM: Emailing the photos to each other like we had for years and years wasn’t immediate enough anymore.
CB: Last summer was a total bummer and I wanted a ‘place’ to go when i needed a laugh. I flip through the archives a few times a month and it still cracks me up. I also thought our friends would get a kick out of it, so we didn’t have to be shy about blogging anymore. Shit, now I can’t stop … had to make this one just to see how far it could go: http://rockhammerhardon.tumblr.com/
Who are the raddest dudes on your blog?
KM: Hermeto Pascoal was my original rad dude. That video of him playing the bottles in a river with other rad dudes sort of sent us into evangelical fervor of spreading the rad dude message. So, he’s definitely one. The Monster watching the couple? The fireman giving the koala water? The Cypress hill/game boy kid? Digital display? Argh, I’m sort of breaking into a sweat trying to narrow it down.
CB: Other than homeboy of the month: MC Wagner? Maybeeeeee monorail hot tub dude, YES dude camping and THOSE dudes.
Have you met any of your rad dudes?
KM: Yes. Many of the rad dudes, especially in the beginning, are friends of ours. I want to meet them all -that might be one of the criteria- they’re all dudes we wanna hang out with.
CB: Yeah, other than family/friends and Clark the old rock guy, I haven’t met many of those rad dudes. mostly I would love to meet Snufkin, Steve Coogan, Jim Henson, James Burke, Malibu or any of the Play Fair dudes.
What would you like to do with them?
KM: Head to head synth jam – LOUD – on a cliff overlooking the pacific as the sun went down.
CB: …And then have a few margaritas and work on a puzzle in front of a fire or something.
Which famous people do you think are rad?
Most of the famous people we obsess over are up on the blog – Zach Galifianakis, Steven Colbert, Gene Wilder … a bunch of our psych/reggae/hiphop/punk/folk/prog heroes…a few BBC heroes – Coogan, Chris Morris, etc. And we must mention Oliver Reed. Although on there as a rad dude, he truly inspired us to start another blog, Weird Dude Energy.
