Ad Report Card: Dude!

One of the last vestiges of non-suckiness at Slate magazine is its Ad Report Card. The current article takes a look at Bud Light's "Dude" ads, which I agree are brilliant (but have yet to make me desire a Bud Light). The piece is pretty interesting in the contemporary wasting-my-grad-school-education-on-pop-culture sort of way. I do think, however, it pays short shrift to the music: that solo piano that underscores the quiet desperation of this guy's life.

He's the untucked renter of a tired apartment and the victim of more mundane indignities: His buddy keeps him waiting, some guy barges into the bathroom stall he's occupying, he gets cut in line at the movies. He refuses, however, to tolerate these affronts. Each transgressor is made aware that his actions are lacking in common courtesy. Dude.

I do think A-B misstepped by producing the version with sportscaster Joe Buck.