Respect Authority

Details has Keanu Reeves on the cover of their Holiday 2008 issue, claiming the walking monotone is “the original dude.” Which, of course, he’s not, and that’s a retarded thing to say in the first place. It’s the most false statement I’ve ever heard. Nothing they could write in the subsequent article could possibly prove that Keanu Reeves is the original dude; it’s absolutely indefensible.

Plus, Keanu Reeves may be a dude, but he’s a shitty dude. He’s not a compelling or interesting person and doesn’t exude “good times” at all — he’s the dude you sit with on the couch all night asking each other what you should do in twenty minute intervals. He’s a boring person as it is, but because he’s a dude, it makes him even more boring.

More importantly, how could anybody ever prove who the original dude was? Who was the first person to exude certain characteristics that somewhere along the line became defined as “being a dude”? What even is a “dude,” exactly? Do you wear sun visors and drink Natty Lights on Saturday afternoon with your “boys,” or do are you a perma-stoned skateboarder who doesn’t shower enough? Are we all dudes? Does anybody know? Does anybody care?

Shirtless Keanu Reeves looking sexy as all helllll on the cover of Rolling Stone

While I’m on the topic of Keanu, I’d like to share a better cover, I think, that I found while searching for an image of Details. It’s Rolling Stone #848, which, really, looks like the worst issue of any magazine in the history of printed media. Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, Keanu Reeves shirtless and awkward, talking about his drug problems (booooring), and George Bush on the environment. Give me a break — “The Riddle of Keanu Reeves” …really, Rolling Stone? Is that even serious? Just incredible. The penultimate disaster of an issue.

And what a cover too, as if seeing the … harder? … softer? side of Keanu Reeves wasn’t bad enough, it’s also just really badly designed. In fact, I was originally conflicted over whether or not this was a Photoshop joke that either wasn’t funny or I just wasn’t getting. So RA did some heavy investigative journalism (read: a 4 second Google search) and it turns out, it is an actual, incredibly crappy Rolling Stone cover, and if you act fast you can have your very own (bids starting at whopping $1.75). Just in case, so when you’re rich and famous and constantly entertained, you can pick it up and remember what it was like to be utterly bored.