DO you spend your free time dressing up like figures of speech, drunkenly bowling for endless hours and memorizing non-sequitors from an obscure film? if so, you must be "an achiever," one of the group of "big lebowski" zealots who gathers to celebrate the coens brothers movie at least once a year. the film, of course, was considered a disappointment upon opening but has become -- thanks to a few gen-x dreamers in louisville -- the biggest cult picture since "rocky horror."
today i have a piece in the LATimes, most of which is an interview with eddie chung, the director of a documentary on the phenomenon called "the achievers." some of the fans he tracks seems to NEED their "lebowski" friends so badly you kinda wonder how they avoided accumulating companions in other spheres... tho chung said most of them are pretty well adjusted. "they're not, as far as i know, criminals," he told me.
either way, more proof that in an atomized, media-obsessed post-industrial culture, anything is possible.
