I used to work for Dell's main competition (envision a cow*), so that little prick was the bane of my existence. Plus the commercials drove me batshit until I realized where I had seen that unctuous slimy asskissing before. I remember when he got busted for buying pot: 'Dude, you're getting a cell!'

* I also spent a year working the night shift in the bakery of a supermarket who's logo was a cow as well. Maybe I should take up dairy farming

"Dude, you're getting Schadenfreude BIG TIME..."

He was my waiter once! At a restaurant on the LES. He was, shocker of shockers, not the brightest guy. That did, however, work in our favor, as we got a lot more mimosas than the menu promised. Score!

Is he known to be straight? The reporter asks about girlfriends, and I don't have the best gaydar in the world, but I assumed he was gay.

To this day, I've never seen one of these commercials. I've heard all about the "Dude!" dude, but have never actually seen the ads.

I'm going to go to bed now while I'm still ahead.

According to this article that was written around the time he was doing an off-Broadway musical called Joy (meant to see it but never got around to it), he is straight.

And Liberace died of emphysema. he's too pretty to be straight.

To this day, I've never seen one of these commercials. I've heard all about the "Dude!" dude, but have never actually seen the ads

Apparently I lead a sheltered existence - I've never even heard of the guy.

I've never seen one of these commercials.

YouTube to the rescue -- 1, 2!

I remember when he got busted for buying pot...

'Dell Dude' released after marijuana arrest.

logo was a cow...

Next up for jonmc's employment history -- Ben & Jerry's.

Huh.

And you say he's a bartender? Go figure!

ericb: my mom grew up in Vermont, not too far from the Ben & Jerry's factory, so I was eating that stuff before it became an international thing. I visited the factory once. It was neat.

I'm sorry you didn't get to see the ads bmarkey and BoringPostcards, at the peak the spots were running 1,100 times a week over 72 cable channels. We also ran a lot on primetime on NBC and ABC.

Oh, my main man Ben. Good times. I had the pleasure of working on those spots with Mr. Curtis. That was an expensive bag of weed he bought. Personally, I was so happy he got busted because we could finally drop the guy that was becoming very annoying very fast. The only reason he was still around was certain executives loved the character and thought the free attention on TRL and Jay Leno was great. I used to get the email complaints about him and the fan mail -- his core fans were older women, gay men, and a few pre-teen girls.

I remember being at a shoot in LA where he just couldn't get his simple lines right which was sad since he pretty much said the same thing in every spot. We were losing light. Everyone was cranky and he kept flubbing. The producer was fuming because we might be having to pay the crew overtime. I was upset since we had about fifty cents left in the budget. He wasn't very good and I wasn't surprised that he didn't get any parts even though the press he was getting was opening a lot of doors for him.

Then one morning I was in Vancouver getting ready for a shoot and checking my email. I had a few emails from friends asking me if I had seen the Smoking Gun yet. I knew right away what it was my boy and he was in trouble. It was a treat to be out of the office and reading the emails from the execs freaking out over what to do. I just knew I had get the agency to write a new spot to launch the printers and get the micromanaging execs to approve it, have it clear legal, and cast it in three days. All from a hotel room in Canada. Those of us had some work to do, but thought it was quite funny -- and predictable. It wasn't if, it was when.

He was an OK kid. But he wasn't the brightest bulb in the pack. And he wasn't the greatest actor of all time. I also don't think he had the best agent [his agent was the same woman that represented a up and coming young girl that was pre-Dakota Fanning and you never heard from her again]. But I wish him well.

Oh, and the little girl that the same agent was Hallie Eisenberg from those Pepsi Commercials.

Don't feel bad, birdherder. I don't watch much TV, and have only had cable for the last three or four years. (Although I do remember the Pepsi girl - she was everywhere.)

birdherder, I'm curious- do you know, roughly, how much someone like the "Dell Dude" makes for an ad campaign like that? He alludes to all the money he made in the article I linked to; I can't even imagine how much something like that would pay.

I'd never seen Hallie Eisenberg before. I'm very glad she had a bad agent. That is one creepy little kid.

I once did a Mefi post totally exposing my mancrush for Ben Curtis.

He made about $120K-$150 if I remember correctly for about 10 days work. Not too bad for a 20 year old. Spots airing on cable do not have the residuals something running a lot broadcast networks would have. The talent get a flat fee if the spot airs once or a million times in a 13 week cycle. His deal was originally a just a multiple of the SAG scale and some negotiating for things like print ads and personal appearances.

It was supposed to be just one spot where he worked for scale but it was well received and so we had the agency do another one and the next thing we knew we had a mascot.

And WolfDaddy I remember your post, I so wanted to comment in there but that was just days before Matt opened up memberships again with the 50 per day and I became one of the 14K-ers. If metafilter mail existed back then, I could have totally hooked you up with an autographed glossy photo. Just imagine what that would be worth today!

For what it's worth, he was great in JOY, the show that ThePinkSuperhero mentioned.