That AC/DC sold out Friday’s GM Place show faster than the average North American male cracks one off after a cup of logger-strength morning glory isn’t just a sign that the Aussie hard rockers are more popular than ever. It’s also proof that the Lower Mainland has no shortage of those who give George Bush a serious run in the stupid sweepstakes.

Don’t take that as a putdown, because, like their fans, the men of AC/DC wear their stupidity like a badge of honour. Haven’t grown up much since the days when getting loaded, getting laid, and cutting shop class were all that mattered? That’s all right, you’re not alone. Remember that This Is Spinal Tap line where a reviewer snipes “the musical growth rate of this band cannot even be charted. They are treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality”? That’s kind of like AC/DC, except you won’t find guitarist Angus Young arguing that’s nitpicking.

To confirm that some things never change, simply cue up Black Ice, an album that’s been loudly trumpeted as a return to the form shown on 1980’s Back in Black. For those who don’t preset every channel on the car radio to CFOX, that’s another way of saying Young and company are back doing what they once did best: delivering thunderstruck choruses, smoking Marshall riffage, and proctology-exam vocals, all propped up by the most cretinously simple rhythm section this side of the Shaggs.

The term return somehow suggests that the hard-rock veterans have spent the past three decades experimenting like David Bowie during the gay years. In reality, AC/DC has been making limp carbon copies of Back in Black since Pete Wentz was doing the backstroke in his daddy’s nutsack. And as sure as three quarters of the Ramones avoid each other in heaven, every one of those records has sucked worse than Bea Arthur with lockjaw.

That hasn’t mattered one bit to the band’s hard-core fans. As Kurt Cobain once noted, one of the best things about being stupid is that you’re easily amused. AC/DC found superstardom in North America on the mack-jacket-clad backs of suburban ’bangers. Think more moronic versions of Deaner and Terry from Fubar. When you’re pandering to those majoring in birdhouses and ashtrays, the last thing you do is confuse them. To challenge those who don’t want to be challenged with something like, say, System of a Down’s Toxicity, would be the stupidest career move since Vince Neil waddled down the solo trail. Give the people what they want and you offend no one.

The overriding message of AC/DC is that anything new is to be avoided at all costs. Which explains why, on Black Ice, drummer Phil Rudd once again turns in the kind of performance that makes Internet porn star Meg White seem like a tits-and-vag version of Ginger Baker. And how galling is it that bassist Cliff Williams admits in the latest Rolling Stone that he plays the same bass line every song?

None of this matters, because to love AC/DC is to suggest that there’s nothing wrong with being stupid, even if you secretly make Stephen Hawking look like David Hasselhoff after a 3 a.m. stop at Wendy’s. A decade ago, I watched Young and company put on an awe-inspiring spectacle at GM Place. From my vantage point in a law-firm luxury box, the Garage was a sea of loogans sporting unironically worn mullets and unwashed-since-the-’80s denim. As a sociological experiment, it was better than hunkering down with Dian Fossey in Africa. By the end of the night, I was watching a gaggle of bankers in the box not only slip and slide around in their own vomit but also giving their inner 15-year-old vandals permission to pry the law firm name off the luxury-box wall one metal letter at a time. Brilliantly stupid? Fuck, yeah. Almost as much as AC/DC. Thick as Young and company might seem, somehow they know even smart people occasionally need an excuse to shut off their brains.