OT: End of some eras

A friend observed it's been a bad last 12 months for pop-culture icons. Well, it's been a bad year for icons period. Some big names have checked out to the great klieg lights in the sky.

And some have meant more to me than others...

• Anyone who asked Paul Newman his favorite role was shocked at the answer. Was it the alcoholic lawyer in "The Verdict?" Was it Butch Cassidy opposite Robert Redford's Sundance Kid? How about Brick in the equally iconic play-turned-movie "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?" Or maybe the role that earned him his one Academy Award — Fast Eddie Felson in "The Color of Money?" No, no, no, and no. It was the alcoholic, lecherous, profane hockey player-coach Reg Dunlop in "Slap Shot." He learned to skate for the role, and movie critics and sports writers could easily get him off the topic at hand by quoting Maxim Magazine's Ultimate Guy Movie. "Slap Shot" is in my top ten, and one of the greatest actors of all time made it worthwhile.

• No, Walter Cronkite didn't make me want to do journalism. My family never watched an evening news show, and Cronkite retired when I was 7. So when I headed out into the cold, cruel world of journalism in 1996, my parents sent me with a copy of his autobiography. I learned that his way was how it was done. Early on in his career, when he was working at the now-defunct Houston Post, he was the go-to guy when things were breaking on deadline. Of the copy he filed he said, "It wasn't literature but it was fast, and it was accurate." It's a lesson long since lost to the immediacy of the internet, the accuracy part, anyway. And his is a model to which all of us purveyors of information should strive.

• Obviously, I wasn't around for the Beatles. But I imagine the hysteria over Michael Jackson called to mind the frenzy the Fab Four caused when they struck their first chords. My sister had the "Thriller" record, which we played as loud as we could stand during the summer of 1983, right before she headed off to college. Her little brother adored her and if she grooved to MJ, so did he. So thanks, MJ, for showing me how little rhythm I really had early on.

• My bedtime didn't allow me to stay up for "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson very often, but when I did, Johnny's sidekick, Ed McMahon, drew as much of my attention as Johnny himself, whether he was laughing on cue at Johnny's jokes or — well, that's pretty much what he did, eh? There also was the draw of dapper bandleader Doc Severinson, but that's another story. Ed big voice also provided the soundtrack to "TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes," which could also have been a journalistic influence for me; where else could you see usually polished and composed celebrities come completely unglued? Ed, please laugh when I fail at getting St. Peter to approve me.

• Of all these icons to leave this mortal coil, I don't think any of them meant as much to me — nor did their death hit me as hard — as John Hughes, for the things he brought to my life.

I bring up my sister Deb again. She was eight years older than me, so to put things in perspective, I was 10 years old the last time she lived at home. As years went by, it seemed like she subconsciously didn't accept that her little brother was going up, so occasionally we butted heads. You know where we found common ground? The brilliance of John Hughes' movies.

Our family took epic car trips where sometimes things deviated from plan, so we guffawed at "National Lampoon's Vacation." Again, in the case of traveling I've seen some crazy shit happen so we both nodded knowingly the first time we saw "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" together. I think I woke up hung over from her wedding party and said "The Donger need food," and she laughed. Hughes' movies defined the 1980s for my sisters and I, though I needed them more with Deb to bridge that eight-year gap.

His movies also seemed to separate our family from others. Deb went to see "Vacation" close to its nationwide opening in the theatre with a group of friends. She came back and said she was the only one in tears from laughter. Her friends chuckled but Deb said it would have been nice if the projectionist could have stopped so she could compose herself, she laughed so hard. The reason? No one else's family took epic vacations like we did. Years later, when I saw it, I did have to stop the DVD to pull it together.

I saw "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" in the theatre on the second run, with a group of friends. Mind you, I was 13 at the time but got into that R movie because the owner just never checked. Same thing happened. I was in hysterics but my friends didn't really get it. The reason? Because I'd logged more travel miles at 13 than the rest of the group combined, and I'd already seen late planes, rental cars not being there, people getting bumped, finding alternate modes of transit, etc.

Point being, regardless of whether the movies age well (Vacation and Planes are two prime examples of timeless movies), Hughes got it right. Anyone who has traveled at the holidays, anyone who has taken a family vacation by car, anyone who has been in high school can relate to the things he put on screen. It's a stretch to say he had his finger on the pulse of the human condition, but he was close.

By the way, Deb's friend Sue was in "Sixteen Candles." She attended Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook, Illinois, where Hughes matriculated, and where he filmed all of his high school scenes. Sue was in the drama club so she was an extra in the school dance scene, right there over Molly's shoulder. Anyway, Deb came home for Christmas one year while she was at college and demanded that we rent "Candles." She popped in the tape, grabbed the remote, and slow-motioned the scenes from the dance, pointing out Sue dancing in the high school gym, blurry behind the movie's stars.

Also, Sue told me she served time in the breakfast club. Of course, she never told her parents what it really was, so they thought it was an extracurricular she was doing to pad her résumé for colleges.

OK, one more story. The Quad-City Times did its all-star teams for the 2007-08 basketball season by designing movie posters with the starting five. For the boys, designer Nate Bloomquist did a "Goodfellas" knockoff, and for the girls, "The Breakfast Club." One of the girls, a 16-year-old sophomore who wouldn't have been a glimmer in her father's eye when "Club" came out, quoted chapter-and-verse the "Eat my shorts" confrontation between Bender and Principal Vernon — while our cameras rolled, recording the occasion for online use. Someone else want to say these movies don't age well?