Johnny Cash, 71

Oh man, what a year it's been! Johnny Cash, dead at 71. Naturally, I feel a link with anyone known as "The Man in Black." I tried to listen to Cash, knowing that he was supposed to be the meat & bread of all cool people. But I found his music to be in the same category of his 'cool, black-clad' contemporaries - Roy Orbison & Elvis - to be palatable in small, measured doses.

But we feel the vacuum of the loss of a Cool Icon.