The Best Pop Culture Icons

October 1, 7:55 AMPop Culture ExaminerDominic Patten

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I was here before you & I'll be here when you're all gone

We all have 'em - icons that is. Only fools are into hero worship or blind obedience to celebrities but there is no shame for admiring endurance, originality, and someone being very good at what they do.

But you can have all that and, like Slash from Guns'n'Roses and now Velvet Revolver, not make the cut because you show up for the opening of too many envelopes if you know what I mean? Hanging out with Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas, showing off your house on Ellen and appearing on the album from Chris Daughtry from American Idol is just not where it’s at. And Eminem? Talk about losing yourself. You got to pull yourself together Marshall, we're waiting for you. See, a little bit of effortless restraint is always necessary and in the case of this list, still being alive.

So I lay it out there  - the Top 5 Icons of Pop Culture. Here's my list - what's yours?

1. Keith Richards - I was once asked to fill out a form that asked me to name the living person I most admired. I remember wondering how many people put Oprah because they knew it was the unarguable answer. I also remember wondering how many of those people knew that the person reading the form knew they were lying but could work up the gas to call them on it? My answer to the question was easy, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. I wasn't trying to be cool, which I always fail at, or unconventional, which I think is a dark art for which I have very little talent. No, I was being honest, using the criteria that are generally accepted in our society. Keith is very good at what he does, he's respected by his peers, he has been at the top of his profession for decades, he is compensated very well for what he does and he plays well, literally and figuratively, with others. Works for me. O yeah and the greatest rhythm guitarist in the world, the man who invented the look and feel of rock'n'roll, makes the ultimate milk toast notion of appearing in a Disney film and a Louise Vuitton ad seem kinda decadent and nudge, nudge, wink, wink at the same time ... who else can do that?

2. Blek le Rat - On his first trip to New York in 1972, 20-year old Xavier Prou, who would become the infamous and influential Blek La Rat, was bedazzled by the graffiti he saw. The scrawled and spray painted urban expressions would linger with him when he returned to France and what looked to be a career in architecture. Almost 10 years later, the Frenchman would start peppering the City of Light with his distinctive stencils, and, in the process, originated a new form of street art that the likes of Banksy admits, "every time I think I've painted something slightly original, I find out that Blek Le Rat has done it as well. Only twenty years earlier."

3. Courtney Love - Yeah, laugh now when she's trying to hire housekeepers on My Space but wait until she goes on tour again and then you'll nod along with everyone and lie about how you saw her play in Olympia back in 1992 and how great she was then and now. A postmodern feminist icon with a devilish sense of humor and a seemingly endless curiosity, Courtney is the Amelia Earhart of pop culture. She flies way out in to the blue, she gets so close to being so lost and then she makes it back to home base.  She keeps the gossip column, sites and shows busy whenever she decides to get her wings flapping. Sure, sure, but line for line, word for word, she's still the best lyricist in America any day.

4. Jackie Chan - He's been in over 100 moves, probably broke that many bones, and is still hard not to be transfixed while he's on screen. But the real reason Jackie's on the list is simple - he worked out the magic formula to international stardom. Work like crazy, take a healthy dose of Bruce Lee, in Fists of Fury Jackie appeared as a stuntman, and add a dollop of Buster Keaton and you have the best of the best and that's why he is just that. 

5. Bill Clinton - I once saw the then 42nd President of the United States, surrounded by Secret Service, agents, walking down a backstage hallway in New York at an event where he was to give a brief speech. That's what it was I was supposed to see. Instead I watched grown men puff out their chests, beautiful women swoon and the boy from Hope turn walking 20 feet into a major campaign event, shaking everyone's hand at least twice, stopping to yak and loving every minute of it while he made the people in the ballroom next door wait for him to come out and then, without notes, he blew them away too. He's shameless, brilliant, opportunistic, slick, now creating his own UN with his Clinton Global Initiative because he's not allowed to become General Secretary of the real one, opinionated, with charisma to burn and you know, if it wasn't for the 22nd amendment, he'd probably be running for his fifth term right now instead of finally hitting the trail for Barack Obama. And you know Billy C. was running again, he'd be blowing the opposition away. 

Most Honorable Mentions - Muhammad Ali and Pam Grier. Him because he's Muhammad Ali, the Greatest, the mouth that roared, the rebel who would lose almost everything rather than go to Vietnam, the rumble in Jungle, the Thrilla in Manila and the man who turned boxing from a sport to an art and took us all along with him. Her because she's Foxy Brown and Coffy and, thanks to Quentin Tarantino, Jackie Brown. Because, if you're into that kinda thing, she's what a real role model should be. And lastly, Sly Stone. Why? Cause he gave the world funk and because he knew there was a riot going on when everyone else was trying to get a portrait of themselves by Andy Warhol. And because he’s Sly Stone and 35 seconds of him on stage is worth more than a three hour show by almost any other performers.