Quit while you're ahead

I stayed up way too late Sunday night, but I really couldn't help it. TBS started showing "The Breakfast Club" at about 1:30 a.m. The movie is the Achilles heel of every American who went to high school during the 1980s. We have to watch it. It's a biological imperative. Dogs chase cars. Cats cough up hairballs. We watch Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson.\nAs I basked in the warm, soothing rays of my television, a commercial for a new Journey greatest hits compilation came on. It was a perfect stroke of marketing genius -- butter us up with John Hughes, then slam us with the schlock. How else would they expect to sell any copies of a Journey album? Like they can depend on Steve Perry's strangled-farm-animal voice.\nBut it got me to thinkin'. Journey is still around? One would have hoped they would have mercifully quit after "Open Arms." (Insert chilled shudder here.)\nBut nay, the band and its marketing madmen plunge ahead. Most people with IQs more than 30 gave up Journey -- and REO Speedwagon, and Bad Company, and ZZ Top, and Night Ranger, and Rush and any assortment of other hokey 1980s arena-rock bands -- after middle school.\nNevertheless, the corporatized and homogenized entity known as Journey continues to survive, despite that the band wore out its welcome a long, long time ago.\nAll too frequently, American culture spits up similarly annoying examples of people and things that should have faded into the sunset (or the fiery pits of hell) but have for some reason -- be it chance or cheated fate or pact with Satan -- have not done so.\nThere is no bigger example than Michael Jordan, a man whose self-image apparently is so inflated that he believes the sport of basketball will wither and die without him. Never mind he has already staged one triumphant comeback. Never mind he retired a second time in storybook manner -- hitting the shot that won the Chicago Bulls their sixth NBA title.\nNever mind that he's twice as old as the Washington Wizards No. 1 draft choice. Never mind that the Wizards are so mired in suckiness they would embarrass Daniel Snyder. Never mind that Magic Johnson tried coming back too late and looked like an absolute fool doing it. Never mind that it's time to pass the torch to any number of capable prodigies like Allen Iverson or Vince Carter or even the annoyingly precocious Kobe.\nNope. Screw all that. Jordan gets what Jordan wants, even if it is one huge ego-stroke.\nOf course, IU has never had an experience with someone hanging around too long (Bob Knight). This campus always knows when to say goodbye at the right time (Bob Knight). Nope, this fair institution has never had anyone stick around for too long (Bob Knight), never had anyone make a jerk out of themselves out of sheer vanity (Bob Knight), never let itself, its staff and its students become a mass of monkey boys for one person (Bob Knight).\nAnd the list of worn-out welcomes goes on. "Friends." Madonna. Trent Lott. Ted Kennedy. Stephen King. The war on drugs. Tom Green. SUVs. "Garfield." MTV. Starbucks. The electoral college. Texas.\nAnd don't think I don't know that a lot of you are saying, "Well, this doofus has certainly worn out his welcome. Jerk." \nTrue, at this point in my rant I very well may have. But I ask you this one question: Why wasn't there an Ally Sheedy nude scene?