Actor Ben Gazzara has passed away from pancreatic cancer at the age of 81. You probably remember him best as pornographer Jackie Treehorn in the Coen Brothers‘ classic, The Big Lebowski, or as monster-truck owning small-town dictator Brad Wesley in Road House. In fact, if you don’t know Gazzara from at least one of those roles, you are an awful person who needs to reassess his or her life.

Of course, I don’t want to reduce the man down to two roles in a career that lasted nearly 60 years, and included both stage and screen. But I’ll always remember him for bringing JCPenney’s to town, and for making great strides in the field of interactive erotic software. The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic!

R.I.P.