My family was visiting my grandparents, as we often did, and the evening news was on, as it often was. I remember one single piece of film, an exterior shot of the hotel where he was found. I'm not sure why I remember it. It's not like John Belushi was part of my world at eight years old. Belushi was part of my parents' world, and my aunts' world... a modern movie megastar they had watched do the craziest shit on Saturday Night Live five years prior. Most likely, when the news came on, the quiet of the room was what soldered my attention.

A celebrity death. That night, it was a shame, a loss, a surprise... to my family and to America. The whole drug thing didn't come out initially, and we didn't have abominable 24-hour news networks trumpeting every single detail or lack thereof to raise the issue. It did, surely and rightly, and only then did the general public hear about his unfettered life, his ups and downs, his quest for - and this would become the single most associated word with the posthumous John Belushi - self-destruction.

I went to school during the "Just Say No" years, so the dangers of drug abuse were made very clear. In my mind, Belushi was always the Bad Example. And yet, my aunt would still quote bits from Saturday Night's golden years, and she'd play the "safest" parts of the cast album for me. It was years before I understood why "With a name like Fluckers, it's got to be good" was funny.

I didn't discover who the man truly was until high school, when Nick at Nite ran the hell out of The Best of Saturday Night Live. At one point, I lived for that show: memorizing all the best lines, staying up for the entirety of their all-Nite marathons. I dubbed off my family's stock of SNL paraphrenalia, which consisted of that original SNL cast album, some Steve Martin comedy albums, and the first Blues Brothers cassette. This was formative material for me, one generation removed. I stopped watching the current Saturday Night Live.

Dan Akyroyd was my favorite. Frequent host Steve Martin was a very close second. I liked Chevy Chase but soon realized that he never actually did anything but be Chevy Chase, so I never missed him during a Bill Murray episode.

I was wary of Belushi. Because.

To a high school kid fifteen years later, 70's Belushi didn't seem to stand out at the first look. He wasn't a Conehead. Nor a Wild and Crazy Guy. I didn't know who the fuck Joe Cocker was.

And then it started happening. I actually paid attention to a Samurai sketch and saw him accidentally slice a chunk out of Buck Henry's head. The "But Noooooo" weatherman. Little Chocolate Doughnuts. The Belushi fashion line. That super-hero bit where he played the Hulk and detonated the bathroom. I became a fan.

An interesting convergence occurred about that time. The movie Wired came out. I was just about the only person in the theater. I haven't seen it since. What I remember most is how the movie failed to get Saturday Night Live right (like gamely shoehorning two classic Akyroyd bits into one scene, by having the actor do Akyroyd as Nixon while in Conehead gear), so what was I to believe about the Bright Lights Big City portrayal of Belushi himself?

I read the book to see if it was enlightening, and, not having any counterpoint, I at least found it more informative. Of course, both book and movie were thoroughly derided by everyone who ever knew the man. I used the book for a tenth grade class where we had to read a biography and then act as that person in group panel discussions. The teacher tried to goad me into performing a skit and I started to do Belushi-doing-Joe Cocker but then chickened out with a "I'm sorry, that's all behind me now." Perhaps she was expecting something more outrageous from me (I had a rep in that class), but I went with a more subdued, reflective portrayal, commenting that perhaps my indulgent death had inspired others in Hollywood to turn their lives around (for example, Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro, both of whom were with Belushi the last day of his life, allegedly to get high).

So even if Bob Woodward's accusatory book and tactlessly weird movie were sensationalistic and designed to be so, I still found I could respect John Belushi's life. There was more to it than the caustic line, "he wanted to take the whole world and snort it."

A few weeks ago, we're at Border's. In the remainder section (those super cheap books they always red-tag and stack at the checkout so you'll impulse shop yourself out of another ten bucks), I see half of John Belushi's face staring at me. It's a 2005 hardcover produced by Belushi's widow Judy, simply titled "Belushi." It's definitely a biography, but rather than follow the traditional route, it's a collection of quotes and anecdotes about his life and accomplishments, told by those who knew him at every stage. An unbelievable bargain at six whole dollars. Brilliant cover design as well.

It's really the philosophical antidote to Wired, and to decades of reducing the man's body of work to "died of drug overdose." I'm sure that some of the memories are a little rose-colored, but there's enough honest appraisal of the low points that it doesn't feel like a whitewash. The list of stars interviewed within is staggering, making every pageturn an enjoyable geeky moment for "old" fans such as myself.

There's a fantastic candid of Belushi flipping off Chevy Chase in the SNL chapter. Akyroyd reveals that Belushi was intended for both Ghostbusters (in Bill Murray's role) and Spies Like Us (in Chase's, ironically.) Akyroyd and Belushi conceived the Blues Brothers on the day they met.

Imagine what he would have done, had he been able to stop himself in March of 1982.

After the cultural shame of his death, we quickly forgot that he simultaneously had the biggest movie (Animal House), the biggest TV show (Saturday Night Live) and the biggest album (Blues Brothers), all around the day he turned thirty. Nobody has done this before or since, and I'll bet a lot of A-list talent would consider it an insult to even try.

John Belushi died twenty-five years ago this Monday. He was thirty-three years old. I just turned thirty-three, and I've always had this slightly depressive internal monologue that goes "Well, if I live past thirty-three, I'll have outlived John Belushi." So it is happily fitting that this book - and his amazing life - would appear before me near both my birthday and the anniversary of his death.