Bob Clark, a director whose career somehow encompassed the seminal 1974 slasher film Black Christmas, the raunchy teen sex romp Porky’s, and the perennial 1983 holiday favorite A Christmas Story, was killed yesterday with his son in a car crash. According to police, the car containing Clark and his son was struck head on by an SUV that a drunk driver steered into the wrong lane on the Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades, CA. He was 67.

For myself, I will always remember Bob Clark for A Christmas Story. With its pitch-perfect sense of timing and Jean Shepherd dry wit, the film always reminded me (and I suspect everyone) of what it was like to be a kid around Christmas. There was always more than a little bit of the geek about Ralphie Parker, the film’s protagonist played by Peter Billingsley. From his love of decoder rings to his decided tendency to daydream about the Red Ryder BB gun with the compass in the stock and that thing that tells time to his problems with schoolyard bully Scott Farkus, Ralphie was a kid who never quite fit in. What geek can’t sympathize with that?

The movie was also full of some truly great lines, read by Jean Shepherd himself:

“In the heat of battle my father wove a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan.”

“Over the years I got to be quite a connoisseur of soap. Though my personal preference was for Lux, I found that Palmolive had a nice, piquant after-dinner flavor – heavy, but with a touch of mellow smoothness. Life Buoy, on the other hand… YECCHH!”

“My father worked in profanity the way other artists might work in oils or clay. It was his true medium, a master.”

“NOW it was serious. A double-dog-dare. What else was there but a ‘triple dare you’? And then, the coup de grace of all dares, the sinister triple-dog-dare.”

Rest in peace, Bob Clark. For these many wonderful moments, I thank you and I will miss you.