The Name... Is Dalton!

So I’ve been meaning to write about this since I heard about it, but just haven’t had the time.

So anyway, I read last week that Patrick Swayze has cancer. This makes the good Doctor kind of sad.

I’ve talked before about guilty pleasures, and I think old Patrick falls squarely into the realm of guilty pleasures. I’ll admit it, and although it may make me look gay, I dig the Patrick Swayze. I don't care what you think...

I mean, seriously, how can you NOT dig Patrick Swayze?!? This is the man who brought us such awesome 80’s staples as Point Break and Steel Dawn. And don’t even get me started on his early work in the great American classics Uncommon Valor and The Outsiders.

Swayze took his special breed of hillbilly charm to new heights with his turn in Next of Kin, and he was only outshone in that movie by Liam Neeson. Neeson, by the way, may have done a more convincing job as a redneck then Swayze did - but Liam Neeson’s a serious actor who was only slumming in Next of Kin to get some action movie credentials. So what if he totally lost his Irish accent and did a better Kentucky accent than Swayze. Swayze was the star, man. Plus Swayze got to wear that totally cool fucking trench coat.

And then you have his breathtaking showing in Red Dawn. Red Dawn is still one of the coolest movies ever made and, I suspect, it is completely lost on anyone born after the mid-80’s. For those who never lived under the skulking threat of a nuclear cloud, Red Dawn must seem strange and foreign. But – for those of us who grew up during the Cold War - Red Dawn completely captured all of our worst nightmares. And the Swayze-meister was right there, waving a stolen AK47 and yelling, “WOLVERINES!!!” He was an encapsulation of all that is good and right and decent in the American character – and fuck those dirty commies. No other actor could have pulled off the emotion he did when his father, played by Harry Dean Stanton, screamed at him, “Avenge me!”

Jesus Christ in a casket! I’ve got goosebumps thinking about it.

Which brings us to his greatest movie ever… and no I’m not talking about Ghost, or Dirty Dancing. Although Mrs. Zombie might argue that was his best movie – she’s totally wrong.

“Nobody puts Baby in a corner”? Please!

That movie did nothing to showcase the wonder and awe that is Swayze. No movie did it better than his piece de’ resistance. I’m talking about the one movie that was the epitome of his career and the one movie that he should have won an Academy Award for – if the Academy wasn’t so blind. Hell, they wouldn’t know brilliance if it molested them like Adrian Brody did Halle Barrie. I’m talking about the greatest movie to EVER come out of the 80’s.

I’m talking about Road House.

That’s right – Road House. The. Greatest. Movie. Of. All. Time.

Why is Road House the greatest movie of all time? Let me list the ways. It had rednecks in a town that wouldn’t exist anywhere else in the world. It had a villain so evil he would have made a Bond villain flinch. It had sluts, it had a sexy doctor, it had attacking polar bears, it even had motherfucking Sam Elliot. It had an evil ex-special forces guy lounging around some podunk town and who apparently did some time in prison where he practiced unsafe sex with other muscular guys. And there – amidst it all – wearing a mullet of epic McGuyver-like proportions, strode Patrick Swayze as Dalton. A poet philosopher and warrior, he brought his own justice to the bar, ripped out Mr. Gay Special Forces’ throat with his bare hands, beds the villain’s woman, and avenges the death of his friend and mentor.

Holy crap! Road House is damn near Shakespearean in scope!!!

And – last week – it was announced that Patrick Swayze’s got pancreatic cancer. What a fucking tragedy, man. And it’s pancreatic too – which means it’s some hardcore cancer. Not that any cancer’s ever good – but there’s different degrees of the big C, know what I mean? I mean it’s not like the little skin cancer moles that, say Dick Cheney, gets on his bald dome. No siree Bob!

I mean, if there were any justice in the world, Cheney’s moles would metastasize and grow until his head looked like a cross between the Elephant Man and an angry, rotten, red and purple turnip. His upper torso would be a swollen mass of pulsing flesh, and his eyes would squint angrily from between the puffy folds of his Jabba the Hut head.

But, alas, no.

Cheney gets a cancer that can be cut off with a scalpel and some local anaesthetic – while the great and awesome Patrick Swayze gets the kind that kills everyone who gets it within a couple of months.

This further proves my assertion that there is no such thing as a fair and just God.

That’s all right though. If anyone can beat the odds, it’s my man Dalton. Hell – I saw a picture of him last week that showed him still smoking. That’s right – Patrick Swayze is so cool he’s still smoking, even though he’s probably doing so many chemo and radiation treatments he’s as hairless as a baby panda. That’s what I’m talking about, brother. You keep it up, man! Hollywood’s not ready for the loss of so great a talent as you.

You hold on, Dalton… and remember – “Take the biggest guy in the world, shatter his knee and he’ll drop like a stone”.

You kick that cancer in its big, throbbing, fleshy knee. Shatter that cancer’s knee, man. Shatter it!

(Author’s Note: And yes, I just made some cancer jokes. If you haven’t figured it out yet, there is no depth to which I’ll not sink to make my audience laugh. If you’re offended, get over yourself. If you can’t get over yourself and your self -inflated sense of righteousness, I hope you burn to death in a fire.)

Have a nice day!