all right dude by now it’s old news, but patrick swayze passed away today. i’m really sad about it – that guy made both the best and the worst movies ever and now you gotta sit there and listen to me talk about it!

number one, like most preteen girls in the 80s i LOVED the dirty dancing movie. had the soundtrack, had the second soundtrack, saw the movie about 8 billion times between the ages of 10 and 32. (lemme share with you that in the back of my head, i always thought it was kinda weird that johnny and baby hooked up because it was like the gabrielle carteris thing in 90210 – i could not get past the fact that swayze looked way older than the early 20s or so character he was playing)

yeah, i liked ghost all right when it came out. (SAM WHEAT!!!) but for me, it was all about coming out – one of my fave swayze movies ever was to wong foo, thanks for everything, julie newmar. PURE COMEDY GOLD.

no wait, what’s better – patrick swayze as a drag queen or patrick swayze doing chippendales dancing with chris farley(r.i.p.) ?!? crap. this may take some thinking.

while i still haven’t seen point break or roadhouse all the way through, i did get to see a chunk of roadhouse once a couple of years ago, and one of the best lines ever is “you’re too stupid to have a good time”. also, a couple of years ago the huzzz and his brother introduced me to the classic red dawn. that crap is intense and fully awesome so you should probably rent it. rumor has it they’re working on a remake. rumor also has it they suck.

so back to swayze! true story, a couple of halloweens ago josh and i went out to south carolina to see our savannah friends for halloween, and when we got there our buddy trav had carefully placed a huge dirty dancing poster on our bed, complete with fake autograph from johnny castle himself saying “thanks for the great time at kellermans this year! i truly was the time of my life”.

i think it was shortly after that, that josh and i found his older than dirt typewriter. we started writing random silly letters to the savannah kids. i don’t know who got our patrick swayze letter, but it started as a fan letter to patrick swayze, and then slowly devolved into creepy fanness, and then joking anger that he may have pushed jerry orbach (r.i.p.) down the stairs. and i think it was the last line of the letter where we wrote “i hate you johnny castle”.

which we later made into a shirt design that we sold via hearts and laserbeams for a long while.

also, one year for our anniversary i spent about 10 seconds photoshopping (badly) josh and i’s faces onto the dirty dancing poster.

that’s not all the reasons i love johnny castle, patrick swayze, vida boheme, the whole kit n kaboodle, but it’s a lot of em. and that’s all the reasons i’m wishin i had a watermelon to carry in mourning.

WOLVERRRRRIIIIIIINESSSSS!!!!!