Patrick Swayze: The King of Basic Cable

Now that my fourth day of chemotherapy has passed, without incident, I feel content enough to reflect on the death of Patrick Swayze. I have a new-new nurse tonight, so I might seem preoccupied because I can see that my bag of urine is getting more and more tumescent. Still, I thought a respite from concern would do me well, and I recently finished watching Point Break again. This is the second time it's been on today, but I think that after the numerous problems I had with my old catheter, as well as the expected travails that go along with this stint in the hospital--like what I perceive to be my atrophying leg muscles due to my limited mobility, now not specifically a symptom of the MS but an added nuisance afforded by my reluctance to deal with the tangle of cords that coil out from my IV tree, which has grown from a fledgling sprout to an overgrown evergreen on the lawn of a senile old cat woman (how's that for a colossal mid-sentence digression?)--I deserve to bloviate a bit on two Patrick Swayze movies that I cannot help but watch whenever I come across them on cable: Point Break or, better yet, Road House. (The nurse just came in to switch my bag, so I'm good to go.)

Keanu Reeves is really the protagonist of Point Break. His truly horrible acting is at the forefront of the movie--replete with timelessly bad deliveries of lines like "I am an F-B-I agent!" or the hilarious "Vaya Con Dios..." at the end, when he uncuffs Swayze in order to allow him to ride one last deadly wave. However, it is Swayze's shaggy appearance and his unquotable surfer slang--I can't even count how many "brahs" he utters--that tempers my disdain for Keanu. In the end, when he rides that last wave to his certain demise, Agent Johnny Utah (Reeves) watches silently with regret, as we all do. I could go on some more about how that was how we should all remember Swayze, but that height of maudlin sentimentality I simply cannot scale. Instead, I turn to the hilarious camp and unrestrained violence that, if you think about it, typified a lot of '80s throwaway movies, but none quite like Road House.

Swayze plays Dalton, "the best cooler in the business." I know you're probably thinking that I must be mistaken, because William H. Macy was clearly the best cooler in the business. In fact, he was the "cooler" in The Cooler, but this is not a movie about gambling. Road House is about "The Double Deuce," a rollicking dive bar somewhere in the sticks of Missouri. Dalton is a head bouncer, the best there is, and somehow the guy in charge of the Missouri bar has heard of him, and wants him to calm his chaotic "Road House."

The place is really out of control, as Dalton observes the first time he enters the bar and drinks his coffee while fight after violent fight breaks out. This leads to a small aside here: Dalton evidently doesn't drink, not while he's working at least, but he chainsmokes like a '40s actor. Plus, he downs pot after pot of coffee, and that can't be good for the controlled movements of a Tai Chi practitioner like himself. We find this out later, as he does his Eastern thing on the lawn of the loft he rents across the lake from an evil Ben Gazzara, who wants to take over the town in an absurd gambit of rural domination. The "Double Deuce" is in a town in Missouri, but even they have laws, which Gazzara sidesteps without the finesse of Don Corleone. He hates the town, and its inhabitants, and at one point looks on with amused, quiet resignation while a fight breaks out one night, instigated by one of his disposable henchmen. Dalton eventually steps in to back up the reliably weathered-looking Sam Elliott, who plays Dalton's mentor and who calls him "amigo." And oh yeah--he falls in love with the doctor (the wannabe mother from Curly Sue who takes in Jim Belushi and his sort-of daughter, the title character) who stitches him up after he gets cut, to whom he says the unforgettably glib, but unforgettable nonetheless, "Pain don't hurt."

The movie ends with the "law" of the town, and several of his Keystone Cop-esque deputies, siding with Dalton in a humorously over-the-top battle royale at Gazzara's compound. Forget about the plot, because it is really forgettable next to Swayze's great quotes, which are too numerous to recount. Here are only a few of his gems: "I want you to be nice until it's time to not be nice," "Take the biggest guy in the world, shatter his knee, and he'll drop like a stone," "You're too stupid to have a good time," and the immortal "Pain don't hurt."

Forget about Ghost, which severely damaged the great song "Unchained Melody," in my opinion, or that other saccharine chick-flick that is unwatchable, at least for me--Dirty Dancing. When I was getting re-catheterized, I could only repeat one thing to myself mentally as I stared at the ceiling of my hospital room:

"Pain don't hurt."

R