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Patrick Swayze Cultural Exchange

Morning all, I'm afraid I am feeling a little worse for wear today, so you will have to accept my apologies if this is a bit meandering. Last night Ellen and I consumed a little too much of the wine and the spirit whilst enjoying two masterpieces by the recently departed king of chain smoking and looking mean, Mr Patrick Sawyze.

It being Sunday we started off with a bit of X Factor to wash down a particularly nice Roast lamb dinner. It's actually gotten quite good after an abysmal start, although it's now clear that Simon is going to win this year with the over-25 category. Check this back in December and you will find I am right. (Incidentally, for any of you sneering openly at the screen and mocking my television viewing habits, the rest of this post involves me watching Dirty Dancing, so you might want to look away now, or maybe come back tomorrow.)

After X Factor we were idly glancing through the schedules and marvelling at how quickly the networks have managed to shoehorn every Patrick Swayze movie ever made into any space they can.

'Ooh,' remarked Ellen 'I wonder when they will be showing Dirty Dancing then.' Unfortunately the answer to that was that it had just started over on Five. I tried for a second to come up with any kind of feasible excuse to avoid it, but there was no escape.

It had already started, but only a few minutes in there was dancing and frivolity the likes of which would have me normally reaching for the remote, but I knew I had to stay the course.  And then something strange happened. Somewhere between the endless dance lessons (in rooms, on logs, in water) and the faux-working-class diatribes, I found myself really enjoying it.

I actually wanted to know what was going to happen (although of course I didn't need the script to tell me) to the point that when the final dance rolled around, and Swayze holds Jennifer Grey aloft to the strains of 'I've had the time of my life' (which is the least 50's song you'll ever hear in a movie set in the 50's) I found myself inwardly cheering.

Now the cynic in me would say that the enjoyment of such a film would only have been aided by the fact that we had finished the wine and I was on Jim Beam by the end of the film, but for once I'm going to tell that little cynic to go away and just accept the fact that Dirty Dancing is a damn fine little film.

However, now I had the upper hand, and despite needing to be up early for work I suggested to Ellen that we should watch another Swayze film, as I figured that she was so hooked on his torso by this point that she would agree to watching anything with him in. I was right, and so I pulled out the DVD of Roadhouse.

I have already gone on record on this site as to how much I love this film, but having not watched it in a good few years I was pleasantly surprised by how well its held up, and even how much of an influence it has had.  Certainly From Dusk Til Dawn is heavily modelled on it, even down to the same house band in the first bar.  But as well as this it is massively charming, especially with the bad guy duo of Brad Wesley and his camper-than camp sidekick Jimmy, who has to be the campest thing to grace an action film since the volleyball scene in Top Gun.

Unfortunately we were only half way through before Ellen decried that she was too unable to focus on the film any longer, and I had to admit that I wasn't far behind her, and so we retired before the film was able to get into full throat-wrenching swing. Gutted.  But if she thinks for one second that we're not going to finish watching it tonight, then she has clearly underestimated the dedication to geekery of her man.

Tonight I am off to a rare York gig, to see the terribly named but actually quite good And So I Watch You From Afar at Fibbers, which should be good. They were supporting Clutch in Leeds a few months back and although we only caught the second half of their set, they were very good in a Pelican/Red Sparrows/Karma To Burn kind of a way. So if you like spacey riffy instrumental music and are in York, you should come and join me.  I will be showing off my splendid new Alice In Chains T Shirt in public for the first time, which I am strangely excited about.

After that, Roadhouse!