Coach Tucker and Carolyn loved to travel, and always sent me postcards from locales around the country during the summer. They kind of kept us accountable to keep running when we really wanted to be sleeping in late and trying to score beer…these postcards let us know he was thinking of the upcoming season, and we should be too. This one’s from Dallas. Reading RHT’s handwriting was an art in itself…but after a few years, you picked up on it. It was like a secret language only our team could read. It says “Thanks for helping at the fair.” We got to sit in the heat together and park cars for the Rushville Demo derby, to raise money for the track. It was one of the longest, dryest, hottest days ever. It really sucked, actually. But he and I got to talk about movies for hours on end. He loved movies, especially Sci-Fi, nerdy stuff like Star Wars and Dune. We definitely had that in common. He was the first to tell me they were making new Star Wars movies, and I was actually excited at the time. He had recently went to see “Striptease” with Demi Moore, which was controversial at the time, and I thought this was hilarious in itself. I don’t think I was old enough to see an R movie in 1996. He said the movie wasn’t any good, but Demi Moore had “bazongas the size of basketballs for some reason” and then eyes got really big and he puffed his cheeks out. We laughed about that all afternoon. The end of the card says “Be careful of heat, use belt at pool. Jog with Stear, Dustin and Caleb. —Coach rht” He had bought a special belt used for training runners in a pool. It was a very odd device, and we rarely used it because we were shiftless and lazy and couldn’t be bothered. We couldn’t even figure it out how to use it for a few weeks. I think we did cannonballs with it on. Coach always wrote his initials in three lowercase letters like that. Kind of humble, in a way. That was his trademark.
I was going through old clippings and photos, thinking back about Coach Tucker. I’m working on a longer piece, but I’d just like to share some bits and pieces for now.
Unfortunately, Kotaku doesn’t show any images from the game, like this promotional poster used to pitch the game to Konami. I’m one of a few people who own one of these but I can’t tell you how I got it. Here it is in my office. Jealous?:
I had a whole post ready to go tonight. It was hilarious. And YouTube deleted the video so I have to redo the whole thing. But you know what? I’m going to see The Pixies tonight, and they’re playing Doolittle in its entirety, so I really couldn’t care less about anything in the entire world right now. Here’s some Pixies videos. Watch ‘em this weekend, download Doolittle, watch the documentary Loud Quiet Loud, and then be jealous of me later on. Frank Black looks like he could be your landlord in some of these videos. Compared to the done-up bands today, it’s kind of an exciting look.
If you appear on the $25,000 Pyramid, and Dick Clark gives you the category “Famous names that begin with the letter ‘C’”, what’s going through your mind? Is it the mantra “Don’t be racist…don’t be racist…don’t be racist…“? If it is, you probably should run off the set before this happens to you.
You’re going to have to excuse the following video, because I’m in it and not the most comfortable or likable person in front of a camera. But dear lord…just watch.
THE KICKER:
“Things that are douchebags, ummm… things that reveal their true nature…ummm…Things the audience suddenly turns on with low-ambiance boos…PASS PASS!”
I did a little research on the “celebrity” trying to get the NAACP Image Award here, and guess who he is? He’s actor Henry Polic II. And if that still doesn’t mean anything, consider that the show he was known for at the time was….
WEBSTER. FUCKING WEBSTER.
So I wonder if he considers Webster “that old black show?” Hell, I wonder if he considers Webster a “black show” at all. Does anyone? He must, because The Cosby Show would be “that NEW Black show.” The one he subconsciously knows is about to unseat his show. “Ruin his neighborhood,” if you will. One thing’s for sure, when George Papadapolis catches wind of this, it’s bang, zoom to the moon with this guy in a very special episode of Kicking Henry Polic’s Ass!
Henry Polic II went on to appear in one episode of Saved By The Bell, and Bill Cosby…well, Bill Cosby went on to have the number one Black show in America, until the number one Yellow show came along. Wait, I mean The Simpsons! I’m talking about The Simpsons!!! It was just a slip! Oh god, my career is over!!!
My high school reunion is this weekend, and I was going through some old crap and found these incredible notes. I butted heads in a pretty big way with my art teacher my Senior year. This stemmed from the fact that I was a normal, immature high school kid going through typical issues (heightened by a sudden obsession with Nine Inch Nails and dark and macabre art instead of my typical goofy-humored stuff), and my teacher went batshit insane right before she retired (something that was relayed to me by some other teachers years and years later over a giant bottle of wine, which felt like the coolest victory ever.) I still get a kick out of these.
This woman is the reason I got out of art and into writing. I owe her a “thank you,” actually, and I hope she’s doing fine now. Had I pursued art—which is what I wanted to do since I was five years old—I would have undoubtedly been proven not good enough once I hit college. I might have improved some, but I don’t think I would have had what it takes to make a career out of something like that. That happens in a small town: you’re encouraged and not given any truly constructive criticism for 12 years and then, when you leave, you learn the hard way.
This makes me sound a lot more badass than I actually was. This lady also accused me of bringing a gun—a fucking GUN—on an Art Club trip to Chicago, and even lied saying that I refused to let her search my bag. The principal, bless his heart, laughed this off and believed me. That’s a pretty serious claim.
To be fair, the rules aren’t for me. She’s got that right. This also reminds me that I’ve gone soft over the years. My antics in art class got my name stricken from the record as Art Club class president. That’s right: if someone goes back through my high school’s records in 1999, doing an investigative report on the legacy of Art Club presidents, they’ll find a hole where my name used to be, and begin a harrowing, John Grisham-style adventure to find the root of the cover-up.
Shown: Sexiest man alive, future loose cannon. And that PROFILE! Dammmmnn!!! GET some!
Patrick Swayze represented a turning point in my life: a point when I stopped loving things ironically, or cynically, and started really enjoying them for what they were, warts and all.
I want you to see something. Something I might not have noticed before. It’s always been obvious in this scene that Patrick Swayze is the world’s most badass man. In this film, he plays “a Cooler.” As in, “He’s cooler than you, motherfucker.” He’s SO cool, he tells a bouncer that he doesn’t have the right temperament for the trade. The TRADE? The TRADE of bouncing? And yet I believe it when he says it.
And notice this: between the time he says “there’s always barber college” and when the greasy bouncer walks away—during their icy, tense stare-down—Patrick Swayze does not blink. I never noticed this. That’s commitment to a scene in a movie that might not have deserved it. At :57 you see him blink, and take a breath, right after the threat is over.
I love Road House the way a mother unconditionally loves her mullet-sporting, philosophy spewing, bouncer of a son. If you’ve seen it, you know why. Road House is my baby, and nobody puts baby in a….well, you know. And my kid is better than your kid, even though your kid is The Godfather II. That’s just how it is.
When I see Road House has been given Two Stars on my cable network listings, I grumble and mutter about how the Weinstein’s Kid, Inglourious Basterds, will probably get three or four stars even though it could never hold a candle to my boy Road House. Quentin Tarantino could never hope to make a movie like Road House, though he will certainly try in his own cut-and-paste grindhouse homage way. A movie—nay, an experience—like Road House is not born from self-awareness and irony. They happen the same way “viral videos” happen…by total accident. Which is what drives advertisers nuts: they can’t tap into what makes one cat playing piano video get a billion views, and another 200 views.
Shown: A painting I made for my friend Ryan Penagos on the occasion of his birthday. It sits above his mantle. From my series “Mediocre Celebrity Portraits.”
A movie like Road House is the kind of happy accident of 80s excess and earnest filmmaking by a man named Rowdy Herrington (and, when you’re born with the name “Rowdy,” did anyone have any doubt he’d be the messiah of big screen honky tonk dust-ups?). And that earnestness, no matter how shoddy the results might be, earns respect in a way, say, Transformers 2—another attempt to gold-dig at nerds by throwing loads of money around—never will. In Patrick Swayze’s throat-ripping, “Pain Don’t Hurt”-offering, Evil businessman-thwarting opus, there is an innocence and purity of creation.
The crap I post on this site—screwed-up, weird and obscure bricks of pop culture garbage that have built the Lego Kitsch Command Center of my life—I enjoy because its flawed and its fun and it makes my friends and I happy. That’s the joy of Patrick Swayze. (It doesn’t hurt that he was a model person in real life, and had a good sense of humor about himself.)
Apple Jacks cereal used to have a terrible ad campaign: “We like what we like,” or something to that effect. It was born, I believe, out of the fact that they found it impossible to market a cereal that neither tasted like apples or jacks. That’s how I feel as I get older, and that’s exactly what I railed against old people for when I was younger. I like what I like. It’s partly a resistance to 24/7 viral video pushes, ad campaigns, pop-up windows…millions of dollars spent by PR Firms trying to get you interested in what they’re selling. “Billion dollar tent-pole film? I’d rather watch Patrick Swayze fight a CGI dragon on the Sci-Fi network and laugh with friends. What’s that? It’s SyFy? Well, then eat me. We’re calling it SciFi Channel.”
My friends and I will always have Swayze. The rallying cries of Red Dawn. The desire to be those manly men of the eighties who had big hearts and bigger hair. A career of highs and lows and even critical redemption in movies like Donnie Darko and shows like The Beast. They’re all planning a three-movie Swayze Manly Movie Marathon right now that I wished like hell I could attend, and THIS song will be played there and analyzed and enjoyed.
There may have been a time when I thought the picture on the left was funny, and the picture on the right was funny for a different reason. Now, to me, the picture on the left seems like played-out, forced irony—an idea of a joke by an unimpressed hipster. The picture on the right, while completely ridiculous, kind of kicks ass. And, yeah, I’m kind of jealous.
I’m kind of jealous that Patrick Swayze is exactly as badass as we’d been led to believe.
My friend Rob is apparently trying to destroy any chance at me having a happy weekend by posting THIS picture today at Topless Robot.
Oh my god. No. Just….Oh Jesus, take it away. Make me a bird, so I can fly far. Far far away. Make me a bird, so I can fly far. Far far away. Make me a bird, so I can fly far. Far far away. Make me a bird, so I can fly far. Far far away……
And that got me thinking, where does the Princess Leia holgram co…oh. Oh no. Please no.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Now YOUR weekend is ruined. That’s called paying it forward.
