Tuesday, September 15, 2009

A moment of silence

Patrick Swayze died. He was 57, which just blows me away. He had been married to his wife since forever. Amazing by Hollywood standards.
Patrick was one of the icons of the 80's!! When I heard the breaking news last night I immediately emailed my friend Heather (from high school) to tell her and to commiserate with her over the fond memories we have of Dirty Dancing!!!
I close my eyes, and I can see the events of that day. The day that I fell in LOVE with Dirty Dancing. It was not in the theater, oh no. It was at my mom and dad's house. On VHS VIDEO on a Sunday afternoon after I had just had a gathering at my house on that Saturday night. Mom and Daddy had gone out of town and someone from Daddy's office was "watching" us. (It was not a huge party, again, just a small gathering. But I will tell you that there was a trip to the ER on the Sunday morning before we watched the movie :D I had to have stitches in my thumb. Cut it on some sort of can...)
Heather worked in a video store, an UN-blockbuster store, and had "rented" some movies for us to watch, and this was one I just HAD to see. As I recall, it was Heather and another friend of ours, Steve, and me.
I loved it. The whole fall in love on summer vacation. The music, the dancing. The rebel boy. the movie lines to treasure....."I carried a watermelon".
Oh the clothes. Rolled jean shorts and little t-shirt tops were in...and Keds white tennis shoes!!!!!
We kept rewinding it to watch certain parts over again. Bad boy gets the girl. Daddy likes bad boy.
Maybe there was hope for all the cigarette puffing, dancing, black t-shirt wearing bad boys in my life.
OK, so none of them danced.
Before he was a dirty dancer, he was the big brother, Darry, to the Curtis boys in The Outsiders. The Outsiders was a coming of age type thing....read the book and then watch the movie! All of those guys were such unknowns back then. Patrick and the rest of the cast (C. Thomas Howell, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio) made being bad look so good.
Then Red Dawn!!! Hello, I go running to the mountains with him let me tell ya.
Reading the paper this morning, they said that Patrick never made that "mega superstar" level..I don't know, I think he did...
oh oh babay, my sweet babay, you're the one.

3 comments:

Marybeth Whalen said...

thanks for the musical memorial for Patrick... so sad... I can't get it off my mind! I am going to leave your site up for a bit and just let the music play as I remember... your tribute to him was beautiful! I hope that somehow his family finds it!!

PS. We still need to catch up!! Call me!!

Thena said...

I found your blog from Marybeth's. Every song that plays I can see the movie scene that went with it. My oldest daughter use to watch it alot. Was her favorite back then. Maybe she dreamed of being baby. But then who didn't.

Sherry B. said...

I also found your blog from MaryBeths..I saw Dirty Dancing on a 8th grade field trip to the movies. I'm surprised at the time that our parents let us go. It was quite the talk in a small town...but that's what I liked about it. Oh, to be a rebel like Baby. Patrick was so dreamy! His performance in Ghost was also rivoting. Thanks for reflecting and posting...