Two obit posts in a row??!?  Welcome to 2009, the year Death acted like a total butthole.  Anyway, it appears earlier reports that Patrick Swayze might be recovering thanks to an experimental procedure (after being diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer in January ’08) were just false hope.  Swayze died yesterday in LA at the age of 57, which is pretty much the lamest thing ever.  Gawdammit, the only time you’re allowed to declare Patrick Swayze a dead man is after he tells you there’s always barber college.

He was Dalton, he was Bodhi, he saved Baby from the corner, where she surely would’ve been aborted by parents who didn’t understand the dance.  Has anyone else ever been in so many bad movies that everyone loves?  Not to mention, he was the best part of Donnie Darko and co-starred in arguably the most memorable SNL sketch of the 90s.  I don’t normally like to gush about dead people, because when an a-hole dies he doesn’t magically become not an a-hole, no matter what anyone says about him.  You have to honor an a-hole’s memory by remembering him for the a-hole that he was (see: Hunter S. Thompson on the passing of Richard Nixon).  But in all honesty, anyone who doesn’t have at least two or three glowy, pop-culture nostalgia memories involving Patrick Swayze is a two-bit liar and a charlatan, and I wouldn’t sit next to him if it was the last seat on an escape pod.  Maybe if you doctors spent half the time you spend giving people who shouldn’t be boning anyway boners you’d have this cancer crap licked by now.  So stop playing grabass back there in the lab and get going on some serious research, the kind that involves stethoscopes and bunsen burners and all that sh’t.  You already lost us Dalton, but I’ve got some important contributions to humanity that I’m maybe probably going to start working on tomorrow after I cook some food and put on my pants and maybe watch a little TV. And you wouldn’t want to miss out on it over a retarded thing like cancer.

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I hesitate to post this for fear of jinxing it, but the Daily Mail reports, based largely on these side-by-side pictures, the left from back in April, the right a recent shot of him looking healthier, that Patrick Swayze may be winning his battle with pancreatic cancer.

The Dirty Dancing star, 56, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer early last year, appeared to have gained a little weight and grown some of his hair back. He had even added a goatee. Tubes thought to be catheters for his chemotherapy could be seen hanging in front of his shirt but Swayze was smiling and even indulging in a couple of cigarette breaks.

It is thought he had an advanced form of radiotherapy which is offering new hope to sufferers.  The CyberKnife technique shoots hundreds of beams of radiation at hard-to-reach tumours.  Last week cancer patient Robert Ferrant, 62, became one of the first in the UK to have the procedure. Mr Ferrant, from Jersey, said the treatment meant he ‘actually had hope of a cure’ [Ed. note - not sure the patient is the best person to ask in cases such as these...].  The machine, which was reportedly also used by Swayze, shoots hundreds of beams of radiation at difficult-to-reach tumours.  It moves with the patient’s breathing, meaning it can target tumours deemed inoperable due to their proximity to major blood vessels.

I don’t go in for a lot of this science crap, so allow me to explain this for the layperson.  Imagine the CyberKnife standing outside your cells wearing a tight black t-shirt.  Cancer walks into your body and the CyberKnife stands in front of it with its arms folded across its chest and says, “Sorry, body’s closed.”  Then the cancer will be like, “Yeah? Well then what are those cells doing?”  And the CyberKnife will say, all calm like, “Dancing and having a good time.”  Then if the cancer still tries to come in, the CyberKnife beats the crap out of it with karate and tells it to go back to barber college.

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Thankfully, it appears my earlier report about Patrick Swayze may have been premature.  Now that a somewhat credible source has weighed in, things might not be as grim as they once seemed.

"Patrick has a very limited amount of disease [pancreatic cancer] and he appears to be responding well to treatment thus far," Dr. George Fisher says in a statement. "All of the reports stating the time frame of his prognosis and his physical side effects are absolutely untrue. We are considerably more optimistic."

The actor’s rep adds: "Patrick is continuing his normal schedule during this time, which includes working on upcoming projects. The outpouring of support and concern he has already received from the public is deeply appreciated by Patrick and his family."

That’s strange, it’s almost as if The National Enquirer had embellished, or even exaggerated their coverage of this in order to garner cheap publicity.  But that almost seems… irresponsible, or even… sleazy.  No, I don’t believe it.  I’m sure it was all an innocent mixup of some sort.  Perhaps their writers passed up journalism school in favor of, say, Barber College.

In any case, let’s hope he gets over this quick – there are still so many ridiculous pictures of him that it would be a real shame not to be able to make fun of him again soon.  For God’s sake, look at this one!

It took every ounce of my better judgment not to use one of these pictures for this story, and I’m actually glad I didn’t, because it’s pretty much a mega huge bummer:

Patrick Swayze is dying from cancer and has just five weeks to live, according to The National Enquirer.  The magazine says the star of Dirty Dancing and Ghost [Editor's Note: and Roadhouse, you motherfuckers] was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in January and that it has spread to other organs. [Source]

I’m not good with saying nice things about people, nor am I sure about the etiquette of doing a tribute to a guy who’s still alive. But I do know that in the present context, the following video nearly moved me to tears:

I defy anyone to watch that without at least tearing up a little. Please let this story be just The National Enquirer making shit up again. I’m not ready to lose Dalton.