Patrick Swayze, 1952-2009
Patrick Swayze died yesterday after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Still, when he was diagnosed early in 2008, doctors only gave him a few months to live — Swayze fought and beat the odds to live this long, and even star in the A&E series The Beast. Swayze starred in beloved nerd flicks like Donnie Darko and Red Dawn (still the only movie to feature Jennifer Grey getting gunned down), but is probably best known to us as Dalton, the lead in what the MST3K/Rifftrax guys have rightly called the greatest movie of all time, Road House (oh, and Point Break was pretty awesome as well). FilmDrunk probably puts it best: “Has anyone else ever been in so many bad movies that everyone loves?” See you, Dalton. At least we know you’ll have kicked all the assholes out of heaven by the time we get there.
About The Author
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.