I first realized that I needed counter stools in my home the first time I saw Road House. When my hungry eyes first devoured Patrick Swayze’s rippling muscles as he tore that guy’s throat out at the end of the movie, I said to myself, "Hmm...these things need to happen in my home."
So I began one of the most difficult and time-consuming journeys of my entire life. Not to mention incredibly shameful and horrendously embarrassing, as I recognize my obsession with Road House and accompanying desire to bring the tale to fruition as a sickness and serious personality disorder. But I didn’t care. Once I had resolved to bring the Double Deuce to my home, it was all over. It had to be done.
I began with what I thought were the easy steps. The steps best suited to get my psychotic ball rolling, so to speak, and help ease the process of completely immersing myself into delusional fantasies. The way an overweight, under-dressed cougar eases her way into a hot tub of young men; so too would I find my Road House.
As my funding was limited to what I could scrounge from my mother’s couch and one hundred and fifty dollars from my grandmothers’ combined birthday gifts of seventy-five dollars each, I decided that I would fashion a sign out of wood and a brightly colored paint called, ‘Electric Blue’.
I thought it might create the illusion of a sign glowing in fluorescent lights. It did not. And when my mother came home and saw the sign over top of our door she forced me to remove it. Later I learned that my grandparents removed me from the will for my hubris.
I decided to move on to the second step, which was finding a miraculously talented guitar player with his quirky wits about him who also happened to be blind. Unfortunately, the person who most resembled sweet Cody from the Double Deuce was the blind hobo who lived behind the abandoned cigar store at the edge of town and played the harmonica very badly.
Undaunted, I walked to the old cigar store which still smelled like stogies with a looming trace of urine and approached the hobo’s growing nest of newspapers, blankets and what appeared to be dead, partially-eaten birds. I asked him politely if he wouldn’t mind coming over to my house to forever re-create scenes from the movie Road House, in which he would play the young, talented, easy to love guitar player with a sunny disposition despite his handicap.
The hobo, instead of answering my question, harassed me for change and insisted that I find him smoke-able cigarette butts, as without the use of his eyes, it was quite difficult. He eventually said he would answer my question if I provided for him, the small fee of smokes and change. So I gathered a pile of cigarette butts that I found around the parking lot and gave him three dollars and sixteen cents in change.
Unfortunately, while hobo was very adept at recreating the dirtiest of dances from Dirty Dancing, his Road House re-enactments left something to be desired. When I told him this, he chased me away from the cigar store with what appeared to be a melted pop bottle.
I was incredibly discouraged at this point, especially considering I had been trying to contact Patrick Swayze for three weeks with absolutely no response whatsoever. I was even beginning to doubt his totally awesome kick-ass-edness. I reconsidered the wisdom of the time I'd dug through the garbage outside his home, looking for locks of hair.
It was at this point that I realized this blog entry was actually supposed to be about furniture, which brings me now to the final stage of my adventure. As I was browsing the internet, creeping through various Road House and Patrick Swayze chat groups, I discovered a website called CounterStoolSelect.com. It is at this website that I discovered the veritable treasure trove of bar stools and counter stools, some of them JUST like the ones in Road House!
From swivel counter stools to low back bar stools and everything in between, I was able to find what must have been an exact replica of the counter stools from the Double Deuce. Rustic, masculine wood barstools... it is as though they were blessed by the buttocks of Patrick Swayze himself.
Luckily, the incredibly reasonable prices and nonexistent shipping costs allowed me to purchase a barstool of my very own within my limited budget which had been depleted further by the three dollars and sixteen cents I gave to that jerk behind the cigar store.
Now, all I have to do to satisfy my sick Road House needs is to sit in my brand new counter stool and imagine myself at the Double Deuce... hand in hand with the Swayze, kicking butts and taking names... forever.
