Hello, everybody.

As I broke it on my Twitter page Monday afternoon, Patrick Swayze, best known for his work in "Dirty Dancing" and "Ghost", died at age 57 after a year-long bout with pancreatic cancer.

Though his co-stars were Jennifer Grey and Demi Moore respectively, Patrick's co-star for life was always his wife of 34 years, Lisa Niemi. But till the end, he's been working on the A&E drama series "The Beast", though the last time he did television was that memorable Chippendales skit on "Saturday Night Live" with Chris Farley (his last TV interview was early this year with Barbara Walters). Now the two are reunited in heaven and Swayze will be missed.

And the celebrity deaths keep on coming, as actor Henry Gibson ("Laugh-In", "Innerspace", "The Burbs", and "Wedding Crashers") has died on Wednesday at 73, as did Mary Travers, 1/3 of the folk trio Peter, Paul, and Mary; she was 72.

But news of Patrick Swayze's passing sure knocked one big entertainment story off the headlines: The Kanye West/Taylor Swift VMA smackdown.

To refresh your memory, Swift went on stage to accept Female Video at Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards, until from out of nowhere, Kanye crashed the party saying that Beyonce Knowles had the best video with "Single Ladies." It got massive boos from the audience and Kanye was later kicked out of the show. When Beyonce won Video of the Year, she re-invited Taylor back to the stage and let bygones be bygones minus Kanye.

Almost immediately, there were non-stop tweets about it all over Twitter; even President Obama weighed in, secretly calling Kanye "a jackass" for interrupting Taylor. Donald Trump also had something to say; he even called for a Kanye boycott.

The next night on the premiere of "The Jay Leno Show" (which debuted big with 17.7 million viewers), Kanye just before his performance spent a few minutes explaining his side of the story; the next morning, it was Taylor's turn in front of the ladies of "The View." After her appearance, West called up Swift to apologize for Sunday.

Now this is not new to Kanye. Remember his "George Bush doesn't care about black people" remark during a Hurricane Katrina relief effort telethon, parodied by Chris Rock with his "George Bush hates midgets" on another? That set off racial firestorms about the Bush administration not using enough resources to help out the hurricane victims as non-government agencies stepped in in their wake.

But what do I make of all of this? Well, Taylor Swift at 19 is on top of the country music world right now, and Kanye West tarnishing her moment in the sun as becoming that genre's first moonman winner was purely a slap in the face. But then again, this was the MTV Video Music Awards, where they stand by its motto: "Expect the unexpected." So long and stay strong.