For anyone who didn’t read my review of Drive Angry 3D (in which I made this point abundantly clear): I think Nicholas Cage is great. In my defence, I was 10 when Face Off came out, and when you’re that age and haven’t been exposed to many ‘super cool dudes’ in your life yet (apart from maybe Fox from ‘Animals of Farthing Wood’ that is: braps), Castor Troy seems like pretty much the biggest badass who has ever, or will ever exist in the natural course of time. So, 14 years and a whole lot of ‘Cage-Kicking-Ass’ later you can only imagine how elated I was when a buddy of mine, in response to the review, posted a link to ‘101 reasons to love Nicholas Cage’ on my facebook wall. Now this is where I’ve got to confess to being a little bit of a sellout in one respect, in that I know absolutely nothing about Nicholas Cage’s off screen personal life, and am only really a fan of his characters in movies. My reasoning here is that since he plays pretty much exactly the same character in every movie he’s in (apart from maybe City of Angels…..shit gets ‘deep’), he must just be like that in real life. After reading the article I found out that I was pretty much completely right all along…… it turns out he’s as utterly mental in real life as he is in every single movie he’s in. If you’ve got the time to read all 101 reasons; I’d recommend checking it out here, because it’s a cracking read, and the dudes who wrote it are not only funnier than me, but also seem to love Nicholas Cage a fair amount more than I do….which makes for entertaining reading. However I know its a faced paced world we live in nowadays, and thanks to TV we all have the attention spans of goldfish with ADHD, so I’ve picked out my best bits for the good folks of Sick Chirpse to save you all some time (and to give me at least some semblance of a real post, rather than just a link to someone else’s article). So here goes:

1. Nicolas Cage changed his name from Coppola so people wouldn’t hire him off the back of his famous family, which includes Oscar-winning uncle Francis Ford and grandfather Carmine. – Unlike most of the other ‘reasons’ on this list I actually just think this is pretty cool (as opposed to COMPLETELY DUMB like the rest of them). That is; if it’s the real reason he changed his name, and not just because he wanted CAGE as a second name.

4. Nicolas Cage really, really loves superhero comic-books. In 2003, he sold his comic collection for $1.68 million, including his copy of Action Comics issue #1, the first ever appearance of Superman. – I don’t think this is that cool, but I know Timw_braps definitely will as he’s a comic book nerd too, so I left this in to guarantee this post makes it on to the site.

11. Nicolas Cage owns a pyramid tomb in which he plans to be buried. – IF ITS GOOD ENOUGH FOR A PHAROAH, ITS GOOD ENOUGH FOR CAGE!

17. Nicolas Cage lived in a fake castle outside Los Angeles and toyed with the idea of importing a real one from overseas, before deciding to leave such behaviour to supervillains and the mentally ill. – A Castle…..seriously? How much of a badass do you have to be to live in a fake castle in LA? And incidentally what distinguishes a ‘real’ castle from a ‘fake’ castle?

21. Nicolas Cage has a Ghost Rider tattoo on his arm, which he had to cover up when starring in the movie, Ghost Rider. Because even Ghost Rider doesn’t have a Ghost Rider tattoo. – This is just hilarious, I didn’t even know ghost rider was a comic before I read this. Does that make me a loser? Or Cage a loser?

24. Nicolas Cage demanded more iguanas while shooting Bad Lieutenant. – Just in case anyone hasn’t seen BAD LIEUTENANT (morons), Nicholas Cage plays a crack smoking, old lady threatening, RENEGADE (a.k.a Charlie Sheen) who goes further and further off the rails during the course of the movie in a desperate attempt to solve the biggest case of his career. One side effect of this is that he goes fairly insane and starts seeing Iguana’s everywhere, which is just smashing. Not as smashing, however as the mental image I have of Nicholas Cage screaming “WE NEED MORE IGUANAS!!” at Werner Herzog, who, like any sane (or as sane as Werner Herzog could be) person probably timidly replied “….um…..I think we’ve got enough Nick?”

28. Nicolas Cage wanted to play the villain in The Green Hornet with a Jamaican accent. I have absolutely no problem with that. – Just take one second to imagine this. Seriously. Gold.

37. Nicolas Cage used to take magic mushrooms with his cat, Lewis. “He ate them voraciously,” he told David Letterman. “I had no doubt that he was my brother.” – …….GOLD.

38. Nicolas Cage used to stalk his neighbourhood as a child. “I would call myself ‘The Spirit’ and I had a white T-shirt with a black ‘S’ on it. I strapped a boomerang to my chest and I would prowl the alley at the back of my house between one and two in the morning.” – I wouldn’t want to bump into this kid at one in the morning on my way home from scrabble club down a dark alley. I’m pretty sure even at age 10 (or however old he was) Nicholas Cage could have kicked my ass.

51. Nicolas Cage has a 20 year-old son called Weston, who is the lead vocalist in a black metal band called Eyes Of Noctum. (*throws up rock horns, splits girl’s lip*). – Have I just died and gone to heaven? Is this really happening? SERIOUSLY? Weston Cage????  Black Metal?…..FUCK!!!

54. Kathleen Turner alleged in her autobiography that Nicolas Cage was constantly drunk on the set of Peggy Sue Got Married and even stole a dog: “He’d come across a Chihuahua he liked and stuck it in his jacket.” – The sceptic in me would say that her poor use of grammar here would seem to suggest a lie…..but I just so want to believe he did it so much.

57. Nicolas Cage claims he was once stalked by a silent mime while shooting Bringing Out The Dead. “I have no idea how it got past security,” he said. – I love a) the fact that this happened, and b) the fact that Nicholas Cage refers to the mime (presumably a human being) as ‘It’.

61. Nicolas Cage auditioned for the lead in Tim Burton’s Superman Lives, even though he has vertigo. And was in his forties. And was Nicolas Cage. – And he still would have been about 10 bazillion times better than whatever jerk they actually got to play him.

84. “I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther. I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion.” – EAT THAT SHEEN!

86. “Without tooting my own horn – I think Face/Off is a masterpiece.”– This, and the last one are from the section near the end of the list where they just started listing Cage quotes as reasons to love him….which I’m fine with. You could call this particular one big headed…..i just call it the truth.

So there it is folks, if you didn’t love Nicholas Cage after Con Air (he’s just trying to get back to his wife and daughter you jerks!!!) and you still don’t love him after this: then you should probably go and see some kind of specialist, because you’ve got something deeply….DEEPLY wrong with you.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wRcv6HA5oQ&feature=related