The movie 50/50 explores, with great pathos and endearing humor, what happens when a 27-year old man named Adam finds out he has cancer. His survival odds stand at 50%. This movie pulls no punches. It’s real. Adam’s best friend Kyle uses Adam’s cancer as a pickup line, and yet Kyle is a true friend to Adam. Adam’s artistic girlfriend cheats on Adam with this ridiculous “Jesus figure,” and Adam avoids returning his mother’s phone calls throughout the movie, right [...]
If you could take a magic pill that would make it all better, would you? Or if you could give your troubled, or autistic, or ADHD child a magic pill that would fix all her troubles, would you? Would you wave a magic wand, pharmaceutical-based or otherwise, to smooth out the bumps in your child’s rocky ride? Or do you wait, arms wide open, to catch him when he fails again? Magic pills and fairy wands frighten me. My mother [...]
Madeline ran downstairs to the dinner table. “Mom, Dad: the toilet is making a weird sound, like it is choking!” Travis and I looked at one another. “What?” I asked Maddie. “You know,” she replied, moving her dirty blond hair out of her eyes. “It made a choking sound, like when you eat too much food . . .” In the background, Ben cleared his throat and simulated choking very accurately. Travis swallowed a bite of chicken and cleared his [...]
Last night, I read an article written by Phil Taylor from Sports Illustrated called The Sandusky Effect, and like so many things written by ex-athletes and sportswriters regarding the Penn State scandal, it ignored the perspective of abused children. See SI, January 9, 2012, at 80. Taylor does not exactly defend Sandusky as much as he complains that because of Sandusky’s alleged rape of a boy, Taylor is afraid to give the boys he coaches a ride home from practice. [...]